Bankruptcy

Infrastructure Spending ? or Job creation

By mcbride

In our history there are many times that President?s attempt to create jobs with infrastructure projects.  President Obama is thinking that he may need to be the next to do so.  ?As historian Mark Rose has noted, in the mid-1930s, almost $3 billion, then a good share of an annual federal budget, was poured into highway projects by relief officials and the Bureau of Public Roads.  But observers, including President Franklin Roosevelt himself, began to notice flaws with this plan.?  One issue with these kinds of projects has always been that there are long delays between the time the plan is agreed upon until the work begins.  Then there is the issue of what roads should be built.  ?[T]he Hoover and Roosevelt road outlays didn?t make enough sense as infrastructure. A highway expert, Wilfred Owen, pointed out that New Deal construction had ?denied congested metropolitan areas? and were instead ?lavished upon local rural roads.??  Then along came President Eisenhower who after some study pushed through the Highway Act of 1956, a huge bill.  It too was criticized.  ?The outcome of the interstate highway program wasn?t optimal. It favored truckers over cities. The roads cut off some downtowns from the commerce that had heretofore sustained them. Minorities pointed out that their communities often bore the brunt of construction. According to Rose, some black political and business leaders spoke of white men?s roads going through black men?s bedrooms.?

Here is a link to an interesting article on this topic: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=axOqj8EtNlXw  

Michael

Full post as published by Texas Lawyer Blog on December 30, 2009 (boomark / email).