Trip is right step in making state a world player
BYLINE: John Hill
BATON ROUGE Like everyone who has been to China, Gov. Kathleen came back awed by the booming economy.
Blanco went to Shanghai, China's financial center, on her two-week industry sales trip to Asia and the Middle East.
"We drove for miles and miles, and everywhere you looked were these very tall buildings, both residential and commercial," Blanco said.
In 2004, one-sixth of the world's high-rise construction cranes were in Shanghai. Both Shanghai, the financial and cultural center that one might describe as China's New York, and Beijing, the country's Washington, have more than 17 million people each.
Both cities make Manhattan look relatively small.
The superheated Chinese economy, put on the profit motive back in the 1970s, is projected to grow larger than the United States' by mid-century. Asia is bustling, with skyscrapers going up like crazy.
China is growing so fast that it must hire American architects to design skyscrapers, with municipal architects providing construction plans.
With so much money, China and Japan have become the leading buyers of the ever-growing U.S. debt. Both Asia countries are looking worldwide for investments, as are the oil-rich Middle East countries that are stable.
Former Gov. Buddy Roemer kept going on industry-seeking trips to Japan while he was governor. But after he left, the trips stopped. Former Gov. Mike Foster rarely left southeastern Louisiana, much less traveled the world. So Mississippi, which had an aggressive economic development initiative while Louisiana was concentrating on gambling, ended up with the Nissan plant, Alabama got the Mercedes plant and BMW went to South Carolina.
Louisiana came late to the economic development game in the last two years of Foster's administration. Blanco is the first governor since Roemer to be willing to fly around the world to seek jobs.
Blanco's critics are focusing on the fact that her trip did not produce any signed agreements, but it wasn't designed to: it was a get-us-on-the-map trip. The next governor, whether it is Blanco or U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, will have to make repeat trips to Asia if Louisiana is going to be a player in the world economy, and not just a host to gaming players.
U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery of Shreveport was disheartened by the Republican loss of control over the U.S. House. He has spent years and raised millions for other Republican candidates, with the endgame in mind of landing the chairmanship of the very powerful U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.
Other members of Louisiana's Republican congressional delegation were more upset over McCrery's missing the brass ring than they were at the prospect of being backbenchers in the new Washington order. Some political observers predicted McCrery would leave Congress.
"To be honest, I certainly considered that, but have decided to stay and become the ranking minority member of the Ways and Means Committee, the minority chairman. So I will direct one-third of the committee staff," McCrery said.
"My hope is to work constructively with the chairman to achieve some of the policy goals that I hope we can discover we share, and work toward some compromise on those issues on which we differ," McCrery said.
U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York he recently apologized to Mississippi for an intemperate remark about "who wants to live there?" will chair the committee. (He's not promised to visit our sister state soon to smooth it all over.)
Democrats, who said they were being mistreated, boycotted the committee's retreats for several years. But McCrery said he told Rangel that Republicans would go on the retreats "as long as he was willing to let us participate in selection of presenters." The first retreat is with the U.S. Treasury Department and U.S. trade representatives in early February, McCrery said.
There will have to be more bipartisan cooperation because the presidential veto power remains in Republican control.
One beneficiary of that will be U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-New Orleans, who is more of a centrist Democrat. She'll be in the old John Breaux role of mediator. Landrieu often voted with the Republican majority in the past.
U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, said the Louisiana congressional delegation has been united in a bipartisan solidarity by a common enemy: the hurricanes.
Boustany said he's worked well with Democrats like Landrieu and U.S. Reps. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, "particularly after the hurricanes."
The Louisianans "are willing to pick up the telephone and talk to each other about problems," more so he thinks that most in the partisan divide that Washington has become. "We have worked well together across the board."