President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is kicking into high gear. Speaking to officials in the Department of Transportation yesterday, Obama announced that 2,000 projects have been greenlighted, many ahead of schedule. Of those investments, 12 percent are based in Illinois.

Furthermore, starting next month, food pantries across the state will see their inventories rise. The Daily Herald has more:

Food banks in Illinois will start receiving truckloads of supplies next month under funding provided by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, Sen. Dick Durbin said Monday during a visit to a Catholic Charities food bank in Des Plaines.  [...]

The act also provides more than $3 million for schools in Illinois to buy equipment to prepare meals for school lunch and breakfast programs; $6.3 million for soup kitchens and food pantries to purchase and distribute food through the Emergency Food Assistance Program; $3.7 million for senior meal programs; and $4.1 million for nonprofit and faith-based organizations to provide emergency food and shelter to meet the immediate needs of struggling individuals.

The assistance couldn't come at a better time. 

As we've repeatedly highlighted, demand for common necessities is growing during these tough economic times and social service agencies are having trouble meeting the demand among needy families. Food pantries in the Prairie State saw a "30 percent increase in people needing food" between August 2007 and August 2008. As the year progressed, the numbers jumped even higher. The Chicago Community Trust found that 115,335 more families were served at Chicago-area food pantries in October 2008 than the first month of the year. According to Durbin, "440,000 households either struggled to put food on the table, skipped meals to make sure their groceries lasted through the week, or went hungry." Thanks to the stimulus bill, that number should drop in 2009.

Another element of the recovery package that we're watching is the extension of unemployment benefits here in Illinois.  We'll have more on that later today.