"Truly terrifying"
Eliot Spitzer turns a few phrases that neatly sum up the Obama Administration’s economic record so far:
…despite trillions in public spending, we are short millions of jobs, are rapidly sliding further into debt, are losing our capacity to borrow at a manageable cost, and are producing fewer of the goods that will generate real wealth.
The remarkable payments to the financial services sector and the auto industry—a quarter-trillion-dollar investment in AIG and GM alone—have produced no structural change at all. We are rebuilding the same edifice—fragile as before.
Alas, rather than proposing bold structural reforms to address these terrifying trends, the Obama Administration is focusing its domestic political capital on costly changes to the health care system and economy dampening carbon restrictions. But Conor, better health care and hedges against climate change are important! Indeed they are. What I worry about, however, is that our reckless fiscal situation is robbing us of the ability to address every important problem that ever comes up in the future.
I’d feel a lot better about spending money on health care, climate change, or any other Obama Administration priority were there significant accompanying spending cuts. Means test social security and Medicare. End the costly, ineffective War on Drugs. Tax college sports rather than subsidizing them. And even that doesn’t get the job done.
The present course is reckless, and that isn’t changed by the fact that President Bush helped bring us to the brink of fiscal disaster, or that the American people support more spending on certain items and oppose tax hikes, or any other apologia for the Obama Administration. Here’s an idea for the GOP: present a sane, centrist plan of specific, pragmatic, sometimes painful cuts to get America’s fiscal house in order, make the case that failing to adopt the plan or some similar alternative is fiscally reckless, and win on that issue because you’ll be correct.
Happily, the Obama Administration’s foreign affairs efforts are more praiseworthy. Nice speech.
Gotta tell you, again, how this looks— conservatives wreck our financial house, liberals take power, conservatives tell liberals, “sorry, we can’t enact your reforms— budgets just too messed up.”
PS Cut the defense budget by 15%.
present a sane, centrist plan of specific, pragmatic, sometimes painful cuts to get America’s fiscal house in order
Specifics?
— Freddie · Jun 4, 03:14 PM · #
Clean your spectacles, Freddie. This kind of looks like some frat boys, mostly conservatives, have got the house filthy so the new caretaker is solving the problem by burning it down. I should be happy that you liberals keep wanting to commit electoral suicide by ignoring real problems and whistling ‘Bush’ in the dark, but I would be happier if at least one party in America were reality-based.
— Adam Greenwood · Jun 4, 03:24 PM · #
Freddie,
For the sake of argument, let’s say that you’re right, and conservatives are engaged in an unfair, opportunistic obstruction of the liberal agenda. Even if that extreme charge were true, neither its unfairness nor the malign motivations of conservatives would change the reality that our financial house IS wrecked, and liberal reforms ARE unaffordable.
As you may be aware, the average American isn’t a conservative ideologue who, by your lights, wrecked everything, nor is he a liberal reformer bent on enacting the Obama agenda because that’s what is fair to liberals — the average American is a relatively apolitical pragmatist who cares very little about whether ideologues are treating one another fairly, or who wronged who.
The average American — and indeed the average Obama voter — chose him not so that he could represent liberals in their ongoing struggle against conservatives, but so that he could represent all Americans, and do what is best for the country, irrespective of whether or not it is “fair” to liberals or conservatives.
It strikes me as deeply weird to view the future fiscal health of America as a pawn in the ongoing battle between Team Red and Team Blue.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 4, 03:37 PM · #
I think the specifics are implicit, if not obvious. Don’t waste your political capital on health care reform. Use it to force structural changes in the industries you’re spending trillions of dollars to prop up. Seriously, tagging Conor with sins of “conservatives” to shut him up is a little rich. It’s as if, because of the manifold fuck-ups of the Bush Administration, not even a center-right blog that was virtually founded on distaste for movement conservatism’s infatuation with that Administration can utter a word against our Democratic president, because of some empty lexical association with that Movement, that president, and their bad old days.
— Matt Feeney · Jun 4, 03:40 PM · #
I should be happy that you liberals keep wanting to commit electoral suicide by ignoring real problems and whistling ‘Bush’ in the dark,
I know the Republican way is to declare victory at all times, but, dude. You have seen the numbers, yes?
