Where we all can agree

Brian Till

Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Barack Obama’s campaign philosophy suggested that we, as a nation, ought to focus on the ideas that unite us, rather than those few divisive issues that politicians and pundits often dwell upon. Before we understood the full weight of our looming financial implosion, he suggested that partisan bickering and posturing for cameras and constituents had kept us from tackling critical issues. So, if we are to abandon the collapse for a moment, what do we, exactly, agree upon?

1. Energy independence and kicking fossil fuels: Whether we’re inclined to this end because of environmental concerns, fears of volatility in carbon deposit prices, or a strictly national-security-based rationale, we all agree that the U.S. must find a way to power its own engine, and that oil, even if we were to suck our own resources dry, is nowhere near an enduring option.

Obama’s stimulus purportedly has enough funding to double current renewable energy output, but we’re a great ways from the windmill-packed campaign commercials and $4 per gallon rage that showed us how united we are on this matter; we shouldn’t lose sight of that memory. According to the Consumer Federation of America, 76 percent of Americans are worried about oil supplies being dependent on the Middle East.

Incentives can be a powerful medium in the green battle. Elevating the federal tax credit from 10 percent to 30 percent for solar power system installation led to a 74 percent spike in the industry in 2007, and 2008 witnessed 50 percent more growth. But in an economically suffocating environment, it’s hard to believe that even strong incentives will lure middle-class Americans to make such substantial investments.

As Obama and Congress turn their focus to rebuilding Detroit, let’s hope they keep in mind the type of efficient cars America needs for its own independence, and to be competitive in overseas markets.

2. The inane inefficiency of defense procurement. While we disagree on the extent to which we ought to spend money on defense, we are united in conviction that the current system of development and acquisition is unacceptable.

As John McCain pointed out this week rather publicly, a new Marine One project is so far over budget — up to $11.2 billion from an original $6.1 billion — that it’s likely to cost as much as the presidential 747. The project is now on the chopping block, with Obama suggesting the helicopter he has — or rather his current fleet of helicopters — seems sufficient.

Another defense project grossly over budget is Lockheed Martin’s F-22 development, which, coincidently, also finds its neck exposed to Obama’s pen. The current cost for each F-22 is $140 million, but the F-35 project, which is currently in development, is delivering nearly equally sophisticated weaponry for $80 million per unit.

The F-22 project, though, as filmmaker Eugene Jarecki has pointed out, has been politically engineered so that it employs nearly 100,000 people in 300 congressional districts — i.e., more than two-thirds of Congress — thus making it politically very difficult to slash the engagement.

It has been a way of business for decades in Washington for defense procurement contracts to increase by 10, 20, even 100 percent without question or penalty — this is no longer tenable.

3. Both liberals and the Christian right can agree with moral conviction that plight of the inner city is a long abandoned moral mantle. And we agree that education, faith, sports, other sources of structure, and hope are the best antidotes we can summon. We agree that we have unequivocally failed to spend enough or care enough about America’s urban poor.

4. Finally, we agree that fault for the financial collapse lies all around, but mostly with the government. Liberals would never charge that big business can be trusted to monitor itself or be expected to look out for the broader public good, and conservatives would never assert that individuals are responsible enough that loans should be granted on an honor system; thus both agree that, to some extent, the government failed.

When the free market became so greedy that it became numb to extraordinary risk, the government failed to step in. And when citizens began to expect comforts well beyond their means, no politician had the courage to say, “Stop, you can’t afford that. America, you must be more responsible.”

At the very root of our tax system lies protection — we give considerable cuts of our wages for security: safety from foreign enemies, from disease, from crime, and at times, from ourselves.

That security has been entirely absent, and we will all welcome it back.

Brian Till writes for Creators Syndicate. He also is a research fellow for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington.