So the stimulus is in trouble. I’m not surprised in the least. There’s too much stuff in this bill in the first place. I attribute this to Democrats not being able to spend on anything for eight years, but this is not the time to cram everything in. So here are the 4 parts that I believe should be the TOTAL stimulus bill of right now.

Break the stimulus into the following parts:

1. Repairing bridges, roads, etc. throughout the country. Hire those laid-off autoworkers, hire engineers and project managers.

2. Give an enormous amount of money to green industry…solar panels, wind power and mass transportation. don’t just give enough for states to keep their existing transit systems…give them more to make the expansion they need due to increased ridership.

3. Restructure the electrical grid. Help fund and give contracts to companies like Better Place, which will send a message to Detroit that there WILL be an infrastructure in place to support the Chevy Volt and other cars when they come out. Oil will only go up.

4. Increase unemployment benefits and let the unemployed go onto Medicare for a time. Find a way to help those who are self-employed and independent contractors…many of whom are illegally paid in this fashion and suffer from extraordinarily high taxes.

This is ALL that should be in this bill. Of course, education reform and health care, etc. are important. My fear is that if we only do half of what is needed in these areas in this bill, when we try to do more, the Republicans will scream “We already spent money on these programs” and we’ll never get it done right.

Democrats, save some bargaining room. Health Care and Education should be addressed later (even in a few months, just to separate from this current bill) and if you dont spend anything on them now, you will have a better place to argue from when you need complete spending to do them right.

Also, let’s get this thing done without the Republicans. Obama needs to stand up to them more…they were not voted in. We wanted a bold, daring stimulus-and this is not it-this is a hodgepodge. It looks like a pot-luck dinner when we wanted and needed 5-star dining. We dont want more tax cuts or credits, either.