Most of the arguments made against Kansas City&#8217;s light-rail plan are easily knocked down.</p><p>For instance, there&#8217;s the complaint that at $815 million it&#8217;s far too expensive.</p><p>To which I&#8217;d ask, what isn&#8217;t pricey these days? Ever checked out the cost of a highway interchange? Or just one bridge?</p><p>Replacing the Paseo Bridge is estimated to cost $245 million.</p><p>So there&#8217;s that argument.</p><p>Then there&#8217;s the opposite one espoused by Jim Nutter and his like-minded associates with the so-called Citizens for Sensible Transit.</p><p>Their claim is that KC&#8217;s light rail isn&#8217;t expensive enough &#8212; that we really ought to be building a regional system instead of some puny starter line.</p><p>To which I&#8217;d say, you gotta start somewhere, guys. Plus, what do you want to bet that if a regional system were on the ballot, the opponents would say it cost too much or find some other reason to be against it?</p><p>Any number of arguments against light rail are just as easily refuted or turned on their heads.</p><p>However, there is one very good argument against KC&#8217;s light-rail plan, or at least I thought it was a potential deal killer until the other day.</p><p>And that is that right now is a lousy time to be spending more than three-quarters of a billion dollars on a light-rail starter line. There&#8217;s the relatively minor matter of the country &#8212; and KC in particular &#8212;being in the midst of a recession with, perhaps, worse to come. Also, don&#8217;t we have many other unmet needs on the civic to-do list?</p><p>In fact, I heard a radio talk show host put that question to Mayor Mark Funkhouser the other day. Not sure if it was Mike Shanin or Scott Parks who asked it on &#8220;Shanin &amp; Parks.&#8221; (You&#8217;re welcome for the plug, boys.)</p><p>Only the answer the Funk gave was the one I should have thought of myself, seeing as how I&#8217;m something of a history buff. And then there are all those stories I&#8217;d heard from my parents, who lived through the Great Depression and never let me forget it.</p><p>Funkhouser&#8217;s point was that right now is actually the perfect time to be spending bazillions of public dollars on ambitious projects such as light rail and that $3.6 billion sewer rebuild.</p><p>Why?</p><p>&#8220;Because they provide jobs,&#8221; he said, or something close to that.</p><p>No, it&#8217;s not as if breadlines are forming on street corners. We may even get out of this fix we&#8217;re in with the credit crunch and the market collapse. (But don&#8217;t count on it.)</p><p>Still, Funkhouser has a good point. The federal government wasn&#8217;t alone in trying to prop up the U.S. economy and put people to work with public improvement projects in the 1930s.</p><p>If you know your local history, then you know that Kansas City&#8217;s own effort in that regard predated FDR&#8217;s New Deal by a couple of years, and the results are still evident on the downtown skyline.</p><p>The Jackson County Courthouse, City Hall and Municipal Auditorium all were built in the worst years of the Great Depression and paid for with borrowed money that was paid off with tax dollars.</p><p>Those and many other public projects, such as roads, sewers &#8212; and, yes, also the paving of Brush Creek with Tom Pendergast&#8217;s Ready-Mix Concrete &#8212; were made possible by a $40 million bond program approved by taxpayers in 1931.</p><p>That so-called 10-year plan was sold to the voters by the likes of Pendergast protege Harry Truman, then a Jackson County judge.</p><p>It put a lot of people to work when there weren&#8217;t many jobs to be had, with the result that Kansas City was a little better off than some other towns in the Depression. And it left a legacy of iconic buildings that still are in use more than 70 years later.</p><p>There are more convincing arguments in support of the light-rail plan.</p><p>But seeing it also as a jobs program isn&#8217;t such a bad idea, either, considering where we might be heading.