July 11, 2011--Big Things
Barack Obama repeatedly claims that America is still capable of doing "big things" even while he works to make a deal with the Republicans to cut $4.0 trillion from the deficit.
Don't hold your breath about either of these--the big-things or the deficit cutting.
About the latter, neither Obama nor the Republicans really want to make a deal, in spite of all the bloviating.
Republicans don't want to make a deal if it requires asking even billionaires to pay one penny more in taxes. And, politically, they want to be able to saddle Obama with responsibility for the deficit even though most of it was amassed by Republicans Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. If the GOP agrees to a deal with Obama he might then be able to get credit for cutting spending, something Republicans want exclusive credit for even though they were in the majority in Congress when the U.S. went on a spending spree and borrowed more than at any time in our history.
Obama doesn't really want a deal because to agree to one that would get to $4.0 trillion in savings would require deep cuts in Medicare and Social Security, and he doesn't want to let the Republicans who voted to end both as we know them off the hook. It would be difficult for Democrats to run TV ads in 2012 accusing the GOP of endorsing the Paul Ryan plan--a potent political gambit--if Obama and the Democrats cave into Republican demands to cut these popular programs.
So look for some tepid, short-term deal that kicks the deficit down the road until a non-election year. No profiles in courage are being written in Washington these days.
On the big-things side of the equation--a look back to the America that built the great dams and interstate highway system, that landed men on the moon, and expanded higher education opportunities to millions of new students--don't expect very much. Is there anything currently underway that even resembles any of these massive social and infrastructural projects?
Forget high-speed rail. There was some money in the stimulus package for this, but governors in Florida and elsewhere turned back the funding in part because it came from Obama. Forget all the hopeful talk about a lunar-landing-sized effort to come up with alternate forms of profitable clean energy, a new industry that Obama claimed wold employ millions. Forget a Marshall Plan to nation-build in America in place of such efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead Obama had us triple down in Afghanistan and there is no real end in sight for that hopeless and costly war.
In the meantime, in China, where officials must be delighted that we are in the process of bankrupting ourselves--there will be no need for them to invest in an American style military in order to "conquer" us economically--they are spending their time and money on the very things that we should be doing.
Not only are they the only game in the world when it comes to developing and manufacturing products for the sustainable generation of energy, but all along the coast of the China Sea as well as inland they are making huge investments in their major cities.
According to a recent report in the New York Times (linked below) in Wuhan, China's ninth-largest city, over the next seven years they will be spending $120 billion to build a 140-mile-long subway system, two new airport terminals, a new financial district, a cultural district and riverfront promenade, and an office tower that will be half-again as tall as the Empire State Building. All in seven years--the amount of time New Yorkers will need to complete a two-mile subway extension along Second Avenue.
And Wuhan is far from unique in its ambitious plans. Dozens, yes dozens of other Chinese cities are engaged in similar infrastructure projects.
Now that's what I call doing big things.
Don't hold your breath about either of these--the big-things or the deficit cutting.
About the latter, neither Obama nor the Republicans really want to make a deal, in spite of all the bloviating.
Republicans don't want to make a deal if it requires asking even billionaires to pay one penny more in taxes. And, politically, they want to be able to saddle Obama with responsibility for the deficit even though most of it was amassed by Republicans Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. If the GOP agrees to a deal with Obama he might then be able to get credit for cutting spending, something Republicans want exclusive credit for even though they were in the majority in Congress when the U.S. went on a spending spree and borrowed more than at any time in our history.
Obama doesn't really want a deal because to agree to one that would get to $4.0 trillion in savings would require deep cuts in Medicare and Social Security, and he doesn't want to let the Republicans who voted to end both as we know them off the hook. It would be difficult for Democrats to run TV ads in 2012 accusing the GOP of endorsing the Paul Ryan plan--a potent political gambit--if Obama and the Democrats cave into Republican demands to cut these popular programs.
So look for some tepid, short-term deal that kicks the deficit down the road until a non-election year. No profiles in courage are being written in Washington these days.
On the big-things side of the equation--a look back to the America that built the great dams and interstate highway system, that landed men on the moon, and expanded higher education opportunities to millions of new students--don't expect very much. Is there anything currently underway that even resembles any of these massive social and infrastructural projects?
Forget high-speed rail. There was some money in the stimulus package for this, but governors in Florida and elsewhere turned back the funding in part because it came from Obama. Forget all the hopeful talk about a lunar-landing-sized effort to come up with alternate forms of profitable clean energy, a new industry that Obama claimed wold employ millions. Forget a Marshall Plan to nation-build in America in place of such efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead Obama had us triple down in Afghanistan and there is no real end in sight for that hopeless and costly war.
In the meantime, in China, where officials must be delighted that we are in the process of bankrupting ourselves--there will be no need for them to invest in an American style military in order to "conquer" us economically--they are spending their time and money on the very things that we should be doing.
Not only are they the only game in the world when it comes to developing and manufacturing products for the sustainable generation of energy, but all along the coast of the China Sea as well as inland they are making huge investments in their major cities.
According to a recent report in the New York Times (linked below) in Wuhan, China's ninth-largest city, over the next seven years they will be spending $120 billion to build a 140-mile-long subway system, two new airport terminals, a new financial district, a cultural district and riverfront promenade, and an office tower that will be half-again as tall as the Empire State Building. All in seven years--the amount of time New Yorkers will need to complete a two-mile subway extension along Second Avenue.
And Wuhan is far from unique in its ambitious plans. Dozens, yes dozens of other Chinese cities are engaged in similar infrastructure projects.
Now that's what I call doing big things.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:01 AM
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