President Obama's electoral strategy can best be summed up as: "We're on the right track, my economic policies are working, we still have a long way to go but stick with me and you'll be fine."
That's not good enough. This recovery is too anemic, and the chance of an economic stall between now and Election Day far too high.
Even now, Mitt Romney's empty "I'll do it better" refrain is attracting as many voters as Obama's "we're on the right track." Each man is gathering 46 percent of voter support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. Only 33 percent of the public thinks the economy is improving while 40 percent say they're still falling behind financially -- an 11 point increase from 2008. Nearly two-thirds are concerned about paying for housing, and one in five with mortgages say they're underwater.
If the economy stalls, Romney's empty promise will look even better. And I'd put the odds of a stall at 50-50. That puts the odds of a Romney presidency far too high for comfort. Need I remind you that Romney enthusiastically supports Paul Ryan's wildly regressive budget, and as president would be able to make at least one or possibly two Supreme Court appointments, and control the EPA and every other federal agency and department?
The Obama White House should face it: "We're on the right track" isn't sufficient. The president has to offer the nation a clear, bold strategy for boosting the economy. It should be the economic mandate for his second term.
It should consist of four points:
First, Obama should demand that the nation's banks modify mortgages of homeowners still struggling in the wake of Wall Street's housing bubble -- threatening that if the banks fail to do so he'll fight to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act and break up Wall Street's biggest banks (as the Dallas Fed recently recommended).
Second, he should condemn oil speculators for keeping gas prices high -- demanding that the oil companies allow the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation to set limits on such speculation and instructing the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute oil price manipulation.
Third, he should stand ready to make further job-creating investments in the nation's crumbling infrastructure, and renew his call for an infrastructure bank. And while he understands the need to reduce the nation's long-term budget deficit, he won't allow austerity economics to take precedence over job creation. He'll veto budget cuts until unemployment is down to 5 percent.
Finally, he should make clear the underlying problem is widening inequality. With so much of the nation's disposable income and wealth going to the top, the vast middle class doesn't have the purchasing power it needs to fire up the economy. That's why the Buffett rule, setting a minimum tax rate for millionaires, is just a first step for ensuring that the gains from growth are widely shared.
The president can still say we're on the right track. But he should also say he's not content with the pace of the recovery and will do everything in his power to quicken it. And he should ask the American people for a mandate in his second term to make the economy work for everyone, not just those at the top.
Such a mandate can be put into effect only with a Congress that's committed to better jobs and wages for all Americans. He should remind voters that Congressional Republicans prevented him from doing all that was needed in the first term, and they must not be allowed to do so again.
Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at Berkeley and former
Secretary of Labor, is the author of "Beyond Outrage." His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
He needs to prosecute the bankers responsible for the 2008 crash. Is your special commission gonna act on this anytime soon or have then been bought off by then banks they are meant to prosecute? Reinstate Glass-Steagall.
Second:
He should greatly accelerate our conversion to natural gas and help end our dependance on foriegn oil. Commerical fleets (ie semis) last ~ 7years. We could convert 1/2 the semi fleet in the next 4 years if they had refuelling stations.
Third:
Balance the budget. If he punts this down the road we could be faced with a Greece like scenario in the near future. Debt is a form of salvery, do not enslave future generations of americans to the banks.
Finally:
Rewrite the tax code. Our present tax code is 16,845 pages long and has a couple million pages of supporting regulations. Tax loopholes exist for the rich, get rid of all loopholes and greatly simplify it. Tax rates would fall for most if we got rid of most exemptions.
"Balance the budget."
"Rewrite the tax code."
These are all things that only Congress can do.
WHY don't more professors follow Prof. Reich's role model example?
Quality education for all citizens is the only way that Democracy can survive this era of destructive political attacks designed to overthrow civil rights, education and Democracy throughout America so they can force us to return to rule by oligarchs that has failed ever since the first Democracy was created and lost many times in Athens 2500 years ago.
Never has there been a more important time for American citizens to fight back for Democracy than today because politicians in both political parties are either attacking or failing to protect American Democracy during this 2012 election cycle so far.
5. Some months ago, Geithner announced that he plans to resign after the election.
Obama should announce that he's going to ask Robert Reich to be his second term
Secretary of the Treasury.
So you end up with a simple rule; To stimulate the economy with taxes you must raise taxes on the top and lower taxes on the bottom
And non-wealth producing nations like the USA might destroy their own economies with (deficit) government spending which will impoverish all of their citizens by selling and/or mortgaging existing NATIONAL WEALTH and spending the proceeds for federal government activities!
US government administrations of both major political parties have created "FREE TRADE AGREEMENT" legislation that killed that golden goose that laid those golden eggs (that created new wealth), won WWII, and created the abundant lifestyle that US citizens enjoyed for a couple of decades after WWII until the US government de-emphasized science, technical, engineering and mathematical (STEM) educations.
