Word: speeded
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...course, bike lanes, electric buses and light-rail extensions are even more efficient than road repairs when it comes to fighting global warming, volatile gas prices and our addiction to foreign oil; transit projects also create 9% more jobs. Then again, transit projects like high-speed rail lines and subway stations tend to take more time to build than roads or repairs. And while a recent study calculated that the average dollar spent on infrastructure ricochets into $1.59 worth of short-term growth - a bit better than aid to states or broad-based tax cuts and a lot better than...
...that speed and size aren't important. We're in a death spiral: businesses are shedding workers at a record pace, which saps consumer spending, which leads to more layoffs, and so on. The public sector needs to get an awful lot of unemployed workers and equipment back to work ASAP. As Christina Romer, an expert on the Depression who will chair Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, warns in a new YouTube video, we can't "let that vicious cycle go all the way to the nightmare scenario." In fact, many Keynesian liberals have been dismissing the Obama proposal...
...trillion dollars in a hurry if you don't want to buy stupid stuff. "We keep hearing we need to spend more. On what?" a transition aide asked. Obama's latest economic report predicted at least three more years of fairly high unemployment even if the stimulus succeeds, so speed can't be the only criterion. Democrat Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, has suggested that shovel-ready should apply to projects that can begin within a year, not just 90 days. This would give a real boost to mass transit...
...time on this, and it's a reach to get to $100 billion." Obama and his team are starting to sound irked by demands for more. Why retrofit only 75% of federal buildings? Uh, it's not exactly cost-effective to retrofit a particle accelerator. What about more high-speed rail? Wonderful, if there were more projects ready to go. Why stop at weatherizing 2 million homes? Sorry, there are only so many guys who know how to use caulk guns...
...paying for it for a long time. Obama can't control how markets or employers react, but he can use the opportunity to start keeping promises and start moving the country away from dirty energy, crumbling infrastructure and economic inequality. If he trades those goals for size and speed, he'll blow a unique chance to chart a new direction. He doesn't need to beg Congress to spend; that's like begging Cookie Monster to eat. He needs to take a stand: No money without reform. That won't just rebuild consumer confidence; it will rebuild citizen confidence...