Abstract
This chapter considers smaller-bore, more familiar alternatives to the more fundamental reforms designed in Chap. 3. Among these are infrastructure banks, social impact bonds, tax reforms, and state public banks. The chapter argues that these proposals would all be steps in the right direction, but are properly viewed as truncated renditions or steps toward the more comprehensive reforms laid out in the prior chapter. As such they would be fitting of less ambitious, more ‘incrementalist’ greenification efforts, but not nearly sufficient for purposes of planning, executing, and overseeing the Green New Deal. It would be as if one were to attempt building a house with a toy hammer, thumbtacks, and a Swiss Army Knife saw. Comprehensive projects that cross industries, sectors, and levels of government require commensurately comprehensive financial modernization, not piggybanks.
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Notes
- 1.
The EIB was established in 1958 and is owned and operated by the EU member-states. Its mission is to foster, through a variety of public-private investment partnerships, the continued infrastructural development and economic integration of the European Union. See EIB website, available at https://www.eib.org/en/index.htm
- 2.
See, for example, Nation Building Here at Home Act of 2012, H.R. 4352, 112th Cong. (2012), available at https://www.congress.gov/112/bills/hr4352/BILLS-112hr4352ih.pdf; and Robert Hockett, White Paper in Support of the Nation Building Here at Home Act of 2012 (2012), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2029239. For previous domestic precedent, see, for example, National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007, S. 1926, 110th Cong. (2007), available at https://www.congress.gov/110/bills/s1926/BILLS-110s1926is.pdf; National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007, H.R. 3401, 110th Cong. (2007), available at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-110hr3401ih/pdf/BILLS-110hr3401ih.pdf; National Infrastructure Development Act of 2007, H.R. 3896, 110th Cong. (2007), available at https://www.congress.gov/110/bills/hr3896/BILLS-110hr3896ih.pdf; Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Overview, Office of Mgmt. & Budget, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/overview (last visited July 5, 2015); Joseph Weber, Obama to Propose $50B in Infrastructure Projects, Wash. Times (Sept. 6, 2010), http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/6/obama-propose-50b-infrastructure-projects/
- 3.
See, for example, Heidi Crebo-Rediker & Douglas Rediker, Financing America’s Infrastructure: Putting Global Capital to Work (2008), available at http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Financing_America_Infrastructure.pdf
- 4.
Something much like this is behind the 2008 Clean Energy Bank proposals of Senators Bingaman and Domenici and Representatives Inslee and Israel. See The 21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act, S. 3233, available at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/s3233; and H.R. 2212, available at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/hr2212; and the Clean Energy Investment Bank Act, S. 2730, available at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/s2730/text
- 5.
See again sources cited supra, note 80, and accompanying text.
- 6.
This observation mirrors, incidentally, James Madison’s argument in Federalist 10 that a continent-spanning republic is indeed sustainable owing to no single sectional interest’s capacity in such case to gain the upper hand against the plethora of other interests bound to emerge in a large and far-flung polity. See Federalist, Number 10 (Madison) (1787), available at https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary-source-documents/the-federalist-papers/federalist-papers-no-10/. Here is another sense in which the Green New Deal, which is as big and inclusive as America itself, is actually more feasible than are lesser, more ‘humble’ and ‘incremental,’ alternatives.
- 7.
See again supra, note 78, and accompanying text.
- 8.
See again sources cited supra, note 80, and accompanying text.
- 9.
See again Hockett, A Jeffersonian Republic by Hamiltonian Means, supra note 141.
- 10.
Id.
- 11.
See 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.
- 12.
Id.
- 13.
See 12 U.S.C. § 1831 et seq.
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Hockett, R.C. (2020). Comparison to Lesser Alternatives. In: Financing the Green New Deal. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48450-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48450-7_4
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