Front Loaded Infrastructure Stimulus Plan in the Works
Smell that? That's the smell of billions of dollars that this country doesn't exactly have lying around, being spent on more stimulus projects. Look, I think we need jobs and roads and all that fun stuff, but we simply don't have the free range cash lying around to do all this stuff right now. We don't even have a bucket of lard to soak our feet in.
Well, President Obama seems to think we do, committing $50 billion to fix the nation's roads, railways and runways. How about the Wal-Mart parking lot by my house? The one with all the potholes? At a Labor Day event Obama will lay out his plan, a six year investment plan front loaded with $50 billion.
Aside from wanting to create an infrastructure bank to manage all of this, Obama hopes that the plan will fix and/or create the following: 50,000 miles of roads; constructing and maintaining 4,000 miles of coast to coast railways; and fixing up 150 miles of airport runways, while also installing a new air navigation system designed to reduce travel times and delays.
Really though, we need another government run bank to control all this? Is the government not responsible enough with their own money? Oh wait, they aren't. The best part is that this $50 billion is just a percentage of the total cost, something that is probably near impossible to predict at this point in time. I'm going to guess we're talking around $300 billion at least.
The good news is that over the next six years as all this is being built, or planned out - since it is government work and six years means 20 - that it will create jobs. Of course, most of those jobs will be low wage construction jobs, but jobs nonetheless. So that's good right? Right? Yes, just what we need - all the white collar unemployed folks still not able to find jobs because lord knows you don't want their pasty white asses on a work site. At least they'll need engineers and whatnot.
Continued on the next page
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