The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, commonly referred to simply as "the stimulus package," is poised to pump over $100 billion into U.S. public education in the next few years. This allocation reflects the Obama administration's new commitment to education as a public good, which is embodied in President Obama's ambitious goal of 60 percent of the country's citizens' having a postsecondary credential by 2020. Dissecting the many strands of the stimulus package that will potentially be invested in state data systems is a challenge because there are so many of them. The most straightforward of these is $250 million to support the development of state longitudinal data systems (SLDS). In this article, the author discusses the stimulus package and state longitudinal data systems and describes some important issues with respect to longitudinal database development.