First 100 Days: Obama's Federal Spending Spree Raises Management Concerns

In the early months of his presidency, President Obama has shown he isn't afraid to spend billions of dollars on corporate bailouts or to run up trillions of dollars in U.S. debt to battle an economic crisis.But in doing so, he has initiated the largest expansion of federal government since World War II and set up a massive challenge for his administration -- one that officials are already warning will be fraught with peril.During the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama has signed a $787 billion stimulus bill into law, proposed an eye-popping $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, taken over a massive $700 billion Wall Street bailout program and created other billion-dollar programs to help grease the economic wheels.Analysts call the spending spree "unprecedented" when the nation is not in a declared war, and they say the challenges that accompany it are a logical result."You take any organization in the world and you double its size in 90 days, it's going to have a hard time managing that transition," said William Gale, vice president and director of the economic studies program at Brookings Institute."The sheer management issues that come up are very important," Gale said, "because I can imagine the people running those projects that are about to be doubled may not want to see their face on '60 Minutes' as the poster child for government waste and useless spending." Among the warning signs: The Government Accountability Office said Thursday that states need help covering the cost of overseeing their share of the massive federal stimulus program.