Rallying for stimulus, Obama spoke in Fort Myers today, liveblogged by…the White House.
[Obama] Makes a case for high-speed rail and mass tranit — says the days of sprawl are over. “Everyone recognizes that’s not a good way to design communities.”
I’d like to believe he means to do something about it. I’d also like to see the Amtrak funds cut from the Senate stimulus bill restored in conference to go with the Amtrak funding from last fall.
I think the problem is that he gets it but members of Congress don’t. So yea we saw Amtrak cuts and sprawl tax incentives… But again that’s due to Congress.
I am pleased to hear him say this so clearly; there were very few acknowledgments of the importance of transportation and the built environment in the energy discussions of the campaign — Bill Richardson was just about the only one mentioning this.
But as in almost every case, I think he has to back this up with action. There are no mass transit operational funds in the bills, which is a huge missed opportunity to save jobs and build on the recent improvements in transit over the last 2 years.
Certainly the Senate shares the blame but Obama preemptively inserted tax cuts, his people are in touch on this every day, and he didn’t do much for the first week-and-a-half to push these issues.