Maybe that was how the US won WWII!
The US government FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS ECONOMICALLY REQUIRE that US businesses utilize foreign labor, environmental regulations and electrical costs, if they want to provide the lowest possible price in the USA for each US consumer purchase, instead of going out of business.
Also Veto all job cuts and tax cuts out of Congress.
Re-election campaign contributions?
You state that President Obama "should stand ready to make further job-creating investments in the nation's crumbling infrastructure, and renew his call for an infrastructure bank."
When you speak of public-private partnership “Trusts”, are you proposing selling roads and bridges to private investors at some politically determined price to campaign contributors who will then pay for the infrastructure repairs, expansions and improvements with Toll Fees charged to the users?
Privately owned water and sewer plants also?
Privately owned zoos and libraries too?”
Do the investors get their money back from these "Infrastructure Trusts" by charging the users tolls and user fees?
Why would any person, business, corporation or foreign individual invest any money into any of these "Infrastructure Trusts" unless that investment was more profitable than starting a manufacturing business overseas?
Are these entities are constructing publically owned facilities that will not provide the owners any equity asset position whatsoever.
If these public infrastructure improvements are publically owned, then they are not subject to local property taxation to pay for local government activities, just like religious properties are exempt from taxation.
Under the US constitutional system, any US citizen or any foreign citizen, foreign manufacturing business, foreign individual or foreign business entity can hire professional lobbyists “to petition the government” and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on wine, food, women, song, corporate jobs/positions for their children/wives/girlfriends of the congressmen, vacations, cash, prepaid sexual services, and campaign contributions to entice (bribe) as many of our congressmen as required to create whatever legislation that the clients of the “professional” lobbyists want to have created.
The lobbyists must also spend similar amounts on each of the congressmen's multitudes of congressional aids if the lobbyists want whatever legislation their clients desire to be created, because the elected congressmen and senators do not have time to read or study any of the proposed legislation and they just vote however their aids tell then to vote.
Drinking, womanizing, vacationing, power lunches and other similar activities that the lobbyists provide keep most of our elected representatives and senators very busy, and maybe that is why each congressperson needs so many congressional aids to do his legislative job and tell the congressman how to vote on each issue.
There is nothing more saddening or devastating than mass unemployment such as existed in Asian countries in the last century before these third world countries industrialized.
I have visited Asia several times on Business in the last half of the 20th century before those countries industrialized. Crime, family abandonment, divorce, selling your own 12 year old (and younger) daughters for the equivalent of about $45 in the 1990's for 10 years of servitude to the brothels to feed your remaining children, selling your 12 year old sons to the rug weavers for about the same price, and other bad things increase during these periods of economic difficulty.
Our basic industries such as steel, computer chip manufacturing, petrochemical refining, appliance manufacturing, tire manufacturing, auto/or mobile parts manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, textiles, and etc. have been decimated and totally eliminated from this country by Democrats and Republicans in the US congress that created the US government FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS that caused US jobs and factories to leave the USA in the last few decades.
The USA must re-industrialize. Even if the USA started to re-industrialize today, it would take decades to re-create the human scientific, engineering, manufacturing and industrial technology databases required to re-create the industrial production bases that we destroyed in the past few decades.
Without re-industrialization, the USA is destined to become an impoverished nation of unemployed, starving, and homeless individuals.
The majority support Obama on raising taxes on the rich to put the rest of us to work re-building America. He just needs to clearly spell out how far we need to go. Obama needs to go big, you can always negotiate away from big but not the other way around.
It will be interesting to see him choose a running mate. With the sheer number of radical righties that he needs to appease, he will need to strike a balance that I cannot put a name on right now.
I believe that the USA needs to re-industrialize and start to make the things that we consume, and then stop buying as many consumer things from the industrious foreigners with US dollars because that CREATES A CONSTANT FLOW OF US Dollars and/or NATIONAL WEALTH to foreign manufacturers to pay for the imported products that we pay for, use and consume.
Only the WEALTH CREATING industrialized nations (like China that the US consumers pay US dollars to make the imported consumer goods that US citizens import and consume) accumulate US dollars through their foreign trade have the amount of US dollars available (that the US government needs to borrow) to loan back to the US government to pay for US government expenses that are in excess of the US taxes collected.
We need for US and European citizens to re-industrialize and then work and produce (most/more of) the things that we consume plus excess items that we could sell to foreign nations because that would create more new privately held NATIONAL WEALTH that would be available for that some of that new wealth to be CONFISCATED via taxes with taxes in order to pay for our constantly growing US government expenses that are in excess of our federal tax collections.
The USA, France, and the PIIGS nations believe that we are entitled to continually borrow money from the industrialized nations to support our government spending.