Obama says what swing voters need to hear

[gmudem]

John Nichols - The Nation

Remarkably, on the day the poll was released by USAction -- as part of a campaign in support of it "Invest in America's Future plan" to reverse the priorities of a country that spends freely on wars abroad but fails to invest in infrastructure improvements and other job-creation initiatives at home -- Illinois Senator Barack Obama channeled the core message of the survey.

"For our economy, our safety, and our workers, we have to rebuild America. I'm proposing a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years," Obama told workers at a General Motors assembly plant in Wisconsin, where he is campaigning hard in advance of Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary. "This investment will multiply into almost half a trillion dollars of additional infrastructure spending and generate nearly two million new jobs – many of them in the construction industry that's been hard hit by this housing crisis. The repairs will be determined not by politics, but by what will maximize our safety and homeland security; what will keep our environment clean and our economy strong. And we'll fund this bank by ending this war in Iraq. It's time to stop spending billions of dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together and start spending the money on putting America back together instead."

Swing voters -- not anti-war activists but the independents and partisan waverers who will swing this fall's election -- want to shift spending from Iraq to Iowa, from Baghdad to Baltimore.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=284732]

[TwilightGardener]

1. Is that Infrastructure Bank the same as the Dodd-Hagel proposal?

[gmudem]

2. I don't know.

I haven't heard anything about a Dodd-Hagel proposal on this subject. When was it introduced?

[TwilightGardener]

3. Ironically, it was introduced the same day that the bridge collapsed

in Minnesota: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/opinion/29herbert.html

Hillary Clinton belatedly joined in co-sponsoring Dodd-Hagel, so I wonder if Obama is keeping pace by coming up with a similar proposal of his own, or jumping aboard that same train?

[gmudem]

4. That is a little weird.

But Obama's proposal sounds similar to the Dodd-Hagel one. I mean, he has no substance. :eyes: This sounds like a very good idea to me though.

[TwilightGardener]

6. I agree--I think the proposal in general is a good one.

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. Using " Iraq money " is a fallacy. There isn't any "Iraq money", so far

it's all been paid for with off-the-books supplementals. No Iraq, no money. They won't approve off the books money for social or infrastructure spending. It'll have to be tax increases or bonds.