Democratic US Senator Chuck Schumer says that the new president and expanded Congressional Democratic majority will be good for the Rochester and Finger Lakes region.

Among the promises he made during a Rochester visit today: increased infrastructure funding, more federal money for Medicaid, more funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and more funds for public safety programs.

He said that he hopes some of this will happen through a stimulus package that Congress expects to take up next week. Infrastructure investment will help the economy through construction-related jobs - he rightly points out that someone will have to do the work and those crews will spend money in their local shops and so on. Expanding health insurance not only helps kids get the care they need, but it means medical jobs, too.

There is, however, a question of how to pay for it all. And some people are not going to like his answer.

"Most of these are going to be deficit spending, which economists will tell you, in times of recession, you have to do," he said.

Schumer's partial to the same philosophy that spawned FDR's New Deal - that large-scale government investment is good for the economy.

During his visit, Schumer also backed a bailout plan for the Big Three automakers, but with conditions. The industry needs a solid plan to turn the situation around, he said. And he wants an arrangement similar to the one the feds struck with Chrysler some years ago. The government needs to "make sure we get paid first instead of the shareholders" if the companies turn their fortunes around, he said.

And the executives who put the companies in such a poor position "ought to be booted" without any golden parachute, Schumer said. (For a really good take on the American automakers and their bailout pleas, check out what columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in today's New York Times.)