That is roughly the percentage of the “stimulus” package which will actually “stimulate” the economy.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the Democratic-proposed stimulus package coming out of the House includes roughly $90 billion worth of projects that can reasonably be considered worthy of funding to stimulate the economy.  In fact, they note that “by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus.”

Among other things, “there’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.”

Attempting to further summarize the laundry list of requests simply does not do it justice, so please check out the full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310466514522309.html 

(Thanks for the heads-up Mr. Guenther.)