...that doesn't involve eating children. Although Swift's voice is sorely missed in today's world.
How do you get people to work, improve our security, promote energy efficiency, and neutralize John McCain's most dearly held issue?
Cabinet-level Department of Infrastructure
New bureaucracy? Expansion of Federal Government? Boondoggle?
What is our critical national infrastructure? A common definition is the assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy. What are those assets? Transportation systems, energy production and distribution, communication systems, water suplly systems, financial services, agriculture, and national security to name a few. Don't we already have a number of Federal Departments and congressional committees dealing with these issues? Yes, and therein lies the problem.
Each Department has a budget that is spent according to both statute and executive discretion. No one has authority to set priorities based on strategic national goals and needs. This leads to earmarks, as much of this pork actually addresses legitimate infrastructure needs not met by the actual spending bills; it gets tacked on to unrelated legislation.
Eliminate earmarks. Make all expenditures part of a specific appropriations bill. If a specific project needs direct funding, it can't be hidden in a defense bill as part of a horsetrade; it will pass or fail based on it's own merit.
Who'll mind the store? The Secretary of Infrastructure. The Secretary will be responsible for creating both a short and long term plan for addressing critical infrastructure needs. They will gather relevant information from other departments, and prioritize projects, based on the following criteria:
Security: What parts of our infrastructure are most vulnerable to foreign or internal attack? Where do choke points exist in our transportation, telecommunications, financial and energy system? How can our infrastructure adapt to 21st century realities?
Efficiency: Where is our economy hindered by lack of capacity in physical or electronic transit? How are we not meeting the basic needs of both large corporations and small businesses in thrive in domestic markets? Where would the benefits of job growth and business expansion accrue most quickly among public works projects?
Well-being: How can our transportation and energy production systems limit pollution? How can our water and food be made safe and available as population grows and resources become more scarce? How can our infrastructure reduce CO2 levels and slow global climate change?
Promoting this department provides a response to the earmarks challenge, creates a vehicle for a New Deal style works program, and eliminates the need for separate energy initiatives. All the funding for alternative energy development could go through this department, as would a good percentage of current earmark expenditures; budgets of existing Cabinet Departments would also be cut. The President would actually have to propose and give support to a national infrastructure plan, and the congress would have to approve these plans. It would increase the transparency of each project's cost, and hold our elected officials more responsible for the results.