Time to Grow Up America

Okay Boys and Girls of the Capitol, recess is over. You need to focus on what a well-fashioned stimulus package could mean to the financial future of Wall Street and Main Street. It must be a job-creating engine, but if it fails to support innovation and new industry it will have missed an opportunity to achieve meaningful progress.

Democrats pulled controversial items such as refurbishing the Washington Mall and funding family planning centers from the Stimulus Plan. Nancy Pelosi and the House leadership have to be more selective in picking their fights. Family-planning services may be a good cause, for instance, but it isn't worth the loss of political capital. On the other hand, the administration's effort to entice Republican support for the plan by adding more tax cuts than it would have preferred didn't have the desired result. Not one Republican in the House voted for the Recovery Package, their membership making much of the fact that infrastructure projects were under-funded. Maybe some of the tax cuts could be scratched to make room for more shovel-ready spending, a course of action favored by most economists in any case.

But Republicans keep promoting their pet ideological formulas. Senator McCain has suggested that Congress should "make the tax cuts permanent". Does he mean the Bush tax cuts? What did they do for the economy besides enrich the wealthy and drive an enormous deficit by reducing revenues in a time of war? "No new taxes", he says, adding that business taxes and payroll-taxes should be cut - - rolling out a tired-old Republican wish list that fails to acknowledge the impact of depleting revenue sources at a time when extraordinary financial pressures threaten an already faltering economy.

Pennsylvania representative Kanjorski, a democrat who voted against the stimulus package, thinks recovery funds should go directly to states and municipalities where officials understand local needs and have projects "ready to go". But nation-wide, labor-intensive projects that seem reasonable to some represent "pork" to others, a term politicians use to bad-mouth things they don't like. Former House Republican, Tom Delay, showed up recently articulating the right's ‘old-time religion', slipping the dreaded word "welfare" into discussions about the stimulus package.

Actually our current distress could provide an opportunity for us to take the lead in cultivating industries that are developing 21^st century technologies. Profitable green businesses exist right now, for example, and could help to create an indigenous workforce with jobs that can't be outsourced. Obviously, immediate economic relief has to be the core of any stimulus package, but there should be another component, some larger vision that propels us towards long-term financial security, not just stagger steps from one short-term solution to the next. It is unlikely that free markets and lower taxes will suddenly produce entrepreneurs to knock our socks off with brilliant new ventures. This is a moment for far-sighted government planning.

Unfortunately, investing in outlier projects like renewable energy seems to offend Republican sensibilities. Greening America and expanding the electric grid don't resonate with the base like drilling for oil, nuclear energy and ‘clean' coal. "Market forces", "smaller government" "lower taxes" and "less regulation" are the party's bedrock principles.

The reality is, though, that we can't borrow our way to economic recovery, and we can't reasonably reduce spending or suddenly decrease the size of government either. What hasn't been part of the debate is the obvious fact that new revenue streams must be found, and that will involve making tough choices - - some combination of taxes and/or fees, perhaps a war tax? to reduce the nation's rising debt service while continuing to prime the economy with an infusion of government spending.

Government must protect the country not just from external threats but from internal ones as well. It cannot stand aside and allow its citizens to be buffeted by the vagaries of institutions left to their own devices in the name of letting markets work - - until disaster strikes. And that will require establishing sensible regulations to shield the public from fiscal intransigence. Our political system is meant to be people friendly not just business friendly; somehow we've gotten off track and forgotten that founding principle.

The old dogmas and tired partisan rhetoric just won't do anymore. The time has come to put away childish things and confront the challenges we face like adults.