Robert Reich on How to Fix the Budget

You have to give Robert Reich credit for tackling the big problems.

Bottom up means giving all Americans what they need to be productive — universal and affordable health coverage, good schools, a chance to attend college, job retraining, affordable child care, and good public transportation to and from the job, for starters. But as we learned a decade ago, this requires money — even more, now. So the question is how the nation can afford it and ALSO give the soon-to-retire baby boomers the Social Security and Medicare they expect, pay for homeland security and national defense, invest in non-fossil based fuel technologies, and repair the nation's decrepit infrastructure (recall the pipe that blew out in New York last July and the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis). I haven't even mentioned the trillion dollars necessary to shield the middle class from the Alternative Minimum Tax. Even if we cut corporate welfare, eliminated subsidies to agribusiness, and banned all earmarks, we wouldn't have nearly enough.