First, Paul Krugman says Obama's proposal for massive tax cuts is "bad news":

There’s a reasonable economic case for including a significant amount of tax cuts in the package, mainly in year one.

But the numbers being reported — 40 percent of the whole, two-year plan — sound high. And all the news reports say that the high tax-cut share is intended to assuage Republicans; what this presumably means is that this was the message the off-the-record Obamanauts were told to convey.

And that’s bad news.

Look, Republicans are not going to come on board. Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they’ll demand 100%. Then they’ll start the thing about how you can’t cut taxes on people who don’t pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent. Then they’ll demand cuts in corporate taxes. And Mitch McConnell is already saying that state and local governments should get loans, not aid — which would undermine that part of the plan, too.

Then Eliot Spitzer, writing for Slate, says Obama's stimulus package should be focused on transforming the economy, not building roads and bridges:

Paving roads, repairing bridges that need refurbishing, and accelerating existing projects are all good and necessary, but not transformative. These projects by and large are building or patching the same economy with the same flaws that got us where we are. Our concern should be that as we look for the next great infrastructure project to transform our economy, we might rebuild the Erie Canal and find ourselves a century behind technologically.

And blogs all over are reacting to the fact that Obama still hasn't mentioned transit as part of his otherwise roads-centric stimulus package. Here's one take from the California High-Speed Rail Blog:

At some point Obama is going to have to use the bully pulpit to help Americans see that rail must become a much more central part of our transportation and economic policy. It would be good if he did that at the outset of his administration.

Instead I am hearing reports that policy change will come later in 2009 when the Transportation Equity Act (TEA) comes up for reauthorization. At that time, Congressional insiders claim, we will finally see the bigger shift away from highways and towards passenger rail. Kerry's HSR bill will be taken up around the same time and will likely be a part of that broader policy shift.

It's not how I would do it - politically it makes more sense to open with a call for change, while you have a 75% approval rating. That has a tendency to reduce resistance in Congress.