Today In Good Ideas from Dems You Won’t Hear in the Media

The so-called “21st Century New Deal for Jobs” invests $2 trillion over the next 10 years to make badly needed repairs to the nation’s transportation, water, energy and information systems. It contains several progressive priorities, including the use of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage standards, maintenance of racial and gender equity in hiring, focus on low-income communities and carbon-free energy production.

“This is how we take our country back. This is how we do job creation,” he said at a press conference organized by the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Capitol Hill.

The MAGA crowd does not realize that the greatest growth in the last century came from Federal and state investments in infrastructure and in higher ed.  Much of that investment is a ghost of itself and higher ed costs are pushed back to students.  Still.  The all the government you can eat crowd needs to be reminded that a mile of interstate costs in the neighborhood of $7-11M.  To mill and repave a 4 lane road, think about spending between $1-2M per mile.   Then think of all of the jobs providing materials and specialty services for that project.  And this would be infrastructure that would not be subject to the financial whims of an investor.

If there is something in our past to replicate, it is the focused investment in our own infrastructure.  And I am delighted that the Congressional Progressive Caucus has proposed this bold plan.

I am, however, betting you won’t hear about this on the evening news.  So maybe this needs to be a regular feature.