Monday, March 23, 2009

How to spend $700 billion in 6 months



Post By: Dana Sunderlin

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Remember that $700 billion financial sector rescue plan from October? It's all but spoken for.

After Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner promised to spend up to $100 billion on a toxic asset purchase plan Monday, only $10.2 billion remain unallocated in the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

After former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson determined how Treasury would spend up to $460 billion of the funds in his tenure, the new administration has committed another $230 billion in just two months. But with the government's rescue programs still incomplete, Geithner may need to ask for more.

(For a look at how Treasury and other government agencies have used taxpayer dollars to rescue the economy, click here.)

"Secretary Geithner is going to need to go to Congress and ask for more money sooner rather than later," said Anne Vorce, policy director at the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank. "He's done everything possible not to go back to Congress, but now the amount left is a worry."


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