Sick economy? Spend, spend, spend on infrastructure!

December 1, 7:49 PMDC Corporate Ethics ExaminerJim Cunningham

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Let me preface this by saying that I don’t have a degree in Economics. I’m just a schmuck with an opinion. But I do consume enormous amounts of news from a variety of sources, I’m an observer of the world, and I try my best to educate myself and be an informed citizen.

The McCain campaign ran, in large part against government spending. The Obama campaign, to a lesser extent, spoke out against government spending as well. But in this writer’s humble opinion, the way out of our financial situation is… government spending.

What we need is a big – I mean BIG – public works projects. Make that plural – projects.

Let’s fix our infrastructure. We need to build bridges, levees, highways, dams. We need to fix roads, perform maintenance on our national parks and our National Mall. The environment? Spend! Education? Energy? Spend! Let’s build gigantic wind farms, wave farms. Let’s do geothermal. Let’s put solar cells on the roof of every government building in the US.

I know. I know. Republicans will complain. Well, screw ‘em. They’re in the minority, and best of all, they’re wrong. The spending the Bush administration has done has gone to big companies like Halliburton who stuck it in the bank or reinvested it; it sure hasn’t “trickled down”. A Democratic administration needs to stop the Bush-crony spending and invest in America. Put Americans to work improving America.

When we do spend the money to create jobs to improve America, we need to make sure that money is doing what it’s supposed to do. There needs to be a requirement that only American citizens are hired to do the work. We need to be using American materials and businesses to get the job done. American steel, American trucks and tractors, but most of all, American workers. That’s right, if American tax payers are going to flip the bill then American citizens need to get the jobs. Vendors will be required to employ American citizens as well.

Let’s do it. Let’s rebuild America. Let’s restore the infrastructure and make it better than ever. But while we’re at it, let’s show off what Americans do best – quality. Not only will we be stimulating the economy and creating jobs, but we’ll also be creating bragging rights, because it’ll all be done with American ingenuity and demonstrate American quality.

The American workforce may not be cheap but, given the chance, we’ll do it better than anyone else can.