I don't think it's fair to characterize that as the "new tactic." Liberals were complaining that it wasn't enough while and ever since the Recovery Act was pas

I don't think it's fair to characterize that as the "new tactic." Liberals were complaining that it wasn't enough while and ever since the Recovery Act was passed. Krugman himself was yelling pretty loudly about it, cite: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic-wonkish-but-important/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithme... At the time, liberals were advocating a $1-2 trillion stimulus made up primarily of government spending, which is obviously not remotely what we got. Funding safety net programs is not really a "misuse of funds;" it was built into the legislation. (Maybe it's a poor use of funds, but that's Congress's fault more than the White House's.) If you want specifics on how money was distributed, just go to the source: http://www.recovery.gov/ http://www.recovery.gov/ It looks like a bit more than a third of the money allocated actually went toward "contracts, grants, and loans," which is the category that one would expect to be creating jobs.