Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Marshall Plan began on the 3rd of April 1948 when President Harry S. Truman signed the Economic Cooperation Act into law. The program originally scheduled to end in 1953 was halted by growing costs of the Korean War rearmament and ended in 1951.
General George C. Marshall delivered his famous address at Harvard University on the 5th of June 1947 describing the dysfunction of the European economy as the proposal for American aid. The purpose was to revive working economies so political and social conditions could emerge where free institutions might exist while preventing communism from spreading across the continent.
Congress eventually allocated $12.4 billion over four years of the plan after passing a bill granting initial $5 billion with strong bipartisan support. Total American grants and loans to the world from 1945 to 1953 came to $44.3 billion including separate aid to Asia and other regions.
Stalin changed his initial openness to the offer when he learned credit would only extend under conditions of economic cooperation that included Germany. Aid would also be extended to Germany in total which Stalin believed would hamper Soviet influence in western Germany leading Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to leave Paris rejecting the plan entirely.
The United States Bureau Labor Statistics contributed heavily to success through the Technical Assistance Program which funded 24,000 European engineers leaders industrialists to visit America tour Americas factories mines manufacturing plants. This program required only $300 million compared to the $19.4 billion allocated capital costs while helping identify productivity deficiencies and implement technologies used by the United States.