Look- this is a great idea:
President Obama, looking for ways to jump-start the sagging economy and create new jobs, called on Congress on Monday to approve a far-reaching plan to rebuild and modernize the nation’s transportation networks — roads, rail and airport runways — over the next six years.
With Democrats facing increasingly bleak re-election prospects, Mr. Obama used a Labor Day visit to a union festival here to lay out the plan, which the White House says could begin creating jobs as early as 2011 if Congress moves quickly. But prospects for a hasty passage seem unlikely, given that lawmakers have only a few weeks before they go home to campaign and Republicans have little interest in giving Democrats any pre-election legislative victories.
“Over the next six years,” Mr. Obama promised “we are going to rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads — that’s enough to circle the world six times; that’s a lot of road. We’re going to lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways — enough to stretch coast-to-coast. We’re going to restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next-generation air-traffic control system to reduce travel time and delays for American travelers — I think everybody can agree on that.”
As good of an idea as it is, the merits of the plan will never be discussed. Ever. That just isn’t how our media rolls- it’s right there in the second paragraph. All Republicans will have to do is dismiss this as an “election year stunt,” and the ground has already been readied by the Politico and elsewhere by calling the WH desperate, and our media will go into full-on horse-race mode. Mitch McConnell just needs to go on David Gregory, purse his lips delicately, dismiss it, and the debate will essentially be over. There will be no discussion of the benefits of the added rail miles. No discussion of the ease of air travel with these improvements. The idea will simply be dismissed, and Republicans will pay no price whatsoever for killing yet another jobs bill.