Word that President-elect Barack Obama is busy crafting a plan reminiscent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Depression-era jobs programs and public works projects is sobering news as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday.
Obama says he wants government spending to create or save 2.5 million jobs over the next two years. Experts estimate the cost of the attempted stimulus could top $200 billion.
If the incoming administration and Congress stick to the kinds of things Obama talked about in his radio address Saturday, we see a lot of positives. The president-elect, however, gave few specifics for exactly how it would work, only to say the two-year stimulus plan was meant to “jump- start job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy.”
The plan would do so, Obama said, by putting “people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels.”
We agree that a true stimulus package — unlike those already hatched — should create jobs here in America. That can be done by sharply increasing federal spending on highways, rapid transit, water and air quality projects, and other needs.
All of the issues Obama referred to relate directly to Colorado. Our pitifully low state budget for repairing deteriorating bridges and highways was the subject of a so-called blue-ribbon panel of experts that suggested a range of fixes that could cost billions. Many of those fixes simply need the money to get started. The repairs and construction would supply immediate jobs and bolster one of the responsibilities most agree government should be there for: providing public infrastructure that allows us to engage in our civic and commercial lives.
Shoring up the education work force and modernizing our schools also should stimulate the economy for the long term, as a more educated populace tends to be a more productive one.
Alternative energy development like wind farms and solar-powered power plants continue to gain traction in Colorado, and no doubt the innovation needed to take green energy to the next level would benefit from the kind of seed money Obama’s plan seems to promise.
As The Washington Post reminded us in its coverage of the stimulus plan, candidate Obama discussed a two-year, $175 billion stimulus package that included money for state governments and infrastructure projects, along with a $1,000 tax credit for working families.
The tax credit idea reminds us of President Bush’s earlier credit; that one didn’t seem to help, so we hope a President Obama plan focuses more on real-world job creation.
With so much at stake, we hope the new leadership resists exotic and unproven projects that might be the pets of special interests, such as the ethanol subsidies that failed to wean us from foreign oil and helped drive up world food prices without cutting overall greenhouse gas emissions.
For any stimulus plan to work, we would expect a set of clear expectations and a list of clear outcomes and mileposts that must be met.
We’re spending too much money bailing out the credit markets to risk the opportunity to actually stimulate the economy.
