Obama unveils 21st Century New Deal

     

By MIKE ALLEN & JONATHAN MARTIN On Saturday, Barack Obama pledged the largest new investment in roads and bridges since President Dwight D. Eisenhower built the Interstate system in the 1950's. Photo: AP   President-elect Barack Obama added sweep and meat to his economic agenda on Saturday, pledging the largest new investment in roads and bridges since President Dwight D. Eisenhower built the Interstate system in the late 1950s, and tying his key initiatives – education, energy, health care –back to jobs in a package that has the makings of a smaller and modern version of FDR's New Deal marriage of job creation with infrastructure upgrades.  The president-elect also said for the first time that he will "launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen." "We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms," he said in the address. The president-elect is bringing new elements of his domestic agenda into his economic recovery plan, committing to a path toward giving every American access to an electronic medical record as part of an "economic recovery plan ... that won't just save jobs, it will save lives." Obama had talked in the campaign about lowering health care costs by investing in electronic information technology systems, but not in the context of the economy. Now, his key initiatives – education, energy, health care – are all being tied back to jobs. "When Congress reconvenes in January, I look forward to working with them to pass a plan immediately," Obama says in the address. "We need to act with the urgency this moment demands to save or create at least two and a half million jobs so that the nearly two million Americans who've lost them know that they have a future. And that's exactly what I intend to do as president of the United States." http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16258.html