Obama's Balancing Act

He's a quick study and seems to have realized he needs to assert himself.
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It seems to me that the bigger mistake with the package has been letting it get redefined by the Republicans without much pushback from the Administration, members of Congress, or Democratic pundits.
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I believe the title is the "Recovery and Reinvestment act," designed (per Rep. Welch's site) to be a major effort to rebuild the economy by providing tax relief, creating green jobs and investing in the future. The Republicans have successfully rebranded it a "stimulus" package, and treated anything that's not immediately stimulative to be pork or outside the intent of the bill.
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Obama needs to marshal a lot of forces quickly to seize the definition and the rationale again.

Nate Silver http://www.fivethirtyeight.com makes the same point this am:

The unflattering term "pork" is now being used about four times more commonly in connection with the stimulus as it was two weeks ago -- even though the underlying package has not substantially changed. This is what it means to lose control of a debate.

I think this is a grossly dishonest article. Obama's political power is at its peak right now, and he has the votes he needs to pass just about anything that he stands behind. Nobody -- especially no Democrat -- would be stupid enough to stand up to Obama to add their own special projects if he objected to them.
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Obama dropped the ball here -- rather than submit his own bill, and let congress nibble at the edges, he gave control to Congress, and now acts as if he's blameless for the results.
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Basically, Calabrisi is doing what JNS did earlier; carry water (although considerably less water than JNS) for Obama.
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Team Obama had months to sit down with Democratic congressional leaders and fashion not just a bill to address the economic crisis, but to craft a consistent and coherent message to accompany that bill . That bill should have had "wiggle room" built into it -- allowing some stuff to be added, and some to be cut out, during "bipartisan" negotiations -- and every concession made by Team Obama should have been conditioned on additional GOP votes.
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(For instance, Pelosi wanted to repeal the Bush fat cat tax cuts immediately -- that should have been put into the bill with the understanding that it would be "negotiated away". And the bill should have included no tax cuts at all -- adding tax cuts during "bi-partisan negotiations would be a major concession, and simply by adding cuts, the Dems could control the nature of those cuts.)
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Telling Congress to get a bill on his desk in three weeks, and then not taking a leadership role in writing the bill itself, and THEN distancing himself from the provisions of the bill when the GOP engages in partisan attacks, is not leadership, its abdication of leadership. (and backing blue dogs who are demanding "regular order" when he wants a bill in three weeks is truly sleazy, because he can't get a big bill through Congress in three weeks under "regular order.")

MSM media has as much to do with this labeling as the Republican Party. They have chosen to pick up Republican talking points and failed to agressively question Republican spokespersons on their terminology in conjunction with this American re-investment plan. But why should we be surprised. The media is a hungry animal who needs constant turmoil to generate great new stories. Another great depression provides them a multitude of stories.

What I am trying to figure out with the lack of Democratic voices rallying to the cause, if they remain silent on marching orders from Obama who wants a cohesive message, or we just have a bunch of finger wavers in the Democratic Party who remain silent while they try ot figure out which way the wind blows?

pluk: all good points. Agree. My complaint is that Pelosi is awful when interviewed. Someone in Congress: Hoyer or Clyburn should have taken charge of the spokesperson role, The Republicans defined the debate because the President has made a fetish of bi-part. His job is to communicate to us as he did in the campaign. The groundswell of support must flow into Congress from all over the country.

He can't rely on the MSM because they are still into reporting talking points. Morning Joke is a classic example of a show in which people show a stunning lack of substance. They are all so all knowing. I am not sure the daily briefings to the Press help. There seems to be all this sports jock talk and insiderism that is bloody annoying.

Disappointed and frustrated: yep.

What I am trying to figure out with the lack of Democratic voices rallying to the cause, if they remain silent on marching orders from Obama who wants a cohesive message, or we just have a bunch of finger wavers in the Democratic Party who remain silent while they try ot figure out which way the wind blows?
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the Democrat with his finger in the wind is Obama. Obama doesn't have a cohesive message -- he talks about the need for a "Recovery and Reinvestment Plan", but only offers generalities when it comes to what he wants in that plan. And at the same time he's demanding that the bill be rushed through Congress, he refuses to be pinned down when it comes to specific programs and spending levels.
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As a result, the people who would be the ones to defend the bill don't know what to say -- they don't know if Obama is going to undercut them tomorrow in the name of "bipartisanship" on anything.

It's like the last 8 years didn't happen. Bush dictated to the rubberstamp republican congress what to pass, and they passed it. This is all about a complete absence of interest on the part of the republican party in policy-making. The Mayberry Machivellis may be out of office, but republicans bloc-voting against a badly needed spending package has nothing to do with deference to Congress.
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The real question is why Senate Democrats haven't set off the nuclear option. We don't have time for this continued BS.

Either way, the fact that the bill is the product of free-spending Congressional committees is likely to hurt Obama. It is defining his first major effort to fix the economy not as a new way of doing business in Washington but as a massive exercise in more of the same.

This is precisely why I consider Massimo Calabresi to be a repugnant Right-Wing hack. The Republicans have been in control of the Congress for fully 14 years. Government services have been driven into the toilet through starvation. Bridges are collapsing into rivers from neglect. Even when there have been nominal Democrat majorities they have utterly caved to the will of government bashers.
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So what possible 'more of the same' could he possibly be referring to? Straw erecting hack!

God help me, I agree with p-luk 100%. Obama has shown zero -- zero! -- vision on this stimulus package. What is Obama's plan to address the fundamental problems with our economy? Crickets.

