Time to Think Big, Push for Progressive Government Action

President Obama’s economic stimulus package is just the beginning of a long-overdue public investment in rebuilding our nation’s economy. And now is the time to seek broad solutions—to think big about what can be done.

At the Thinking Big/Thinking Forward conference February 11, hundreds of progressives took the first steps to building a movement to coalesce public support for a more activist, progressive government to rebuild our nation’s economy.

The one-day conference in Washington, D.C., was co-sponsored by The American Prospect, Institute for America’s Future, Demos, and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

In his opening speech on “The New Deal Moment,” Columbia University History Professor Alan Brinkley presented an overview of the New Deal and noted that when President Franklin Roosevelt immediately took action to address the crisis after taking office in 1933:

It was a welcome contrast to the seeming paralysis of the discredited Hoover administration.

But unlike Roosevelt, Obama must work with a smaller number of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, Brinkley pointed out, resulting in the near-gridlock we’ve witnessed as the economic recovery package bounces around Congress.

Panel discussions addressed several major areas where social investment can rebuild a new and more productive economy by focusing on infrastructure and on issues such as home foreclosures, education, health care, jobs and public and business policies that make it hard to work and care for a family.

Michelle Collins, senior vice president of ShoreBank in Chicago, told the group about the bank’s “rescue loan program” to help customers refinance home mortgages that may be in danger of default. She said many homeowners simply are in over their head and need help getting the payments down to a manageable level. ShoreBank has only a 2 percent default rate among the rescued customers.

Collins said the current home foreclosure crisis is the result of a mix of lax regulation; greed by Realtors, banks and others in the home mortgage pipeline; the decline in jobs; and stagnant wages. She called for a federal program to help homeowners refinance subprime mortgages.

For far too long, we have not placed a priority on human investment (education, health care and families), another panel told the more than 800 participants.

Nancy Van Meter, assistant to AFT President Randi Weingarten, told the conference that a good education is essential to rebuilding our economy. Whatever economic stimulus package emerges from Congress must include funds for school construction, she said.

There is a huge need to build, rebuild and modernize our schools. This is a “win-win” that is getting lost in the shuffle. A good education is vital to a good life. If we are truly thinking big, we have to make sure everyone has a good education.

We also have to ensure quality, affordable health care for everyone, says Jacob Hacker, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

We cannot afford not to [have universal health insurance]. We cannot afford to have our workers and our businesses saddled with rising costs that eat into paychecks and lock workers into jobs. We cannot afford another bankruptcy or foreclosure for another family because health care wasn’t there when they needed it. If we do nothing, the public resources we need for everything else are imperiled.

He called for a national health insurance plan modeled after Medicare in which everyone is enrolled.

Ellen Bravo of the University of Wisconsin discussed the need to focus on families in the new economy. While three states now have paid family leave laws, the federal government should set minimum standards for a range of family benefits, including family leave, Bravo said.

She said the best way to win many of the things progressives are seeking is to build “unexpected coalitions” with groups affected by the issue and let them drive the campaign. She pointed out how groups in several states raised awareness of the need for family leave by enlisting school nurses to talk about the number of children who are left sitting in school sick because their parents can’t get off work to take care of them.

We can change the nation, Bravo said, but it will take a movement for change that includes workers, academics, low-income people, businesses, politicians and others, adding:

What made the New Deal wasn’t just a great president, but a movement that made him act.

Click here for more information about the conference.