Economic Development

Making the Case for Social Insurance in the 21st Century

Daniel Marans — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:47:05 -0500

President Obama is to be commended for making economic competitiveness and innovation the focus of his State of the Union address. Indeed, major new investments in infrastructure, energy and education are needed to secure America’s place in the 21st century economy. The question remains, however, 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.

Many center-left infrastructure enthusiasts are already suggesting that we should cut a compromise deal with Republicans that would involve cutting “entitlements” in exchange for an infrastructure investment bill of unspecified size. This position is exemplified by Thomas Friedman’s column in Saturday’s New York Times. Friedman singles out Singapore’s model of governance for high praise, because, he insists, it knows where to invest (infrastructure and education)—and where not to invest (the social safety net). Now, I am no expert in Singapore’s retirement security or healthcare systems, and I suspect that neither is Friedman. I do take issue with Friedman’s insistence that the United States will not succeed in emulating Singapore’s high science and math performance if it does not cut entitlements. Friedman jumps seamlessly from an interesting anecdote about a Singaporean science teacher to a clichéd condemnation of official Washington for just not “getting” the need for major "entitlement reform":

This was just an average public school, but the principal had made her own connections between ‘what world am I living in,’ 'where is my country trying to go in that world' and, therefore, 'what should I teach in fifth-grade science.'

I was struck because that kind of linkage is so often missing in U.S. politics today. Republicans favor deep cuts in government spending, while so far exempting Medicare, Social Security and the defense budget. Not only is that not realistic, but it basically says that our nation’s priorities should be to fund retirement homes for older people rather than better schools for younger people and that we should build new schools in Afghanistan before Alabama.

In falsely equating Republican intransigence on defense and would-be Democratic opposition to Social Security and Medicare cuts, Friedman plays the insidious “greedy geezer” card. The idea is that every dollar we spend on building “retirement homes for older people” is a dollar taken away from America’s future. Thus, America’s grannies, apparently the only ones left defending our wage insurance and healthcare programs, are protecting their own narrow interests at the expense of everybody else. (David Brooks, Friedman’s mushy middle counterpart on the Times op-ed page, spells out the “cut and invest” equation more explicitly, calling for a grand bipartisan compromise centered on major entitlement cuts and new infrastructure investments, though unlike Friedman he remains skeptical of the effectiveness of the latter.)

It is hard to know where to begin debunking Friedman’s fallacies. Which entitlement program pays for enrollment in retirement homes, anyway? This remark betrays Friedman’s bourgeois biases, in assuming that all elderly Americans get to retire to assisted living facilities in Boca Raton, FL, thanks to Social Security and Medicare. Sorry Tom, your largesse may pay for your parents to live in a sunny condo, but the two-thirds of seniors who rely on Social Security for a majority of their retirement income are probably not living as comfortably.

But the bottom line is that 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.

In a new world economy where flexibility is everything, fewer employers can afford to offer decent pension plans, or cover their employees’ health care costs; global financial markets have decimated the value of workers’ 401(k) accounts; and Americans are much more likely to change jobs frequently or work independently. For us to maximize our human capital we need to reinforce the basic guarantees provided by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Without these guarantees, companies whose healthcare and pension costs cause them to suffer competitively will continue to stagnate, or be forced to pass these costs on to their employees and consumers. Americans will be less likely to invest their savings in capital markets, start businesses and pursue the expensive advanced degrees needed to succeed if they cannot guarantee their basic well-being and standard of living.

Sara Robinson has already written very eloquently about the vitality of universal healthcare for America’s economic growth and progress, in her blogpost "What Would You Do if You had Guaranteed Healthcare?". The case for strengthening income insurance in general, and Social Security in particular, is no less compelling.

On Social Security, William Arnone, a former partner at Ernst & Young and retirement planning expert, puts it best. When asked at a National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) panel in June, whether Social Security has the effect of discouraging private investment, Arnone answered that just the opposite is true. Once he explains to his clients what they are entitled to under Social Security, they have a lot more flexibility to pursue higher risk investments in the capital markets.

