Federal stimulus dollars spent in the five-county region surrounding Savannah River Site created or saved 4,600 jobs and helped mitigate the impact of the worst recession in recent history, according to a new study unveiled Tuesday.
Economists at O’Connell Center for Executive Development at the University of South Carolina Aiken partnered with Augusta State University and Claflin University to produce an analysis of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spending and its impact on Aiken, Barnwell and Allendale counties in South Carolina and Richmond and Columbia counties in Georgia.
“Every dollar of the Recovery Act invested in this area funded 86 cents of additional economic activity in the region, and each job funded by the SRS Recovery Act program created an additional 0.90 jobs in the local community,” the study found.
The $135,000 study, funded with stimulus dollars, was commissioned by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the site’s primary contractor; and Savannah River Remediation, the site’s liquid waste contractor.
The two companies were allocated $1.4 billion and $200 million, respectively, in recovery money, to accelerate environmental cleanup projects at the site.
The authors of the 86-page study evaluated spending from April 2009 to October 2010 and found average household income increased by almost $500 per year, while the number of people spending their new paycheck within their own communities increased by 90 percent – from 2,400 to 4,600.
During the study period, the two companies spent about $819 million of the site’s total allocation of $1.6 billion in Recovery Act funds. Out of that amount, $282 million was spent in local communities.
Much of the work financed by the extra money was already in the planning stage, but completing those cleanup efforts earlier has helped reduce the site’s footprint by 122 square miles through closing, cleaning up or consolidating facilities into smaller areas.
The eventual goal is to reduce the footprint by 75 percent, or 233 square miles.
Major projects that received stimulus funding included decommissioning two defunct reactors, packing and shipping of nuclear waste, demolishing an old cooling tower and removing obsolete buildings and facilities.
Employment through the program peaked last April, when Savannah River Nuclear Solutions had about 2,200 stimulus workers on the site.
Major impact from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds for the study period, April 2009-October 2010. Economic impact reported by the current study is estimated over 2.5 years: 1.5 years of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions/Savannah River Remediation spending and 12 additional months of economic spill down effect :
Source: O’Connell Center for Executive Development, USC-Aiken
Well it couldn't have been such a good program because it happened under the Obama administration.
Yeah, Boogaloo, you've got it right! It must have been an accident.
Far better would have been tax cuts for the local rich, which would 'trickle down' (never mind that they buy Mercedes and drink French wine, IF they actually spend their money instead of saving or investing it). This 'magical reality' economics has not worked before, for example under George W. (or Ronald Regan), but will make a break through any moment now.
So, how surprising that spending money on projects that put local people to work has helped!
Keynes may have been right, after all.
Isn't it funny how US Rep. Joe Wilson said the stimulus money was a complete flop in South Carolina that didn't create any jobs. I just wonder who Joe got his info from, Sen. Demint? Joe did say we should be getting some jobs from the Boeing plant in North Charleston any time now. This was actually in The People Sentinel of Barnwell! What a croc of BS we get from Wilson, Deminted and Graham. Sadly most locals believe this bunch of dog faced liars.
Joe Wilson, and the question where he got his facts! Great joke. Data, expressing an approximation of truth (our best effort), does not matter to him, or his ilk.
He prefers a negative shout out...LIAR!
Pluffmudder, I'm curious. You don't believe the Boeing Plant in Charleston will provide jobs? What did you mean by that?
Pluffmudder seemed to say at 7:36 that the Boeing Plant wouldn't provide jobs. Am I misinterpreting what he means? Does he mean the plant is not coming or what?
I meant relevance to this article, not an attack on one of the correspondents.
Liberal..LOL...you mean my asking someone who commented what he meant? Uh, that's kind of how it's done. Seriously, a thread of comments will bring forth much information that was not included in the original article.
Actually, I was not attacking Pluffmud. I really thought he may know something about the Boeing Plant not coming to SC. Sooooo, if you really think about it my comments were much more on target than yours. I was not attacking a commenter as you seem to be doing, but maybe you are simply unclear of my intentions?
No, I think I understand why you want to change the subject, e.g. positive news about an Obama's stimulus plan.
Why don't you comment on what I said, which relates to the article.
Democrat poster said something.
I said, "Huh?"
You say I'm picking on him.
Okay..you want me to comment on what you said. Keynesian economics is a form of central planning that may show a very short term beneficial effect, but it's negative in the long term. Our capitalistic system needs currency that's not devalued and a political-tax system that encourages free business.
Capitalism has made this country great. Instead of thinkng those who drive Mercedes as getting something over on the poor, I'd recognize their talent, industriousness, risk taking and pure luck as being a good thing.
Well, you've explained yourself, Riverman. Let's hope you are right!
Recent American history, as well as that during the Great Depression would suggest otherwise.
P.S. Please note, Riverman, that I do not disagree about the positive role of capitalism, nor would Keynes, but do about everything else you said.
Liberal, great....then we can do that agree to disagree thing. Here is where many misunderstandings about capitalism come about. I said "free capitalism."
Many liberals will say big, evil corporations get away with this and that. Well, if that's the case, they are breaking the law. THAT'S ILLEGAL. Put their officers in jail or whatever the appropriate penalty would be. I want free capitalism not hindered by monopolies of any kind....or by the goverment's oppressive taxes and control.
