"What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further," he said. "We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else's."
And on unions:
The president-elect also gave his support for legislation that would
make it easier for workers to unionize, but he said there may be other
ways to achieve the same goal without angering businesses. And while
many Democrats on Capitol Hill are eager to see a quick vote on that bill, he indicated no desire to rush into the contentious issue.
"If we're losing half a million jobs a month, then there are no jobs to
unionize, so my focus first is on those key economic priority items I
just mentioned," he said. "Let's see what the legislative docket looks
like."
Is that a "no"?
The real question for progressives to ask is why this is happening (in the interests of fairness, I should add that libertarians need to ask themselves similar questions about the Bush years). It is too soon for them to vilify Obama, so you'll either hear mutterings about him not being bold enough or just not hear much at all. The deeper reality is that Obama understands that this country was set up to be governed from the center and he'd rather start there than move there after two years of failed attempts to do something else. Don't be taken in by those funny maps they show about how the Democratic legislators are further left than before; the more power you have, the harder it is not to govern from the center.
The bottom line: If I'm happy so far, a lot of you out there have to be unhappy.
The key argument Obama made is this: “We can’t solve Medicare in isolation from the broader problems of the health-care system.”
In other words, he’s going to “solve” Medicare by giving us national health care. Tyler, do you now think that’s a great idea? Is it a solution to the problem of Medicare to create the same obligations for everyone else? (Oh, I know there will be cost containment–we’ll go after the drug companies and other innovators first. But that won’t be enough to make these promises sustainable.)
Oh dear, as a libertarian, I have been asking myself about Bush for a long time. I’ve long said he was a Democrat. But I now think the names Republican and Democrat are totally meaningless – as you note, they are both plain old centrists.
So to answer the questions, “Why is this happening?” Government has little to do with governing, and everything to do with winning votes. So today’s politician’s platforms rest on finding proposals that are equally abhorrent to both sides of the fence so at least people can shrug and say, “Well, I’m not happy, but hahaha, I bet he’s not happy either.” So it seems the goal is to achieve defacto satisfaction out of knowing everyone else is just as miserable as we are.
“Don’t be taken in by those funny maps they show about how the Democrat legislators are further left than before;”
Of course it likely only matters where the median of the majority is not the outliers.
The median NOMINATE scores [-1 to 1] for house democrats from the 89 to the 109th are:
-0.2420, -0.2420, -0.2830, -0.2830, -0.2820, -0.2820, -0.2900, -0.2900, -0.2790, -0.2790, -0.3000, -0.3000, -0.3030, -0.3030, -0.3125, -0.3125, -0.3205, -0.3205, -0.3205, -0.3205, -0.3290, -0.3290, -0.3255, -0.3255, -0.3190, -0.3190, -0.3190, -0.3190, -0.3200, -0.3200, -0.3190, -0.3190, -0.3200, -0.3200, -0.3215, -0.3215, -0.3230, -0.3230, -0.3230, -0.3230, -0.3360, -0.3360, -0.3885, -0.3885, -0.3885, -0.3885
It certainly looks like they have shifted left.
“the more power you have, the harder it is not to govern from the center.”
Interesting conjecture. Got a causal mechanism in mind for that?
Obama rightly perceives that replacing secret ballot voting with card check will have exactly the sort of negative consequences that prevent us from using a card check analogue in the political process. I wish, though, that he would tell the people pushing it to drop the subject.
I am distrurbed that Tyler seems to think that he has the ability to accuratly interpret Obama speak. I in contrats think that Obama has spent most of his political career avoiding taking strong stands. You listen to an Obama speech and you say that sounds nice, how is he going to do that?
In his comments Obama is a Social Democrat i.e. he believes that capitalism is deeply flawed and leads to social injustice. For Obama, the heavy hand of government, through regulation and taxation, must fairly reallocate resources. Of course what one person thinks is fair is highly subjective. Property rights and effiency are secondary concerns to the pursuit of equitable outcomes.
Tyler may think that he has a special ability to read the Obama tea leaves, I would urge greater caution. We may just all be redfining what the center is in this country.
Unfortunately, Congress isn’t populated with any of these. Game over, thanks for playing.
sounds like a recipe for a robust form of government
I am one of those who does not think we need to do anything
about social security, the position of Obama during the campaign,
at least for his presidency. The system has beaten the “low cost”
projection in as many years as it has not recently, the projection
under which the system never runs a deficit, although most people
have no idea of this at all (or that if the system goes “bankrupt”
in 2041, it will mean that recipients will “only” get about 120% in
real terms of what current ones do, eeeeek). So, I am not pleased
about this caving in to conventional stupidity and ignorance, oooops,
I mean “wisdom.” It would appear that this is a combination of the
influence of Larry Summers getting to be “economics czar,” who has
long drank the “social security reform” kool-aid, and perhaps Obama
thinking he needs to throw this bone to the “blue dog” Dems in the
Senate who are worried about longer term deficits, particularly Kent
Conrad, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, who has also long
imbibed of the same kool-aid.
