On Wednesday morning, after shedding more than a few tears for the Members of this Congress who won't be going forward into the next, I started reading the pundits. However, after reading Senator Evan Bayh's op-ed in the New York Times entitled "Where Do Democrats Go Next?" I decided no more 'instant cures' for me.
Senator Bayh's comments follow -- along with my reactions. The Senator said that:
So, how about instead of the Bayh road map, Democrats become the impetus behind the three economy-related legislative areas where I remain convinced that Ds and Rs can find agreement, albeit with different policy specifics going in? These three are job creation, getting tough with China on trade (as evidenced by the House's recent bipartisan legislation regarding China currency, H.R. 2378, which passed 348 to 79), and a National Infrastructure Bank that would leverage some initial public investment in ways that would incent large private sector job-creating investment.
All of us - Republicans, Democrats (I'm one) and Independents alike - just saw up close the electorate's anxiety and often anger. Every American facing prolonged unemployment, stagnant wages or economic insecurity of course has a right to be angry, and now it's time to channel this disaffection into constructive, positive action of the sort we are equipped to provide before it becomes political gridlock.
Let's start with jobs. Near-term large-scale job creation and long-term deficit cutting are not mutually exclusive. In fact, well-conceived job efforts, because of their very large 'multiplier effects', are at least deficit neutral in the medium term and, most likely, they are substantially deficit reducing. And they are always a more responsible and effective way to reduce the long-term deficit than is slashing spending simply for slashing's sake. The new Congress does not have to choose between stimulus and austerity - it just has to get each challenge's priority and timing right.
President Abraham Lincoln said that government's "leading object is to elevate the condition of man - to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." This is why "jobs" are the right starting point, to best include, in order to heat up the stove, infrastructure investing in 'shovel ready' projects (I know that a lot of Rs hate this phrase, but there really are a lot of such projects) and youth employment programs, for which we have many successful examples.
China's abusive and unfair trade practices should be the next easy bipartisan legislative target. When China wins in trade, as it now does every day, it's really only the U.S. which loses, a loss each year which is now so great that our country's annual GDP is reduced by more than three percent or so, or nearly $400 billion. Imports from China are now responsible for about 75% of America's deficit in manufactured goods and 55% of our overall trade deficit, which should come as no surprise since there is now clear evidence that 90% of China's domination in high-tech manufactured goods vis-à-vis the U.S. is due not to its relatively low labor costs but rather to its subsidies related to plant sitings, financing, taxes and currency and to its extremely low environmental standards. Going forward, it is imperative - for federal budget, trade deficit, employment, global competitiveness and national security reasons - that the new Congress:
Finally, there is the National Infrastructure Bank, which has been kicking around (and sometimes 'kicked around') the halls of Congress since 1994. One pundit I did listen to last Wednesday was Tom Friedman who wrote that, "If we were a serious country, this is what the midterms would [have been] about: How do we generate the jobs needed to sustain our middle class and pay for new infrastructure?" Friedman went on to say that the answer, if we were all willing to accept it, "would require a different kind of politics, one that doesn't conform to either party's platform."
Long before this Great Recession began, we knew that thoughtful investments in all types of infrastructure, including things green, were one of the top two ways to create lots of jobs and help restore America's global competitiveness, provided the spending was coupled with buy-domestic requirements. And today, for the first time since 1994, everyone who matters supports the idea of a National Infrastructure Bank as the best vehicle to advance this spending, including the Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and Labor.
The specifics of this are simple: each $1 billion spent on infrastructure creates on average 25,000 new jobs, and when the investments are for high-tech, energy efficient green things, the new-jobs figure is on the order of 45,000 per $1 billion spent. And an NIB would immediately increase many-fold, and at much lower costs, the infrastructure investment capacities of our federal, state and local governments. It would move most such investments away from the annual budget process, and give these needed investments beneficial access to the private capital markets, large fiduciary investors, and foreign central banks.
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So, where should Democrats go next? How about right now across the aisles of Congress to help enact the three economic initiatives where bipartisan support is achievable and which would go a long way to putting some real juice in our now jobless recovery? Good policy is always good politics, and Democrats and the Republicans should worry about the specifics of the 2012 elections later.
Leo Hindery, Jr. is Chairman of the US Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Currently an investor in media companies, he is the former CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), Liberty Media and their successor AT&T Broadband. He also serves on the Board of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
Follow Leo Hindery, Jr. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/leohindery
Within or outside government, health services, security services, education, and support of our aged and infirm must be paid for. If the wealthy pay less, the bigger consumers, the middle class pay more limiting their consumer demand. No matter how you look at it the tax cuts for the wealthy is bad economics.
Democrats and their ideas/policies/actions are good for the economy. WAY better than the R's.
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/6284-philip-davis/99651-newt-gingrich-brands-democrats-the-party-of-food-stamps
22% tells 78% what to do...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-the-nerd-ferraro/22-of-the-population-is-t_b_780781.html
Yes we should ignore his advice at all times.
Once you get out of Indianapolis or Bloomington, Indiana is the kind of red that makes Texans say "Dang those people are conservative!"
You will find few voters in this area that will base their vote on DADT,Gay Marriage Equality, or any other social issue that doesnt impact them directly.
That may sound harsh to some of our friends in the Progressive movement that champion those issues everyday but those issues get you beaten in the industrial heartland they dont get you elected.
And then they should call out the GOP for their shameless shenanigans like the "GOP Young Guns" -- http://completelybaked.blogspot.com/p/t-h-e-d-u-n-g-g-u-n-s.html
The American party is, at this moment the best comparable would be when George and the gang were pushing propaganda, radical thought and subversive ideas in pre revolutionary colonial America. going to shake up this idea that they are the only game in town. The thinkers are wrong. The last ice cream cone election proved it. The inability one by the Democrats and the inflexibility by Republicans will defeat them in 2013. They will be defeated by the swing voter who wants a better America.
The President went to India with ten billion dollars to buy for India what America sells. To me American wealth was given to keep Americans working. It was to build better relations with India because we need them to buy from America, but they did not buy from up we gave them a loan, grant bribe totaling the complete price if the air planes and power equipment, and HD manufacturing. There is something wrong in that.
I suggest we re-evaluate trade across the world. We can't under cut labor and now we can't sell the best we make. Would it not be better to have given that money to the plane manufacture and sold the planes a half cost.