Public Infrastructure

In a new slideshow issue brief, Economic Growth Program Associate Daniel Mandel examines several new tax credit bond programs included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  Mandel describes the differences between tax credit bonds and traditional tax exempt bonds, and analyzes in particular the success of Build America Bonds, which have attracted new classes of investors to the municipal bond markets and lowered the cost of borrowing for state and local governments. 

President Obama’s December 3rd jobs summit has drawn attention to the debate over policy options for job creation. The case for intelligent and aggressive public policy to promote job creation, in addition to the helpful but inadequate stimulus package, is overwhelming. The official unemployment rate is currently 10.2 percent, and rises to 17.5 percent when marginally attached workers and those working part-time out of necessity are included.

The American economy is in trouble. Battered and bruised by the collapsing housing and credit bubbles, and by high oil and food prices, it is having trouble finding its footing. The stimulus medicine the Federal Reserve and Congress administered earlier this year is already wearing off, while home prices are still falling and unemployment continues to creep upward. By the time a new president is sworn in, there is a good chance the economy will have stalled again, and the hope for a relatively quick rebound will have given way to the fear of a protracted slowdown.

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 the "Back on Tracks" project.

New America will be hosting two events with Steven Hill to discuss this book and Europes evolving leadership. Join us Thursday, January 21 at 12:15 p.m. and Friday, January 22 at Noon ET.

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.

read more

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.