1 Boring Old Man

A National Mobility Project
By DAVID BROOKS

Government spending is growing at an astounding pace. Congress and the president have thrown hundreds of billions into stimulus packages, domestic programs, military spending and other initiatives. Total federal spending is growing at a 13.8 percent annual rate. Has all this money done anything to actually stimulate private economic activity? Not that you’d notice. Consumption is cratering. The U.S. economy just experienced the sharpest real drop in consumer spending since 1974. The lesson here is that we have a right to be skeptical of so-called stimulus packages. The Federal Reserve can effectively stimulate the economy. There are certain automatic government programs, like unemployment insurance, which also do it. But the history of the past century suggests that politically designed, ad hoc stimulus packages rarely work…

In times like these, the best a sensible leader can do is to take the short-term panic and channel it into a program that is good on its own merits even if it does nothing to stimulate the economy over the next year. That’s why I’m hoping the next president takes the general resolve to spend gobs of money, and channels it into a National Mobility Project, a long-term investment in the country’s infrastructure…

A mobility project would dovetail with the energy initiatives both presidential candidates have offered. It would benefit from broad political support from liberals and business groups alike. It would rebalance this economy, so there is more productive weight to go along with Wall Street wizardry. Smart investors are going to take advantage of the current panic to make money. A smart president could take advantage of it to build something that will last for decades and decades to come.

Not long ago, when the Stock Market crashed and I heard Woody Guthrie songs playing in my head, I suggested it was time for a New Deal government corps like the C.C.C. or the W.P.A., and the focus should be rebuilding our infrostructure. Then today, I was watching Obama being interviewed, and he was talking about something similar – focusing on data lines and our electrical grid. He was talking in a knowledgable way, discussing feeding the grid from wind and solar power, rebuilding our ports, etc. Now I read about it from an Op-Ed Columnist in the New York Times. It would be a good idea, even if it weren’t something to handle employment during this economic set-back [I doubt that I’m going to get credit for thinking the whole thing up all by myself since it’s so obvious that it’s occurring to everybody]…