The average American — and indeed the average Obama voter — chose him not so that he could represent liberals in their ongoing struggle against conservatives, but so that he could represent all Americans, and do what is best for the country, irrespective of whether or not it is “fair” to liberals or conservatives.
What is best for all Americans is to pass comprehensive health care reform and protect the millions who are uninsured and the millions who are underinsured.
Don’t waste your political capital on health care reform.
Spoken like someone who has health insurance. It is a moral travesty for the country with the most powerful economy in the history of the world to have citizens who are incapable of getting health care when they are sick, or of doing so without leaving themselves in financial ruin. It is the most profound tragedy of this country. The status quo cannot stand. It is an insult to any notion of social justice to say that it has to because of fiduciary responsibility, and it undermines all of our self-aggrandizing national narratives about equality or the American dream.
Moreover, don’t pretend that somehow I am playing politics and you aren’t. Settling for the status quo and waiting for change isn’t stepping outside of liberal vs. conservative, it’s just adopting the conservative message and using the canard of the Very Serious to defend it. Don’t act as though there is political content to my opinion but not to yours. Nothing annoys me so much in political argument as the person who argues politically by pretending that he isn’t.
— Freddie · Jun 4, 03:53 PM · #
“Seriously, tagging Conor with sins of “conservatives” to shut him up is a little rich.”
Metaphorically speaking, the question that Conor and Freddy both have to ask themselves is this: How can I make my point without pissing off Tony Comstock? Freddy’s got the historical edge; Conor’s got the rhetorical edge.
My questions are:
1) Can Conor perform sufficient acts of contrition and sufficient critique of this fellow travelors that I might begin to give him the benefit of the doubt?
2) Now that Freddie’s folks have the reigns of power, can he convince me that they won’t fuck it up as bad or worse than their predecessors. Can Freddy let go of his indignation and quit with the rally the base bullshit?
It’s a jump ball, boys. Wait for the whistle!
— Tony Comstock · Jun 4, 03:54 PM · #
But I’m not making the argument I’m being accused of making. Forget Bush. Forget this political moment. I am making what to me is a banal point, which is that a bipartisan political system that allows one party to act utterly irresponsibly— you know, like passing tax cuts immediately after starting a war—, then tells the other party that they can’t pass their agenda because the first side screwed up the budget so bad, is a disaster for the people of the country. I don’t care if it’s liberals or conservatives who are doing the overspending. If we constantly say “Well, I’m afraid you’ve got to put your agenda on the backburner, that’s the responsible thing to do,” and then act as if saying so isn’t in and of itself an intrinsically political act, that’s a disaster for the constituents of the current party. People are desperate for reform, and they elect leaders to put that reform into action, and if their wishes are denied because of the excesses of the party they voted against, we’re undermining the basic project of democracy.
— Freddie · Jun 4, 04:05 PM · #
A big part of the liberal case for health-insurance reform is that such reform is necessary if we are to restructure some of these industries (notably the automotive sector) effectively. That’s a contestable claim, of course, but you can’t just pretend it isn’t there.
AIG and Fannie/Freddie are another story, of course, and I would be thrilled to hear anybody’s exit strategy, even Spitzer’s.
— Noah Millman · Jun 4, 04:19 PM · #
One of the main reasons why health care reform is a priority is that’s where the money is (and even more so, it’s where the money will be), so that’s where the Obama administration is looking for long-term financial savings. Their goal is to slow the growth of health care costs by 1.5 percentage points per year. Given how fast those costs have been growing, the CEA estimates that this would save the US nearly 8% of GDP in 2030 – almost $10,000 per person.
— Brad · Jun 4, 04:41 PM · #
After four months, perhaps the jury is still out. Congress and the American people are going to have to take their medicine sooner or later. And if Obama still retains the type of popularity he presently enjoys, then I would suspect that the tough-talk of “structural reform” begins sometime after the 2010 midterms, when everything has simultaneously gotten a lot worse, and a little better. He could be in better a position to “sell” it by then.