In other words, knowing you won’t fall into poverty in old age enables investment and productive behavior, by providing a floor beneath which your standard of living will not fall, regardless of the risks you take.

Further, unlike many means-tested programs that sadly discourage work and social mobility, Social Security actively rewards achievement. This is because of Social Security’s unique structure as a universal wage insurance program. While programs like SSI and Medicaid remove their protections the moment a person reaches a basic level of income, Social Security rewards work, by providing greater benefits, the more someone earns (while still replacing a higher proportion of earnings for poorer workers).

The result is not a social safety “hammock,” as Rep. Paul Ryan would call it or even a social safety net as we tend to describe it, but more like what Hilary Doe, National Director at the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, calls a “social safety trampoline.” To be sure, Social Security is there to catch us if misfortune befalls us, as a net might figuratively do. But it is a trampoline, in that by neutralizing our anxieties and incentivizing productivity, it propels us into the labor market, where the sky is the limit to pursue our dreams.

Finally, many advocates of the “cut and invest” approach fail to understand the stiff ideological barriers that even their efforts face in the contemporary political environment, and as a result, spurn their natural political allies in the labor and progressive movements. The real problem is not the enormous debt we have racked and our inability to reckon with it in an “adult” way. The real problem is an entrenched neoliberal ideology and power structure that has for three decades shrunk government revenues down to miniscule levels and crippled our government’s ability to maintain basic services and regulate industry, thereby undermining public confidence in the very idea of “government.”

To get the kind of sustained investment in infrastructure alone, that Friedman and his ilk ceaselessly advocate, it will take more than a two-bit compromise with Republicans that slashes trillions in Social Security and Medicare and allots a few hundred billion for bridges and high-speed rail. It will take a major sea change in our political climate from one that focuses on cutting government to create growth, to one that focuses on investing—in all aspects of American life. If infrastructure enthusiasts embrace the talking points and narrative of neoliberal budget wonks that public spending comes only at the cost of private growth, they will have contributed to the culture of deficit and antigovernment fear. And if we continue to allow this fear to take hold, we will never see the $4 trillion investment in our infrastructure that experts believe is necessary in the coming decades if we are to bring ourselves up to speed with other developed nations.

The same argument can be made for supporting tougher enforcement of our trade laws, a major priority for the labor movement that unconditional free trade advocates like Friedman have yet to embrace. We can create as many wind energy and biotech plants as we want, but if China is free to steal our patented technologies through arcane trading provisions, manipulate its currency, put hidden tariffs on our exports, and dump its child-labor produced technologies in our markets, then it will all have been for naught.

On a practical level, if the labor movement, which has by far the largest field, lobbying and fundraising operations of any left-of-center constituency, is forced to expend resources on defending entitlements (which it already has), that much less of its power will be available to push for infrastructure investments. If labor perceives that infrastructure advocates are working against its key interests in other areas, it will likely refuse to coordinate its efforts with those groups. Whether you are an infrastructure wonk at a think tank, a climate change advocate at an environmental group, or a New Democrat supporting high-speed rail for your constituents, you will want to be on the receiving end of labor's massive organizing clout, rather than left out in the cold.

Those of us interested in building a prosperous, competitive American economy in the 21st century for all to enjoy should work with and for one another. To the extent that the “cut and invest” crowd cuts and runs from its progressive allies, conservatives committed to blocking government investment of all types will grow stronger--and we will all be more likely to fail.

The Missing Link In Clean-Energy Policy

Andrea Buffa — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:15:41 -0400

There was a certain irony in the U.S. decision to hold the recent G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh to show off the former steel town’s success at creating green jobs. Pittsburgh transformed itself from a polluted and declining industrial metropolis into a clean and booming green one by crafting deliberate economic development policies to support the growth of clean-energy industries. The irony is that the United States—unlike most other G-20 members—still needs a comprehensive national clean-energy economic development policy.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act could be considered a step toward a national economic development policy to promote a clean-energy economy. But the Recovery Act was merely a short-term approach designed to lift the U.S. economy out of recession.

What would it look like if the U.S. had a long-term national economic development policy to grow the clean-energy economy?

