Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

SUN EDITORIAL:

Helping the economy

Obama’s plans for highway spending and tax deductions would create jobs

In a Labor Day address before union workers in Milwaukee, President Barack Obama acknowledged what Republicans in Congress have been too afraid to admit — that the shattered economy he inherited when he took office could not be mended quickly. Obama stepped into the Oval Office facing catastrophic marketplace failures in housing and finance.

Thanks to his predecessors in the Bush administration, greedy Wall Street companies ran amok in an unregulated environment. Meanwhile, nothing was being done to protect America’s working class.

Years of reckless mismanagement in Washington cannot be changed overnight, which helps explain why it has been so difficult to turn the economy around. The carnage, as Obama stated, is reflected in the fact that nearly 1 in 5 construction workers is unemployed.

“It doesn’t do anybody any good when so many hardworking Americans have been idled for months, even years, at a time when there is so much of America that needs rebuilding,” he said.

With that in mind, the president proposed that Congress approve $50 billion in new spending to shore up the nation’s roads, railways and airport runways. He also made a pitch for an infrastructure bank that would help finance projects based on economic need rather than on geography or politics, which is the way many transportation funds are allocated now.

But the president is not stopping there. Fully aware that more should be done to stimulate the economy, Obama is also proposing that businesses be allowed to take tax deductions on the full value of new equipment purchases through next year. As reported by The New York Times, those deductions would give companies more incentive to spend and invest.

One thing the infrastructure financing and tax deduction plans have in common — and why they should be approved — is that both would create jobs, the key to a sustainable economic recovery.

Another thing the proposals have in common is that they come from a president who obviously recognizes that the federal government should do more to help struggling Americans stay afloat. He and fellow Democrats in Congress have consistently proposed the legislation necessary to repair failed markets and give working-class wage earners a fighting chance to help turn the economy around.

At every step along this path, though, the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have faced obstruction from selfish congressional Republicans who insist on helping only those special interests that drove the economy into the ditch. Nevadans, faced with the nation’s highest unemployment rate, have been particularly hard hit due to the Republicans’ intransigence.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said Monday: “If we’ve learned anything from the past 18 months, it’s that we can’t spend our way to prosperity.” Actually, what we’ve learned from the past 18 months is that Boehner and fellow Republicans don’t have any concrete solutions to help the economy or the working class. If they had, we surely would have heard them by now. That’s something Americans should keep in mind when voting in November’s elections.

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