I am still waiting for someone to explain what measures for reigning in Medicare costs require a complete overhaul of healthcare financing first? What, exactly, could Medicare do with single-payer for all that it cannot do today? Why not tackle Medicare/Medicaid first and show a palatable way to reduce healthcare costs, then sell this plan to the general public?
“For Obama, the heavy hand of government, through regulation and taxation, must fairly reallocate resources.”
It’s a good thing Bush didn’t reallocate resources. (Guffaw.)
to meter
Bush was not a great President. However, Obama wants to allocate resources based on his idea of social justice. Perhaps even more worrying is that he wants to allocate trillions from future generations to pay for the bad business decisions of the recent past.
Using the power of the government to reallocate private property, to increase taxes without regard to effieciency, to increase the death tax, and to impose massive taxes on future generations hardly seems like steps to make the country better. Which of these steps do you think will improve the future for the country?
Some grown up needs to sit Obama down and explain to him how democracy actually works outside of a civics textbook.
Yes, maybe an anonymous blog commenter named “StreetWalker” could spend a few minutes with the President-Elect of the United States to teach an ex-Senator and ex-State Senator how the government works in the real world.
However, Obama wants to allocate resources based on his idea of social justice.
I really don’t understand this kind of thinking. The tax structure under Obama will be more or less the same as it was under Bush. I’m not saying you have to like it but where do you get this idea that Obama is going to radically change the philosophy behind taxation and government spending?? “A marginal rate of 35% for the top tax bracket is a natural property of the world, completely disconnected from anyone’s ideas about social justice. If Obama (and Congress) changes that to 37%, then he’s imposing his own personal idiosyncratic view of social justice on us and life will never be the same.” Uh no, he would just be raising some tax rates, just like Bush lowered some tax rates.
Bush raised taxes on future generations when he raised government spending, you know. Again, it’s one thing to think spending should be higher or lower, but why the fascination with the completely unrealistic case of zero taxes and spending as an ideal free of conceptions of “social justice”? What does that add?
Don’t be taken in by those funny maps they show about how the Democratic legislators are further left than before; the more power you have, the harder it is not to govern from the center.
I love how meaningless tropes are thrown around. Would anyone care to define what “the center” is?
Sorry Ami but a great deal about my life changes with the death tax. My biggest motivation is to provide for my children. I save, live below my means, as my immigrant parents did, with the hope that my children will have an advantage that I did not have. This has worked for generations of Americans and is part of what has made this country. You see to think that is self centered. Am I worried that my offspring may waste the money? No but I do fear that the government will piss most of it away.
mulp, you are making the common error of conflating health care with health care financing. What Obama is actually calling for is a free market in health care financing. I have not seen any proposals from his team that would create a free market in health care.
Is that a “no”?
It’s a “don’t worry about it.” And you’re not worrying about it, so job done. I predict Obama will make some amusingly small concession, like a 60% card-carrying threshold for automatic unionization instead of 50%.
Does anyone else here see a pattern of Obama seemingly putting issues on a back-burner during interviews, only for people like Gibbs to reassure the base that those issues will in fact be addressed? For instance, Obama says, from about September onwards, that repealing DADT is going to have to be done by building consensus with the military. Then Gibbs gives an utterly unambiguous promise to repeal it. The consensus, in other words, will be what Obama wants it to be. Or Guantanamo – Obama says it’s complicated and might take more than 100 days, then has ‘officials’ tell the NYT he’ll issue the order on day one, and makes sure they agonize a bit about not detaining anyone indefinitely.
To Barber
You ignore the other issues. Still Social Security from the start was a forced retirement system to provide some minimum level of support. The wealthy were seen as able to buy their own private insurance. Increasingly, we have had a disconnect between benefits out and payments into the system. Obama just wants to take the final step and just make it a welfare system i.e. little relationship between how much you put into the system and how much you get back. Instead of increasing the Social Security tax rate, reducing benefits, etc, he prefers to just increase taxes people making over $100,000 or what ever it is this year.
BTW didn’t Obama clainm that he only wanted to increase taxes on people over $250,000? Payrole taxes don’t count?
We are indeed at the end of the road! This problem has to be tackled immediately, so we don’t end up with public debt at several hundred percent of GDP (as The Economist recently projected). Past administrations have let this fall by the wayside. We’re running out of time; that can’t happen again. http://malcontentist.com/2009/01/to-do-list-for-barack-obama-part-1
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