Letter: Government investment is needed

When I hear people complain that President Barack Obama isn't doing enough to get the economy moving, I wonder what is it exactly that they expect him to do. There are only three things the federal government can do: reduce interest rates to encourage investment, spend money or reduce taxes to keep more money in the pockets of consumers.

During the 1980 Republican primaries, Ronald Reagan introduced "Reaganomics," the idea that tax cuts for the rich would stimulate the economy through the "trickle down" effect. Sadly, wealth redistribution in the country has increasingly impoverished the working and middle classes while drastically enriching the wealthiest Americans. In the process, our consumer-based economy has been seriously wounded.

Perhaps we need to look back to the administration of a wiser Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower. The rich certainly got richer during Ike's two terms, but so did the working and middle classes. While paying down the debt incurred during World War II, the Eisenhower administration embarked on arguably the most effective stimulus program in the country's history, the National Highway System. Defense spending provided good-paying jobs and supported important research and development that private industry was able to apply to the commercial high-tech segment that is so crucial to today's economy.

In 1958, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was established. Among its many projects was a program to streamline military communications and vastly improve communication across service and command lines. This project led to ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet.

If the Bush tax cuts have to go to satisfy the deficit hawks, then they have to go. After all, the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent during Eisenhower's presidency, and nobody accused him of being a socialist or engaging in class warfare.

Alexander J. Kelly, Smithtown