Most proposals for a national clean-energy economic development policy start with the need for federal policies that increase demand for clean energy. These might include putting a price on carbon (through a carbon tax or “cap and trade” program), adopting a national renewable energy standard, implementing national building and appliance energy efficiency standards, or encouraging small-scale renewable energy projects through a national feed-in tariff.

National energy policies should not only send a strong signal that the U.S. economy is set to embrace cleaner technologies; they should also be long term. Brian Sager, co-founder of Nanosolar, a solar power technology company, believes current U.S. clean-energy policies have created a difficult environment for businesses: “One thing we’ve been lacking in the U.S. is stable policy. In Germany, feed-in tariffs have been very stable. In the U.S. there is a lack of harmony from year to year, so there’s inherently a higher level of risk. The warranty for a solar panel is 25 years; that’s the kind of time-frame we’re talking about.”

Many experts believe the federal government should offer incentives to persuade clean-energy companies to set up facilities in the United States, a practice that is commonplace in other parts of the world. “Many countries offer financial investment incentives … but in the U.S., we don’t,” said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former Reagan administration trade and investment counselor. “The issue of investment incentives is very important. I think we should try to negotiate some international discipline on investment subsidies (as we’ve already done on trade subsidies). I also think we should have a war chest and use our war chest to match the incentives that are being offered by others to move their production facilities elsewhere in the world.”

Another policy often described as essential to a clean-energy economic development policy designed to support a domestic clean-energy manufacturing industry is a local content requirement. Without such a requirement—also called a “Buy American” policy—most clean-energy manufacturing companies will likely locate overseas.

“First and foremost, we actually have to put a serious buy-American/domestic-content policy in place,” said Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Council. “It matters where you make things. In the case of wind turbines and solar, 70 to 80 percent of the cost itself is in the product, not the installation. That means you have to have a strategy and a policy that says you’ll do it here.”

Leo Hindery, chair of the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation, also emphasizes the need for a buy American policy, but argues that it could begin with federal government purchases: “We need a buy-American policy that mirrors China’s,” Hindery said. “We have a GDP in this country of about $14 billion. Twenty percent of that comes from federal purchases. We should simply say that the federal government will buy domestically produced goods and services if they’re available. If they’re not available, then you’re allowed to buy them overseas.”

Other policy recommendations to promote clean-energy domestic manufacturing include programs to help U.S. manufacturers become more productive—and thus competitive, and programs to help reconcile supply chain challenges. Susan Helper, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University, argues that Manufacturing Extension Partnership centers should be given additional funds to help small and medium-sized manufacturers become more productive. Helper cites a 1999 study by Roland Jarmin showing that productivity at firms that received assistance from a partnership center center rose in the range of 3.4 percent to 16 percent more between 1987 and 1992 than productivity at firms that received no assistance.

As Congress debates comprehensive clean-energy and climate legislation, and the issue of green jobs becomes increasingly important, perhaps it’s time for a comprehensive U.S. economic development policy to promote the clean-energy economy. From lithium-ion battery producers to wind turbine component manufacturers, the industries of the clean-energy future need clear direction—and support—from the U.S. government if they are going to be able to compete and thrive in a low-carbon global economy.

This blog post is an excerpt from a longer article, which can be found on the Apollo Alliance website.

Andrea Buffa is a senior writer and policy associate at the Apollo Alliance.

Food Security: All Investment Is Not Created Equal

Susan Ozawa — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:34:58 -0400

The G8 countries committed $20 billion in aid to address global hunger and promote more productive farming in the world's poorest countries this July in L’Aquila, Italy. Major commitments came from the United States and Japan. The challenge remains to make sure the investments are structured properly and the environment that caused the hunger crisis is reformed to ensure food security for all.

Tokyo has already begun targeting its investment in ways that might exacerbate food security problems in developing countries. This demonstrates the need to maintain pressure on donor countries and the international financial institutions (IFIs) to adjust their assumptions and protocol so that the crisis is addressed in the short, medium and long-term.

