Forbes columnist Ralph Benko highlighted John Delaney’s effort to bridge the partisan divide and offer new solutions this week.
You can read the full column online here.
Here’s what Benko said about Delaney’s problem-solving approach:
He seems motivated by an interesting challenge. (The Thematic Apperception Test calls this “Need for Achievement.” It’s a nice quality.) In an in-person interview with this columnist Delaney states that he is driven by three principles: to tackle major challenges, in innovative ways, and to do so exclusively in bipartisan ways. Call it the “New Delaney Paradigm.”
Congress is obsessed with small ball. Rather than innovate, Congress is fixated on doing the same thing but expecting different results. (Rita Mae Brown, in her novel Sudden Death, famously defined this as insanity.) Congress gratuitously is polarized. So … Delaney certainly has tackled a challenge of magnitude.
And here’s what Benko wrote about Delaney’s bipartisan Partnership to Build America Act:
The Delaney Act is practical politics. Conservatives gain a desideratum. Corporations can bring, maybe, something like $1 trillion of their shareholders’ money back … at a reasonable rate set by Dutch auction. Liberals achieve one of their hearts’ desires: Infrastructure. (And union jobs! Full disclosure: this far right wing columnist is a proud member of the AFL-CIO and is in solidarity with blue collars and purple tees. Happy Labor Day, all!)
So the Delaney Act is about pulling out a wedge inhibiting access to a trillion dollars, more or less, and about maintaining our roads and bridges. It does so by offering a good deal for corporations plus shrewd leverage. It does so without sticking us taxpayers, even contingently, with the tab. We voters are the big winners.
For more information on John’s plan to rebuild America, click here.