Congress must pass the stimulus bill if it hopes to save the country from another Depression. It is a very sound and well-thought-out bill that, if enacted, would be one of the biggest and boldest pieces of progressive legislation in the past 40 years. It would create or save 3-4 million jobs during the next two years.

It doubles funding for the U.S. Department of Education, thus avoiding literally hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs. There might be a chance that Auburn could get funding to build a new high school to replace the crumbling Edward Little.

It creates 500,000 green jobs, which in turn will effectively double the nation’s clean energy production, and it immediately helps unemployed folks get health insurance, previously unavailable to them.

The stuff that’s being singled out for criticism by Republicans such as Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe amounts to a tiny fraction of the total bill. For example, anti-smoking programs make up less than one-ten-thousandth of the total spending. It is that kind of nit-picking that is pure politics. Republicans would have you believe this is the centerpiece of the bill, when clearly it is not.

If an effective stimulus bill is not passed, the country faces extreme hardship. Even Republican economists acknowledge that unemployment would easily top 11 percent by 2010, the highest level since the Great Depression.

Dave Chirayath, Lewiston