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Sept 12, 2010
neighbor’s house is on fire but you don’t want to use your water to put it out because water is scarce and very expensive. You sat it out and waited for the firemen to come and do their job. But the fire trucks were called to put out another fire somewhere in the village. Before you knew it, the flames were eating up your home. You didn’t believe this fire could move so swiftly but it did. You regretted your decision but it was too late.
This is what the Republicans would have Americans do. To do nothing about the mountain of problems weighing down on every American life and simply return to the Reagan and Bush era of deregulation, tax cuts for the top 2% of the population and budget cuts primarily on the so-called entitlements (but not on defense and their pet earmarks) which drove the U.S. economy down to the abyss in the first place.
America is burning. If we don’t use the water in our reserve to douse the fire, soon there will be nothing left but the ruins of a system and a mental set fashioned into steel by hard core philosophies and ideologies that refuse to comprehend or hear the voice of reason.
We live in very precarious times. The economic mess these years of deregulation put us into would take many times longer for us to undo. It’s unthinkable how this crazy rhetoric about big government the Republicans continue to use as a socialist threat can still work despite the obvious damage we’ve already seen it has done to us.
So, what makes more sense: to return to the Reagan/Bush Republican era of small government, tax cuts and defense spending which put us into this economic dump? Or, dare to explore our options, execute drastic measures and make bold but intelligent investments in our human resource?
What’s there to lose that has not already been lost? But there is so much more to gain in the future. When these long term investments start paying off, America will be back on its feet again. And our children will reap the benefits of our foresight and courage to take risks for greater results.
Michael Grunwald’s article, “How Obama’s Stimulus is Changing America,” published in Time Magazine, August 26, 2010, captured the essence of change this President envisions for America. It told of Obama’s investments into America’s future. Projects and programs that meant to change the old way we do things, the very culprit that held us hostage to the system that sucks the life out of our hardworking middle class.
Obama’s accomplishments are major legislations that have far reaching effects. The much demonized health care reform legislation though watered down by the obstructions posed by Republicans and a few Democrats, counts on the computerized health system that will avoid unnecessary expenses as duplications of expensive tests, avoidable medical errors, etc. The financial reform, though not nearly quite the same as progressive Democrats want, places Wall Street on notice that there are regulations and watchdogs that will put them in check should they try anymore of those tricks that put Main Street in jeopardy.
As Grunwald wrote, “…the battle over the Recovery Act’s short-term rescue has obscured its more enduring mission: a long-term push to change the country. It was about jobs, sure, but also about fighting oil addiction and global warming, transforming health care and education, and building a competitive 21st century economy.”
He continued, “Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more.”
He pointed out Vice President Biden’s all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future.
For once, Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 made the biggest sense as Grunwald’s piece ventured in details where much of the $787 billion Stimulus money goes. For starters, he wrote, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund. It’s pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the
U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet.
It is uncertain how much of Obama’s programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will achieve. But it is clear that in his plans, there is hope for a brighter future. There is a good chance that America will rise again and recapture its lost glory. Our job is to make sure he gets the right people in Congress to help him do his job efficiently. It is our own “down payment on the change” we clamor for. Let us not fail our President this November. If we failed him, we have done no one but our children the gravest wrong.