I understand that we have make our political gestures sufficiently colorful, particularly when they lack the force of office, but let’s not reduce the scope of the problem. I think risk has been socialized to such an extent that the alternative (collapse) would be to invite a pretty grotesque species of social nihilism. Perhaps we slow the nihilism with a preservationist industrial policy, and figure out how best to restore trust and confidence back into the “system” in the meantime. But from what I understand about the whole de-leveraging process, the time horizon for getting back to the way things were is way, way, way off in the future. And that I’m very skeptical of. I share Reihan’s worry that the future will be a lot shabbier.
— ron · Jun 4, 05:06 PM · #
“I share Reihan’s worry that the future will be a lot shabbier.”
Shabby’s really not so bad, ron. Come for sail with me on our shabby old boat, or spend a little time helping my wife weed our vegetable garden. Shabby can be quite nice.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 4, 05:11 PM · #
Tony,
I’ll critique the Bush Administration until free range, scattered across the far flung hillsides cows come home. But I won’t go along with the idea that my fellow travelers got us into this mess.
For one thing, I opposed a lot of the Bush era spending. For another, it doesn’t make sense to determine one’s fellow travelers through an exclusively ideological lens. Sure, I possess lots of conservative and libertarian beliefs, and whatever you call my various political positions they fall on what most folks would call the center right.
In another sense, however, I’d call my fellow travelers people like Reihan, Ross, Peter, James, Cheryl Miller, Radley Balko, Will Wilkinson, Megan, Rod, David Frum, Heather McDonald, Jim Manzi, Daniel Larison, and others, even though there is wide disagreement among these people on all sorts of issues — and indeed, there is an important sense in which I am also fellow travelers with everyone who writes here at The Scene, Damon Linker, Charles Homans, William Saletan, Conor Clarke, and yes, Freddie, and many others on the left, despite my forceful disagreements on certain policy matters, because among us we can agree that forceful arguments honestly offered in a robust public discourse is as necessary a means to an improved nation as any legislative program.
(That is the sense, Mark Levin listeners, in which it makes no sense to criticize me for attacking a member of “my own team” — partisan and ideological lenses are not the exclusive ways to look at life, or the best way to improve America, etc.)
Finally, jump balls in the NBA are just atrocious. They ought to have a mechanical arm take the ball up into the rafters and drop it from the ceiling. I swear that the refs either throw it up crooked or allow it to get stolen two-thirds of the time.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 4, 05:16 PM · #
See this is why, even though I’ve vote for the Democratic candidate in every election since 1984 (my first) you’re winning, Conor. You actually take time to engage someone who just might be willing to listen to what you have to say, while Freddy comes back with “But that’s not what I said.”
Time to bring your A-game, Freddy. Bad toss by the ref or not, it’s time to bring your A-game.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 4, 05:24 PM · #
“if Obama still retains the type of popularity he presently enjoys, then I would suspect that the tough-talk of “structural reform” begins sometime after the 2010 midterms”
I would expect Republicans to respond just as responsibly as the Democrats did right after the 2004 elections when Bush proposed structural reforms of Social Security. Honestly, am I the only person whose memory hole doesn’t work?
— y81 · Jun 4, 06:07 PM · #
“Honestly, am I the only person whose memory hole doesn’t work?”
It’s just you and Podhoretz. Two brave and lonely souls. Stay strong! Your country needs you!
— Tony Comstock · Jun 4, 06:15 PM · #
“rather than proposing bold structural reforms to address these terrifying trends, the Obama Administration is focusing its domestic political capital on costly changes to the health care system”
Conor, change “rather than” to “As part of” and the sentence makes a lot more sense. The US health care system costs at least twice as much as the systems of other industrialized countries and delivers at best comparable results. The risk of the loss of employer-provided health care not only discourages entrepreneurialship but also dramatically shifts labor negotiating power in favor of employers. And the failure of this country to provide adequate affordable coverage to 45+ million people is simply a moral outrage.
— Francis · Jun 4, 07:47 PM · #
Well, if it isn’t, that’s a pretty good argument.
