President Obama’s stimulus package will actually do nearly nothing to stimulate the economy. This is an economy where every headline is about layoffs or business going out of business. The republicans are absolutely right. There is not enough juice in his plan. Take the infrastructure number alone. In this package they are putting $30 billion towards infrastructure. It takes $22 billion to build one bridge and only puts 5000 people to work. That is only one project. This package is not going to put a lot of people to work. That is putting 5000 people to work versus millions losing their jobs. This number towards infrastructure needs to be at least ten times the amount it is now to do anything to stimulate this economy. Production has declined 50% in this country and in order to boost our economy we need to be building because building produces more jobs. In January alone there were 598,000 job losses.

This bill is not timely. CBO estimates that only about 15% of this stimulus package will be spent in 2009 – and we’re only in February, we still have ten-plus months of the year left. The next 37% of the bill won’t be spent until 2010 and the remaining amount until 2011 and later. This isn’t relief that the citizens and businesses of this country need. By that time, many more businesses will probably not even be operating.

The worst item on this bill is $50 million that goes to the National Endowment for the Arts. We all should support the arts, but how is this going to stimulate our economy? A stimulus package should be something that will help create jobs and incomes so we can spend more. This just will not do anything to help.

This problem is a lot bigger than our new president realizes. I applaud his efforts, but I think he needs to use his education, his ideas and go back to the drawing board. Take the time to put together a better bill rather than just throwing out another $800 billion in the trashcan.

Is it any wonder 100% of Republicans and about 11 Democrats in the House voted against this thing? Let’s put aside bi-partisanship and work together for the American people – something we all vote for you to do.

I expect more from you Mr. President.