Stimulus still paying for Obama’s promises

There may not be much stimulus money left to spend, but it continues to pay dividends for President Barack Obama.

As we’ve noted before, Obama and the Democrats packed the 2009 economic stimulus package with dozens of projects that would fulfill his campaign promises. They included everything from extending the patch for the Alternative Minimum Tax to increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

The stimulus remains very unpopular with Republicans, who continue to attack it as wasteful, but for Obama, it pays the bills for many of his promises.

Today, two more have earned a Promise Kept on our Obameter because of billions of dollars of stimulus money:

* A sweeping promise to improve water quality, which we rated Kept because of millions of dollars for local water systems and reclamation projects.

* A promise to attract more students to math and science, which earned a Kept because of stimulus money used for the Department of Education’s Race to the Top program.