PASS THE BILL
As I’ve said before, I’m no fan of Paul Krugman. But he absolutely gets it right today. This bill isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than nothing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/opinion/18krugman.html?ref=todayspaper
Money quote:
“Bear in mind also the lessons of history: social insurance programs tend to start out highly imperfect and incomplete, but get better and more comprehensive as the years go by. Thus Social Security originally had huge gaps in coverage — and a majority of African-Americans, in particular, fell through those gaps. But it was improved over time, and it’s now the bedrock of retirement stability for the vast majority of Americans.”
The same was true of civil rights legislation in the ’50s. As LBJ famously said to Hubert Humphrey when the latter was complaining about an initial proposal being too weak (I think it was Humphrey), “You have to start somewhere.”
