WASHINGTON — Cisco Systems, General Electric and Emcor Group may be winners as President-elect Barack Obama seeks to revive the U.S. economy by rewiring classrooms and libraries for high-speed Internet service and repairing bridges and highways.
While industrial giants such as U.S. Steel and Caterpillar were called on to build 47,000 miles of roads, bridges and tunnels under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, technology companies will be tapped under Obama to improve efficiency at hospitals and schools, ease congested traffic and make alternative fuels work, said analysts and company executives.
The president-elect’s transition team hasn’t put a number on the package. Economist James Galbraith, a Democratic Party adviser, urges spending of more than $900 billion.
“This is a nontraditional stimulus,” said Frank MacInnis, chief executive of Emcor, a Norwalk, Conn.-based maker of systems for voice and data, electrical power and lighting. “These new priorities of the Obama administration are indicative of the way that systems installation is capable of improving the efficiency of existing facilities.”
“President-elect Obama is really going to push the edge on how we use technology,” Cisco CEO John Chambers said.
