You Got This?

TNG Founder Ben submitted this post.

The Obama administration is the most organized, aggressive, and fast-moving in the history of our country, enacting more change in its first week in office than any other previous administration:

• Two executive orders and three presidential memorandums laying out strict new ethics guidelines and demanding more openness by government agencies.
  
• An executive order to close Guantanamo Bay, and two other orders banning torture and conducting a review of detention policies.
  
• Quick movement on the Middle East peace process by appointing former Senator George Mitchell as an envoy.
  
• A moratorium overturning the ban on federal money going to overseas groups that counsel about abortion.
  
• Directed his administration to implement new fuel-efficiency standards and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider a waiver request by California to impose tougher standards for cars.
  

I should probably feel good about all this, but I can't shake the feeling that in the context of our great unraveling, it amounts to little more than glitter on a turd.

I try not to set my hopes too high, but I want more from the men and women we are counting on to save us from collapse. I think I understand the basics of the stimulus bill, how tax cuts to the middle-class make sense because the poor are more likely to spend the money (which improves the economy) instead of save it (which doesn't), and how the data show that every $1.00 of government infrastructure spending produces $1.40 in return through job creation. What I don't understand is the absence of what isn't in the stimulus bill.

This stimulus bill might jolt the economy, but it won't solve our bigger problems. The nation's infrastructure got a grade of "D" from the American Society of Civil Engineers and a cost estimate of 2.2 trillion dollars over five years in order to get it back in shape. How much money is in the stimulus bill for infrastructure? $90 Billion. I don't need to be a civil engineer to understand that with each layer of complexity that a society creates by nature of it's existence, the weight of that complexity impacts the layers beneath it. Well, those lower layers, be they water systems, power plants, roads, bridges, or rail, are crumbling. $90 billion ain't gonna cover it. It's the same story with energy, education, health care, and scientific research in general: big needs, little money. Are a few more mega bills right around the corner that will do more than just stimulate? I'm not even counting the inevitable bill where we taxpayers throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Wall Street (again), bearing the cost of any failure while stockholders and executives get the benefits.

I realize I'm being impatient, but if I'm going to have this "confidence" that everyone says America needs to flourish, I really need the man to show me a detailed plan. You got this, Barry?