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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
As members of
He dusted off his proposal of a month ago, introduced then with only middling fanfare while
The president put a price tag of
Obama was trying to breathe life into an idea that had been crying out for implementation throughout the Great Recession, and particularly as the national unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent and has plateaued there.
The president took note of it, observing that "nearly one in five construction workers is still unemployed and needs a job. And that makes no sense," he said, stating the obvious, "when so much of America needs rebuilding."
He subtly implied the opposition party was to blame, saying: "Investing in infrastructure is something members of both political parties have always supported. There's no reason why we can't do this. This is work that needs to be done. There are workers who can do it. All we need is the political will."
Obama got a well-orchestrated boost for this renewed pitch from his
All this raises the question of why the Obama administration didn't trot out this initiative much earlier and with much greater publicity and urgency than it did. On the surface at least, it is much more defensible and much less vulnerable to partisan sniping than, for instance, Obama's health-care reform package that weathered such an ideological storm from conservatives last year.
One reason may be that this administration, like the Clinton administration to some extent before it, remains spooked by the specter of being linked to the New Deal, which has been thoroughly demonized by Republicans in general and conservatives in particular over the last half century.
Rebuilding America was a centerpiece of Franklin D. Roosevelt's early presidency, marked by great public-works projects across the country, both urban and rural, as well as by the gradual unionization of the American workforce.
The New Deal became a major engine not only of recovery from the Great Depression, but also of the creation of a greatly expanded middle class. In gratitude and/or political self-interest, it embraced the
Eventually, however, perceived excesses of the New Deal as movement and symbol nurtured the emergence of the conservativism of Ronald Reagan, and of
The reluctance of latter Democratic presidents, from Jimmy Carter to Clinton and now Obama, to more aggressively use federal power and machinery to put millions of Americans to work appears to stem at least in part from fear of reawakening the bugaboo of the New Deal.
The tardy pushing of public works to repair the nation's infrastructure isn't likely to help the Democrats in next month's congressional elections. But if more Republicans are elected, or even if they take control on
Available at Amazon.com:
The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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An Hour Late and a Dollar Short | Politics
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