The Next Stimulus Package

Last Sunday in the NY Times Business section (Economic View - "One Tax Rebate Isn't Enough"), Yale economics professor Robert Shiller wrote,

The reality of the subprime situation, augmented by the energy crisis, at least suggests that we’d better get ready for another round of rebates. There is little talk of it now, but we should be putting in place another stimulus package like the current one, and stand ready for another after that, and another.

Today a letter writer suggests that the next stimulus package be comprised of infrastructure spending instead of rebate checks (Letters - "Next Time, Improve the Infrastructure"),

Re “One Rebate Isn’t Enough” (Economic View, June 29) in which Robert J. Shiller suggests that “we should be putting in place another stimulus package like the current one”

Because the American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated that we will need to spend $1.6 trillion over five years to maintain the adequacy of the nation’s infrastructure, why not use infrastructure spending as the next stimulus package? Wouldn’t $100 billion in such spending create more jobs domestically than $100 billion in tax rebates, some of which will be spent on imports, as Professor Shiller acknowledges?