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A snowy overhang suddenly gave way beneath him. he had been climbing with another hiker at the time of that accident. bill: the white house launching a major blitz across the country, touting the $787 billion stimulus plan that was a year ago today when president obama signed it do law, the white house saying the massive bill helped save the economy from collapse. of the seven # $7 billion, $272 billion has been paid out. $514 billion is still in the kitty. chief economist for the white house recovery board, my guest, austin, it's been several months but welcome back to "america's newsroom". a...

Already $272 billion spent. you are looking here, $257 billion left to go to other projects. are there places where lawmakers feel they will get more political bang for that buck? >> reporter: yeah. certainly. that's one reason you are trying to hear policy being merged with these announcements. you have -- lot of clean energy jobs that are being created with stimulus funds. everybody is for the education. education of this country being improved. they talk about teachers, firefighters, public safety. they are trying to merge the priorities. but it is really about making sure that they spend t...

Taxpayer money on a company from canada? you got to be kidding me. >> there's -- there is a group in new hampshire and they turned away stimulus money because there were so many restrictions attached to some of the things. they did the right thing, clearly this company in colorado didn't figure who they were going to hire to do some of the water work. bad idea. bad idea. >> well, it's just people saying hey, isn't anybody paying attention? why are we -- it's like the cash for clunkers thing. why are we creating so many cars -- >> real quickly. go you to the government's web site on this exact ...

>> sure. >> the obama administration accounting of the recovery act. i'm giving you the numbers. i did this an hour ago, 595,000 jobs created. 595, 263 jobs created. $272 billion spent, coming to 436,940.88 per job. we immediate nor? first of all the recovery act wasn't attractly a -- directly a job creation bill. >> hold it right there. sir. >> i recall the recovery bill being pitched to us as, if this thing passes it better pass quickly, if we get it passed, we will not go above 8% unemployment. we're at 9.7% and creating jobs that cost $456,000 for job and you want to do more.

Taking more money from those who earn it for government to waste. >> reporter: in a "wall street journal" op-ed with the headline "the tax cliff is a growth killer" art laffer wrote, "the united states faces an economic collapse thanks to massive tax increases on january 1 and continue deficit spending for years on end." >> that is about 3-1/3% of the whole u.s. economy. that is something like 20% of all tax revenues. that is a massive tax increase. when you have tax increases like that, that precipitates a collapse. >> reporter: the house is preparing to vote on extending all of the bush tax ...