Emanuel says infrastructure money a priority for Obama

President-elect Obama's chief of staff-designate said Tuesday that billions of dollars in infrastructure building and repair will be a key component of Obama's economic recovery act. "A lot of people say, you know, 'It doesn't happen, it takes too long,' " Emanuel said. "There's now a consensus that we've for a long time had to deny our investments in our critical needs ... be that refurbished schools, our water treatment facilities, our roads, our bridges, our mass-transit systems, our 21st century infrastructure, universal broadband, medical ID ... [I]f we did [invest in those projects], we would be a more productive economy. And that was shared by governors of both parties." He continued, "We need to rebuild America, we need to build those critical areas today to do it and an Economic Recovery Act has to do that." Emanuel said the first half of the meeting between the president-elect and the governors dealt with the need for infrastructure funding and the positive impact it could have on the economy. The "ballpark" amount used for the discussions was about $136 billion.