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While $5 billion dollars could be spent well on any number of policy priorities in Obama's first term, I think that an investment in science and technology, specifically focusing on energy efficiency and innovation around alternative energy, would provide the most concentrated set of benefits, as well as spill-over effects in a variety of other areas. I agree with Barack Obama that we need a new Space Race, in which the enormous economic and educational power spent by previous generations of American leaders on competing with the Soviets is channeled into solving the twin problems of fossil fuel depletion and global warming. I would like to emphasize, though, the importance of competition and innovation (free market ideas put towards progress in addition to profit) in making sure this money is well spent.

More specifically, an increase in scholarship money for the sciences is needed, especially for lower-income children. An investment in technological entrepreneurship is a way to ensure future job growth; by tying awards to both performance and need, in much that same way that wealthy private universities pay full tuition for qualified lower-income applicants, the brunt of this job creation will be in the neediest sectors. This would leave existing federal financial aid in place, but supplement it to  provide opportunity for economically-disadvantaged students to enroll in elite science and technology schools. In 21st-century America, there should never be a "ghetto Einstein," unable to get the support and training he or she needs due to inadequate education funding.

A similarly entrepreneurial approach, on a grander scale, would be creating a series of government-funded "prizes" for various modeled after the Ansari X-Prize for private spacecraft development. This has already been started; House legislation creating the hydrogen fuel cell "H Prizes" has been signed into law, though it has yet to be awarded. Here, instead of subsidizing underperforming technology (a common criticism of many green jobs schemes), the government can step in and raise aspirations beyond what's conceivable today. Such a scheme could not only reward excellence and create jobs, it could lead to whole new industries opening up.

Luckily, while making no specific mention of the prize idea in their agendas on change.gov in energy and technology policy, the Obama administration already seems to be taking these sorts of initiatives seriously, and many other common sense policy proposals in this field (weatherizing houses, subsidizing energy-efficient appliances, etc.). Besides the prize idea, these are all ideas widely held as beneficial in his circle of advisors. Let's just hope that in working to create "Green Jobs," the administration focuses on rewarding excellence and innovation, and less on political sops like corn ethanol and "clean coal," or broad subsidies that use taxpayer money to increase market inefficiencies.

-- Will Payne

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