President Obama unveiled a new plan Monday at a union festival in Milwaukee designed to jump-start the U.S. economy through the creation of jobs, with a focus on renovating the country’s infrastructure.

While the total cost of the plan wasn’t given, senior administration officials said “$50 billion was a large percentage of the bill” and “most of the money would be spent in the first year,” according to the Washington Post.

The plan would be to spend the $50 billion the first year as part of a six-year program. Goals Obama hopes to achieve through the implementation of such a plan include: “[building or repairing] 150,000 miles of roads … constructing 4,000 miles of railways … and rehabilitating 150 miles of airport runways,” according to the Associated Press; as well as “[avoiding] massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” according to the Post.

While the president’s speech may have been moving, there is still disagreement about whether this is an appropriate time to spend an additional $50 billion of taxpayer money.

On one hand, a popular economic strategy during economic crises is to continue to spend on projects such as roads and railways to jump-start the American economy, similar to what was done during the Great Depression.

However, we question whether such an economic push would actually catalyze the economy. Simply using the logic that larger spending equals economic growth leads to a budget that is never balanced.

It seems the age-old advice, “Don’t spend more than what you earn,” has lost its appeal. With an approximately $819 billion stimulus package passed earlier this year, it is hard to declare whether the additional $50 billion would help or damage the economy.

Much criticism of the project is due to its vagueness. For example, the plan touts that it would create a substantial number of new jobs, but it doesn’t give an estimate.

Obama’s stance, nevertheless, remains that more spending is urgent and unavoidable. To manage the money, an “infrastructure bank” would be created to “[reform] the haphazard and patchwork way we fund and maintain our infrastructure to focus less on wasteful earmarks and outdated formulas, and more on competition and innovation that gives us the best bang for the buck.” Such a bank would be government-run and would pool tax dollars with private investment.

Despite Obama’s claim this plan is necessary, we’re just not seeing it. We would much rather see detailed results of the already-passed stimulus package before another appeal for taxpayer dollars.