[Caller:] Hey, Rick. This is Angela from Maryland. Thank you and CNN for investigating where the stimulus money is going. But could you present the entire list of the corporations or agencies or businesses that are corrupt, instead of giving us just one or two of them, as you highlight the story? Thank you for being the man with a plan. We love you, Rick. Bye-bye.
[Sanchez:] I think you can get the answer to that question, by the way, at CNN.comstimulusplan, right? There you go. Go there. You will find it or just stimulus, actually, not stimulusplan. OK. All week, CNN has been examining and reporting on projects around the country funded by the massive stimulus package. The stated intention, as I have told you repeatedly, of the stimulus project is to put unemployed Americans to work. That's what they said. Well, guess what? One of those projects, I kid you not, is a study of the stimulus. Tom Foreman has the details over at stimulus desk. Oh, my goodness.
[Foreman:] Rick, I thought I was the man with the plan.
[Sanchez:] Yes. Well, we both are today.
[Foreman:] You have a different plan, I think. Yes. Yes. You know, a tremendous amount of this money, when you go through these books with all these pages we have of all this spending, a tremendous amount of this is for research grants at universities all over this country. And one that really caught our eye was a grant that looked at this question of if you spend the stimulus money, what result will you get from spending the stimulus money on grants?
[Sanchez:] Huh.
[Foreman:] Now, there are many other grants in here for things like cancer research and and autism, all sorts of things like that, a lot of important work. But we were interested in this one. So, we have this giant pile of books here that we have been going through, looking at all these potential studies. And this grant is for about $400,000, just under. It went to the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan. And what they are studying is, if you spend money this way, how much do you generate work down the line for people at these universities, related to the studies that they did down line? Also, one of the things they considered was, how much does this affect the bringing in of workers under these special visas from other countries who are specialists, for example, in brain work or in blood work or something? You may bring them in for a while. How much do the jobs go there? Now, here's the thing. When you look at the study of about $200,000 to UVA, $200,000 to University of Michigan, it is easy to look at this and say, look, this does not create any jobs. And we can bring up the graphic that shows that, really, this doesn't create any actual jobs in its current form. This is simply money that they are spending, and they are creating no jobs. But the researchers say they believe this is still pretty valuable work because it is studying the impact in the long run of spending this kind of money. The question is whether do people out there buy it or not. The bottom line is, one of the researchers said to us this grant is more complex and potentially helpful than just a using stimulus money to measure the stimulus quip. So, maybe we shouldn't be quipping so much. But I think that's up to our viewers out there to decide, whether or not this money was well-spent. But, nonetheless, Rick, we are going to add it to our big tote board here, as we have been looking at this total of $254 billion spent on projects. We're now up over $8 billion, $198 million. And we just keep adding it up and adding it up, Rick, trying to go through all these projects, as our caller suggested just a minute ago, figuring out all the people who are getting money and where that money is going and whether or not you are getting what you paid for when you backed the stimulus.
[Sanchez:] Yes. Well, and, again, the frustrating part of this in some cases, not all, because there have been many jobs created, obviously. But it is a question of numbers. If you looked at this from a Rooseveltian, point of view, thinking back to the last depression, there, the money was used to get people literally concrete jobs.
[Foreman:] Yes.
[Sanchez:] I mean, the guy had a hammer in his hand, and the other guy had a wrench in his hand. Here, it is much more nuanced.
[Foreman:] That's right. Well, and, Rick, this has been one of the complaints from some of the critics of this from the beginning. They have said really all that should matter is immediate, real jobs right now.
[Sanchez:] Yes.
[Foreman:] And one of their complaints is that a lot of this grant money is really a backdoor way of the administration funding programs they wanted to fund anyway. That's one of the big complaints. But we will keep digging through it...
[Sanchez:] OK.
[Foreman:] ... and seeing it, and, as I said, let the viewers out there sort it out and decide for themselves.
[Sanchez:] Good. Tom Foreman, good work. Thanks. Appreciate it.
[Foreman:] All right, Rick.
[Sanchez:] So, there you have it, nearly $400,000 in stimulus money given to two researchers at two universities to analyze whether the stimulus is working as intended or not. Total jobs created, zero. These researchers were already employed. But maybe it is going to help show what works and what doesn't, so they can be smarter about it in the future. That's why we do it.
[Unidentified Male:] We have good officers, and even the best officer is susceptible to this type of stress and this type of pressure.
[Sanchez:] Huh? Well, look at that video. What could cause that kind of pressure? You can't see it. He's at the bottom of your screen there. But what he is doing is certainly something that's raising a lot of eyebrows. Talk about needing a lift. Also, take a look at this. Here's a guy who ended up on the wrong side of a Chevy Camaro. We are going to tell you how that one happened as well and how he was saved in just a couple of minutes. Stay with us.