It was the first of two long days for me, and I didn’t get home in time to watch the Speech. I did read it, though.
If I understand it correctly, there’s a bill Mr. Obama wants Congress to pass. Right away. If for any reason you don’t think that’s a good idea, you are probably a millionaire or billionaire who wants to expose kids to mercury. Also, you’ll be turning your back on the “fairness and security that has defined this nation since our beginning.” (Right, because who doesn’t look back fondly on the generous Federal entitlements, lavish social programs, and protective government regulations of the 1790s?)
Yes, it will cost a lot of money, some significant portion of a trillion dollars. Don’t worry, though: it’ll all be paid for. How? Well, you may recall that one of the results of the debt-limit scuffle was the creation of a “super-committee” that was going to take on the enormously difficult task of cutting the increases in Federal spending by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. So while they’re at it, they can just figure out how to pay for this extra half-a-trillion or whatever, too. Should be a snap. (After all, if they can’t manage a little thing like this, they aren’t very “super”, are they?)
All told: pretty great! The only real downside, as blogger Iowahawk just pointed out in a “tweet”, is going to be “the traffic jams tomorrow, with all those businesses rushing to hire people.”
So there you have it, Congress: the President’s done his job. Now do yours.
17 Comments
Actually, the super committee is not tasked with “cutting the increases in Federal spending by $1.5 trillion.” Its assignment is to reduce the deficit by that amount, which can be done with tax increases as well as spending cuts.
Imagine that you are Barack Obama. The housing market bubble is still being deflated. There’s no reason to build a lot of new homes when the overhang is still being worked off. The population is aging and health care costs continue to increase. A decade was wasted obsessing about Islamic terrorism instead of economic growth, and the bills for the two unpaid wars continue to grow. (The total cost of the Iraq war, including debt service and veterans’ benefits, is estimated at $4 trillion, much of which has yet to be paid.) A large part of the workforce does not have the skills to compete in a global economy. The infrastructure sucks. The declared aim of the opposition party is to remove you from power, and will oppose whatever you propose, regardless of what it happens to be. You’ve stabilized the economy from losing 700,000 jobs a month when you took office to a multi-year expansion which is starting to sputter. Besides cursing the day you first thought of running for President, what do you do?
Mark Zandi, who was McCain’s economic advisor in 2008, said that if Obama’s agenda were enacted, there would be a decrease of 1% in the unemployment rate and an increase of 2% of GDP. Seems like a reasonable trade-off to me. Your plan is what, exactly?
You’re right about the task the deficit commission faces. I should have said “cutting the increase in the deficit”, not Federal spending. I stand corrected.
Among the things Mr. Obama proposed, there are indeed several things that conservatives can support, including the payroll-tax cuts (as long as they aren’t too short-term and too narrowly targeted) and, in particular, reducing federal regulation. Burdens like Sarbanes-Oxley are a tremendous weight on small business. And it hardly encourages job creation when the Federal government harasses businesses in the way, for example, that it’s recently done with Boeing and Gibson.
A reform that leads to a clean and fair corporate tax code is another point mentioned by Mr. Obama that would indeed have a salubrious effect, and would be easy to sell to conservatives.
In an era when American citizens can’t find work, how about enforcing the damn immigration laws?
But more Keynesian wine in the same old bottle, to be paid for in some vague way somewhere down the road, when we’re already suffocating in debt? I don’t think so.
And Mr. Obama would be better served, I think, if he would drop the patronizing tone, and stop demonizing successful individuals and private enterprise.
Finally, a great many in Congress were offended by his repeatedly demanding that they pass legislation “right away” that they haven’t even seen yet. It’s insulting.
1) The statement that “burdens like Sarbanes-Oxley are a tremendous weight on small business” is incorrect. SOX regulates the activity of public companies. Since nearly all small businesses are privately held, SOX imposes no burden on them at all.
2) I agree about Boeing and the recent lawsuit against the banks. However, it’s not an easy call. There are substantial grounds to suggest that Boeing violated labor law, and the case against the banks is bullet proof. The executive is charged with enforcing the law, and giving a free pass to corporate misdoing creates problems of its own. I agree with you because I think you have to decide what your highest priority is, which in this case would be stimulating the economy. There are strong arguments to be made for both sides here.
