infrastructure

In his Saturday address this morning, Barack Obama started filling in details of his emerging economic strategy.  Major elements of this speech - massive investment in our infrastructure, putting computers in our schools and making universal connectivity to the internet a national priority, health IT and making our government buildings more energy efficient (for both see here) - should be familiar to NDN readers, as they are ideas NDN has been championing for some time.  

Needless to say we are pleased with the direction the President-Elect is taking, and are anxious to work with him to turn these powerful words into reality next year.  

Here is the full text of this important speech: 

Good morning.

Yesterday, we received another painful reminder of the serious economic challenge our country is facing when we learned that 533,000 jobs were lost in November alone, the single worst month of job loss in over three decades. That puts the total number of jobs lost in this recession at nearly 2 million.

But this isn't about numbers. It's about each of the families those numbers represent. It's about the rising unease and frustration that so many of you are feeling during this holiday season. Will you be able to put your kids through college? Will you be able to afford health care? Will you be able to retire with dignity and security? Will your job or your husband's job or your daughter's job be the next one cut?

These are the questions that keep so many Americans awake at night. But it is not the first time these questions have been asked. We have faced difficult times before, times when our economic destiny seemed to be slipping out of our hands. And at each moment, we have risen to meet the challenge, as one people united by a sense of common purpose. And I know that Americans can rise to the moment once again.

But we need action - and action now. That is why I have asked my economic team to develop an economic recovery plan for both Wall Street and Main Street that will help save or create at least two and a half million jobs, while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil, and saving billions of dollars.

We won't do it the old Washington way. We won't just throw money at the problem. We'll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve - by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world.

Today, I am announcing a few key parts of my plan. First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won't just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.

Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We'll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we'll set a simple rule - use it or lose it. If a state doesn't act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they'll lose the money.

Third, my economic recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen. We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.

As we renew our schools and highways, we'll also renew our information superhighway. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they'll get that chance when I'm President - because that's how we'll strengthen America's competitiveness in the world.

In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the internet. That is why the economic recovery plan I'm proposing will help modernize our health care system - and that won't just save jobs, it will save lives. We will make sure that every doctor's office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year.

These are a few parts of the economic recovery plan that I will be rolling out in the coming weeks. When Congress reconvenes in January, I look forward to working with them to pass a plan immediately. We need to act with the urgency this moment demands to save or create at least two and a half million jobs so that the nearly two million Americans who've lost them know that they have a future. And that's exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States.

Thanks for listening.

More Background: Note this passage from an essay Rob Shapiro and I released in early November, A Stimulus for the Long Run: 

This change should be directed toward creating a 21st century, low-carbon, innovation-driven economy, as the development, spread and efficient use of economic innovations will continue to be the most important factors driving all our future progress in growth, productivity, and incomes. For example, productivity gains are increasingly tied to an employee's capacity to operate effectively in workplaces dense with information and telecommunications technologies. Within a decade, workers who cannot perform in such work environments will be marginalized economically. Therefore, the stimulus should help businesses and workers prepare for the ideas-based economy, through grants to community colleges to keep their computer labs open and staffed in the evenings and on weekends for any adult to walk in and receive free computer training, a plan Obama endorsed as Senator. The stimulus also could include an innovative program to provide inexpensive laptops to every sixth-grader in America and spread broadband installation to schools, local libraries, and human services offices that currently lack it.

There is already a broad consensus on the need to include infrastructure investment in the stimulus, but instead of addressing only roads and bridges, America can also take this opportunity to invest in a new generation of clean infrastructure. The federal government can lead the way, through greening its buildings and vehicle fleets and putting 1,000 megawatts of solar power on its roofs. It also can provide funding to help modernize the electrical grid and build a new generation of light rail systems for urban areas, as well as greater support for research and deployment in renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, and tax credits and other incentives for greening America's homes and private buildings.

Aside from energy, the other rapidly rising business cost squeezing wages and jobs is health care. To help hold down these costs for the long haul, the stimulus can provide support for hospitals, clinics and physicians to purchase and install the hardware and software for standardized electronic medical records systems. This will serve as a first down payment for 21st century health care reform, and will ultimately reduce costs and promote best-practices at the nation's hospitals.