— Chet · Jun 4, 07:55 PM · #
Man, I wish I lived in a world where the biggest problem Obama inherited was a $1.2 trillion budget deficit. I mean, if Bush had left us with a coherent energy policy that reduced our fossil fuel dependence, an efficient health care system that provided care without swallowing all our productivity gains, a financial system that intelligently allocated business and personal credit, and 2 successfully ended wars, and all Obama had to take care of was closing a $1.2 trillion budget gap, I’d have a certain grudging respect for Bush. But instead, Obama inherited a huge budget deficit, … and a financial system in tatters, and a health care system quickly swamping our ability to pay, and an energy policy that leaves us ridiculously dependent on fossil fuels, and in the middle of two sputtering wars. Not to get too Captain Obvious here, but none of these problems are going to get fixed for free. So yeah, our budget deficit is a problem, but it’s not our only problem, nor even our biggest problem.
— Bo · Jun 4, 08:15 PM · #
“Well, if it isn’t, that’s a pretty good argument.”
It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. If this is all just another fundraising opportunity, maybe.
“ Not to get too Captain Obvious here, but none of these problems are going to get fixed for free. “
When you take a moment and think about it, it’s pretty staggering, isn’t it?
The place where Freddy really goes off the rails is laying this at the feet of the GOP. Who votes those assholes in? We did. And that means if we don’t have enough money to do all the things we thought we were voting for when we voted for Obama, then we dont’ have enough money because we spend it all.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 4, 08:26 PM · #
Brad;
“Their goal is to slow the growth of health care costs by 1.5 percentage points per year. Given how fast those costs have been growing, the CEA estimates that this would save the US nearly 8% of GDP in 2030 – almost $10,000 per person.”
That is a great goal but I haven’t heard any concrete proposal from the Administration that will significantly reduce costs. If we’re at least 50% higher than the next highest country in per capita health care spending and still can’t get better outcomes nor cover all of our citizens then we’ve got a lot of dollars to “save”. Electronic Medical Records are a great idea but they won’t do it. Eliminating insurance company profit will certainly get some support (and a lot of fighting) but frankly would only reduce overall spending by <5%. (Total administrative costs for all payors including the feds is about 7+%). We can use the old Reagan phrase, “waste fraud and abuse”…. But unfortunately, as the Dartmouth Atlas (http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/) has pointed out, I would bet that the guy in Texas getting his knee replaced wouldn’t consider HIS knee replacement as waste, fraud or abuse.
And so if we have to spend political capital on healthcare reform can we focus on getting a MUCH better bang for our buck (BUCKS)!
— C3 · Jun 4, 09:38 PM · #
Well, hey, Tony, maybe you can go back to 2000, then, and find the instances where Bush campaigned on nation-building, deficit spending, and ignoring climate change.
— Chet · Jun 4, 10:50 PM · #
“Well, hey, Tony, maybe you can go back to 2000, then, and find the instances where Bush campaigned on nation-building, deficit spending, and ignoring climate change.”
Jesus Christ, Chet! Are you retarded or something. Bush didn’t even get elected in 2000 so who the fuck cares what he campaigned on and who the fuck cares anyway. He got (re?)elected in 2004 and we gave him a majority in congress too.
And don’t get me started on the DemoFuckingCrats. What a bunch of crybaby cowards. “Go out to dinner. Go shopping.” That was a bipartisan plan.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 4, 11:34 PM · #
I’d like to see a Constitutional Amendment on the budget issue which keeps expenditures equal to or under revenue — except in ‘emergencies’, an official designation that needs bicameral supermajorities, and which must pass prior to the enactment of an exceptional budget.
I wonder if we could make that work.
— Sargent · Jun 5, 12:05 AM · #
Yeah, Sargent, probably the “emergency” which justifies federal deficit spending would end just about the time the “emergency” which justifies rent regulation in New York City.
— y81 · Jun 5, 12:13 AM · #
“I’d like to see a Constitutional Amendment on the budget issue which keeps expenditures equal to or under revenue — except in ‘emergencies’, an official designation that needs bicameral supermajorities, and which must pass prior to the enactment of an exceptional budget.”
