Even though Obama’s 2009 stimulus did not work according to almost everyone in the United States, he proposed another $302 billion infrastructure funding plan that would last four years.
In speaking of the earlier success, Obama said, “Union Depot was renovated and expanded with the help of what we call TIGER grants. These are competitive grants that were created as part of what we call the Recovery Act, also known as the stimulus, which actually worked despite what everybody claims.”
Apart from this, he also offered $600 million in competitive grants to localities in order to work on projects that fall under the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program.
He also said that people from both parties should support infrastructure projects because everyone uses airports and roads but don’t want to pay for them.
While Joe Biden called the earlier 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act a success, the nonpartisan Factcheck.org stated that the number of jobs that were supposed to be created from this initiative still fell short by 3.5 million.
That said, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the unemployment rate will drop to 5.8 percent by 2017 and will remain the same for the rest of 2014.
As for the plan announced in Minnesota, Obama believes that this $302 billion infrastructure program will contribute to financial success and million of jobs in the future. Of course, this will only be possible as soon as the simplification of the tax code is complete.