News Release

Report Details Staggering Public Investment Deficit; Recovery Plan "Only a Down Payment," Much More is Necessary

WASHINGTON – The Institute for America’s Future, the research arm of Campaign for America’s Future, today released the report, “Beyond Recovery: America’s Public Investment Deficit,” highlighting the need for a dramatic change of national priorities to bolster long-term public investment. As the report states,

One thing is painfully clear. America’s public investment deficit is deep and costly. The recovery plan makes a useful down payment in various areas of dramatic need. But as we detail below, the recovery plan is only a down payment. Glaring needs remain. So as we build the new economy coming out of this crisis, we must sustain increased public investment in areas vital to our social and economic health.

The core areas… are also clear. We need to build a modern, efficient, 21st century infrastructure, the foundation on which the economy relies… We need a concerted drive for sustainable energy independence, while ending our addiction to foreign oil… Finally, we need to invest in people. America has prospered by leading the world in public education, scientific research and technological invention.

“The old economy was founded on stagnant incomes and unsustainable debt,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Institute for America’s Future. “The old economy was floated on asset bubbles like that in housing which has now exploded in our faces. We can't resuscitate the old economy—and should not want to.

“The next economy must seek to provide a sustainable and a widely shared prosperity, one where the American dream remains in reach for working people. That will require new thinking and bold reforms.”

The report sets the stage for the “Thinking Big, Thinking Forward” conference to be held tomorrow, Wednesday, February 11, in Washington, DC. Sponsored by the American Prospect, Economic Policy Institute, Institute for America's Future, and Demos, the conference will call for a new economic plan to break the recent destructive cycle of asset bubbles and build a new economy, instead, grounded in responsible, jobs-based growth that creates broadly shared prosperity. Reaching these goals will require the sustained commitment of resources at the level laid out in the president’s economic recovery package well into the future.