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Tag: public investment
Biden’s Big History Lesson For Republicans

Biden’s Big History Lesson For Republicans

Embedded in Joe Biden's first speech to Congress was a crucial lesson in our nation's economic history that every American ought to understand.

Explaining why he proposes to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the construction of new power grids, broadband internet connections and transportation systems, the president reminded us of the public investments that have "transformed America" into a prosperous world power. It is a lesson too often and too easily forgotten amid the incessant propaganda, imbibed by almost all of us from an early age, about the "magic of the free market," the "dead hand of government" and various equally hoary conservative cliches.

Markets are marvelous, but government has been essential in growing and regulating the economy from the republic's very beginning. Biden cited the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway system, the construction of public schools and colleges that enabled universal education, the medical and scientific advances that sprang from the space program and defense industries - but his speech could well have continued for quite a while in that same vein. Political leaders from Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy all have promoted public investment in research, infrastructure and people as the prerequisites of progress, and sometimes even national survival.

What progress requires, however, changes in every generation along with technology and society. Today, we face rapid climate change that jeopardizes the future of human civilization, creating threats that range from flood and fire to pandemic, famine, drought and mass migration. We must swiftly rebuild our basic infrastructure, which is crumbling after decades of neglect. And we have to bring the entire country into the modern digital economy before inequality permanently damages our democracy.

When Republicans say Biden wants to spend too much on a "liberal wish list" and we should do nothing more than repave roads and repair bridges, because that's "real infrastructure," their complaints only expose their ignorance. The expansion of rural broadband is just as necessary as fixing a bridge on a country road, and the replacement of lead pipes in city water systems is just as critical as filling potholes on an urban highway. The long list of projects enumerated in Biden's proposal, from new schools to veterans hospitals, from upgrading water systems to capping old oil and gas wells, and yes, for providing child and elder care — these are harbingers of a future that works.

We ought to have started this transformation years ago, even before the former guy uttered his false promises about infrastructure. But interest rates are still low — and more importantly, the billionaires whose fortunes derive from public investment can certainly pay for its upkeep and expansion. Biden correctly observed that while most Americans suffered from lost jobs and income during the pandemic, the richest families saw their wealth increase by a trillion dollars, after pocketing a Trump tax cut that awarded them trillions more. Are we all in this together? Not unless the super-rich pay their fair share.

It's nice that some Republicans — though not all, apparently — understand that we can't just let everything fall apart because we don't like taxes or we distrust government. Unfortunately, their comprehension of what infrastructure means is quaintly out of date. While the president warmly welcomed Republican proposals because he's interested in achieving a measure of bipartisan agreement, what they have offered so far is absurdly inadequate.

So, he offered a clear warning as well. Doing nothing — like the Republicans and their incompetent leader over the past four years — is not an option.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

How And Why We Should ‘Re-Fund’ America

The powerhouses of Wall Street have tunneled directly into the cloistered backrooms of Washington deal making, extracting trillions of dollars worth of government bailouts, special tax breaks and regulatory favors every year. Yet, in a stupefying act of hypocrisy, they have also been the major force pushing policymakers to embrace extreme laissez-faire bunkum and to inflict the most austere budgetary minginess on the American people.

Through their lobbyists, front groups, economic shills, media hacks and the politicians they’ve purchased, these pampered princes of high finance have gained a stranglehold on policy, choking off the public investment that our country desperately needs. In a nonstop drone, their operatives chant: “America is broke. Fiscal doom looms. Government spending is the cause. Austerity policies are our only hope.”

And Washington is buying this snake oil. In a Fox News appearance, George Will, the GOP’s high priest of the plutocratic order, declared victory for the laissez-fairyites, noting that they have taken control of Washington’s conversation on public spending: “We are now talking entirely on Republican terms, in Republican vocabulary. No taxes, how much is the spending going to be cut? The federal workforce is being cut.”

No doubt the debate in Will’s tiny circle is focused entirely on shrinking America into its dark vision of parsimonious plutocracy. But I find that most people, living way outside George’s bubble of elites, have a far bigger vision of what America can be, and they’re engaged in a less constipated conversation about ways to meet our country’s budgetary needs.

If you review opinion polls, hear the results of door-to-door outreach campaigns, or just have a few real conversations at various chat-and-chew cafes, you’ll tap into ordinary people’s simmering anger at the Wall Street/Washington axis that’s dictating a harsh normal of economic inequality, declining opportunity and diminished democratic control. The elites are constantly monkey-wrenching the public’s ability to act together, thus limiting our nation’s possibilities and causing America’s present drift from world leader to mediocrity.

This undermining of the workaday Americans goes against the very essence of America, from our egalitarian ideals to our can-do spirit. We must create a politics that directly confronts the narcissistic nabobs who’re knocking down our people and our country — and rally an increasingly restive workaday majority to come together in an expansive, aggressive effort to re-fund America. For example:

— As the richest country in the history of the world, the USA ought to have the top public education system, not one of the worst among wealthy nations.

— Improve Obamacare to Medicare for All.

— Let’s re-establish our technological supremacy, from building the green economy of the future to reaching boldly again into outer space.

— Our priceless system of public parks should be flourishing and expanding, not firing park rangers and locking entry gates.

— Rather than succumbing to a bleak future of low-wage, part-time, temporary, no-security jobs, let’s publicly invest in full employment, world-class skills and technology that works for workers.

— Restore democratic power with public financing of all election campaigns, enact labor law reforms so workers themselves can democratize the workplace and encourage the development of co-ops as an alternative to corporate control of the economy.

That’s an America that is worthy of ALL of us — a society of historic democratic vision, genuine opportunity for all and a shared prosperity. Most people would feel good about bringing children into that world. That’s the America we should strive to be.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: At the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California’s Mojave Desert, some of the plant’s 347,000 garage-door-sized mirrors used to generate power can be seen. (Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/TNS)