Bailout Report

Once the automobile manufacturers can continue making cars, the country will need improved roads to drive them on. In the past two days, two municipal advocacy groups started making their case for federal bail out dollars.

American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)

The directors of state transportation departments promoted over 5,000 shovel-ready highway projects in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that would create over 2.1 Million jobs at a cost of over $64.3 Billion.  (Interestingly, that was $36 Billion more than the 3,000 projects identified for Congress two months earlier before there was talk of an Obama stimulus plan.)

The United States Conference of Mayors

Cleverly calling their Mainstreet Economic Recovery “Ready to Go” Report a “build out” rather than a “bail out”, the country’s mayors touted 11,391 infrastructure projects in 427 cities that would create 847,641 jobs for $73 Billion.

The President-elect’s goal is to create jobs while moderniz,ing. To meet that goal, he will have to insure that his “spend or lose it” sense of haste is balanced by good policy.  As Reason points out, “not all infrastructure spending is created equally and randomly pouring billions of dollars into roads won’t fix America’s gridlocked transportation system.”  The original federal interstate highway system was estimated to cost the federal government $25 Billion over 12 years.  In the end, it cost $114 Billion over 35 years.  Hold on to your seatbelts.