TALK LESS, SPEND MORE

Dear Friend,

As I listen each day to the debate on raising the federal debt ceiling and decreasing the deficit, I am constantly struck at the extent to which this discussion is a major distraction from what we should really be talking about: jobs and righting the ailing economy.

Republicans are, once again, holding our economic progress hostage by demanding partisan concessions without offering anything in return.  Yes, we need to increase the debt limit, but that is a simple and straightforward process - one which has been carried out repeatedly, including multiple times during the Bush Administration - and should be divorced from discussion of spending cuts and taxation.

Once we get past the hubbub and raise the debt ceiling, we can then get to the real work of creating jobs, stimulating economic development, solving the mortgage crisis, and getting dollars circulating again throughout the economy.

And, when it comes to reducing the deficit, we need to have a more honest debate.  The single largest source of the federal deficit is the Bush tax cuts, coupled with the exorbitantly expensive and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  If we are truly serious about driving the deficit down, then we must remove tax loopholes for the super-rich and for corporations, and we must withdraw our troops from the costly and tragic battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Social Security and Medicare - those perennial bogeymen for the Republicans - are not the problem and must not be on the table.

The Republicans, for all their rhetoric on jobs, have yet to offer or support any legislation to create jobs or extricate the nation from the recession.  What we need is not political posturing but immediate and robust job-creating bills to create employment now and stimulate the economy.  We need a major surface transportation bill that is far stronger than the extremely weak proposal recently emerging from the GOP-led House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.  Such legislation would not only maintain and improve our nation's broken infrastructure, but would also create economic development, make the country more efficient and competitive, and, most significantly, create thousands and thousands of jobs at a time when Americans desperately need them.

During economic crises past, the government has boldly led the way in reinvigorating the economy and creating jobs - from the Intercontinental Railroad to the New Deal, World War II, and the Federal Highway Act.  Now is no different.