Tokyo believes that expanding food production, through public-private partnership with its local trading houses and other companies, will help mitigate future risks. Among Japan’s five mammoth trading houses, Mitsui & Co, Itochu and Marubeni are expanding into food commodities such as soyabean, palm oil, wheat and corn. . . . Beyond their homeland, where demand for grains and oilseeds is relatively stable, industry observers say the Japanese trading houses seek to tap the voracious appetite for soyabean and grains in China and elsewhere in Asia, particularly in Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, or in Middle-East countries such as Saudi Arabia.

What is being pitched as a new agricultural revolution using these forms of investment will look very much like the colonial model of exploitation with the exception that the output will meet commodity demand in high growth countries versus demand in the colonizing nation. Regardless, the same distribution of benefits will apply without proper safeguards. These should include mechanisms to coordinate international production as well as mechanisms to ensure investment is directed at local producers, and to ensure prices are low enough so that developing countries will have food security and access to their own goods. By simply funding industrial agricultural conglomerates, the company, in typical neocolonial fashion, will utilize the resources of developing countries, extract the raw materials and export them to sell in foreign markets at a profit.

The current framework discussed by the G8 nations and embodied in the new IFI push for investment assumes increased investment in agricultural production will generate greater supply, which will naturally decrease prices and address the problem. Although increased production will tend reduce prices generally, this does not mean that this strategy will address the global food crisis for several reasons. This line of thinking presumes the large run-up in commodity prices resulted from a uniform increase in demand against a less responsive supply chain. Leaving aside the ways in which speculative players affect commodity prices, there is a structural supply problem because of the increasing cost of energy.

However, this issue of increasing costs affecting global food prices predominates because a technological mode of agriculture production and transportation predominates. This mode is extremely capital-intensive, industrial and large-scale. Thus what we are seeing is not a food security problem as much as an investment problem in certain kinds of agricultural production and distribution. It is also a global food supply chain coordination problem. On the demand side, there aren’t fast growing populations of hungry people in the least developed nations driving up the prices of food; there are changes in the diet preferences of high growth nations representing a dynamic middle-class who are driving demand for more energy and resource intensive food sources.

Although demand exceeds supply, the demand for staple crops is driven by demand for livestock feed and for biofuel crops in addition to basic staple consumption by households. Thus, the problems of food security for the poor are being caused by structural distribution problems that drive up prices on basic staples. This leaves local populations, even in arable, land-abundant nations, without access to their own agricultural products.

International price fluctuations wreaking havoc on production in developing countries has been particularly damaging over the past 30 years of neoliberal development policy. This has occurred after the privatization of their development and agricultural banks and the liberalization of their agricultural and commodity markets. The export and foreign exchange-oriented development strategy which promote economic growth before food security presumes the distribution of gains from increased economic growth will benefit the population equally. However, the impact of privatization and globalization on the rural poor, historically has not demonstrated that this happens naturally. Income inequality has grown across the developing world during this period of neoliberal polices. Further what we have witnessed is the trend in the rapid transformation of small-scale agricultural producers into struggling slum dwelling communities. See more here. A solution to the global food crisis must then also address these neoliberal policy failures to address the root causes of the problem.

The original document drafted by the agricultural ministers to the G8 and the subsequent joint statement with G8 ministers recognized the significance of investment in smallholder farmers and women farmers. However, it still maintained that open and efficient trade markets were part of the solution. This part of the statement might have sought to draw attention to the large distortionary impact of US agricultural subsidies on the developing world’s agricultural markets. If this was the case, it should have stated explicitly that wealthy nations, particularly land and resource abundant wealthy nations, should work to scale-back their subsidies to large-scale, industrial producers. The ministers should have then gone further by endorsing developing countries’ use of protections to develop their agricultural sectors through whatever means are necessary including revitalizing publicly subsidized agricultural banks.

