By Ellen Ratner
Bureau Chief, Talk Radio News Service/FOX News political contributor

With Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke’s and President Bush’s comments on the economy Wednesday, I couldn’t help but wonder if America is going the way of my home city of Cleveland, Ohio.

At dinner last night in Cleveland with my friends from elementary and junior high school we lamented how our hometown was once the sixth-largest city in the country and had now dropped to somewhere in the thirties in population. The steel and manufacturing industry has all but vanished. Cleveland, once an economic center of the nation, is struggling.

In the mid-20th century Cleveland was on top. No one ever thought there would be empty stores and empty homes. There have been attempts to bring Cleveland back, such as the development of The Cleveland Clinic, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the new ball stadiums. They helped, but nothing has been done to bring real business and industry. The high-tech revolution passed Cleveland by. Many tourist attractions moved to warmer climates and tax incentives and investments in infrastructure were not early or large enough to attract new business. Money was not put into the school system to make it competitive with other countries in science and math.

With the president talking about stop-gap measures and trying to increase consumer spending, I can only wonder why we are not doing a “Manhattan Project” on energy, why we are not spending the money on infrastructure that would encourage new high-tech growth, and why we are not putting real money into making our schools highly competitive in science and math.

The trillion dollars we have spent in Iraq could have been spent on keeping America great. The current economic situation is a warning to switch our priorities while we still can, or else our entire country will go the way of Cleveland.