Barack Obama had great plans for this country. The country he envisioned was a place where the air was clean, everyone who wanted a job had one, our manufacturing base was rebuilt and working on producing green energy products. .
He saw our schools gaining the status as the best in the world, and our children having every opportunity to pursue higher education. He saw us all driving fuel efficient or hybrid cars, or taking the new high speed rails that would be the base of the mass transit system he was in favor of.
He saw the rich no longer lining their pockets off of the misery of the middle class. He saw an equitable tax system, and a health care system where no one would ever die for lack of medicine or treatment.
No one expected him to do all this in four years. It was almost a given that we would give him eight. Then the mortgage industry crashed, and the economy tanked with it.
Barack Obama will now have to spend at least his first four years putting American back to work, funding projects that are necessary, but were not at the forefront of his dream. We will get better roads and structurally better schools. Maybe the tax code will get fixed, maybe not. A lot of what he dreamed he could make happen will have to wait.
There will be no paying down the deficit, at least not anytime soon. Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama is coming into an economy that was bleeding profusely from every portal. He will not simply be able to raise taxes and set things right.
He laid out some of his strategies in his economic plan. Now, when we need the money most of all is the best time to enact these changes. These are ways Obama can raise the needed money.
1. Stick by his plan to end subsidies to the oil companies. Why we are subsidizing one of the most profitable industries in the country has always been a mystery.
2. Change the tax code so that the middle class will have more purchasing power. If they are buying, the businesses will find ways to get more goods to them without huge tax breaks.