Obama's reach

The Nation's Robert Borosage (Mar 23, 2009 issue) says that President Obama's first budget "is an audacious plan to transform America."

Even while dealing with the economic crisis, he demands that we address the nation's most pressing problems, from catastrophic climate change to a broken health care system, from energy policy to a faultering education system, from Wall St. to Main St. And then, when the economy has stabilized and returned to growth, he will call for a new tax policy that addresses the growing gap between the wealthy class and the working class.

If he is able to get this budget enacted, with its policy implications, this will be the most ambitious progressive program at least since Lindon Johnson's Great Society; some are saying since FDR's New Deal.

But it will be difficult, and special interests are already gearing up. It won't just be the "Say No" Republicans. Quoting Borosage:

To help pay for this, he slaughters many sacred cows. He'll slash the obscene subsidies handed to insurance companies to compete with Medicare. Reduce prescription drug prices. Cut subsidies to agribusiness. Let Bush's tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 expire. Tax the earnings of equity fund managers as income. Cut subsidies to oil companies. Eliminate banks from the student loan program.

This will spark the mother of all budget battles. Agribusiness, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Wall Street, the business, insurance and military lobbies--all are gearing up multimillion-dollar campaigns to block, limit or delay the change. Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, will offer massive resistance, railing against deficit spending and taxes. A citizen mobilization will be needed across the country to sustain the reforms. Soon after the budget rollout, Obama warned the country that the lobbyists and interests are "gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: so am I."

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But none of this should distract from the scope of the battle ahead. The president has repudiated the failed conservative policies of the past and called on the country to change course. He has put forth a budget that calls for sweeping change. He has raised the stakes. This will be a transformational presidency if he succeeds. We dare not let him fail.

We dare not let him fail. If we do, it will set back progressive reform for another generation. This is the moment. We dare not let US fail.

Ralph