Obama has now revealed the board outlines of his proposed budget. It is honest, in that it does not use bushstyle accounting tricks to keep his war costs out of the budget. It is boldly progressive in its social spending and tax policy. Further, he accompanies this huge deficit budget with fiscally responsible committment to halving the deficit by the end of his first term.
If he can get anything like the main thrust of these goals passed in Congress, this will be the most progressive budget since LBJ in the 60s.
Predictably, conservatives will howl and resist, calling it socialism. So be it. I hope Obama and the Democratic congressmen will not cave in. They have the power of the public behind them, and they must use that clout to push this through. Obama has already shown his willingness to go directly to the people through local appearances, televised speeches, and use of the internet to conduct a campaign to pressure the politicians. The weak link, in my opinion, will be the leaders in Congress who sometimes seem too ready to compromise, when they actually have the power to win.
Charles Krauthammer, one of my least favorite conservative pundits, writes about the budget in today's AJC in tones that almost sound admiring, that is until you remember his premise that European style Social Democratic government is really socialism and therefore evil incarnate. He points out that this budget will increase spending, as a percentage of GDP, to the levels in the Euopean Union.
Krauthammer also points out Obama's goals, as he sees them: he wants to be to universal health care what Lyndon Johnson was to Medicare; he wants to extend universal education to the college level, just as we did for high school education during the Industrial Revolution; and he wants to be to green energy what John Kennedy was to putting a man on the moon.
For K, I supposed those are criticisms. For me, they are goals that should make us very proud and inspire us to work to make them happen. Obama is challenging us to our better possibilities -- so different from bush telling us to go shopping in the aftermath of 9/11.
Ralph
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In mentioning conservatives as the opponents Obama will have to confront in getting his budget passed, I overlooked another big source: lobbyists from industries that will be affected and their power to sway Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress.
ReplyDeleteThink health insurance companies and BigPharma; think agribusiness giants; think oil industry. Fortunately banks and the financial sectors, as well as the auto industry, are not in a position to mount much opposition in the wake of their benefits from all that bailout money.