Public Infrastructure

This proposal offers dramatic improvements in highway safety and public health, as well as much reduced highway maintenance and construction costs. It will also significantly reduce energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic jams, and shipping costs while providing significant short- and long-term economic stimulus. If fully implemented, it could get as many as 83 percent of all long-haul trucks off our nation's highways by 2030, reduce carbon emissions by 39 percent and oil consumption by 15 percent. Call it… more

"This is an opportunity to do something truly dramatic," said Phillip Longman , a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. ...

Imagine a place where doctors still do house calls. Or where childcare is affordable, professional and widely available. Or where all new parents are paid to stay home and care for their newborns, and receive a monthly stipend to pay for diapers, food and other daily needs.

"What we're talking about are the kinds of investments that will create the platform for people to thrive, not just a safety net," said Frank Micciche, deputy director of New America Foundation's Next Social Contract initiative.

Michael Lind is director of the American Infrastructure Initiative at the New America Foundation.  

There are worrying signs that what may end up being a stimulus package of a trillion dollars or more is being turned into an ordinary piece of legislation, with its content to be determined by politics, special interests and ideology.

Six days before Thanksgiving, a truck driver heading south on Interstate 81 through Shenandoah County, Virginia,ploughed his tractor trailer into a knot of cars that had slowed on the rain-slicked highway. The collision killed an eighty-year-old woman and her one- and four-year-old grandchildren, and brought traffic to a standstill along a ten-mile stretch of road for the better part of the afternoon.

Barack Obama and his transition team are already doing the hard work of governing, despite the fact that they haven't even come close to staffing the next White House. Plans for a mammoth economic stimulus bill are proceeding apace, and Republicans are watching glumly from the sidelines. Given that the Democrats hold almost all of the cards--they can freeze the Republicans out of the process entirely and pass just about anything they want--how should Republicans play a weak hand?

ERIC SCHMIDT: The correct thing for the government to do is to come in with a fair amount of money to get the--get business going again. If you're going to do that, seems to me that you should get a twofer. The president-elect has talked about this. Let's use that money to fix some of the problems that we have in the country--roads, bridges, schools, access to broadband. And maybe we can work on energy… more

Washington, DC -- President-elect Barack Obama has called for an ambitious program of public investment in infrastructure, including but not limited to short-term stimulus spending. Proposals for rebuilding America have received broad bipartisan support.

In a recent video, Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressing The New America Foundation, discussed the wonder of having all of this information available to us and ...