infrastructure

America's infrastructure is crumbling, hurting our competitiveness as other countries spend hundreds of billions. The Chamber of Commerce claims it supports spending on infrastructure. President Obama should call them on it because a majority of the public supports rebuilding our infrastructure and millions of us need work. The President should tell the Chamber to take its rhetoric seriously and support spending what is needed. Imagine the jobs it would create and the boost it would give to our economy now and in the future. The President should make it the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

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The question remains as to whether Democrats' 21st century vision will accord an appropriate role for the social insurance programs and protections that helped make America great in the 20th, as the President would like, or follow the oft-repeated Beltway truism that we must “invest, even as we cut,” which is code for investing in infrastructure at the expense of our modest social safety net. Rather than view the President's competitiveness framing as a threat, we progressives must seize it as an opportunity to elevate and expand our social insurance programs, as well as enforce our labor and trade laws. We have a very strong case to make that from both a substantive and a political perspective, America will achieve economic greatness because of a robust social safety net, rather than in spite of one.

Tom Friedman—and nearly every other Washington pundit obsessed with the idea of “cut and invest”—just does not get how basic social insurance actually makes our society stronger and wealthier. The case we progressives need to make emphatically is that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are more relevant to American competitiveness than ever. Compromising on them is compromising on innovation.

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In my last post, I scored the SOTU on the 7 Fairy Tales I discussed previously, and concluded that the President was subscribing to at most two of them, and that he accepted the deficit reduction framing of the Republicans as a basis for negotiat more »

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In "All Together Now: There Is No Deficit/Debt Problem,” I warned against the message calling for deficit reduction that the President would probably deliver in his State of the Union Address. more »

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Tonight, when President Obama gives his State of the Union address, he will be facing a nation that has millions of infrastructure jobs that need doing and millions of people out of work. more »

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Yesterday I wrote that the President may have sacrificed his long-term vision on trade and economic/industrial policy to day-to-day concerns and politics. The tax-cut deal is another indicator that a big-picture vision has been sacrificed. more »

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Does it even matter what the public wants anymore? more »

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Watch Chris Matthews, "We need to build!": (thanks Open Left) more »

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Just a short note here, to repeat and amplify what Krugman said: more »

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On Labor Day, President Obama rediscovered his roots. more »

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