Wednesday, February 4, 2009

If They Asked Me...

As the Senate continues to wrangle with the many aspects of President Obama's economic stimulus bill, I was thinking what I would tell them IF, for some crazy reason, they actually cared what I thought. Here's what I would recommend.

Scrap most of the plan!! Most of it is nothing more than a repackaging of many of the same economic strategies that got us into this mess in the first place. Our mantra should be sustainability and that should be the driving force behind this plan.

I would allocate at least 50% of the money toward the recreation of FDR's Works Progress Administration (WPA) with a nod to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This would put millions of unemployed Americans back to work and would go a long way toward repairing our degraded infrastructure. We could repair millions of miles of roadways and bridges, hospitals, and schools plus retrofit thousands of other buildings to withstand tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis.

I would divide most of the rest of the funds between pursuing sustainable renewable energy resources (far more than the piddly amount of money earmarked currently for this major undertaking) and for bringing broadband to every nook and cranny of the nation. I would also ensure there was significant money available for Amtrak and other means of public mass transportation.

Of course, I'm very certain no one will ask for my opinion and the signed bill will look nothing like the above.

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