Can Obama's Infrastructure Program Work?

Another critical debate regarding the stimulus plan is whether it includes too many programs -- especially in the area of so-called "green jobs" that involve public alternative energy projects or conservation -- that may be experimental and which lack the job-creation power of more basic public works projects such as new highways.

According to Smetters, the evidence is that a large government role in translational research -- work that takes critical discoveries in basic science and converts the findings into projects such as, in the case of energy, new fuel cells for cars or wind turbines -- is a highly inefficient use of taxpayer money. He notes that while it is important for the government to help pay for basic research through its agencies such as the National Science Foundation, commercialization of new discoveries works better when financed by private enterprise. "If the government is paying for it, you have to ask why the private sector isn't."

But Eric W. Orts, a Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics who helped provide energy and environmental policy advice to the Obama campaign, takes a different view. He sees several types of programs that could create a number of new jobs while aiding the environment at the same time. In particular, he cites federal block grants to states that would help them pay for energy efficiency programs such as retrofitting and insulating existing buildings, as well as work on mass transit programs such as high-speed rail, which could reduce carbon pollution from automobiles.

"It's very encouraging that they're going to subsidize new technologies," Orts says. "It's a signal that we will invest in what are viable technologies and that it's going to be targeted and reasonably done." Orts argues that investments in areas that will make the United States more economically competitive down the road -- not just in energy but also in education, for example -- are a much more productive way to incur debt than, for example, the massive cost of waging a long-term war in Iraq.