Scott Wallsten Quotations

If someone would have suggested giving them $600 million to build a shopping complex in the city, you can imagine the outrage. And in fact, the economic benefit is bigger.

There's no real justification for public financing of stadiums. They don't generate economic benefits. They don't help revitalize neighborhoods. The economic research on this is pretty solid. The only studies that show positive effects are the ones commissioned by baseball and people who want a stadium built.

And so if instead you were to ask people - this started out as $500 million, and now it's pushing toward $700 million - and say, this is going to run about $1,000 a person, are you willing to commit that to have baseball come here to Washington? They're going to look at you and say, are you kidding me?

The problem is that they sell it on a lie - which is economic development. And it doesn't bring economic development.

Even if you assume that they were right about the revenues that baseball would be expected to generate, and I don't think that they are, it's pretty much exactly the same amount. And the developers of this project didn't get any public funds. And that's going to be a bigger benefit for the city.