Trust | NDN
In its lead editorial today, the New York Times asks a simple but super important question - why should we trust this Administration to understand what is happening now to our financial markets, offer the right solution and then manage the coming difficult process ahead?
With two days of Senate and House testimony ahead, our financial future takes center stage in Congress, as it appropriate given what the American people are being asked to do, and who is doing the asking.
As I wrote over the weekend, I, like many, worry about what this means for the agenda of the next President. Through the twin disasters of Iraq and the financial bailout, we will have little money now to tackle other urgent national priorities - modernizing our schools, improving the skills of our workers, investing in clean and traditional infrastructure, helping move our nation to a low-carbon future, radically improving our health care system, managing the coming retirement of the Baby Boomers, protecting our homeland, keeping people in their homes? Will cleaning up the terrible messes of this disappointing era overwhelm the need to build our 21st century economy and sap our collective capacity to tackle the necessary and tough challenges ahead?
Congress must stand firm and ask the tough questions. The most important being will this investment of what will be more than $1 trillion actually stop the meltdown? Rob and I offered our thoughts on this last Wednesday, and argue that without an effort to keep people in their homes, any moves by the the government are unlikely to do what we need them to do.
It is more important now for Congress to do the right thing than the expedient thing.