We're poised to privatize as many of the interstates as we can and turn them into toll roads. The stimulus for infrastructure is going to be a great jumpstart for that. Oh you wanted to drive on the roads you paid for? Well that's gonna cost you, big time. Such is progress.

Parking garages all over the suburbs, to make riding mass transit easier.

Everyone likes to bemoan the suburbs and say how awful they are, how the sprawl is a blight, yadda yadda. They're probably right.

However, we're stuck with them. We can't exactly tear down millions and millions of homes because the neighborhoods weren't designed properly.

So let's put in parking garages for park-and-ride commuters (bus, train, etc.) all over suburban America. Strategically located. Decent looking, say, with retail on the ground floor. To get people out of their cars and off the freeway, we have to get them out of their car-designed neighborhoods.

What if every suburban strip-mall or small community shopping center had a park-and-ride garage added in?

The reason the states have been privatizing hiways was because they can't pay for upkeep. With Obama talking about spending over half a trillion dollars, mainly on infrastructure improvements, that impetus may be going away. States are far less likely to want to unload properties that they know they'll soon be getting federal money to upgrade.

And the way things are right now, he's going to get the money out of congress. I think in the longer term the problem is going to be paying for this package. The same Republican Senators who will not dare block money for economic stimulus are going to more than willing to filibuster any tax increases to go along with all this new spending. So the creditcard conservatives will win again.

Spending on infrastructure is no longer labor intensive. Materials will likely be the bulk of the cost, and those materials are Not labor intensive either ie: cement, asphalt, steel. Labor will mostly be for operators or other highly paid workers ... Infrastructure spending will take time to implement. The money will not get flowing for many months. Sure it will be allocated, but not spent into the economy for at least six months, the bulk of it will take longer than a year.

Infrastructure spending is worthwhile, necessary and stimulative but it will appreciably help an economy that is in a free fall with jobs being lost at an accelerating rate in the hundreds of thousands. By the time Obama's infrastructure stimulus reaches the economy it will already be a basket case.

What we need now are job saving ideas. It is far easier, quicker and cheaper to save a job than to create one.

We need "Medicare for All". This saves jobs right away, especially in the public sector in states and local governments.

This re-capitalizes business especially manufacturing but also any business currently employing many people. Strings could be attached such as a no layoff rule whereby companies would run 32 hour workweeks paying for 40 supplemented by the paid health insurance. States would be mandated to take any extra money and use it for unemployment benefits and or pension fund replenishment.

Medicare for All would also make our businesses more competitive at home and abroad. All the other G7 nations have government sponsored health insurance giving their businesses a subsidy.

... We need to save as many jobs as possible as soon as possible ...We need Medicare for All ASAP. Obama has the momentum, the people on the ground and the moral authority to get this done. Will Barack be a manager or a leader ?

If hopes for Obama's stimulus package hinge upon a showdown in Congress then, based on the lackluster performance and outright incompetence shown heretofore by Congressional Democratic leaders, I'm afraid we're looking at little to no stimulus at all. Or worse, a package laden with Republican sponsored poison pills for the American worker to swallow.

I have no faith that Harry "I Surrender" Reid and Nancy "By Losing We Win" Pelosi will be able to pass much of anything acceptable in the face of what will undoubtedly be determined, if inchoate, opposition.

In the first place it will take years for these projects to be implemented, and in many cases there is no room to expand highways and bridges because the land along the right of ways is now heavily populated, and property values are still relatively high. The real problem is getting consumers going, and that will require lower consumer lending rates, and lower small business lending rates, not just lower interbank lending rates.

Like a lot of the bailout money, none of it is real, the money isn't real, it has to be pulled out of thin air in the first place. At this point these promises mean nothing and they are being bandied about as though they will have some immediate effect. The most likely immediate effect will be to the states who divert these funds to their own general fund, to keep their bureaucracies going. Years from now people will ask, what happened to that money. Quien Sabe?

Not sure I see that there is likely to be any big showdown in Congress. There may be some holdouts here and there who insist that we actually find a way to pay for all the spending (raise taxes? cut somewhere else?) but I can't see that being a widely held position in Congress: has it ever been?

This bill will be so full of goodies for everyone that it should be able to pick up a majority. There've gotta be 2-3 GOP Senators who will come along for the ride based on fat local contracts in their states, which shouldn't be hard to provide. And that's ultimately all the Dems need, right?

How does it work? Where does the money go? Is $850 billion 1.7 times more effective than $500 billion? Or is it 1.7% more effective? Or 170% better? Do we need a trillion just to break even?

Who knows.

Pumping money into the economy is a waste of time as long as our economy has the huge gushing leaks of trade imbalance and job offshoring. All the money they pour in just vanishes overseas as fast as they can pour.