Change We Didn’t Need
Here’s an interesting article from The Washington Post explaining why the 2008 election meant a lot less than it seemed to at the time. As the country discovers how deceptive, empty and expensive the promises of “change” are turning out to be, disenchantment is growing by the minute. Worth a full read…
In the aftermath of last year’s Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics — most prominently, rising minorities and the young — would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed “The Death of Conservatism,” while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.
This was all ridiculous from the beginning. The ‘08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.
America has become more of a welfare state than most of us would care to admit as Robert Samuelson details in a recent article. The shock to many will come when it becomes obvious that the promises made by Government are so large that they simply cannot be kept.
Washington Post - Raised in an individualistic culture, Americans dislike the concept of the “welfare state” and do not use the term. But make no mistake, the United States has a welfare state, and its future is precarious. The true significance of General Motors’ bankruptcy lies more with this welfare state than with the battered condition of American capitalism.
Broadly speaking, the U.S. welfare system divides into two parts — the private, run by firms; and the public, provided by government. Both are besieged: private companies by competitive pressures; government by rising debt and taxes. GM exemplified the large corporation as private welfare state. In contracts with the United Auto Workers, GM promised high wages, lifetime employment, generous pensions and comprehensive health insurance. All this is ancient history: New workers get skimpier benefits.
What most Americans identify as government “welfare” are payments to single mothers, food stamps and (perhaps) Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor.
But that’s not the half of it. Since 1960, government has changed radically. Then, 52 percent of federal spending went for defense, 26 percent for “payments for individuals” — the welfare state. By 2008, 61 percent consisted of “payments for individuals,” 21 percent for defense.
Social Security and Medicare — programs for the elderly — represented the biggest share: $1 trillion in 2008. Most Americans don’t consider these programs “welfare,” but they are. Benefits are paid mainly by present taxes; there’s little “saving” for future benefits; Congress can alter benefits whenever it wants. If that’s not welfare, what would be?
In theory, expanding public welfare could offset eroding private welfare. President Obama’s health-care proposal reflects that logic. The trouble is that the public sector also faces enormous cost pressures, driven by an aging population and rising health costs. The Congressional Budget Office projects the federal debt will double as a share of the economy (gross domestic product) to 82 percent of GDP by 2019.
Any sober examination of figures like these suggests that the system has promised more than it can realistically deliver. We are borrowing not to finance investment in the future but to pay for today’s welfare — present consumption. Sooner or later, the huge debt will weaken the economy. Nor would paying for all promised benefits with higher taxes be desirable. Big increases in either debt or taxes risk depressing economic growth, making it harder yet to pay promised benefits.
Politicians for the most part do not understand basic finance and they get elected based on who promises the most, regardless of the ability to pay. Do not expect things to change until America’s overextended credit line is cutoff.
How Obama Is Like Spock
President Obama has seen the new Star Trek movie. “Everybody was saying I was Spock, so I figured I should check it out,” he told Newsweek.
Obama is often compared to Spock because he never gets too hot or too cool and speaks in the careful way of a logician. But the president and the fictional character seem to have the same kind of empathy, too.
For Obama, empathy has long been the key to delivering the change in the political structure that he talks so much about. Here’s how he explained this approach as it applies to his decision-making: “[Opponents] might not, at the end of it, agree with me, but having seen how I’m thinking about a problem, having a sense of how I’m making decisions, that I understand their point of view, that I can actually make their argument for them, and that that’s part of the decision-making process, it gives them a sense, at least, that they’ve been heard, and … it pushes us away from the dogmas and caricatures that I think get in the way of good policymaking and a more civil tone in our politics.”
Great article with insights into the Presidential thought process as it relates to decision making.
Newsweek - A Conversation With Barack Obama
Inside the mind of Barack Obama - an in depth interview worth the full read.
Obama: “One of the extraordinary privileges of not only being president but being president at a time of great difficulty is that your plate is full and the decisions we’re making and the policies we’re pursuing I absolutely know will make a difference.”
In Obama’s universe, strength and subtlety are not mutually exclusive. He may make the wrong call—things could go disastrously awry, at home or abroad, on his watch—but one of the most interesting and underappreciated things to emerge from these early days is how comfortable Obama is in making the call. He savors exercising the power of the presidency.
