Obama speaks out on infrastructure, regulation

Obama speaks out on infrastructure, regulation Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Thursday made a strong case for investing in infrastructure as a way to make America strong.
   In a taped interview on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,' Obama said rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure is an investment that pays long-term dividends and helps the United States compete for global business with countries like China.
   “Look at what China’s doing. Their trains are faster than us, their ports are better than us. They are preparing for a very competitive 21st century economy, and we’re not,” he said.
   During the campaign the Illinois senator proposed the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that would spend $60 billion over 10 years on the underlying foundations of the national system. Congress is considering a heavy dose of infrastructure appropriations as part of a second stimulus bill designed to create jobs and turn around the economy.
   “One of the most frustrating things over the last eight years is the ability of George Bush to pile up debt and huge deficits and not have anything to show for it. So, if you’re going to run deficit spending, then it better be for rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our sewer lines, our water systems, laying broadband lines,” Obama said.
   He also stressed the importance of modernizing the nation’s electricity grid to handle renewable energy sources, plug-in hybrid vehicles and other demands.
   Infrastructure represents “huge projects that generally speaking you’re not going to have private enterprise want to take all those risks. We’re going to have to be involved in that process,” he said of the government’s role.
   He also elaborated on his philosophy of regulation, using the chemical industry as an example of where more oversight could improve homeland security.
   “The chemical industry has been resistant to mandates when it comes to hardening their sites. But you know what? If you’ve got a chemical plant that threatens a 100,000 or a million people in New Jersey we better have some say in terms of how serious they are in terms of guarding that facility.
   “There is this ideological predisposition that regulation is always bad, so stay out of the marketplace. Well, I am a strong believer in the free market. I am a strong believer in capitalism. But I’m also a strong believer that there are certain common goods — our air, our water, making sure that people are safe — that require us to have some regulation. Now it has to be well designed. But the financial system is a classic example of a deregulation philosophy run amuck. And now we see consequences. And, ironically, had we had sensible regulation we would not have a much closer approximation of socialism when it comes to the banking system than anything that any Democrats have been proposing over the last several years.
   “When you don’t guard against excess then a lot of times government ends up having to step in anyway in a much more burdensome way,” Obama said. ' Eric Kulisch