This week, President Obama signed (approved) a law that will spend $787,000,000,000.00 ($787 billion) to help the US economy. The new law is being called a stimulus package. A stimulus increases activity or causes a reaction or response in something (the plural is stimuli, which comes from the original Latin plural). A package is a collection of things that are related, in this case, different ways of trying to boost (make stronger, increase) the economy.
Part of the money will be used to build roads, bridges, and other parts of the infrastructure of the country. Infrastructure refers to the physical things that a society needs to operate – roads, bridges, power plants, harbors, and so forth. The federal (national) government will give most of this money to the individual 50 states to spend on what are supposed to be “shovel-ready” projects. To shovel means to take a tool (see the picture at right) and make a hole in the ground or build something. Shovel-ready means that the project is all planned and ready to begin as soon as there is enough money for it. The idea is that the government wants to spend the money quickly to help the economy right away, so it is asking states to spend the money as soon as possible on projects that are ready to begin.
Will the president’s plan work? I don’t know, but $787 billion will buy a lot of shovels.