By Robert Pear, New York Times
President Bush rebuffed appeals from the nation’s governors on Monday to increase spending on roads, bridges and other public works as a way to revive the economy.
Governors said Mr. Bush had told them at a White House meeting that he wanted to see the effects of his economic stimulus package before supporting new measures.
A bipartisan group of governors is pushing for major road and bridge projects as a way to create jobs and foster economic development. But the White House says the money could not be spent fast enough to be of much immediate help.
“There’s no short-term stimulus to the economy for some of these projects,” Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said.
Moreover, Ms. Perino said, the president will not accept any bill that raises taxes to finance such projects. Governors would have more money available, she said, if Congress ended the wasteful earmarking of billions of dollars for specific projects.
In a report on Monday, the National Association for Business Economics, a professional group, said, “Economic growth is expected to slow to a crawl in the first half of 2008.”
Asked about the president’s response, Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat, said: “I think I can summarize his remarks best by saying he did not think he would be interested. He wants to see the results of the stimulus package that was just passed.”
Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who is vice chairman of the National Governors Association, described the response as “a fairly significant no.”
“There are tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure projects ready to go,” Mr. Rendell said. “I asked the president if he would support spending on those projects as part of a second stimulus package, and he said no.”
The Bush gang don’t want to stabilize the economy by repairing our infrastructure. They would rather print more money, hand it out and expect us to give it to Walmart or some other crooked corporation. The Bush regime wine about earmarking while adding thousands of earmarks to Bush’s current budget. I think that the Bushnicks believe the best way to deal with global warming is to eliminate 80% of the population, so why would they do anything for the people or our infrastructure !!