Obama sees roads, rails as a path to bipartisan support for spending

DRIVING THE DAY: At 10:15 a.m., President Obama will hold a State Dining Room meeting on infrastructure investment, then at 10:50 will deliver a Rose Garden statement to build support for the $50 billion "roads, railways and runways" proposal he unveiled on Labor Day. --The White House's Jennifer Psaki, on a conference call for reporters yesterday: "Infrastructure is similar to the small-business jobs bill that the president signed into law two weeks ago, in that it has traditionally been supported by Democrats and Republicans. And we're pleased to have a number of Republican mayors, elected officials joining us tomorrow. We're hopeful that we'll also be able to work in a bipartisan way in Congress to ... move past some of the partisan obstruction we've seen of late." --Per the White House: "Joining the President at the meeting will be Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, former Secretaries of Transportation Norman Mineta and Samuel Skinner, Governors Ed Rendell and Jack Markell, and Mayors Antonio Villaraigosa, Mick Cornett, Julian Castro, Michael Coleman, Michael Nutter, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Kasim Reed and Joe Riley." --"The group will ... discuss a new report on infrastructure investment from the Department of the Treasury with the Council of Economic Advisers. ... [T]he report finds that 80 percent of the jobs directly created by investing in transportation infrastructure would be in the construction, manufacturing and retail trade sectors. The report also finds that infrastructure investments have high bang for the buck because construction costs are low due to underutilized resources." --From the 27-page report: "[N]ow is an optimal time to increase the nation's investment in transportation infrastructure. ... [T]he average unemployment rate among those who would gain employment in the jobs created by additional infrastructure investment is currently more than 15 percent." Full text http://politi.co/cDKpYl

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