Business leaders, Bay Area officials praise Obama's jobs plan

By Steve Johnson

sjohnson@mercurynews.com
Posted: 12/09/2009 01:00:00 AM PST
Updated: 12/09/2009 08:54:47 AM PST

Business leaders and Bay Area public officials praised President Barack Obama's call Tuesday to reduce the nation's persistent double-digit unemployment through a major federal spending effort to improve roads, bolster small businesses and make homes more energy-efficient.

Under intense political pressure because more than 7 million Americans have lost jobs over the past two years and despite Republican criticism over the rising deficit, Obama called the nation's 10 percent jobless rate "staggering" and said the U.S. must continue to "spend our way out of the recession."

Although Obama didn't specify how much the plan would cost, experts said it would doubtless involve tens of billions of dollars, which local government officials said was sorely needed.

"I'm euphoric about it," said Dan Collen, Santa Clara County's deputy director for roads and airports, who said the county has $160 million of high-priority road needs, including improvements to its extensive network of expressways. And if the state tries to grab some county money to ease its own budget woes, "we may need all of the stimulus-for-jobs or whatever money is available just to keep the routine baseline operations going," said Collen.