The Washington Post reported last Friday:

The massive economic stimulus package President Obama pushed through Congress last year is coming in on time and under budget – and with strikingly few claims of fraud or abuse – according to a White House report….

Coming barely a month before November’s midterm elections, which will determine whether Democrats retain control of Congress, the report challenges public perceptions of the stimulus aid as slow-moving and wasteful – an image that has fueled voter anger with the dominant party. Even some former skeptics who predicted that the money would lead to rampant abuse now acknowledge that the program could serve as a model for improving efficiency in government.

By the end of September, the administration had spent 70 percent of the act’s original $787 billion, which met a White House goal of quickly pumping money into the nation’s ravaged economy, the report says. The administration also met nearly a dozen deadlines set by Congress for getting money out the door.

Today, from Associated Press:

A government investigator says 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each went to people who were either dead or in prison. The Social Security Administration’s inspector general said in a report Thursday that $18 million went to 72,000 people who were dead.

The report estimates that a little more than half the payments were returned. The report said $4.3 million went to a little more than 17,000 prison inmates.

The payments were part of the government’s massive economic recovery package enacted in February 2009. Under the law, the $250 payments were sent to about 52 million Social Security recipients and federal retirees.

Guess they got that money “out the door” a little too fast.