Obama's Thursday townhall in Tampa will announce high speed rail

[karynnj]

A day after delivering a State of the Union address aimed at showing recession-weary Americans he understands their struggles, President Barack Obama intends to award $8 billion in stimulus funds to develop high-speed rail corridors and sell the program as a jobs creator.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden plan to announce grants for 13 major corridors during a town hall meeting in Tampa, Fla., Thursday, the president's first public appearance following his speech to the nation. It's an attempt by the White House to show that getting Americans back to work is the president's top priority and that he has a plan for how to do it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100127/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_high_speed_rail

Kerry pushed for the inclusion of this in the stimulus bill in the Finance committee and he introduced legislation for it in 2008 - that Beachmom wrote up here - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/25/95822/061

Here is a link to Kerry's comments when the funding was announced - http://kerry.senate.gov/cfm/record.cfm?id=309684

This may be a major accomplishment of the Obama administration if this really is done well - and it seems Kerry did a lot of the ground work - so posting it is seems appropriate, even if he is not mentioned.