Well, Riverman, this is getting off topic, but speaking of large businesses... How about in your context, mention of Wall Street (Goldman Sacs, Lehman Brothers, etc), and the banks and other lenders handing out mortgages to unqualified buyers (think about now defunct Wachovia, if you must think locally), and the agencies that were supposed to objectively rate the garbage that Wall Street bought from the bankers and packaged and sold at great loss to investors, and the guys who sold insurance on this garbage (AIG). Not one, so far, person involved in any of these scams has gone to jail, as far as I know. Yet the country is in recession, and almost went into a depression because of what they did.
P.S. Most of the 'big' guys involved in fact, far from going to jail, walked away with millions, some with tens or hundreds of millions.
Oh, how short-sighted we are.
Ask anyone who works (or, more aptly, "worked") at SRS. Yes, the stimulus added jobs. BUT.... When the money ran out so did the jobs.
I challenge the authors of the study to perform the same analysis in one year.
Liberal, ahhhh, instead of faulting the whole system because some do wrong, let's concentrate on punishing those who don't uphold the principles of free capitalism....if you truly respect that economic machine. By the way, the home loans to those who couldn't afford them orchestrated by the Democrats were as much the cause of the crash as anything else. You know Franklin Raines and all. I notice that ANY time the goverment gets involved guaranteeing ANYTHING it eventually fails.
".....each job funded by the SRS Recovery Act program created an additional 0.90 jobs in the local community......"
WOW! I hope they popped a bottle of the bubbly on that massive growth!!!
By the way, how many jobs did we LOSE because of the economy? Net loss or net gain?
Brad
Brad, I was thinking the same thing...0.90 jobs?
I'm SHOCKED!
A study funded by the stimulus shows that the stimulus was positive.
If you pay me $135,000, I will say nice things about you too.
It's all so silly, all this hyperventilating about the deficit. Nary a peep while about 85% of it was being created in 2000-2007 by tax giveaways to rich GOP patrons, a frivolous, carelessly executed, and ruinously expensive war in Iraq, and later this wild goose chase in Afghanistan.
Frankly, the reason we're in this economic mess started with Reagan and followed with every administration since, Democratic and Republican! Bush 43 ran up public debt like a drunken sailor, handed out massive tax breaks (which I rather agreed with honestly), and seriously deregulated many industries that really shouldn't have been deregulated. Add to this continuing to hand over jobs hand over fist to cheap markets and massive increases in world-wide resource consumption and you have a recipe for disaster. Bush was just lucky his watch ended when the stuff really hit the fan. And I didn't agree with the stimulus, but if it hadn't been pushed through (by Bush AND Obama) you'd be eating dog food out of a can in some Hooverville.
@ citbank... There is no such thing as a "tax break" or a "tax giveaway." When the government doesn't take your money, it's not a break or a gift.
That's like giving Christmas presents to your children by not taking the toys they already have. Ha.
I disagree Insider...I would read into the 'tax giveaway' as earned income credit, or the 1st time homebuyer housing credits.
liberal, ‘Recent American history, as well as that during the Great Depression would suggest otherwise.’
Perhaps you should read the REAL American history.
FDR’s inaugural address left no doubt about his intentions to seize the moment and harness it to his purposes. Best remembered for the false "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," it also called for extraordinary emergency governmental powers.
Two professors at UCLA, a liberal college, wrote a report that said FDR’s new deal policies did accomplice one thing. His policies were responsible for putting the ‘GREAT’ in the depression. They said, most historical experts agree, that his policies prolonged the depression by at least 7 years. It might have been longer if World War II had not started.
FDR tried to manipulate the economy in many ways. Invoking the Trading with the Enemy act of 1917, Roosevelt declared that “all banking transactions shall be suspended.” Banks were permitted to reopen only after case-by-case inspection and approval by the federal government, a procedure that took months. People no longer trusted the banks and with good reason the federal government was running them.
FDR with the help of the idiots in congress abandoned the gold standard and nationalized the monetary gold stock. Besides being theft, it did not work.
Having hobbled the banking system and destroyed the gold standard, he turned next to agriculture. Roosevelt pushed through the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. It provided for acreage and production controls. It authorized new lending, taxed processors of agricultural commodities, and rewarded farmers who cut back production. The objective was to raise farm commodity prices until they reached a much higher "parity" level. They had thousands of baby pigs and baby chickens killed and crops plowed up in the effort to force prices higher; all that while people in the US were staving.
Industry was virtually nationalized under Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933.
I could go on and on but the point is we did not learn. The Obama administration and the democrats are doing the same thing again. They trying to manipulate the economy of the USA the same as FDR did. But just it was with FDR this is more about growing the federal government than it is about helping the country. At last count Obama had 32 Czars. The federal government is pretty much running the banks and most of the auto manufactures. Now they are trying to take over health care and pass one of the biggest cons ever with the Cap and Trade bill.
Obama, like FDR, thinks he is an intellectual and he knows what is best. Obama and congress believe they are so much more capable of making decisions than we are. Many of these people never had a real job in their life.
"Why should people that worked hard to get where they are be punished?" and " people stop thinking they are owed, no one is owed anything" ....do not go together ;-)
Success is measured by money in the US, not hard work ... in my area, the harder you work, the less you make so don't pretend its hard work that gave the rich their success, its the support of those busting their butts living on the poverty line ...
Is it, or is it not, true that the top 2% of earners in the USA are in a lower tax bracket these days? Is it not also true that many corporations get away without paying a cent in taxes? I'm not out to punish the rich - it'd just be nice to have them play on a level playing field for a change
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