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Barack Obama outlined his economic recovery plan in today’s weekly address:
The plan includes infrastructure investment – roads, bridges, schools, technology. And it will come with a few rules for states – “use it, or lose it”. That’s important. The stimulus won’t work at creating jobs if states hold it and it’s not spent.
and SusanG on DailyKos noticed this aspect of his presentation (which, I confess, had escaped me):
One can quibble with the details of what is included and what is not, but it is still the right direction. I remember that when Bush first came to office, I wrote him suggesting that the Clinton surplus be used to address infrastructure issues citing a report about the disastrous state of bridges, city sewer systems, etc. … but we all know what came of that surplus (I believe we got about $150 useless dollars “rebate” out of money that could have been invested for some communal benefit.
I was struck in his talking about job losses that he said people were worried not only about their own jobs, but about their husbands’ jobs, their sons’ and daughters’ jobs–something to that effect. But where one would normally focus on the man in a household, Obama focused on women as breadwinners.
I’m reading Robert Kuttner’s book, “Obama’s Challenge.” On p.115, he starts a four page speech that he thinks Obama ought to give to summarize where we stand and where we need to go. I nodded all the way through it, at passages like this one:
At the end of this imaginary speech came the kicker: