Although Reich's argument is based in economic sanity, it fits well with the concept of sustainability. A dollar of spending on early education, repairing roads, or R&D is an investment that will increase future revenue and/or decrease future expenditures. So it's far more productive than a dollar spent to service the debt or pay for Medicare (not that we shouldn't do those things).
The U.S. budget since this article was written has moved in the wrong direction, however. Since 1992, the deficit has grown exponentially, the country's population has gotten older, and we've started two expensive foreign wars on credit. Obama and Congressional Democrats obviously didn't understand Reich's categorization of spending in the debt fight. (Sorry, it was neither a discussion nor a debate.) Ezra Klein of the Washigton Post makes a similar point, tying the current situation to Reich's piece. He quotes the Economic Policy Institute's Ethan Pollack, who gets to the heart of the issue:
“What we’re doing here is transferring financial debt to investment debt,” says Pollack. “Cutting a dollar from the deficit by not repairing a road keeps you from passing one dollar of debt on to a future generation. But you are passing on a crumbling road. If you look at that using an accounting perspective that includes assets and liabilities, then by making a cut in the budget by not repairing a road, you’re not necessarily saving that money.”That sounds anything but sustainable to me.