A well-coordinated strategy would use the WTO, not to police nations to reduce barriers to trade uniformly, but to coordinate international agricultural policy to ensure food security for all. Particularly, the WTO could be tasked to ensure short-term efforts to address food security via dumping excess commodities on low income country markets do not crowd out domestic production of agricultural crops in the medium- to long-term. Likewise, along the lines of the Kyoto Agreement, nations that are large consumers of staple-intensive livestock, should commit to lowering their consumption to less resource intensive foods. Treating wealthy nations that are agriculturally constrained differently from resource abundant nations that are poor when allocating IFI investment is also particularly important. The International Financial Corporation’s latest commitment to boost agricultural production by 30% would seem to be targeting production in developing and high-risk nations, however, the companies benefiting from the investments will be donor country corporations and budding domestic partners, not traditional farmers. Funding small local producers is the right thing to do socially and politically but also makes economic sense. Walden Bello states:

[S]mall farmers have confounded those who have preached their demise by showing that labour-intensive small farms can be far more productive than big farms. To cite just one well known study, a World Bank report on agriculture in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador showed that small farms were three to 14 times more productive per acre than the large farms.

Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) explains the value of investing in smallholder farmers over larger-scale producers in the developing world even with reaching industrial levels of productivity:

Eighty percent of the farmers in Africa are smallholder farmers. The majority of them are women. They produce 80 percent of the food that is consumed by Africans. Obviously, if these are the people that produce the food that we eat we must invest in smallholder agriculture. . . . We have proof that investment in smallholder agriculture is two to four times more profitable than investment in any other sector or sub-sector. It's very simple mathematics.

The investment generated to address the food crisis must be tied to measures to ensure the domestic population gains from the increased production and use of their land, energy and resources. Thus, investment should be targeted toward local producers for local consumption in low and middle income countries. These countries should be allowed to maintain tariffs on their commodities if they choose to export to wealthy and middle-income countries. Likewise, price controls should be permitted for countries with hunger problems.

If the G-8 and IFIs were sincere about addressing the food crisis, they would be permitting more flexibility of developing countries' policy responses to address this crisis using all tools at their disposal. This would include channeling investment on favorable terms to local producers; working with the WTO on global food production and distribution coordination; encouraging populations in high-demand countries to eat further down the food chain; and reigning in speculation in commodity and futures markets. Now's the time to ensure the US doesn't follow in Japan's wake.

Patricia Navadomskis

Patricia Navadomskis — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:33:20 -0400

I am a life long democrat. I know first hand how little working people have achieved in the last 30 years.
My favorite president was Roosevelt. Big fix via big programs. Fair ,equal pay.
I know that many people who benefited from the GI Bill had good jobs ,benefits and retirements.Housing costs were low and even the public schools were good. A lot of them felt that they had been taxed severely in the 80's and voted for REGAN. Look what has happened over the last 30 years .
Any one who believes in rights for labor,decent pay, benefits better future for your children Take a good look.

I kept trying to get ahead but the further i fell behind. I sure got stuck in the middle.

I guess that is were I belonged. I would of been a great loyal employee.

I have been outsourced , down sized, right sized , out placed, fired at will ,blamed for things I did not do.
Mobbed, bullied ,sabotaged.

I am a 53 year old woman. I raised three children with a disabled husband. No union helped me, my husband was in a union but you need 15 years of service he had 13 for any help. SS helped I was not paid very well. My jobs kept going south. I bought the crap that outplacement firms were selling .I went back to college to get a degree. I updated my computer skills. I guess my coworker's see me as a sneak or tattle tale. i see them as horrific monsters No one wants to hire me. I really do wish that people did get along but I understand the need to stand our ground.

We need a progressive president and we need to have the Corporations quit ruining America.
Decent jobs and pay.

The Old Lady, the Goose, and the Golden Eggs

Dennis Chin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:12:33 -0400

How can Aesop's tale of the goose that laid the golden eggs guide us towards economic justice?

America's Infrastructure Crisis: Are We Really A Developed Country?

Steven Brant — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:05:15 -0500

(Originally published in The Huffington Post on August 19, 2007)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/americas-infrastructure-_b_...

In the three and a half years in which I worked in the office of Dr. Russell Ackoff, my mentor in the field of Systems Thinking, he probably talked about one thing more than anything else: the true nature of development. "Development," Russ would say, "increases the capacity of people to manage their own lives. Growth -- which is what people usually talk about when they say a community or a nation is getting better -- is about the accumulation of greater amounts of things, some of which are beneficial and some of which are not. Growth is not the same as development."

