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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  America’s three missed opportunities
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America’s three missed opportunities

America’s three missed opportunities

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After the failure of the 1973 Geneva Peace Conference, the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban sighed: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." In recent years, the same could be said of Americans.

Two months ago, the US marked the 10th anniversary of the 11 September attacks. Sadly, we commemorated a tragedy without celebrating much triumph. The post-9/11 moment was an unheralded instance of national—even global— unity. The Bush administration could have used it for almost anything. And, to be fair, it did. The nation burned trillions of dollars in two wars and a budget-busting round of tax cuts. The president told us to go shopping, and the Federal Reserve held interest rates at extraordinarily low levels. The result? Deficits and a credit bubble. That was missed opportunity No. 1.

For a country with more than $2 trillion in unmet infrastructure needs, this is a remarkable opportunity. But it gets better. Weak global demand means raw materials are cheap. And the bursting of the housing bubble means unemployment in the construction sector is high. We can borrow at a bargain, buy at a bargain and ease the unemployment crisis in the hardest-hit sector of our economy, all while making desperately needed investments in our future competitiveness and quality of life. So are we taking advantage of this opportunity? No. Are we seriously discussing it? No. That’s missed opportunity No. 2.

Right now, the only thing the two parties in Washington appear to agree on is the need for deficit reduction. Viewed correctly, even that is an opportunity. Everywhere you look in the federal government there are overdue reforms worth making.

The tax code should be cleaned of loopholes and extraneous deductions. The cost controls in the recent health-care reform Bill should be strengthened. The defense department, bloated after 10 years of war, should be pared down.

We could go further still. The tax code, for instance, could be shifted to tax consumption more and investment less. Economists of all stripes agree that, if correctly constructed, that would be a good idea.

We could shift some of the taxes we currently impose on work and put them instead on dirty energy. That would boost the clean energy sector and cut down on pollution.

But that won’t happen, either—due to missed opportunity No. 3. The so-called supercommittee looks increasingly unlikely to reach a deal. If it does reach one, it will certainly not be an ambitious one. Given the curve on which we grade our politicians now, a curve on which paying our bills and keeping the lights on counts as success, even the most modest agreement will be celebrated. But if you look back to the beginning of this process, to the days when the Bipartisan Policy Center and other groups were putting out detailed and thoughtful proposals to reduce the deficit by reforming government and remaking the tax code, it is clear that we have lost whatever opportunity we once had to rise to this occasion.

It’s entirely possible that we could wake in 2013 only to realize that we have made no durable progress on any of our pressing national problems over the course of the Bush and Obama presidencies, and have, in fact, made some problems worse.

That would mean a loss of 12 years during which we could have been moving forward as a country. And we won’t be able to blame it on a lack of opportunities.

Ezra Klein is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own

Edited excerpts. Comments are welcome at otherviews@livemint.com

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Published: 20 Nov 2011, 11:15 PM IST
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