You can give a starving man a fish, or you can give him a fishing pole and teach him how to fish…. That’s the classic saying about investing in the future. Some things are a one-time benefit, some keep giving back. Two recent local news items that caught my attention brought this to mind. The first, an investment in broadband internet access for rural parts of Sumner County; the second, the installation of a new Heating and Cooling system at City Hall and the Police Department in Hendersonville.

The new HVAC units sitting on top of the Hendersonville City Hall are a perfect example of an investment that keeps giving back. Paid for wholly with stimulus dollars, these high efficiency units are an excellent long term investment in our infrastructure. Would City leaders have put borrowing money to buy these units at the top of their priority list? Certainly not in this time of layoffs and diminishing City services. But the benefit of this grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is that we will reap savings month after month in reduced energy bills, easing the City’s budget and perhaps helping to retain a job or service for our City.

Sadly, certain forces of monetary interest and political malaise continue to work steadily to pit Americans against each other and many would have us believe that the stimulus money that paid for this grant are a sign of the evil in politics and the first steps on a dangerous path where Americans have mortgaged our children’s future for temporary political gain. We should all be grateful that the public servants who applied for this grant didn’t see it that way. Yes, the ARRA is money borrowed against our future. But you cannot boil the state of our economy down into such a simplistic and misleading view. If you feel you cannot relate, ask yourself: how many times do families choose to go into debt in order to save money, or provide for a better future for ourselves? Our homes, our children’s college educations, even the braces for their teeth are often financed on the idea that the future will be more prosperous and more secure if we make this investment now.

Take the decision to buy a car. Even if you have cared for your auto well, there still usually comes a time when continued maintenance, repairs, and the replacement of major systems make you feel like you are buying a whole new car one piece at a time, minus the new car smell. Projected years of repairs cost more than the future of the car is worth. Not to mention this risk of driving a break down hazard. At that point it becomes wiser to take the thousands of dollars that would be spent on new parts and labor, and invest that money in a newer vehicle, with years of repair free performance banked under the hood. Whether your family has budgeted and has cash waiting to buy the car outright, or whether, like the majority of us here in Hendersonville, you carry a car note, it was still wiser to invest in the new car, than to throw good money after bad.

And here we have Hendersonville’s new HVAC system funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Whether this stimulus was financed with a budgetary surplus, or unfortunately with debt, it was still a wiser choice to invest in our future savings than to continue throwing away money and energy at the City Hall month after month. Not to mention keeping and creating jobs to prevent our economy from taking a total nosedive. Imagine if you kept on driving that old car until an axle broke or the transmission gave out on the interstate. How safe would your family feel as the 18 Wheelers whizzed by and the steering suddenly quit working? That’s the state our economy will be in if don’t continue to invest in our future.

Believe me, I’m not advocating trading in a perfectly good 2 year old vehicle for the shiniest new bauble on the lot. As the driver of a 2000 Ford Wagon “Mom-mobile” complete with Kroger stickers on the window and tornado scars on the door panels, I understand the value of making a conservative decision. We paid cash for the Taurus as a low mileage used car the year my son was born, and it is sticking with me.

My child’s future is of the utmost importance to me, that’s why I have decried the predictable and proven disastrous economic policies of the Republican Party. One has only to look at the 8 years of the Bush Administration, to see that we elect Republicans to get us into trouble, and elect Democrats when it’s time to get out of trouble. A fine mess we’ve been gotten into, and if you, like me, are the type that likes to participate in your government, you might want to ask yourself a few questions as you listen to the common wisdom about the debt and the stimulus. Did you support the Bush Administration with your vote, your money, or your time, W sticker proudly emblazoned? Then maybe you need to take a moment to think through your responsibility for the trillions of dollars in debt that built up over those 8 years and see if you have any lessons to learn, before you attack the democratically elected President who is working to right this ship, and the policies of the Party that knows how to create a surplus.