January, 2010
You Can’t Believe Everything You Read
I’ve been surprised at how readily people have accepted as fact the conclusions offered in a recent Associated Press news article that claims that the transportation funding in the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) failed to have an impact on unemployment. The authors seemed to have relied on information that many have pointed out is, at best, incomplete.As an engineer who lives and breaths data and scientific analysis, that anyone would accept such an analysis as a definitive conclusion still surprises me. I’ve heard about or read various stories from civil engineers and contractors that ARRA funding helped them avoid/delay the types of layoffs they feared were inevitable, but I recognized that for what it is, anecdotal information that needs to be validated by further analysis.
We need to remember that the infrastructure funding—all infrastructure, not just the transportation projects the article’s authors mention—only amounted to less than 10 percent of the overall stimulus investment. Did it make a difference? It seems so. Have I seen an analysis that would definitively quantify the impact? Not yet. Would a dedicated, long-term investment, like the desperately needed six year authorization of the surface transportation system or the reauthorization of the Clean Water Act, do more? Of course. Long term financing is something our agencies and companies can count on.
The stimulus bill was not a cure-all, but it has helped—both with employment and the infrastructure problems that plague the nation.
Source: Blogs.asce.org