Obama, at least in my experience, is different. There may be some small talk, but very little; and there is none of the conventional journalistic flirtation-by-compliment. This is business, time is valuable, so let’s get on with it.
“But one of the things I’ve actually been encouraged by—and I learned during the campaign—was the American people, I think, not only have a toleration but also a hunger for explanation and complexity, and a willingness to acknowledge hard problems. I think one of the biggest mistakes that is made in Washington is this notion you have to dumb things down for the public. I’ve always been struck by the fact that, if you can get me in a room with a group of people, even who disagree with me violently on an issue, they’ll still take the time to listen.”
“What I’ve learned, I think, [is] that the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party after Ronald Reagan’s election, when it’s been in power for a long time, has trouble making an adjustment—not just to minority status but also to self-reflection. I think there’s a certain period of time where you insist on talking only to your base instead of to the American people more broadly. And I suspect that they’ll make an adjustment.”
Thought Provoking Links
Even some loyal Democrats are feeling queasy about what will happen if, as seems likely, Al Franken wins the endless dispute over that Senate seat from Minnesota. With Arlen Specter’s recent conversion, that would give the Democrats 60 seats, or three-fifths of the Senate, which is a filibuster-proof majority.
We have endured gridlocked government for so long that the idea of a president and a Congress from the same party enacting the legislation that they promised to enact while they were running for office seems almost unnatural.
The president and his party in Congress face the terrifying prospect of being able to fulfill their campaign promises. They will have no excuse if there is no health-care reform or energy reform, or if there are and they are disasters.
Now, when the voters demand change, they may well get it. We’ll see how they like it.
America is on the great quest for “change”. Although a great campaign slogan, when faced with the reality of real change, most people are terrified. With what can only be described as near dictatorial power compared to previous Presidents, the Obama administration is likely to bring the status quo to an abrupt halt. The power to act decisively could be a huge positive for the country - time will tell.
Speaker’s Comments Raise Detainee Debate To New Level
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s extraordinary accusation that the Bush administration lied to Congress about the use of harsh interrogation techniques dramatically raised the stakes in the growing debate over the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies even as it raised some questions about the speaker’s credibility.
Pelosi’s performance in the Capitol was either a calculated escalation of a long-running feud with the Bush administration or a reckless act by a politician whose word had been called into question. Perhaps it was both.Washington is now engaged in a battle royal of finger pointing..
Conservatives say that, if Pelosi was so opposed to torture, she should have spoken out forcefully when she learned that these techniques were being employed.
The president wants the focus kept on the future…
Each side seems to have something to prove. Meanwhile, real issues we face today and in the future are being sidetracked. No one is better than a politician at pointing fingers and blaming others. It’s time to move on to more important issues.
TWO TRILLION dollars in health-care savings, as hailed by President Obama in the White House yesterday, would be nothing to sneeze at.
The White House has emphasized repeatedly that health-care reform is entitlement reform — that is, an answer to the nation’s long-term fiscal challenge. Yet, so far, it is backing a plan to expand coverage that would cost taxpayers between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years, while it has proposed health-care savings of only $309 billion. There is a danger that the administration and Congress alike will be tempted to “pay for” actual government expenditures with presumed but unspecified savings, like those promised yesterday. In fact, even as they promise cost control, a number of the groups that met with the president yesterday also have argued that health-care reform should not be held to Congress’s pay-as-you-go rules.
The White House has stated clearly that any reform bill should be fully paid for. To ease suspicions that the associations he met with yesterday are only talking a good game on cost control to ensure a seat at the bargaining table of health-care reform, the president will have to reaffirm his commitment to pay fully for health care and get to that goal without gimmicks.
In 2007 the U.S. bill for health care amounted to 17% of gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 11% in Switzerland and Germany and 10% in Canada and France. There is no evidence in terms of over all health or longevity that suggests the U.S. is getting any benefit for spending almost twice as much on health care as other industrialized nations. Savings on health care are, of course, theoretically doable but getting there will be the hard part. One person’s “savings” usually means a cost or pay cut to someone else - and that “someone else” is likely to resist.
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