Unfortunately, that's not true. The public is footing the bill for political maneuvering and inflationary pork. The amount of money that went to actually covering bad debts is a joke; this was a big pile of money that got earmarked by people who didn't understand the problem or the solution and now is getting spent by people who don't care to accelerate the recovery as much as they care to cross off line items on their political agendas.

We don't need healthcare, we need jobs.

We don't need 20 miles per gallon to "fix" roughly 2% of global warming cause worldwide, we need investment in clean power grids.

We don't need to hire half a million people to assist with the census, we need to to hire half a million people to work on infrastructure as public reinvestment in economic growth.

More public spending isn't going to fix anything; cutting back on the fat and realigning public spending to directly benefit long-term economic growth will fix these problems. Nobody was bitching about healthcare until someone threw out a fucking fantasy budget number and the actual recovery efforts cost a fraction of it. The healthcare system hasn't changed much (except that wonderdrugs that make our lives longer and more pleasant apparently became a right and not a priviledge) since Clinton, and no one had any problem with it until the role of government apparently shifted to acting as parents for whiny 9 year olds.