More than once I have had the thought that never in their wildest dreams did the founders imagine that their fledging republic would be able to borrow such massive amounts of money; and I’ve further though that the capacity to borrow has revealed a flaw in our checks and balances system. What “compromise” means now is everyone gets what they want, and we borrow the money to pay for it.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 5, 12:17 AM · #
C3, Obama’s latest proposal is to give more power to a commission of experts, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), to change Medicare policy. Each year MedPAC comes up with a bunch of recommendations for how to cut costs, set payment rates, and so on, but those recommendations have trouble making it through Congress. Obama’s proposing to change the default rules, so that “MedPAC’s recommendations on cost reductions would be adopted unless opposed by a joint resolution of the Congress.” That could slow cost growth each year for a long time. Obama has also proposed a public plan to compete with private insurers among the general population, and if it follows these rules too then private insurers are going to have to work to keep up (and vice versa, if private insurers come up with some good cost-saving innovations).
— Brad · Jun 5, 12:51 AM · #
Brad, are you familiar with the “Oregon Plan”? Town hall meetings were conviened across the state to form public consensus on how public healthcare dollars would be spend. Hard choice were made; for example it was decided, that babies born under 2.5 pounds would not receive publicly funded care. Similar cut offs were made across the whole spectrum of care in the hopes of maximizing the overall healthcare available to Oregon’s residents against the simple fact of limited healthcare dollars.
I don’t know much more about it, except that it was opposed by a number of East Coast representative, and that my father, who was as practicing physician in Oregon at the time, was favorably impressed with the process and the outcome.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 5, 01:03 AM · #
I know that the basic idea behind the Oregon Plan was to base everything on cost-benefit analysis. They were going to decide what to cover based solely on the expected increase in quality-adjusted life years and the financial cost. But it ended up not working out the way they’d hoped (too much controversy, so the political process kept meddling with it, if I recall correctly).
Obama isn’t proposing anything that radical & systematic, and I don’t think he needs to (other countries with much lower health care costs don’t have a system like that, do they?). But he is trying to take some steps in that direction. In addition to MedPAC, part of his proposal is to fund & publicize comparative effectiveness research, and I believe there’s been talk about differential reimbursement rates for different treatments, depending on the treatment’s proven effectiveness.
— Brad · Jun 5, 03:30 AM · #
Given that the entire problem was people not going out to dinner or shopping, it’s not clear to me exactly what other advice they should have given.
But then I remember that Tony is clearly clinically insane, and I wonder why I even bother.
— Chet · Jun 5, 07:59 AM · #
Y81, I was thinking that each emergency designation would sunset after a year, so that whatever emergency there was would have to be re-asserted and -defended before each budget.
I’m pretty sure it’d be much more dangerous, politically, to maintain the designation than you imply. Saying “We’re in an Emergency” is so readily digestible, so universally cognizable, that even CNN and Fox News could debate it. Instead of defending an obscurantist’s appropriations bill on the Sunday talk shows, lawmakers would have to defend their vote to assert a national emergency. Good theater, that. Plus, any ridiculous justification is easily converted to a 30 second youtube clips.
Tony, that’s why I’d like to see an amendment — to protect us from ourselves.
— Sargent · Jun 5, 01:37 PM · #
In a perfect world, government spending would be countercyclical. A balanced budget amendment works against that. Maybe it’s better than the alternatives — the real world isn’t perfect, after all — but you’ll have to work hard to convince me.
To the original post, I agree with Brad and Francis. The only way to keep the deficit from spiraling out of control is to reduce health care spending. As Conor writes:
Means test social security and Medicare. End the costly, ineffective War on Drugs. Tax college sports rather than subsidizing them. And even that doesn’t get the job done.
What will get the job done? Real health care reform. So why criticize Obama for spending political capital on exactly that? (Answer: Because Obama’s changes would make the problem even worse! Rebuttal: Sez you. I think they are serious about cost control.)
— dj · Jun 5, 08:31 PM · #
“AIG and Fannie/Freddie are another story, of course, and I would be thrilled to hear anybody’s exit strategy, even Spitzer’s.”
The Treasury department was presented with a proposal (by an outside authority) last summer for a debt-for-equity swap for the holders of Fannie and Freddie bonds. The Treasury department rejected it, for whatever reason.
— Art Deco · Jun 7, 04:36 AM · #