Infrastructure

When Congress authorized funding for the Interstate Highway System in 1956, it launched one of the greatest periods of economic growth in our history. Jobs from the highway construction itself were important, but the biggest effect by far was the economic activity enabled by the system. Manufactured goods could be moved efficiently from any factory to any city or town in the nation, cities were given room to grow, families were given a compelling reason to own a car, and whole new industries sprang up to serve the new growth and mobility.

The private sector could not have built the Interstate Highway System. Taxpayers complaining "that money's all mine, mine, mine!" could not have built it. What built the system was a public consensus that the United States was greater than the sum of its citizens, that it could do great things working together. That same ambition won World War II and landed men on the moon.

What's interesting to note about the Interstate Highway System is that it began with a national investment, but this expenditure was less than 1% of Federal taxes, and only about one-tenth of one percent of the nation's economic activity. Practically all of the benefit of the system was realized by individual and private sector spending in the marketplace, even though it could not have happened without the initial Federal investment.

The failure in more recent decades to make such monumental accomplishments, is a monumental failure of leadership and imagination, by both parties. America has turned inward, into the self. Leaders pander to selfishness instead of inspiring us to great achievements together.

It may well be up to the youngest generation of Democrats to shake us out of our stupor, to build the foundation of the next great economic expansion. There is much to be done, the most obvious investments being to build out a universal high-speed internet extending Opportunity to every small town in the nation; construction of a high-speed rail network to finally overcome the growing dysfunction of the airline industry and move people faster from home to the customer's office; construction of a renewable energy system that reduces our vulnerability to fossil fuel scarcity and allows us to launch more energy-intensive industries that currently are out of reach; the cure of diseases that currently weigh down the economy with an unsustainable burden of health care costs; and even the renewed exploration of space. The private sector isn't doing these things – it can't do them, and all would be less expensive than the Interstate Highway System. So what's stopping us?

Democratic leaders are the ones whose values of Freedom, Responsibility, and Opportunity can finally pull us out of the doldrums of selfishness, to remind us of why we are a great nation. Infrastructure investment to nurture new industries and enhance the productivity of our society isn't caused by the magical invisible hand of random economic actors, but by strong leadership inspiring us all to work together toward shared goals. This is the future of the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party is the future of the nation.

Political themes: Economic growth requires infrastructure investment. Imaginative leadership will launch the next great economic expansion. If Democrats don't do this, no one will.