Ten Radical Remedies America Needs

Obama must use his leadership to make necessary radical ideas mainstream. These changes are essential if we are to build an economy of broad prosperity.

Robert Kuttner
American Prospect
March 24, 2009

This is one of those eras of national crisis when the effective solutions to national problems are still far outside mainstream debate. Only a president can bring radical ideas into the mainstream. Under Abraham Lincoln, abolition of slavery went from unthinkable to inevitable. Thanks to Lyndon B. Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the White House embraced a radical social movement for civil rights. What will Barack Obama do to shift the political center of gravity?

To date, President Obama has managed to enact an impressively large stimulus bill -- bigger than would have been possible even six months ago. By contrast, his program to rescue the banks is still a variant on one proposed by the Republican Treasury secretary from Wall Street, Hank Paulson. Obama has overturned some extremist Bush policies. What he has not yet done is use his leadership to make necessary radical ideas mainstream.

However, there are several radical remedies that cry out for presidential leadership. Some of them are essential if we are to get the economy into recovery. Others are long-deferred reforms that America needs to build an economy of broad prosperity. Here are 10:

Use Direct Government Loans to Refinance Mortgages.

At most, the complex and largely voluntary (to the banks) system proposed by the administration will refinance about one distressed mortgage in three. That's not enough to stem the foreclosure epidemic or to brake the collapse in housing values. The administration did shift to a direct-loan program for student loans. Why not for housing? Because the mortgage industry would be extremely upset. Prospects: not very good, unless things get a lot worse.

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