These are all investments we know we have to make if we intend to make the U.S. economy more efficient, innovative and sustainable. They also are all investments that will ultimate pay for themselves several times over. Congress and President-elect Obama can use this opportunity not only to create more jobs, but to do so in ways that will help drive the development of a real, 21st century workforce and genuine 21st century economic infrastructure. And taking this course by passing a stimulus for change could be an early and important opportunity for him to practice both his new politics and a new form of economic leadership.

Déjà vu. In 1992, while managing economic policy for Bill Clinton's campaign, I recall watching the Republican Convention in happy disbelief. For days, the gabfest had veered sharply and angrily to the right; and then, when George H.W. Bush accepted his renomination, it took him 26 minutes to get to the economy, the central issue of that campaign, which he talked about for perhaps five minutes. He didn't get it, and neither did John McCain last night. It took him even longer to get to the deep, economic concerns of a majority of Americans, and then devoted about three minutes to jobs, wages, the housing bust, globalization, trade, debt, and the rest. He doesn't get it either.

Another aging, career politician out of touch is hardly news. But another president who doesn't understand or much care about what's happening to most people in our economy would have serious long-term consequences for the real prospects of tens of millions of American families. And deteriorating conditions for most could well undermine public support for the measures that a responsible president will have to take over the next generation - including broad based IT training for all workers; universal access to post-secondary education; a major national commitment to 21st century infrastructure, including universal broadband and climate-friendly light rail system in most major metropolitan areas; a national commitment to aggressively support and promote R&D in climate friendly technologies and fuels, and support to broadly deploy the new technologies and alternative fuels; new cost-control provisions to slow rising health care costs as we provide universal access to health care insurance; and more.

Somehow, none of this made its way into John McCain's acceptance speech, which is only the most recent evidence that he doesn't have what we need in our next president.

Today, three of the nation’s most well regarded leaders, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, will speak about the need to invest in the nation’s decaying infrastructure. The Building America’s Future Coalition is advocating the inclusion of infrastructure investment in both major parties’ platforms, and is looking at infrastructure in terms of provisions that stimulate the economy and improve quality of life, environmental sustainability, and national security.

This timely talk comes as Marisol Bello of USA Today reports on the dangerously shoddy state of the nation’s bridges:

The fatal collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis a year ago jolted states into better inspections of the nation's 600,000 bridges, but they aren't coming up with the billions of dollars needed to ensure that all of them are sound.

The plunge that killed 13 people when the span crumpled into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1 was "a wake-up call" to take care of aging bridges, says Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. "We can't wait for another Minneapolis."

Since the tragedy, Pennsylvania has approved $350 million in bonds to repair 411 bridges. Road tolls will go up next year.

It would cost $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies in the USA, according to the latest estimate, made in 2005, by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
A USA TODAY review found that beefed-up inspections since the collapse led 16 states to close bridges, reduce weight limits or make immediate repairs.
…

Twelve percent of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient, according to the Federal Highway Administration, meaning they are not unsafe but are so deteriorated that they must be closely monitored and inspected or repaired. That percentage has crept down. In 1997, it was 15%.

States are fixing bridges that are in the worst shape, but long-term repairs and upkeep will still suffer unless funding increases, says Kent Harries, a University of Pittsburgh engineering professor.

"We will see more bridge collapses," says Harries, who specializes in bridge engineering.
…

States are facing cuts in federal funding next year because of a projected $3.2 billion shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund. The gap is expected to grow because Americans are driving less.

NDN has been a longstanding proponent of investing in infrastructure. Fellow Michael Moynihan published a paper on Investing in Our Common Future: U.S. Infrastructure and NDN recently endorsed the Dodd-Hagel Infrastructure Bank.

As Rob Shapiro argues in this recent video report on the economy, Washington policy makers are faced with three distinct, but related, economic challenges today - the housing crisis and the weakening of our financial system, the emerging recession and the increasing struggle everyday people face in a more globalized world. Given that our great Capitol has limited time, attention and money, tackling all three of these effectively in the next few years will be hard. Choices will have to be made. It is our belief that of the three big challenges the most important - and perhaps the most difficult - challenge that must be addressed is this need to restore broad-prosperity in a much more global, fast and dynamic economy of the 21st century.

