January 23rd, 2009 at 08:17pm Chuck Sweeny

U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minnesota, is chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, and he isn’t happy that President Obama’s stimulus plan — the one that was supposed to have all the roads, bridges and mass transit money. Well, it has hardly any of that money. Says Oberstar, as quoted on the TPM website, these kinds of projects provide jobs and needed infrastructure at the same time:

“That is why we set forth this $85-billion initiative from our committee. It’s been reduced in the final going. We expect that it’ll come out somewhere around $63 billion, but $30 billion for highways.

“The reason for the reduction in overall funding — we took money out of Amtrak and out of aviation; we took money out of the Corps of Engineers, reduced the water infrastructure program, the drinking water and the wastewater treatment facilities and sewer lines, reduced that from $14 billion to roughly $9 billion — was the tax cut initiative that had to be paid for in some way by keeping the entire package in the range of $850 billion.

Complete article: http://blogs.e-rockford.com/sweenyreport/2009/01/23/obamas-stimulus-plan-gave-amtrak-aviation-clean-water-the-shaft/