Progressives Won. Now What?
Progressives Won. Now What?
Our guest blogger is Brian Levine, a Senior Policy Adviser at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Last week, progressives won a resounding victory. The question is: Now what? Today, the Center for American Progress released its own recovery strategy for 2009 and beyond. The CAP report cautions against being “penny wise and pound foolish” as we confront large budget deficits in the short-term. We must invest immediately in health care, energy and education to help our economy through this crisis and lay the groundwork for future growth.
The report lays out a strategy that begins with stabilizing the economy by ensuring the solvency of financial institutions, restoring confidence to the credit and stock markets, and ending the housing crisis, while jumpstarting the recovery with an intelligently crafted stimulus package.
These steps must be accompanied by a sustained economic agenda that focuses on building the foundation for a brighter future. As the report points out:
Today’s crisis is not just the failing economy but the looming barriers to future prosperity in the form of unsustainable and growing levels of health care costs, the lack of adequate clean, dependable energy, and our inability to educate our children for the needs of our economy.
We must slow the growth of health care costs, which will require an upfront investment, partly because it requires universal coverage. In addition to covering everyone, we must incorporate new medical technologies into the system and promote more efficient delivery of care.
We need to invest in a new green energy infrastructure to create jobs now and begin the shift to clean, sustainable energy. Using energy more efficiently makes our economy as a whole more efficient. And renewable energy and efficiency are growth industries that can drive American economic leadership well into the future.
And the economic crisis must not prevent us from transforming the public education system to one that prepares our children to compete for high-quality jobs in the global economy and tackling the problem of college affordability.
After the period when deficit spending is needed to strengthen the economy, we must restore fiscal discipline as quickly as possible.
2 Responses to “Progressives Won. Now What?”
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The big money boys don’t trust each other to pay their bills/debt. Despite $ trillions in programs, credit hasn’t eased. Now other nonbanks are lined up for Treasury and Fed money.
The “mother of all stimulus packages” will run through the same layers of corporations, each with their 15-30% profit expectation. How much will trickle down to the average citizen?
Now what for progressives? We visit Think Centrist to see how Rahm Emanuel is doing as Obama’s pit bull.
November 12th, 2008 at 5:43 pmBush set up a federal government that fosters corporafornication. The aicraft carrier doesn’t shift on a dime, much on $4 trillion.
Now what? That’s easy:
The GOP will order their house negroes (the Democratic Leadership) to betray the voters and adopt the Republican platform. The Democratic leadership will say, ‘Yes, master!’ and immediately capitulate everything anytime a Republican whimpers.
The Democratic Party sold out to the Republicans back in the Reagan days. Ever since then the ‘leadership’ has immediately capitulated when a Republican demanded it.
How is this proven? Just look at the record of the Democratic Party over the last 38 years. Like Pelosi’s stonewall refusal to hold Bush accountable to the US Constitution.
Now that the Democrats have a Socialist Mandate from the American Electorate and almost a perfect majority in Congress and the White House, they won’t even try to hide their debasement to the GOP.
Already Reid is begging Lieberman take an even more lucrative committee post, and Obama is surrounding himself with GOP operatives that are called ‘Democrats’.
November 12th, 2008 at 9:13 pm