Obama talks policy at CMU

Sen. Barack Obama led an all-star panel of prominent players in the fields of education,… Sen. Barack Obama led an all-star panel of prominent players in the fields of education, technology, labor and business in an economic competitiveness summit at Carnegie Mellon University Thursday morning.

The 14 panelists spoke before a private group of more than 100 supporters in CMU’s Weigand gymnasium. Discussion ranged from education reform to investments in infrastructure.

“If we don’t rebuild our crumbling roads, rail bridges and electrical grid, we’ll see our standard of living suffer, while we leave our communities less safe from terror or natural disaster,” said Obama.

He proposed a $60 billion deposit into a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to help rebuild roads, bridges and levees while creating “new jobs that pay good wages and can’t be exported.” Obama pointed out that in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ infrastructure report card in 2005, the national infrastructure received a “D” rating.

Despite the varied backgrunds of the speakers, the group established a consensus that there needs to be more incentive for people to pursue research and development careers and that concrete plans would help monitor progress.

Obama said that U.S. education is falling behind and that this deficiency will eventually impact every industry.

He said there is nothing more heartbreaking than hearing about a person who accumulated $20,000 of debt from college loans while training for a job that has become obsolete. For this reason, he proposed a tuition credit program intended to help all participating college students.

“One of the things we talked about is a $4,000 tuition credit for every student, every year, in exchange for national service or community service of some sort, applying not just to four-year university students but also