Obama’s stimulus plan gave Amtrak, aviation, clean water the shaft

5 comments January 23rd, 2009

U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minnesota, is chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, and he isn’t happy that President Obama’s stimulus plan — the one that was supposed to have all the roads, bridges and mass transit money. Well, it has hardly any of that money. Says Oberstar, as quoted on the TPM website,  these kinds of projects provide jobs and needed infrastructure at the same time:

“That is why we set forth this $85-billion initiative from our committee. It’s been reduced in the final going. We expect that it’ll come out somewhere around $63 billion, but $30 billion for highways.

“The reason for the reduction in overall funding — we took money out of Amtrak and out of aviation; we took money out of the Corps of Engineers, reduced the water infrastructure program, the drinking water and the wastewater treatment facilities and sewer lines, reduced that from $14 billion to roughly $9 billion — was the tax cut initiative that had to be paid for in some way by keeping the entire package in the range of $850 billion.

“But I’ll say that our portion is the one that really creates the jobs. Our portion of it is the one that’s going to put people to work because unlike anything else, these jobs can’t be outsourced to Bangalore, India.”

In truth, Obama’s plan is a sop to all the traditional Democratic special intrests, and a capitulation  to minority Republicans who wanted more tax cuts.

 His bill won’t create jobs, just ill will. He needs to revise it. But he won’t.   

Pardon me, the era of change is over. It’s back to same-old, same-old.