Wyden's Stimulus Plan Targets Job Creation

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has a plan to create jobs. It's a plan he'll bring up later this month when Congress meets to discuss another economic stimulus package.

Wyden was in Medford Friday morning has part of a two and a half day tour through Oregon.

Among those who met with Wyden were Jackson County leaders who say their roads are in bad shape and there simply isn't money in the budget to fix them. The economy is in the tank and unemployment is rising. But Wyden says fix one of these problems and you'll start to fix them all.

"I'm going to pull out all the stops to get democrats and republicans working together so that we can get people back to work and start dealing with all this economic hurt we're seeing around Oregon," he says.

Unlike the last economic stimulus package where rebate checks were sent to millions of Americans Wyden would like to see this package put money in the nation's infrastructure by funding road and construction projects.

"I like sending folks rebate checks as much as the next person. But dollar for dollar the best investments in my view are these kinds of projects: construction, road repair. And in a lot of them they actually get out faster and in the economic bloodstream more quickly than would these rebate checks," he says.

This comes as good news to Jackson County leaders.

"No pun intended, we've been losing ground," says Commissioner Dennis C.W. Smith. "We're at a crucial juncture for our road system in the county and the city as well in many areas."

The county has almost a dozen projects that could benefit from stimulus funding and lead to family wage jobs.

Construction workers who met with Wyden say they need work not a one-time stimulus check. Wyden and Smith say that's the best way to get the economy moving again.

"It provides direct jobs. Twenty-eight jobs for every million spent in the community. And then that has a multiplier effect of about three or four," says Smith.

"There really is no economic multiplier out there like road repair and transportation," says Wyden.

Wyden says he'd like to pay for the stimulus package by removing special interest tax breaks like those that ship jobs overseas.