Ogden » U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett said Tuesday a stimulus package will likely pass Congress, but said he's more enthusiastic about President-elect Barack Obama's plan to spend money on infrastructure -roads, bridges, sewer systems - than on so-called green technology.

While addressing about 20 Weber County elected officials, Bennett said the nation's infrastructure needs work and it would mean immediate jobs for the ailing construction industry.

"I'm not there on the green technology business," Bennett said. "Given the severity of this recession, there are some things we should put off."

Part of the problem, Bennett said, is that Obama has been long on rhetoric but short on specifics about green technology, Bennett said. Both solar and wind power lack the predictability that the country needs to wean itself off fossil fuels.

"If we are indeed going to a carbon-free environment, it's going to take 20 or 30 years to get there and bridge to that promised land is built out of fossil fuels," Bennett said.

Bennett favors seeing the United States building one or two plants to reprocess waste from nuclear energy, which would allow the country to double the nuclear share from 20 percent to 40 percent.

"The environmental movement is at a crossroads. Do they believe greenhouse gas is most important? If they do, the need to endorse nuclear power," Bennett said.

The veteran Utah Republican is optimistic that his Democratic colleagues in Congress will support Bennett's plan to revamp - and save - Social Security now with a Democrat in the White House.

But fixing Medicare is a more formidable problem, Bennett said. "If there is no change in the present method of calculating the benefit, the two of them will bankrupt the country."

Bennett believes Obama will be a centrist president and praised the president-elect's choice of New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner for Treasury secretary.

"We are in a very perilous ... financial situation and you need grown-ups who are working on the problem. Obama has picked grown-ups," Bennett said.