This article provided by The Charleston Gazette

September 24, 2008

Gary Zuckett

It will take another New Deal to rebuild

Americans today are riding an economic roller-coaster. Too many are losing jobs. Even more are losing health-care coverage. The crunch driven by spikes in energy and food, along with collapses in the housing and banking industries has led four out of every five voters to conclude that our country is going down the wrong track. Polls now say that voters' main concern is the imploding economy.

A new Congress and president will be leading our country in January. This fresh leadership will face a once-in-a-generation challenge: how to restore our teetering economy to a secure health.

It was less than a century ago that we faced misery and suffering even more dismal and dire than that which we are experiencing now. There is hope for the future - if only we are smart enough to remember success of the past.

In 1933, after the election of a new president and seating of a new Congress, the New Deal was launched. As a result of this bold plan of action, we emerged a stronger, better and more unified nation. Today, with economic indicators in the tank, our wallets drained by high energy prices, and indeed the whole planet in the balance, we need a 21st-century solution. We need the Next New Deal.

Recently, U.S. Rep. Nick Joe Rahall joined more than a dozen other members of Congress gathered to voice their support for Invest in America's Future, a bold plan that could turn the economy around and build new era of economic security, opportunity and prosperity for working Americans. The plan guarantees quality, affordable health care for every American; expands access to education from early childhood to the first two years of college as a birthright; and eliminates dependence on foreign oil by creating a clean energy economy.

Polls show that Americans are demanding long-term, structural solutions to the deep economic problems we face, not band-aid fixes. A recent poll commissioned by Time magazine and the Rockefeller Foundation found that 82 percent of Americans favor government-funded, public-work projects to jumpstart the economy; 84 percent support new measures to improve energy efficiency and 77 percent demand new initiatives to provide more access to quality health care.

In other words, the American public is primed and ready for the Next New Deal.

The momentum of a new president and renewed Congress is the perfect time for our representatives in Washington to begin steering our nation in this new direction.

Unlike tax cuts for millionaires and bailouts for billion-dollar corporations, the next New Deal can pay for itself. An economy based on clean energy will create new jobs and reduce our dependence on expensive foreign supplies. Affordable, quality health care for everyone will save lives, families from medical bankruptcy, and drive down costs for American businesses. Improving access to education will expand economic opportunities for millions of Americans and restore Americans' competitive edge in the global marketplace.

Of course this question can be reframed: What's the cost in continuing down the road we're on? What's the cost of failing to invest in America's future?

For one jolting answer, we need only cast our eyes to Minneapolis, which regrettably recently commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Interstate 35 West bridge collapse. Thirteen died in that unnecessary tragedy, and the economic costs still roll on. It will take $400 million to rebuild the bridge, and the estimated losses - in extra fuel consumption and commuting time - cost $400,000 a day until the new bridge was opened earlier this month.

Nearly two-thirds of our country's most important bridges still need critical repairs - and our nation's highway maintenance fund, which boasted a $23 billion surplus when the current president took office, is expected to be running a deficit by the time he quits.

Conservatism has again failed America and left us in an economic mess. The market meltdown we're now suffering is a product of the Reaganomic soothsayers who declared "government is the problem" and the market can fix itself. Well, we now see government coming to rescue us from the fixing of the greedy marketeers.

It's time to reinvent the successful New Deal of the last Depression and invest in America from the bottom up, not the top down. Only with these bold new investments can we rediscover the path back to the security, opportunity and prosperity we all desire. We can make the Next New Deal even better than the original. Let's roll.

Zuckett is executive director of West Virginia-Citizen Action, the state affiliate of USAction.org.