The New New Deal Read Online Free Page B

subservience to petro-dictators while seeding green new industries. The stimulus converted Chu’s cobwebbed department into the world’s largest clean-tech investment fund. Overall, it pumped about $90 billion into green energy, when the United States previously spent a few billion a year.
    The scale is almost unimaginable. Secretary Chu’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which had a $1.2 billion budget, got a $16.4 billion infusion. New Jersey’s state energy program received a 9,500 percent funding increase. The Recovery Act will also triple the smart meters in homes, quadruple the hybrids in the federal fleet, and expand electric vehicle charging stations forty-fold. It’s creating an advanced battery industry almost entirely from scratch, increasing the U.S. share of global capacity from 1 percent when Obama took office to about 40 percent in 2015. Yes, Solyndra failed, but thousands of other green stimulus investments haven’t.
    The stimulus is also stocked with non-energy game-changers, like an initiative to sequence over 2,300 human genomes to help fight diseases like cancer and schizophrenia, when only thirty-four had been sequenced before. Or a $20 billion effort to computerize our pen-and-paper health system, which should reduce redundant tests, dangerous drug interactions, and fatal errors caused by doctors with chicken-scratch handwriting. Or the “Race to the Top” competition to promote data-driven reforms of public schools, which prompted dozens of states to revamp their education laws before they even submitted applications. Or the website recovery.gov, which lists every stimulus contract and lobbying contact, along with quarterly data detailing where all the money went.
    At a time when government wasn’t supposed to be able to run aone-car funeral, the Recovery Act was a real-time test of a new administration’s ability to spend tax dollars quickly, honestly, and effectively—and to reshape the country in the process.
    “America said it wanted change,” says Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan. “Well, this is it!”
The Opening Act of the Obama Era
    T he stimulus had its roots in Obama’s 2008 campaign agenda, which was mostly ignored while the media obsessed about his incendiary pastor, the ads comparing him to Paris Hilton, and other issues that had nothing to do with policy issues. It was put together during Obama’s chaotic presidential transition, while the press focused on who he would choose for his cabinet, which of his nominees hadn’t paid taxes, and what breed of dog he would give his daughters. It passed during his whirlwind first hundred days, when it competed for attention with his rescue plans for the auto, banking, and housing industries, his breaks with Bush on issues like torture, stem cells, and fuel efficiency, and controversies over everything from his handshake with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez to the attempted sale of his Senate seat. Then its rollout was overshadowed by Obama’s epic battle over health care; his push to end the war in Iraq and expand the war in Afghanistan; the rise of the Tea Party, which held its first rally ten days after he signed the Recovery Act; the weak economy; the Republican revival; and the constant dramas over Somali pirates, Iranian nukes, Supreme Court nominations, financial regulations, beer summits, birth certificates, and killings of international terrorists that add up to an eventful presidency.
    Ultimately, one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation in modern history was reduced to an afterthought. In April 2011, Obama’s most influential supporter asked him on national TV whether he wished he had started his presidency by focusing on the economy instead of health care. “Oprah, I’ve got to tell you, we did start with the economy,” Obama replied with evident irritation. 17 “Remember, the first thing wedid was pass a Recovery Act.” Polls have found that most Americans see the stimulus as a