Steven Chu - oh, he's ready to stimulate you, America!

[Coexist]

Steven Chu: DOE Working to Spend Stimulus Money Faster
Posted by Keith Johnson

One of the big knocks against much of the proposed spending in the stimulus packages is that it will take years for the money to trickle into the economy. New energy secretary Steven Chu vows to make sure that doesn’t happen on his watch, and pledged to try to spend about half the department’s $35 billion to $40 billion in expected funding this year.

In an interview with Stephen Power of The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Chu said the department’s legacy of conservative decision-making might have to be jettisoned to get that money out the door quickly. A transcript is here; some excerpts from the story (sub reqd.) below:

Mr. Chu said he is prepared to overhaul the way the agency operates to quickly direct the money to projects on weatherization, energy efficiency and support for renewable energy <…>

In Friday’s interview, Mr. Chu said one reason for that delay is that the agency’s legal department has been “very conservative.” He said the amount of documentation the agency has required of companies applying for aid “might be too much,” and that the agency’s lawyers too often wait until all applications are submitted to begin vetting them, rather than “triaging” them on a “rolling” basis.

“I now have my advisers actually going down, rolling up their sleeves and saying ‘OK, let’s look at every detail … What is it that you’re requiring? Is this necessary?’ ” Mr. Chu said.

He added that the Obama administration is exploring the idea of temporarily reassigning employees from other federal agencies with more experience dispensing financial aid to companies to “come over here and put them next to our people and say ‘this is the pace we expect, not three years, but five months.’

[Tashca]

1. I like the sound of this.

The idea of bringing experts from other departments to dispense this money properly. This has got to be a monumental task. I'm sure the vetting process will be huge. I hope the oversight and regulation aspect of this is handled properly too.

I'm not worried about the new start up as much as I am some of these large corporation that will be getting funding. Will they be able to regulate them to put the money where they are suppose to put it. It sounds like a daunting task.

Every time I hear something out of Secretary Chu it is impressive and what I would like to hear....now lets hope his performance is equally impressive.