As our esteemed members of Congress debate the proposed $700 billion bailout to keep our economy from going into a tailspin, there are few certainties about the current economic climate.

The solution to our economic and environmental problems?

Here are a few of them:

1. The economy has too much money leveraged against itself. Read Jim Manzi’s post in The American Scene for the best non-partison, layman’s-terms explanation I’ve found for why we’re in such a mess.
2. The federal government has to do something to avoid a financial meltdown.
3. It’s going to be really, really expensive.

As scary as these things sound, there are steps the government can take in addition to any bailout that will address the root of the problem, and not just prevent our largest financial institutions from collapsing. It’s time for a new, green deal.

Happily for me, and anyone else who cares about the future of our planet as much as their 401k, government money spent on improving infrastructure will put money back in the pockets of working Americans. The first domino fell in this crisis when an increasing number of people could not afford to pay their mortgages. Foreclosures went up, housing values tanked and the backbone of too much of our economy (home equity) began to evaporate. Part of this is because banks were irresponsible in granting loans, true. But part of this is also because people have to spend $4 per gallon of gas to get to work. It is because electricity, natural gas and heating oil prices are all rising faster than the paychecks of most Americans.

A solar thermal energy farm in California's Mojave Desert.

There is a solution to high energy prices, and it is not off-shore drilling. We need to make mass transit an option for people who don’t work in Washington, D.C. or New York. We need to revamp the power grid to make it more efficient and eliminate transmission loss of electrical power. We need to construct the infrastructure to get energy from wind farms in the Midwest and solar thermal fields in the desert to mainstream America.

The Senate took a positive first step today, when it passed an extension and expansion of the renewable energy tax credit, but we need more of a push in this direction. There are real-life solutions to our energy crisis rather than turning everything nuclear (McCain’s basic energy plan, coupled with pointless offshore drilling), or wasting time and money on clean coal (a pipe-dream that Obama keeps bringing up to gain favor in the rust belt).

Improved mass transit and efficient power lines are not technical impossibilities, like carbon sequestration. So far, all devised methods of carbon capture and storage would be so energy-intensive that there would be no net decrease in the environmental footprint of burning coal for electricity, not to mention that burying liquid carbon in an empty oil well is no guarantee it would stay there.

Have you ever wondered why it’s easier to take a high-speed passenger train from Paris to Athens than from Atlanta to Washington, D.C.? Ever tried to get to work in a mid-size city without a car? Have you ever loaded the family onto a train for your summer beach trip?

No, you haven’t, but you could. Yes, it’s expensive, but good Lord, what are we spending our money on now? Trillions to Iraq. Potentially $700 billion for a bailout, with no guarantee that there won’t be more bailouts over the horizon.

A conservative’s conservative, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., points out there are a lot of problematic aspects of the bailout.

1. It would reward the greed and irresponsible lending practices that caused the problem in the first place.
2. It would bail out foreign entities that invested in the U.S.
3. Either the national government makes massive loans to these corporations or actually takes a stake in them, a nightmare for any politician who’s advocated “smaller government.”

So, conservatives, tell me why this bailout is acceptable and yet the government spending money to improve our infrastructure, grow the economy by providing jobs and lowering energy costs for everyone is socialism.

The worst part of it is, the Republican Party of today isn’t really conservative anymore, at least not fiscally. We have a $9 trillion debt, thanks to the current administration and neither McCain nor Obama is going to cut back on government spending after this election.

The difference is simply where the money comes from, and for what purpose it is used. Obama wants to close tax loopholes for the wealthy and major corporations and invest money in renewables.

McCain wants to cut taxes even further for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, claiming that will boost the economy from the top down. In essence, he wants to be even more George W. Bush than George W. Bush was. Does he really think it will work this time? Oil companies have never had it so good as they did under the Bush administration. Their profit margins have been shattering records year-after-year. Has any of that money trickled down to the rest of us? Of course not. Gas prices are also at record highs, and as a result of our government’s lack of investment into clean technology and renewable energy, we are more dependent on oil than ever.

The crisis has forced McCain to re-write his economic policy on the fly. For more than 20 years in the Senate, he’s fought hard for the de-regulation of Wall Street. Now, it’s becoming clear that a staggering lack of regulation allowed this crisis to fester and grow. So now he rails against the greed and corruption of Wall Street CEOs, but just a month ago, Carly Fiorina was his chief economic advisor. Fiorina, you may remember, was forced out as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, but got a $45 million going-away present as 20,000 employees were laid off because of her bad business decisions.

These are the exact “golden parachutes” McCain has decried so forcefully in the past week. He claimed on The Today Show, that he didn’t “know the details” of Fiorina’s severance package, and extols her virtues.

Either McCain is lying about not knowing the details of Fiorina’s severance, or he and his team were incredibly irresponsible in doing background checks on a very high-level adviser. Based on his track record in this campaign, I’d say it’s probably both. Yesterday, he praised her as a “role model” in the same breath that he used to demand Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs give back their severance packages.

Obama, meanwhile, is preaching more regulation, also lambasting golden parachutes, and focusing on how the government will be repaid for the deal.

Neither candidate has explicitly endorsed or rejected the Bush bailout plan, and they are both focusing more on who is to blame for the problem than what to do next. Therefore we have to look at their history and tendencies to try to determine what they will do if elected.

McCain has always been a hands-off, help industry by cutting taxes on the wealthy politician. That may help stock prices recover, but it won’t help middle and lower class families pay their mortgage or their energy bills.

Obama’s energy plan has always included investing money in renewables to provide jobs, reducing consumption of oil rather than trying to drill for more of it, and adapting our country for a clean future rather than clinging to the dirty ways of the past.

I shared these thoughts with a more conservative friend of mine a few months ago, well before we realized how serious the mortgage crisis was. I even used the phrase “New Deal” as a description of what I’d like to see happen. He responded that the New Deal was a failure and that only World War II brought us out of the Depression.

PWA workers install Chicago's first subway system, circa. 1940.

He’s right, and he’s wrong. If you see FDR’s program as simply an economic instrument meant to end the Depression, then it did technically fail. The Depression did not end because of the New Deal. The New Deal helped, but not enough.

But looking beyond, the effects of the New Deal are still being felt today. For example, only 10 percent of rural homes had electricity in the early 1930s. It was not profitable for utilities to run power lines out to the countryside, so they didn’t, until the New Deal’s TVA and Rural Electrific Administration.

It was the Public Works Administration that first brought a subway system to Chicago, so why not continue in that vein now that people can’t afford to drive their cars to work. If the government can pick up the tab to bring electricity to the rural farms, why not bring efficient wind power to the large cities? Why not expand tax incentives to make people want to put solar panels on their roofs, and spring up solar panel manufacture and installation businesses across the country?

The fact is that since The New Deal and the completion of the Eisenhower Interstate highway system, our nation’s infrastructure has taken a backseat to sexier ways to spend money. Bridges are collapsing, our power grid could use an upgrade, our highway transportation fund is in danger,  and mass transit needs a big infusion to give people an alternative to automobiles.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. Bill Clinton said government investment in green technologies could have on The Daily Show last night. Dennis Markatos, a blogger for publicradio.org, sees the crisis as an opportunity to rally behind the policies we should have enacted years ago.

So, as our government debates and throws out astronomical cost figures to solve this economic crisis, let’s not forget to expand our green economy. It makes sense economically and environmentally, and for once, Americans would not have to choose which was more important.