Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Mayor and President Obama’s former chief of staff, advocated stimulus spending such as that proposed in Obama’s jobs bill as “the reinvention engine” for the American economy.

“Basically, about every six or seven years the American economy reinvents itself with a single engine,” Emanuel said on Meet the Press this morning. “Rebuilding our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our broadband for the new economy, is essential as that single engine . . . that should be the reinvention engine.”