White House meeting on stimulus next week

Another week, another White House conference.

The Obama team announced this afternoon that next Thursday, President Obama and Vice President Biden will hold a "White House Recovery and Reinvestment Act Implementation Conference" on the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

The stated goal: "to ensure that dollars invested and spent as part of the Recovery act are effective, transparent and efficient."

The White House said that each state’s governor is being invited to send their senior official working on the stimulus to share ideas and hear from Cabinet secretaries and administration officials, including Earl Devaney, the former Massachusetts police officer leading the stimulus accountability board.

“States have a huge responsibility in partnering with us to ensure that dollars spent as part of the Recovery Act are spent wisely, with transparency and accountability,” Biden said in a statement. “We’re giving each state a chance to send a high-level representative to interact first-hand with top officials here in Washington. Our hope for this conference is to meet face-to-face with the state officials and streamline this implementation process so we can get our economy running again.”

Obama has already read the riot act to state and local officials, warning them that they'll be called out if they waste the money.

The president hosted a "fiscal responsibility" summit at the White House last week, and on Thursday one on healthcare.