50 Billion, calculation shows it will build 1000 miles of double lane roadway or 250 miles of high speed rail. Since the lagress has to be spread across 50 states. each state gets allocated 20 miles of road or 5 miles of high speed rail allocated to them.
Too little, too late, Should have been 500 billion, 18 months ago. Instead the crooks at AIG got what, 180 billion, and what did we get for that? Zilch! The rest of the crooks in finance got billions, so why not have some guy filling potholes? They could use the bankers as filler to save on asphalt cost.
You will probably find that $50b is the amount required to build specific roads that will, when built, improve the access to and thus value of property holdings of members of the elite. Maybe somebody's golf or ski resort development isn't selling well because it lacks good access. What did you think this was about? Helping ordinary Americans? Get real. Dollars are only available for people who pay politicians directly.
Building roads is not a great way to improve unemployment - it's a great way to grease the union voting base. People wax poetic about the Roosevelt "New Deal" - well, those were the days you employed 200 guys with shovels, and not 3 union guys running modern grading equipment. BTW, if the Dems could ram through "Obamacare" without any Republican support last year, why can't they ram through their 'economic improvement package' by themselves if now all of a sudden 60 days before an election the economy is important?
I ask the same question. The main purpose is to generate jobs, not (much) the roads themselves. Only massive keynesianism can drive america out of recession.