The White House and Washington state’s two Democratic senators were very happy to announce this week that a small piece of the stimulus package was headed to Spokane for a new medical clinic.

Community Health Association of Spokane was awarded a $1.3 million grant  Monday from the Health and Human Services Department’s portion of the Recovery Act. (Forgive me for referring to seven figures of money as small, but we’re becoming so used to trillions that a million sounds picayune.)

Good for jobs, with unemployment moving up to 10 percent around here. Good for health, considering that those unemployed workers are also, mostly, uninsured. Good for the stimulus package.

Except that the clinic isn’t going to be in Spokane… 

The Community Health Association of Spokane will get $1.3 million from the economic stimulus package, although the organization that operates five local clinics isn’t sure yet how the money is to be used.

The White House and Washington’s two U.S. senators announced Monday the money would be coming to CHAS as part of recovery act’s Health Center Cluster Program, which will pay for new clinics and cover health care for recently unemployed workers who have lost their medical insurance.

A spokesman for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said the money will be used to pay for a project the association proposed in late 2007 but failed to get approval. CHAS submitted a request for a Health Center New Access Point Grant and scored well, but didn’t make the list for funding in early 2008, spokesman Matt McAlvanah said.

  Aaron Wilson, deputy chief executive officer for CHAS, said he wasn’t sure what past project proposal the federal government is now offering to fund. It is hoping to expand its operation in the Northeast Community Center to handle an expected increase in demand for services

Now that the stimulus package has packaged, state and local governments are lining up to ask for money for projects that they’d like to get done, if only they had the money.

Gov. Chris Gregoire today debuted a new Web site, Recovery.wa.gov , that tells those looking for money how to go about applying for it, as well as offering updates on how the process is going.

And how is it going? Well, from the asking side, very well. The Web site also has a list of requests so far for federal stimulus money. It’s about 1,275 projects long, arranged neatly on a spread sheet that’s alphabetized by location.

Total amount for the projects listed? A tad over $7 trillion (that is, if $92 billion can be described as a “tad.”)

Let’s see, if the entire stimulus package is $787 billion, the list right now is about, umm, divide into 7, carry the 3…nine times more than that huge amount Congress approved.

We’ve all heard of wish lists, but this is a bit much. Want to see projects for Spokane or any other Washington state location? Click here to go to the spread sheet.

In an interview last week, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers fairly succinctly described the problem a Republican governor would be in right now when faced with the prospect of taking or not taking federal money from the economic stimulus package.

“It would be very difficult to say ‘No’ to money from the federal government,” the Eastern Washington Republican, who voted against the bill, said.

The Sunday talking head shows gave lots more depth and context to that dilemma, with Republican governors taking opposing sides.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal plans to say ‘No’ to some things.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is saying ‘Yes.’