I want my Magnev - Stimulus Edition

With President Obama signing into law his first stimulus package, a sum of $120 billion dollars are directed towards this nation’s infrastructure. One might think that $120 billion is a lot of money but it’s actually very minimal as the states had asked for approximately $3.4 trillion dollars to upgrade our infrastructures. California passed Prop 1a last November, which allow the construction of a high speed railway from San Francisco all the way south to Los Angeles and that project alone will require $45 bil to complete. All these projects are needed just so that we can be on par with the facilities provided by Europe and Asia as of current. Imagine the actual amount of money needed if we actually want to compete with those two places. Infrastructure spending is important because it will attract investors. Currently, you will not only find cheaper labor in Europe and Asia, but better transportation system and such in those places as well. No wonder our manufacturing jobs are being outsourced to those countries.

According to this article in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/politics/14stimintro.ready.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1), $8.4 billion is being appropriated for high-speed rail. I have no idea what $8.4 bil can do after being divided to the whole of this country other than study groups being formed to study long term infrastructure projects. Sen Reid wants to build a ‘magnetic’ train which travels from LA to Las Vegas in 2 hours. I’m sure the study group for that can now be formed. Maybe in 20 years time we can finally ride that train.

The rest of the $111.6 bil will be used to upgrade current infrastructures such as modernizing the electric grid, water projects, military housing and facilities, making federal buildings more energy efficient, repairing public housing, expanding broadband access and the biggest chuck of $29 billion be use to upgrade and repair road and bridges. In my next post, I shall discuss how the conditions and efficiency of how these money are to be spent.