Title: Which States Squandered Their Stimulus Money?
Headings: Which States Squandered Their Stimulus Money?
Which States Squandered Their Stimulus Money?
David A. Graham
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Content: The funds were designated for infrastructure spending and handed over to the states. Injecting money into transportation projects, the thinking goes, is an especially potent jobs-creation tool because it not only puts construction workers and contractors to work quickly, it also lays the groundwork for future economic growth and development. Obama predicted the transportation money alone would put hundreds of thousands of workers on the job. It was a nice idea. Today the unemployment rate is hovering above 9 percent—better than it would have been without the stimulus, most experts agree, but still painfully high. Why didn’t we get more for our money? While liberals and conservatives alike blame the stimulus itself —It wasn’t big enough! It was never going to work!—the problem may have more to do with how the money was spent. It’s not enough just to inject money into infrastructure, because not all transportation funding is created equal—or at least, it doesn’t create jobs at an equal rate. As any infrastructure policy wonk can tell you, money spent on fixing up existing systems or building mass transit delivers more jobs, and faster, than building new highways.