January 26, 2012, 7:39 AM EST
Bloomberg Buisnessweek
By Carol Wolf
(Updates with House committee proposal in 13th paragraph.)
Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s call to rebuild U.S. infrastructure with money saved by bringing troops home may not resolve Congress’s struggles to set aside more money for roads and bridges, two analysts said.
“I’m not entirely convinced that reallocation of war funds will necessarily pick up enough momentum to gain traction in Congress,” Patrick Hughes, an analyst with Washington-based research firm Height Analytics, said in a telephone interview yesterday after Obama’s State of the Union address.
Obama is seeking to use half of the savings created by withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq to rebuild U.S. infrastructure, helping companies ship goods more efficiently, the White House said in a fact sheet yesterday. The plan would fix existing roads and invest more in high-speed rail, according to the fact sheet.
“Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation- building right here at home,” Obama said yesterday. He didn’t specify how much the government expects to save... FULL ARTICLE
Posted on
Thu, January 26, 2012
by John Cox