Obama team, Congress fleshing out stimulus bill
WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama's team and congressional staff are scrambling to come up with details of a plan to pump up the droopy economy with $650 billion or more in government spending over the next few years.
The aides met in the basement of the Capitol on Friday to devise ways to pump public money into science, energy, education, health care and infrastructure programs, as well as to help the poor and unemployed.They hope unleashing a torrent of spending in the near term will create jobs and lift the economy.
But
amounts of money under consideration are so enormous — larger than either the Pentagon's annual budget or the entire domestic budget passed each year by Congress — that it's likely to prove challenging to spend so much without wasting taxpayer dollars.-snip-
The plan, which some Obama aides think could swell to about $850 billion after negotiations with Congress, would be the
largest investment in public infrastructure since the federal highway system was established in the 1950s. It also would provide tens of billions in dollars of aid to financially strapped states.-snip-
Other items in Obama's spending plan
include middle-class tax cuts that have yet to take shape, roads and bridge construction and repair, funding to make federal buildings more fuel efficient, huge investments to modernize information systems across the health care sector, boosting access to broadband, school construction, and cleanup of superfund sites.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081220/ap_on_go_co/obama_stimulus;_ylt=AoJolY4E9cuhPy1ZCvby4LyyFz4D
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