3) Keynesian economics worked well in stabilizing the economy in 2009 from its death spiral. As Nobel Prize winner and Princeton University economist Paul Krugman noted at the time, a $787 billion stimulus plan (which was ~ 40% tax cuts) was probably too small in the context of a $15 trillion economy and the severity of the economic collapse. Obama has two choices: allow a few more years of stagnation so the baby can cry itself to sleep, or accelerate economic growth with more fiscal stimulus. If Zandi’s projections are correct, Obama’s proposed bills seem reasonable and prudent to stimulate growth and lower unemployment.
I know that Sarbanes-Oxley applies only to public companies. The point regarding S.O. in particular is that it puts a huge obstacle in the path of small businesses seeking to go public. Once S.O. was passed the rate of public offerings dropped dramatically, and never recovered. So if Mr. Obama really is serious about reducing some of this regulatory burden, that is indeed welcome, and I’m sure it will be warmly received on the Right.
We all know how Paul Krugman feels about things, of course. What is always evident in everything Mr. Obama says and does is the belief that the solution to all problems, real or imagined, is always more government, more tinkering, more spending, more collectivism — more, more, more.
Sarbanes Oxley was passed in 2002 following Enron’s collapse in a nearly unanimous vote, so I suppose your point is the Obama should have rolled back Bush-era regulation. Like any other regulation, it’s a trade-off. Even assuming that your contention is correct — that SOX inhibited public offerings by small business — the question becomes whether preventing another Enron or MCI is worth keeping some number of companies in private hands.
I am not sure what imagined problems Obama seeks to solve with greater government involvement. However, of the many very real problems that we have, many of them are so intractable that robust government involvement has the greatest probability of solving them. Throughout its history, America has grown by executing bold programs: the WPA, the Marshall Plan, the highway system, the space program, Medicare, and Social Security. The conventional wisdom is that any bold plans by Obama will be defeated by the Lilliputians in Congress. Perhaps this is so. What is certain is that if our future is determined by men of small vision, our best days are certainly behind us.
Sure – I’ve never made any brief for George Bush as a conservative paragon or enlightened statesman. I couldn’t care less who was in charge when this or that regulation was passed; if it is now a millstone around our necks, get rid of it.
I quite agree that our best days are most likely behind us. However, though it may seem axiomatic to you that to envision a smaller government makes one a man “of small vision”, it certainly doesn’t seem that way to a great many of the rest of us.
The Founders themselves imagined a strictly limited role for the Federal government (and would surely be appalled at what the beast has become). Were they “men of small vision”?
Certainly not. However, they replaced the “strictly limited role for the Federal government” which existed under the Articles of Confederation with a Constitution with a much stronger central government. Nor was there unanimity among the Founders – there was a raging debate on how robust the federal government should be, and you can go through the Federalist Papers and find arguments on both sides. Hence they provided a framework which provided many enumerated powers plus a “necessary and proper” clause which made the document agnostic on whether the government’s role should be limited or expansive.
However, it is intellectually reckless to extrapolate from a pre-industrial agrarian economy to modern post-industrial society. To paraphrase the Beatles: now our land has changed in oh so many ways. Whether or not they would have been “appalled” by today’s government is anybody’s guess.
I quite agree that it isn’t realistic to think that the US could function with the same infrastructure as it had in the 1790s — and I don’t think anybody is suggesting that it could. (I just thought it was silly of Mr. Obama, in arguing against efforts to scale back our morbid Federal obesity even slightly, to speak in terms of what had “defined our nation since the beginning”.) But yes, obviously an enormous, modern industrial nation like the US needs a large and complex government.
The point, though, is that even someone who agrees, like me (and like almost all conservatives), that we need a large and complex government, can nevertheless make a reasonable case that the government as it is might still be bigger, more complex, more intrusive, more collectivist, and more burdensome than it needs to be, and that the nation’s health would benefit by seeking to pare it back where possible, instead of expanding it at every turn.
Presumably there is some sort of “sweet spot” regarding the size and scope of the Federal government. Liberals think we are still south of it, conservatives think we’re somewhere north of it. So we’re going to push in different directions.