One of the expressions Russ used most often to make this point is If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach them to fish, they can feed themselves for a lifetime.

When it comes to our nation's infrastructure, I fear that our political and civic leaders have -- for decades -- been giving us "fish" in the form of lots of roads, bridges, mass transit systems, utility systems, and other elements of what is sometimes referred to as the built environment. We know who these leaders are. They're the people in the photographs taken at the ground breaking ceremonies when new projects start... and at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies when projects are complete. After that, we rarely hear from them again.

Well, perhaps with the collapse of the I-35 bridge, we will. In fact, we already are... in the personages of Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Chuck Hagel (R-NB). Their National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007 is an important first step in moving we Americans past our long history of "being given fish" and towards a future in which we learn "how to fish for ourselves" and then act of that new knowledge.

Of course, by "learn how to fish" I mean learn how to take care of what we've got... not just admire it when it's new and then let it fall apart under our very noses.

Russ loves using this fishing analogy to help people understand what true development is. And -- because he emphasizes that development involves wisdom that focuses on long-term (not short-term) results - I'd like to start a national dialog on the following question:

Is the United States truly a developed country? Or are we just a "built up" country?

It is common to talk about how our world is divided into the developed and under-developed nations. And the US -- based on its GDP and other factors -- always falls into the "developed nations" category. But based on my knowledge that to be truly developed is to know how to take care of yourself and what you have -- not just to have a lot of stuff -- I no longer personally put the USA into that category.

I think -- and this seems especially appropriate when you consider how young America really is, in "country years" -- that America is in a category that may have never existed before. Neither under-developed nor developed, America appears to be a "proto-developed country." We've accumulated a lot but do not yet have the wisdom to manage what we've got.

Now, having just described the problem, I'd like to suggest at least the beginning of a solution:

Education.

As H.G. Wells once said "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

I almost hate using such extreme-sounding language, but there really is a catastrophe awaiting us if we don't address our infrastructure crisis very soon. Just as the homes we live in will fall apart if we don't maintain them, so will the larger built environment -- literally, our national "home". And for this analogy I have Sam Schwartz to thank. Sam was the First Deputy Commissioner at the NYC Department of Transportation when I worked there in the late 1980's. He ran NYC DOT's Bureau of Bridges. (I directed the office in the Bridge Bureau that contracted with private engineering firms to fix NYC's bridges... in my former life as an engineering program manager.) Sam recently wrote a very blunt New York Times OpEd piece entitled "Catch Me, I'm Falling in which he points out how crazy the bridge maintenance financial system is throughout America. I highly recommend you read it, as a first step in educating yourselves about the true nature of our problem. Because, it's only when a problem is truly understood that it can be permanently solved.

Solving America's infrastructure problem starts with understanding the magnitude of the physical challenge (see the report from the American Society of Civil Engineers) and then understanding the financial system challenge... which includes the long-term financial costs which will be incurred as more and more of our infrastructure falls apart.

To some extent, I suppose, this is a painful thing to come to terms with: that we now have to find the money (and fast) to "learn how to fish"... to maintain that which we have. But I also expect this is exactly the lesson America needs to learn in the run-up to the 2008 elections.

We need to ask ourselves -- and those who would be our political representatives -- if they "know how to fish". We need to find out if they know how to think long-term. We need to find out if they know how to learn to do the right thing -- as defined by experts in the field such as, in this case, Sam Schwartz and the American Society of Civil Engineers -- when information about a problem is presented to them.

Making sure we take care of what we have. Making sure what we have works and is the best quality it can be. That, my friends, is the hallmark of a truly developed country. And right now, this is not something that is true about America.

But it's not too late. We can still learn how to fish.

Deirdre Franzen

Deirdre Franzen — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:14:11 -0500

Dems' Strategic Challenge

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:53:10 -0500

Democrats Bow to Bush's Demands Again, on Spending Bill

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:20:16 -0500

House Democrats handed the president a victory, agreeing not only to drop their demands for $22 billion in additional spending but to also shift funds from their priorities to Bush's.

The Roots of the Crisis

OurFuture.org Staff — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:35:33 -0500