Community Commentary:

Last week, the American economy lost 71,400 jobs — in a single day. The International Monetary Fund warned that world economic growth is set to fall to 0.5% in 2009, its lowest rate since World War II. And at the just-concluded World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, business leaders from around the world were gloomy and skittish. Their mood reflected the global fear about the state of the world economy.

We have a unique opportunity to achieve two important goals with the stimulus package that recently passed the House and is now awaiting action in the Senate: to create jobs and get commerce moving again through a combination of infrastructure spending, tax cuts and other fiscal stimulus, so that families can maintain their income, standard of living and health care; and to make investments in our future and promote our long-term prosperity.

One of the major pillars of the stimulus package is infrastructure spending that will quickly create jobs while rebuilding the nation’s transportation networks. Los Angeles County is expected to receive $447 million for transit-related projects and at least $380 million in highway funding in the House version of the bill. While we must disburse these funds quickly, we must ensure that they constitute a significant and lasting investment in our country, such as building ready-to-go capital projects like the Gold Line Foothill Extension, which will benefit our community for decades.

By also focusing on renewable energy, we meet both goals for the stimulus. The green energy sector is burgeoning and offers many opportunities to give the economy a quick boost. The bill includes billions in federal loan guarantees to help local and state governments finance new projects, a necessity in these credit-starved times, while extending tax incentives for renewable energy developers and funding for immediate reliability improvements to the national electrical grid.

But much of the renewable energy section of the bill is also vital to long-term economic health and competitiveness. Each solar panel or wind turbine we build makes the next one cheaper, and the stimulus includes funding for research and development that will provide the clean, efficient new technologies that will produce our energy in the future.