A cross-country trip to discover what the stimulus looks like from the ground.

The stimulus's time has come. When it was signed into law in February, the Obama administration slow-played its effects, saying it would take months before we saw any progress. Money had to be allocated, states had to be advised about what to do, and grant applications needed to be sifted. The stimulus was a curtain-raiser to a brighter future, one that we were allowed to see but not touch. Obama seemed to say as much at the bill's signing ceremony: "Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles. Nor does it constitute all of what we must do to turn our economy around. But it does mark the beginning of the end."

Now, four and a half months later, we are finally at the beginning of the "beginning of the end." Stimulus bulletins have increased from a trickle to a torrent. Every day brings a new piece of major news—50 percent of states' transportation funds have been assigned; health clinics across the country are getting a new $851 million wave of cash; we may need a new stimulus after this one is exhausted. And states and agencies are releasing lengthy project lists, making the number of databases overwhelming. One could spend hours puzzling over an individual project's merit, let alone several thousand's.

Which is why The Big Money is embarking on a stimulus road trip. We're calling the series "Recessionary Road," and for the rest of the month, a friend and I will be driving across the country trying to describe what the stimulus actually looks like on the ground. We're going to visit nearly a dozen different sites as diverse as the stimulus itself—a stimulus czar in Michigan; a youth worker program in Alabama; a plutonium cleanup initiative in Washington state. Some of the sites will be case studies for different sectors of the stimulus; some will be isolated stories that have little to say about the national scene but plenty to offer on the local one. I'll be filing dispatches as I go at The Big Money.

The trip will be an attempt to cut through the exhausting amount of information we receive about this exhaustive piece of legislation. There are so many moving pieces of the stimulus that one can forget how we're actually supposed to evaluate the thing. The rubric according to the Obama administration: Is it creating or saving jobs? The rubric according to some congressional Republicans: Is it spending taxpayer dollars wisely? The rubric among local officials: Is it helping prevent my town from falling into disrepair?

For now, we seem to be arguing about the answers to these questions on a macro level. At first there was the debate over the bill itself. Too pork-ridden? Too large? Too small? Too delayed? But once the bill was signed, those questions became moot—the stimulus was going to be what it was going to be. So now a new back-and-forth has cropped up. A sampling:

• Critics: The stimulus must not be working considering we're still losing jobs. Defenders: A salmon still swims upstream even if it's going backward. We'd be hemorrhaging even more if the $787 billion wasn't in play.
• Critics: There are hundreds of examples of inappropriate and useless stimulus projects. Defenders: Job created or saved = spending money wisely. No matter what the job is.
• Critics: Money hasn't been handed down to the states and counties quickly enough, leading to even more depressed towns and communities. Defenders: If the government went any faster, it would lead to wasted money and corruption.

But these arguments are premature and misguided. One of the hallmarks of the stimulus is its ripple effect. If you fund a transportation project then you aren't only creating construction jobs. Somebody has to make all the materials that go into the job: the asphalt, the construction equipment, the hard hats. Less than $55 billion of 400 billion non-tax-break dollars has actually been paid out, and not all of that has actually reached stimulus projects yet. (Some is sitting with the states, waiting to be spent on contractors.) There's still time.