Summers: Spend on education

White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers made a case for bolstering government spending on infrastructure and on education to create jobs and strengthen the economy’s long-term growth prospects.
“There will never be a better time to improve America’s infrastructure than the present,” Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said in a speech last week to the National Association for Business Economics. “That is why this is an important period for infrastructure investment.”
Summers cited rising unemployment, slack demand for construction services and low interest rates for government-issued bonds. The Obama administration is considering an array of options to boost employment amid rising joblessness.
In his speech in St. Louis, Summers told the business economists that employment losses are being driven by long-term trends as well as the economic recession. He noted that the most recent economic expansion under President George W. Bush produced fewer jobs than previous expansions and he said the drop in employment during the recession was greater than conventional mathematical models would predict for the loss in economic output.
That, he said, “suggests grounds for structural as well as cyclical concern about employment, employment creation.”
Reprising a theme President Barack Obama sounded in his presidential campaign, Summers said improving education to raise American workers’ chances for well-paying jobs is a “central national economic challenge.” He cited community colleges as particularly fertile ground for more assistance. &#8226