Friday, January 16, 2009

So Much for Roads and Bridges

Out of $825B+, roads and bridges get $30B. That's 4% of the total stimulus bill.
Modernize Roads, Bridges, Transit and Waterways: To build a 21st century economy, we must engage contractors across the nation to create jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads, and bridges, modernize public buildings, and put people to work cleaning our air, water and land.
•$30 billion for highway construction;
•$31 billion to modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long term energy cost savings;
•$19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration investments;
•$10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption.
Meanwhile, the bloated and failed education industry gets far, far more.
Education for the 21st Century: To enable more children to learn in 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries to help our kids compete with any worker in the world, this package provides:
•$41 billion to local school districts through Title I ($13 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), a new School Modernization and Repair Program ($14 billion), and the Education Technology program ($1 billion).
•$79 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cutbacks to key services, including $39 billion to local school districts and public colleges and universities distributed through existing state and federal formulas, $15 billion to states as bonus grants as a reward for meeting key performance measures, and $25 billion to states for other high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education.
•$15.6 billion to increase the Pell grant by $500.
•$6 billion for higher education modernization.
Stimulus package? I don't think so. This is just the biggest pork pile in the history of the country. It also takes $79B, more than twice what they will spend on roads and bridges, and hands it to the California Teachers Association and other such education industry political goon squads across the country.

2 comments:

B-Daddy said...

Pork pile or pork pie. Either way this will only deepen the recession. Every dollar spent on useless projects is a dollar of wealth that won't earn interest if it were invested in the private sector. I remain convinced that the was in Iraq shares some blame for the recession, (I still believe the war was correct). But ultimately, most of the money spent on warfare is non-productive in exactly the same manner as these projects are likely to be, hence my belief that the recession will get worse if this passes.

Anonymous said...

Do you think my kids' Catholic school will see a penny of those billions? hahahahahaha.

'We want what's best for the children... as long as they go to sh*thole public sector union schools.'