WASHINGTON -- As debate raged in the nation's capital over the stimulus bill on its first birthday, federal officials announced that it will provide $35 million for freight rail projects in Western Pennsylvania.

The money is part of a $1.5 billion package of transportation projects revealed Wednesday by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, including a freight corridor run by CSX that is known as the National Gateway Project. Overall, the project received $98 million for the line that is to connect ports with major inland destinations.

The money will go toward raising bridge and tunnel clearances to allow CSX to "double stack" cargo on trains traveling through Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. The federal government and CSX said increasing the loads on rail cars would allow freight to be moved more efficiently and reduce the need for long-haul trucking -- easing congestion on highways and cutting gasoline consumption.

The Pennsylvania state government will match the $35 million to boost the National Gateway's plans for 17 clearance projects in Western Pennsylvania, including seven in Allegheny County, that are scheduled to be finished by the end of 2012. In addition, CSX is planning to build a rail-to-truck terminal in Pittsburgh but has not chosen a site yet.

The other bridge and tunnel construction projects are in Somerset and Bedford counties, along a rail line that follows the Interstate 70-76 corridor from Maryland to Ohio.

Mr. LaHood made the funding announcement from Kansas City, Mo., part of a nationwide blitz by Obama administration Cabinet secretaries promoting the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a measure estimated to cost a total of $862 billion.

Today, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke is scheduled to visit Carnegie Mellon University to announce an initiative to increase broadband Internet access.

The overall effectiveness of the stimulus has been hotly debated since President Barack Obama signed the measure Feb. 17, 2009, but the rhetoric heightened for its anniversary.

"We had a responsibility to do what was right for the U.S. economy and for the American people," Mr. Obama said Wednesday at an event to mark the occasion. "One year later, it is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second depression is no longer a possibility. It's one of the main reasons the economy has gone from shrinking by 6 percent to growing at about 6 percent."

Democrats drove the bill through with no Republicans in the House and only three in the Senate -- one of whom, Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, later flipped to the Democratic Party.

Republicans maintained their opposition to the bill a year later, noting that although the economy has not collapsed, unemployment has risen to about 10 percent -- well above White House projections when the bill was passed. Republicans also seized on news media reports of wasted and unaccounted-for funds, while decrying many projects as silly porkbarrel.

"Struggling small-business owners, families and young workers see trillions in debt, on their tab, and still no job creation," House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., said in a statement.

So far, the public is siding with the Republicans. A CBS/New York Times poll last week found that 6 percent of respondents believe that the stimulus "has created jobs." Republicans gleefully compared the result to a 2002 poll in which 7 percent of respondents believed that Elvis was still alive.

In a conference call Wednesday with reporters, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said he was "very concerned" about such polling data and insisted that the stimulus has been an effective tool to create jobs. According to a White House study, 1.7 million to 2 million jobs were created or saved by the bill in 2009.

The public dissatisfaction, Mr. Casey said, comes in part from a poor selling job by stimulus backers. "Any message from Washington about positive news is hard to get through in a recession when you have 15 million people out of work in this country and 560,000 in Pennsylvania," Mr. Casey said. "[But] elected officials in Washington have probably not spent enough time telling people about the progress of this."

When the Senate returns next week, it is scheduled to vote on another jobs bill, a $15 billion proposal of business tax cuts and infrastructure spending put together by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., as part of a piecemeal approach to a second stimulus -- though Democrats now are reluctant to even say the word "stimulus," given the poisonous politics surrounding it.

Mr. Casey quibbles with some details of the bill, but is hoping that a series of smaller measures can gain bipartisan support to attack the economic woes that remain in spite of a year of stimulus.

"We've kept our economy from going over a cliff," Mr. Casey said. "We're still in a ditch, but we're climbing out of it, and we have to make sure that when we climb out of it, we have to put in the reinvestment to make sure we stay out of it."

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