In yet another powerful column in the Times today, For Many, A Boom That Wasn't, David Leonhardt writes:

the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau's inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less - about $60,500.

This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy's health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?

In the second half of the 20th century, the United States passed the test in a way that arguably no other country ever has. It became, as the cliché goes, the richest country on earth. Now, though, most families aren't getting any richer.

"We have had expansions before where the bottom end didn't do well," said Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard economist who studies the job market. "But we've never had an expansion in which the middle of income distribution had no wage growth."

More than anything else - more than even the war in Iraq - the stagnation of the great American middle-class machine explains the glum national mood today. As part of a poll that will be released Wednesday, the Pew Research Center asked people how they had done over the last five years. During that time, remember, the overall economy grew every year, often at a good pace.

Yet most respondents said they had either been stuck in place or fallen backward. Pew says this is the most downbeat short-term assessment of personal progress in almost a half century of polling.

Laying out an agenda that restores broad-based prosperity has been at the core of our economic work these past three years, and is certainly one of the most significant governing challenges of our time. The President's refusal to work with Democrats to offer such an agenda is at the core of our disapointment with the President's strategy on the current Colombia FTA, and is a subject I visited extensively in a recent post, excerpted here:

What this all means for economic policy is that whatever set of policies are put into place to put the economy back on track they must be capable of addressing the struggle experienced by every day people prior to the current slowdown/recession. Offering up such a strategy has been at the heart of our economic work at NDN these past several years, and based on our recent major survey of American public opinion, is what Americans are desperately looking for. Looking back at the exit polls in 2006, there is even a very strong case that it was unhappiness with the economy that was the primary cause of the extraordinary GOP defeat in the fall elections.

Some highlights of what we've been advocating for:

A New Economic Strategy for America that makes globalization work for all Americans - In a recent paper Rob Shapiro argues that America needs a comprehensive new economic strategy, one that tackles rising health care and energy costs, accelerates innovation and makes significant investment in human capital and infrastructure.

A More Modern Approach to Trade Liberalization - In a major paper about the future of US trade policy, Rob Shapiro and I argue for a a continued commitment to global liberalization but only if coupled with a substantial new domestic approach to help those struggling with globalization prosper.

A New Committment to 21st Century Skills - In two papers, A Laptop in Every Backpack and Tapping the Resources of America's Community Colleges, NDN makes the case for a new national strategy to ensure that all Americans have the capacity to work in the much more IT-intensive work environment of the 21st century.

A Better Understanding of What is Driving Growth - In a new paper, The Idea-Based Economy and Globalization: The Real Foundations of American Prosperity in the 21st Century, Rob Shapiro describes how the American economy is undergoing an historic transformation from one built on hard physical assets to one built on intellectual property and intangibles - "ideas." The implications for policy makers here and abroad are only just being understood, and need to be if better understood in crafting future American policies to accelerate future growth.

The Need to Invest in our Aging Infrastructure - In a major new paper, NDN Fellow Michael Moynihan makes the case a major new commitment to investing in domestic infrastructure will help drive future growth and improve America's quality of life.

A 21st Century Immigration System - We need a much more modern approach to bring both high and low skilled workers into America, in ways that meet the needs of our modern economy and does so in a way consistent with our values. NDN has been one of the leading institutions championing a thoughtful approach to immigration reform, and certainly for those looking to relieve downward pressure on wages and benefits for American workers bringing the 5% of the workforce that is undocumented under the protection of American law, giving them access to the minimum wage and the ability to unionize would be a good place to start.

NDN also recently announced a major new initiative, tentatively titled the Green Project, which will be looking at ways to help transition our nation to a post-carbon economy while maintaining growth.

The economic path forward will not be easy, inexpensive or full of quick fixes. Globalization is bringing about structural changes in our economy that are not well understood, and helping make the American Dream a much more distant reality for too many. Whatever set of policies the nation pursues in the years ahead, it is critical we take a long-term view, and advance a comprehensive agenda that tackles the underlying structural challenges of what was already a very tough go of it in the age of Bush.

If you are interested in talking more about all this come see the Chair of our Globalization Initiative, Rob Shapiro, and I in SF tomorrow morning or in NY on May 5th. And be sure to pick up a copy of Rob's compelling new book, Futurecast.

