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See, what happened was a state would have a million bucks in its road budget, so they would look around at everything they could do for a million bucks. They would have one section of road that needed to have some potholes filled, and they would also see a bridge that needed to be replaced. The road could be fixed for the million dollar budget. The bridge was gonna cost $100 million. So they planned to fix the road. They got the project into the pipeline and made it shovel ready. But they hadn't started the work yet.
Then Obama came along and said "I'll give you as much money as you can spend right now." They really needed a new bridge, but they needed a couple years to plan for that. The potholes were ready to be fixed right away. So Obama gave them money for the potholes.
The bridge still needs fixing badly. But so did the potholes.
Was the money wasted? Depends on how you define that. It stimulated the economy fairly quickly, and some potholes got filled. Hope that bridge doesn't fall down.
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