If for any reason you don’t think that’s a good idea, you are probably a millionaire or billionaire who wants to expose kids to mercury.
The majority of billionaires are most likely on board with another “stimulus”. The last one was written specifically to put money in their pockets.
Throughout its history, America has grown by executing bold programs: the WPA, the Marshall Plan, the highway system, the space program, Medicare, and Social Security.
Fascinating. Apparently America never “grew” prior to the 1930’s.
A decade was wasted obsessing about Islamic terrorism instead of economic growth
Not by you. The Democratic Party spent a decade obsessing about how much it hatehateHATED George W Bushitler who was “selected-not-elected”. Then it spent the last three years doling out taxpayer money to the people who donated money to it.
Besides cursing the day you first thought of running for President, what do you do?
You do what you are supposed to do and what is your sworn duty as President – you start securing the border and cracking down on illegal immigration, thus taking meaningful action on all sorts of social problems, including unemployment, at no cost.
Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
Not worth responding to the seemingly unhinged Severn. I have better things to do with my time, like use Google maps to see if I can locate Greasy Lake.
No? He seems perfectly well-hinged to me.
It’s about a mile down the dark side of Route 88.
Got a bottle of ouzo? Let’s try it.
Other conundrums from rock & roll include: why does everyone know Lil McGill as Nancy? How does Major Tom just float away into space? Doesn’t he get hungry? And from the Eagles: where exactly is the cheatin’ side of town? Is there an option on Google Maps which will help me find it?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Not worth responding to the seemingly unhinged Severn. I have better things to do with my time
Like writing comments about how beneath you it is to write comments responding to me.
There must be a section on this in the Troll’s Handbook.
Oy.
1) Of course America grew before 1930. Much of its growth is due to bold government programs, like the one which recognized that admitting successive waves of immigrants is a pretty good idea, and hence built an apparatus which facilitated unprecedented levels of large-scale immigration. Or the local programs which contributed to the growth of New York City, which has always had a progressive and active government. Or the combination of the two, which led to New York being the world’s pre-eminent city. Your point is what, exactly?
2) Re the Bush Hitler thing: there will always be a few hot heads on both extremes, like the ones on the Right who think that Obama was born in Kenya. Hold on: that was the majority of Republican primary voters a few months ago. OK, bad example.
The fact is that when you rain untold destruction on a country based on phony intelligence, abandon another war, give up on finding bin Laden, ignore the Constitution, torture innocents, and crash the economy, some people will get pretty cheesed off. Making fun of people’s names is never a good idea, which is why I would never make a joke about Willard Romney.
What puzzles me is the sheer level of vitriol directed at Obama. Even here in the Bay Area, yesterday I saw a car festooned with art depicting Obama’s name, except the O was a cartoonish figure squatting and pooping. (Of course, I keyed the car.) Let’s put aside the fact that Obama hasn’t come anywhere close to committing any of the errors of his predecessor. There has been no scandal in his administration: no Watergate or Monica Lewinsky. There has been no blatant disregard of the Constitution: no Iran-Contra or warrantless surveillance. Even his critics have to acknowledge that he is a smart and honest man who is doing his best. If you want to disagree with him on fiscal policy or health care, that’s fine — but those are policy differences, not the sort of thing which leads to national shame. Yet if you read the comments board on any news or political website pertaining to Obama, you will see a steady stream of vicious, nasty, and occasionally outright racist bile.
3) As far as “doling out money,” it went to red states and blue states, Congressional districts which will never vote Democratic in a zillion years as well as our Kos reading, sandal wearing, Prius driving, Micheal Moore ticket stub holding communities here in the Bay Area, where I am fortunate enough to live. Old and young; black and white; lower class, middle class, upper class. You are a fool spouting nonsense.
4) The fact is that illegal immigration has declined substantially since Obama became President. However, I don’t expect you to have any interest in facts, or to be able to entertain any concept more nuanced than that which fits on a bumper sticker.
Severn,
All you have to know about “the one-eyed” Dick Ed is that, in his considered opinion, batshit-crazy Pelosi is a great public servant.