Thursday, March 29, 2012
If you think the scarce commodity in Washington is knowledge ...
... think again. On Friday, Treasury and CEA released an updated report showing the value of infrastructure investment. It is broadly similar in its conclusions to the recommendations that some of us have been making for over four years. And yet today, the House passes the weakest of transportation bills -- another 90-day stopgap. The scarce commodity in Washington is leadership, the ability to translate knowledge into productive action.
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3 comments:
See http://goo.gl/7p7bG for similar thoughts.
Andrew - The scarce commodity is "common goals". The reason there's no compromise anymore is that there are no shared goals across party lines. Each side seems to have devolved to a state where simply being elected, or re-elected, is the final goal.
I'm not even sure that there are many shared principles, or more to the point, that anyone will compromise on their vision enough to move the country forward in any meaningful way.
We tried "throwing the bums out" and that was disastrous. Those dysfunctional congresses from the mid-90's are starting to look pretty good when you compare them to today's set of do-nothings...
Build and repair infrastructure when labor is in surplus and cheap. Cut back when labor markets are tight. BigG gets more bang for its infrastructure buck.
I agree in part with the leadership comment. My Tea Party Congressman ran on a platform of rolling back government spending to FY 2000 levels. Unfortunately, he is in a Gerrymander district and supported by big dollars from wealthy individuals. The leadership could use a better quality of rank and file.
-jonny bakho
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