It's like winning the lottery, then being told you have just a week to spend it. And, oh yeah, don't waste any of it.

Under the nearly $800 billion stimulus package signed last week, some federal programs are set for an unparalleled increase in funding.

The example people usually cite first is the Energy Department's Home Weatherization Program, which is expecting a tenfold increase to its budget - with the stimulus package dumping $5 billion on a program that's currently running on $500 million a year.

But the weatherization program is hardly the only example. From the National Park Service to the Health Department to the Army Corps of Engineers, several agencies are getting a huge infusion of cash and a mandate to spend it quickly.

And that's got a lot of people nervous.

"'The federal, state and local bureaucracy just doesn't have the capacity to handle that decision making," said Rudy Penner, a senior fellow with the Urban Institute and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. "There's going to be a lot of waste."

The Obama administration - which is responsible for managing the stimulus money - seems to understand the potential for waste.

They are promising an unprecedented level of transparency in doling out the money, and have created a board to oversee the process and a novel Web site - www.recovery.gov - that's supposed to allow citizens to track every dollar.

But experts say many of the federal agencies simply don't have the manpower or procurement procedures in place to oversee a such huge amount of money.

It's a shortcoming the Obama team itself acknowledges.

Pre-Sept. 11, 2001, the government awarded about $200 million worth of contracts a year, Earl Devaney, head of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, said at a press conference earlier this week.

Now the government doles out more than $500 billion a year, but the number of procurement staff has stayed the same, said Devaney.

"That will be a major challenge for all of the (cabinet) secretaries to address," he said, "to make sure that the staff is available to make this happen quickly and to monitor it once it goes out."