Earlier this year I wrote a piece (here) about how an effort
to radically change the Washington debate on Social Security benefits (don’t
cut them, increase them!) could be used as a model for recasting the debate (or
lack thereof) on transportation funding.
Now comes a new story (here) explaining how the effort to
change the Social Security debate was consciously crafted to change the “Overton
Window.” The supershort
explanation of the Overton Window is that public policy options are considered
to be serious only if they fit within a narrow window of acceptability (the
Overton Window). So in the field
of transportation finance, the conventional wisdom is that increasing taxes for
transportation is politically infeasible and therefore is not a serious option. That option is not within the current
Overton Window. Since all the “serious”
options – within the current Overton Window – lead only to national decline, my
answer (from the earlier piece) is: move the goalposts! Or, in Overton parlance: widen the
Overton window!
Whatever parlance or metaphor you prefer, it seems to me to
be time to stop accepting failure as an option, let alone as a decree of the
Fates.
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