Government-bashers who challenge supporters of a health-care reform public option to name just one successful government program should read Bold Endeavors by Felix Rohatyn. He cites 10 large and transformative events in American history to explain how our government built America.
The author, who managed the negotiations that enabled New York City to resolve its financial crisis and avoid bankruptcy in the 1970s, reviews how large government investment helped shape our nation with positive results.
These are the Louisiana Purchase, the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, land-grant colleges, the Homestead Act, the Panama Canal, the Rural Electrification Act, the Reconstruction Finance Act, the G.I. Bill, and the Interstate Highway System.
Rohatyn shows how important national leadership has been to the development of our country. Determined national leaders—Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Eisenhower—found the will, steadiness, and political acumen to make decisions that were often unpopular but proved to be visionary—decisions that were building blocks of America’s destiny.
Worried that the nation has ignored core assets like bridges and levees, Rohatyn laments the lack of public faith that the government can do the needed job.
The 10 episodes from different eras in American history offer a general strategy that time after time, generation after generation, has proven to work. Innovative public investments are monies well-spent, capital expenditures that continue to pay both tangible and intangible dividends.
When some naysayers complain that the Obama administration should focus on “one single most important” effort rather than taking on too much at a time, Bold Endeavors reminds us that three of these—the Pacific Railroad Act (creating the transcontinental railroad), the Land Grant College Act, and the Homestead Act—were all passed in 1862, in the depth of the Civil War!
This article appears in Sep 24 – Oct 1, 2009.
