The stimulus package has evidently granted the Northern Mariana Islands statehood, if recovery.gov is correct.

The tiny territory was given five seats in congress, along with $44 million in stimulus funds.

It appears that the labels for the districts, including 00 and 99, were chosen at random. It is obvious that Northern Mariana Islands have no congressional districts, but it is not clear what geographic entities, if any, the districts refer to.

A Watchdog study revealed 440 non-existent congressional districts within the stimulus tracking web site, recovery.org. The full report can be found here and below:

Recovery’s Phantom Districts –