Bob Herbert: Obama’s Biggest Challenge

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/opinion/10herbert.html

Obama’s Biggest Challenge

By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 9, 2009

snip//

With credit tight, savings depleted, the stock market in the tank and home prices in a state of collapse, the only way to get real money into the hands of ordinary Americans (and thus back into the economy) is through employment. The way to truly stimulate the economy and save the jobs of anxiety-ridden workers who are still employed is to get the unemployed back to work as soon as possible.

And the way to create jobs is through infrastructure investments (building and repairing roads, bridges, tunnels and water and sewer systems); and by investing in 21st-century clean energy initiatives, in public transportation systems, and in school construction; and by providing access to health care for the millions who don’t have it.

In other words, by investing in the people and the enormous productive capacity of the United States.

Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was blunt this week after he and other Senate Democrats met with Obama aides to discuss the president-elect’s stimulus package. “There is only one thing we have got to do in the stimulus, and that is how can we create jobs,” he said.

Referring to Mr. Obama’s national economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, Mr. Harkin added: “I am a little concerned by the way that Mr. Summers and others are going at this in that, to me, it still looks like a little more of this trickle down. If we just put it in at the top, it’s going to trickle down.”

Been there. Done that. Didn’t work.

The madness of trickle down and its corollaries ruined the economy and millions of Americans with it. President-elect Obama ran to the mantra of change. One hopes he is not too timid to deliver.

[jwirr]

1. K & R