The present state of the economy being as awful as it is, the three presidential hopefuls are looking at a mountain of problems come next January. It is reassuring that they recognize this as each of them has laid out a detailed plan for the economy.
The pity is that the media and the voters are fixated on political gossip and ignoring the very specific economic plans that the candidates have offered. Voters, directly worried about immediate dislocations, have some excuse. The press should do better. They treat every proposal as a pitch for votes when they should look at needs and consequences.
Few people read the detailed plans and for good reason. These plans are full of pie-in-the-sky proposals that are quickly lost in the rough-and-tumble of the politics of a new administration. These proposals are, nonetheless, of interest for they lay out what the presidential candidates would do if they had their druthers. These plans tell us more about the candidates than TV snippets replayed endlessly, whether it is 100 years, an embellished war story or an out-of-the context sermon.
So, caring about the economy as I do, I went to their web sites and read what the candidates had to say about what I thought was one of the most important economic problem facing us: the sorry condition of our infrastructure.
We turn to government because infrastructure is for the most part a public good. The private sector has not been able to provide it without substantive direction and aid from government. Alexander Hamilton, the great progenitor of American capitalism, set the government to provide roads, ports and canals. And, of course, the interstate and the Internet are government innovations.
Infrastructure is usually defined to cover the wide range of physical and human structures that our economy rests upon. In transportation, it includes roads, bridges, seaports, canals and tunnels as well as public transit, railroads, and airports,. In communications it covers broadband, radio, television, GPS and satellites. In energy, it includes the whole gamut from creation of renewable and non-renewable fuels and transmission through pipelines and power grids. Obama but not Clinton includes the educational and healthcare systems.
Senator John McCain is as uninterested in the economy as George Bush. The word infrastructure does not appear in Senator John McCain's economic plan which is, for all practical purposes, a list of the taxes he would cut. Infrastructure does turn up in several of his speeches. He would, for instance, use tax cuts to encourage extending broadband to small towns.
Senator Hillary Clinton presents a "Rebuild America Plan" that is a very serious and comprehensive approach. If you have listened to the senator's speeches, you know that she loves lists and this is a place where it works.
The Rebuild America Plan lists most of the problem areas but its strength is that it ties these challenges to specific actions such as an Emergency Repair Fund for our transportation system or it assigns responsibility as to the National Academy of Engineering or the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Finally, the Plan lists individual program costs, sums them to a total cost of $3 billion per year and proposes specific sources for those funds.
Senator Barak Obama takes a different approach. Obama's plan for the economy does not consider an infrastructure laundry list of problems but rather turns to the opportunities those problems present to tie together new jobs and a new economy. The heart of Obama's plan is strong support for federal funding for basic research in the physical sciences and engineering.
Obama ties infrastructure investment to healthcare, to clean energy and to education. His comprehensive energy independence and climate change plan is tied to education and the first wave of green technologies.
The Obama plan recognizes the neglected transportation infrastructure and proposes a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank with $6 billion a year for transportation alone.
Obama treats infrastructure as an investment problem, which it is. In fact the words are close to being interchangeable.
The debate in this election, at least between Obama and Clinton, should be about how we are going to invest in this economy and meet the storm of technological and economic change that is swirling down upon us.
There is a choice. Senator McCain would cut taxes. Senator Clinton would go right at each problem and with her experience restore the strength of the
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