The dollar just doesn't go as far as it used to. Not long ago I would have guessed that you could buy a lot of cool stuff for $800 billion. Take trains, for example. Wouldn't you think you could buy a bunch of really nice trains and still have enough left over for some windmills, a national smart electric grid and a few schools?
A serious commitment to mass transit would do far more to stimulate the economy, create jobs, and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels than most other things in the bill - like roads, for example. Yet the amount of money for mass transit in the stimulus package wending its way through Congress (on a slow train) is woefully small.
Let's just look at job creation which, obviously, is a high priority right now. According to a study by the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, mass transit creates more jobs than defense spending, tax cuts, health care, education, or home weatherization. I'm a big advocate of weatherization for other reasons, but here are the number of jobs that would be created for each billion dollars of spending in the following areas:
Defense: 8,555
Tax cuts: 10,779
Home weatherization: 12,804
Health care: 12,883
Education: 17,687
Mass Transit: 19,795
So why has Congress cut stimulus spending for education and transit to the bone. Can't these people read?
