In 2009 I was in Vermont State government, in th Labor Dept. People kept asking me about the stimulus program, employers with ideas about infrastructure fixes they saw were needed. I passed their ideas up the pipeline and pressed for answers. After months, the answer came back down. The money would be used to continue funding for state and local government employees. In other words, shut up and focus on how your bread was being buttered, and forget about infrastructure. The “least costly” way to stimulate was to create and maintain government jobs. Real jobs would require costly equipment and logistics. It was shortly after that I took. Buy out and an early retirement.
Wow, that’s depressing. Our money went to people already employed. Not to fixing anything.