Nation needs new revenue streams

By Al Portner

President Obama has submitted a culture-changing fiscal blueprint to the Congress for consideration. The President’s priorities are appropriate and long overdue.

Healthcare costs as a percentage of GDP are double the rest of the comparable, developed world. Sending $700 billion dollars annually overseas to buy fossil fuels can’t be good for the economic health of the nation or the environmental health of the planet. That the financial future of the nation rests on the higher education of its people is tough to argue against when the entire history and prominence of America has been based on the notions of innovation and discovery.

But all these initiatives are mind-blowingly expensive. The markets and the people who control them are gasping. An already weakened financial system must be reinforced, re-regulated, or in some cases regulated for the first time.

President Obama plans to pay for this platter full of problems by programs of fiscal responsibility and taxes on those who are most able to pay. The top five percent of earning families will be resentful.

The country needs new revenue streams. Money is the mother’s milk of innovation in a digital age. If the nation achieves the goals enumerated in the budget and clearly stated before the 2008 election, we will have to fund the research that makes them possible.

The nation should benefit from a portion of the intellectual property that it pays to develop. And the use of that money should be limited to paying down or paying interest on debt.

Al Portner is a former daily newspaper editor and publisher who has operated newspapers in seven states. He is currently the proprietor of The Assignment Desk, LLC, an editorial services consortium.

Portner is also the author the forthcoming non-fiction book “Mark Twain and the Tale of Grant’s Memoir.” He can be reached at alanportner@theassignmentdesk.net. The Assignment Desk URL address is www.theassignmentdesk.net.