Lots of stories today about the terrible jobs report, and what this means for the marcoeconomy. David Leonhardt from the Times does a terrific job today putting all this news in perspective, and reminds us that far too many Americans had not shared in the wealth created in the Bush era:

If history is a reliable guide, the recession of 2008 is now unavoidable.

The dismal jobs report released Friday showed overall employment to be lower than it was three months ago. Every time such a slump has occurred since the early 1970s, a recession has followed - or already been under way.

And if the good times have really ended, they were never that good to begin with. Most American households are still not earning as much annually as they did in 1999, once inflation is taken into account. Since the Census Bureau began keeping records in the 1960s, a prolonged expansion has never ended without household income having set a new record...

Recent recessions have inevitably brought inflation-adjusted income declines for most families, which would be particularly painful given what has happened over the last decade. For a variety of reasons that economists only partly understand - including technological change and global trade - many workers have received only modest raises in recent years, despite healthy economic growth.

The median household earned $48,201 in 2006, down from $49,244 in 1999, according to the Census Bureau. It now looks as if a full decade may pass before most Americans receive a raise.

What this all means for economic policy is that whatever set of policies are put into place to put the economy back on track they must be capable of addressing the struggle experienced by every day people prior to the current slowdown/recession. Offering up such a strategy has been at the heart of our economic work at NDN these past several years, and based on our recent major survey of American public opinion, is what Americans are desperately looking for. Looking back at the exit polls in 2006, there is even a very strong case that it was unhappiness with the economy that was the primary cause of the extraordinary GOP defeat in the fall elections.

Some highlights of what we've been advocating for:

A New Economic Strategy for America that makes globalization work for all Americans - In a recent paper Rob Shapiro argues that America needs a comprehensive new economic strategy, one that tackles rising health care and energy costs, accelerates innovation and makes significant investment in human capital and infrastructure.

A More Modern Approach to Trade Liberalization - In a major paper about the future of US trade policy, Rob Shapiro and I argue for a a continued commitment to global liberalization but only if coupled with a substantial new domestic approach to help those struggling with globalization prosper.

A New Committment to 21st Century Skills - In two papers, a Laptop in Every Backpack and Tapping the Resources of America's Community Colleges, NDN makes the case for a new national strategy to ensure that all Americans have the capacity to work in the much more IT-intensive work environment of the 21st century.

A Better Understanding of What is Driving Growth - In a new paper, The Idea-Based Economy and Globalization: The Real Foundations of American Prosperity in the 21st Century, Rob Shapiro describes how the American economy is undergoing an historic transformation from one built on hard physical assets to one built on intellectual property and intangibles - "ideas." The implications for policy makers here and abroad are only just being understood, and need to be if better understood in crafting future American policies to accelerate future growth.

The Need to Invest in our Aging Infrastructure - In a major new paper, NDN Fellow Michael Moynihan makes the case a major new commitment to investing in domestic infrastructure will help drive future growth and improve America's quality of life.

A 21st Century Immigration System -We need a much more modern approach to bring both high and low skilled workers into America, in ways that meet the needs of our modern economy and does so in a way consistent with our values. NDN has been one of the leading institutions championing a thoughtful approach to immigration reform, and certainly for those looking to relieve downward pressure on wages and benefits for American workers bringing the 5% of the workforce that is undocumented under the protection of American law, giving them access to the minimum wage and the ability to unionize would be a good place to start.

NDN also recently announced a major new initiative, tentatively titled the Green Project, which will be looking at ways to help transition our nation to a post-carbon economy while maintaining growth.

The economic path forward will not be easy, inexpensive or full of quick fixes. Globalization is bringing about structural changes in our economy that are not well understood, and helping make the American Dream a much more distant reality for too many. Whatever set of policies the nation pursues in the years ahead, it is critical we take a long-term view, and advance a comprehensive agenda that tackles the underlying structural challenges of what was already a very tough go of it in the age of Bush.

To talk more about all this be sure to come to our Forum this Wednesday, March 12th, in Washington, DC. Rob Shapiro, the Chair of our Globalization Initiative, will be speaking about these and other matters at 1:15pm.