Officials: Obama to call for more spending on roads, railways, airports to stimulate economy

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

Officials: Obama to call for more spending on roads, railways, airports to stimulate economy
By: JULIE PACE
Associated Press
09/06/10 6:10 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — Vowing to find new ways to stimulate the sputtering economy, President Barack Obama will call for long-term investments in the nation's roads, railways and airports that would cost at least $50 billion, administration officials said.

The infrastructure investments are one part of a package of targeted proposals the White House is expected to announce in hopes of jump-starting the economy ahead of the November election. Obama will outline the infrastructure proposal Monday at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee.

While the proposal calls for investments over six years, officials said spending would be front-loaded with an initial $50 billion to help create jobs in the near future. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the proposals ahead of the president's announcement.

The goals of the infrastructure plan include: rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads; constructing and maintaining 4,000 miles of railways, enough to go coast-to-coast; and rehabilitating or reconstructing 150 miles of airport runways, while also installing a new air navigation system designed to reduce travel times and delays.

Obama will also call for the creation of a permanent infrastructure bank that would focus on funding national and regional infrastructure projects.

[AceRimmer]

How much of that 'front loaded' $50 billion will go to signs promoting the stimulus package?

[Argyle58]

These proposed projects represent some much needed improvement to the infrastructure, if done correctly. But, they won't be. Roads will redesigned to be "other than automobile" friendly, airports will become over complicated attempts at "modernization" (re: Denver), and railroads will be high speed rail passenger systems, not a re-vamping of the rail freight system that represents 95% of all rail traffic.

 

Improvement of the infrastructure is a vital undertaking, but HAS to be utilitarian by nature. It is unfortunate that even in this, some of the most basic needs of any society, i.e., transportation of people and goods, liberals must try to imprint their political and social ideology, in spite of the proven failures that they represent.

 

Add to that, projects of this type rarely show any long term, or even substantive short term, effects on the economy. Economic upswings from any government project tend to be extremely localized, and last only as long as the project itself. One need only look back as far as the CCC projects of the Great Depression era projects to see this.