There is new money to lay rural broadband lines, some $400 million for bridge and highway repair, $240 million for improving mass transit, $27 million for drinking water projects, and so on.
Nationwide, the government will have $4.5 billion to help make federal buildings more energy-efficient. A significant amount of the money will be spent in this region. The Food and Drug Administration facility at White Oak is already on the list, according to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski's office.
Mikulski, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had a direct hand in providing additional funding for NASA, some of which will go to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Industry officials credit her with single-handedly getting $400 million to speed development of the space shuttle. NASA's Mid-Atlantic regional spaceport at Wallops Island, just across the Virginia line from Worcester County, will be a shuttle resupply center.
Mikulski describes the various federal facilities in the state - the military bases, labs and office complexes - as a "cornucopia."
"Every time the federal government spends a dollar, a lot of it is being administered in Maryland," the Democratic senator said. Recently, the state has been a "real world" backdrop for senior Obama administration officials, who have used the area between Baltimore and Washington to highlight new spending during the debate over the stimulus measure.
Vice President Joe Biden stood in the chill outside an ancient MARC train station in Laurel to promote a $2.9 million repair project. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar toured the Patuxent Research Refuge, which is getting $15 million for restoration and repairs.
But those figures are dwarfed by major area projects in the package: a new $500 million National Computer Center for the Social Security Administration at Woodlawn, for example. Social Security will receive $1 billion in all, with $500 million going to reduce the agency's processing backlog.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg will get much of the $360 million allotted for construction and maintenance work at the agency, which also has a Colorado facility. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, headquartered at Camp Springs, will get $230 million, some of which will go to operations in the state.
A total of $650 million is earmarked for initial construction of a new $3.4 billion Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, the largest building project there since the Pentagon was erected. Construction work will employ 32,800 people in the capital region, the government estimates.
Add to these figures the hundreds of millions in direct aid to citizens in the form of tax cuts, help for those who have lost their jobs or fallen deeper into poverty across the country.
Nobody knows how much spark those billions will give the beaten-down national economy. The impact of any government spending and tax-cut plan is "very uncertain," Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, advised the other day.
Private economists forecast that the stimulus package will generate or preserve about 2.2 million jobs, barely half of Obama's target of 4 million.
But Maryland, once again, may be an exception.
