Obama did a lengthy interview with George S. on This Week.
Here is the transcript.There's more here.
Here he offers what might be funded by the stimulus:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, that's what I wanted to ask you about, because like one of the signature proposals already is this Museum of Organized Crime out in Las Vegas. I had Mitch McConnell out on the show last week and he ridiculed it, saying that, you know, this is an example of the kind of pork we don't want.By the way, even Las Vegans are against the Porky mob museum.
Yet its advocates say, wait a second, it's a construction project, it's ready to go, it's going to create jobs. Is that the kind of project that you want to fund or not?
OBAMA: Well, let's be clear, that was a project that was proposed as part of the mayors' project. The country's mayors put together -- here are a range of projects we can do, we didn't include that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But would you want to fund it or not?
OBAMA: Well, I think that what we have to do is evaluate whether or not these are projects that, as I said, are going to provide long-term benefits to the economy. You know, I would prefer spending money on things like making sure that all federal buildings are energy efficient so the taxpayers are saving money over the long-term.
I want to make sure that on health care we are creating the infrastructure that can make our health care more -- system more efficient. So, you know, we want to spend the money wisely. We want to spend it prudently.
In a package of this magnitude, will there end up being certain projects that potentially don't meet that criteria of helping on health care, energy, or education? Certainly.
But what we don't want is this thing to be a Christmas tree loaded up with a whole bunch of pet projects that people have for their local communities.