This is All About Rahm. So far, meh. Unimpressed that he lost the Blue Dogs on the most momentous vote in recent history. Is that all you got?

I wouldn't go so far as to say he has zero vision... I mean, at least they're calling it the Recovery and Reinvestment Plan
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Rather, he has failed to articulate the need for diverse approaches to the problem. IMHO, he should have presented the "plan" as a four part program.
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1) Stabilization -- money spent primarily to address the problems created for families by the economic downturn, much of which will be funnelled through state and local governments who are facing budget crisis that will force cuts in services when they are most needed. While the focus of this spending will be on helping people, it will also have a positive impact on the economy because it will prevent massive job losses (and add some additional jobs) in the public sector.
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2) Recovery -- spending that is aimed at job creation itself, not just on national priorities but on regional and local priorities as well. (Basically, this is all about "pork" -- and while "pork" is a bad term, the fact is that "pork" is generally about job creation.)
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3) Reinvestment -- programs designed to repair and expand infrastructure that will provide the means of further sustainable growth in the future. Spending on these initiatives will be "front-loaded" as much as possible in order to create new jobs as soon as possible, but these projects will continue to be worked on once the economy recovers.
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4) Restructuring -- creating new regulations that are designed not merely to prevent another meltdown, but will ensure that the benefits of future economic growth are distributed to all Americans.
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A timetable should be established -- the first three prongs should be passed immediately, while the restructuring aspect will take longer, but should begin to be implemented within six months, and be completed within 18 months.

"Obama has shown zero -- zero! -- vision on this stimulus package. What is Obama's plan to address the fundamental problems with our economy?"
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The way things are going it would seem to me the plan is to allow the minority party, the one with zero power to dictate the terms of the bill. Once the bill fails to produce results the demoracts and Obama plan to accept all the blame and then ask the minority party for help digging themselves into a deeper hole in the hopes of being voted out of office. This is the only thing that makes sense to me after watching events unfold.

KT-- Why doesn't any journos asking the question that in this unquestionably critical moment why is Obama the only one behaving as if political gamesmanship should be taking a backseat to patriotic duty. Any politician or journos who try to use this crisis to benefit personal ambitions ought to publicly shamed flu unpatriotic behavior.
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This does not mean dissent will be chilled, but will require it be worthy of this moment in history.

flu=for

gunny while we don't often disagree, I don't think he lacks vision, I think he underestimated the willingness of the GOP to throw the country under the boss for political gain.

"gunny while we don't often disagree, I don't think he lacks vision"
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Dee-quote from another post up thread.

kathy beat me to the post with the Nate Silver article; it's not long and it's very thought-provoking. So here it is again so you don't need to scroll:
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The Proliferation of "Pork"
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Word selection is important -- "bailout", "pork" and other pejoratives used by the opposition should NEVER be automatically picked up and used by the media without drawing attention to their negative use. I would also appreciate their using the Administration's own language when presenting its side. That's why there was such a reaction to Amy S's use of "pro-life" to describe Obama's policy on abortion reduction. (I'd also like to ban the new darling word, "optics" -- gahhh!).
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What good does it do the proponents of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to provide eloquent and reasoned defense of their ideas if it then gets reported in the rhetoric of the opposition?

missed that sorry gunny

After 9/11 Democrat that dissented in any way were deemed unpatriotic. I would argue that this crisis is even more critical for the country and Rethugs game playing is not even being questioned. The media is totally separating their egregious behavior from context of our current economic times.

pluk: the Democrat with his finger in the wind is Obama. Obama doesn't have a cohesive message . I disagree. The problem is that he thought he could do two things at once - promote bipartisan behavior and pass a substantive stimulus bill, when what he needed to do was focus on the economy and hope bipartisanship flowed along with it. I think DougJ has the best take on this:
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So let's admit that what we have here is a media and Congressional Republican assault on economic common sense. No one expects an assault on common sense. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition either. But when either comes, you'd better react.
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Speaking of the Spanish Inquisition:

Is it all the media, or mostly TV, which replies more on sound bites and 40-second stories? (I once wrote headlines for a small weekly newspaper, and I realize that print also "short-hands" for heads, titles and captions, but am not sure what the relative influence is of that format.)

I should add, though, reading MS's latest goggle-eyed discovery of how the Senate works, that Bush DID make an implicit deal with the Congress. They rubberstamp everything, and he signs off on all the pork without a peep.

"The problem is that he thought he could do two things at once - promote bipartisan behavior and pass a substantive stimulus bill, when what he needed to do was focus on the economy and hope bipartisanship flowed along with it."
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Agreed.

Some, however, aren't so pleased with the deference the Obama team showed. Apparently responding to public disaffection, a small but growing number of moderate Republican and Democratic senators are opposed to a bill they claim has become loaded down with pet projects and spending that have little to do with spurring immediate job creation and economic growth.
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"Apparently responding to public disaffection"?
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Does Massimo refer to Rush's audience? I'm going to leave that ridiculous statement alone to focus on a broader question:
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KT:
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Why is it do you think that the economic ideology of the Republicans, as opposed to the Democrats, was left out of this piece, as it is omitted from almost every bit of reporting on this package?
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Republicans in general subscribe to a theory of economics that tells them that government spending, even in economic crises, will be largely ineffective at creating jobs, and will introduce terrible economic problems to the country that far outlast the current catastrophe.
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I'm not just saying this, here's the conservative talking-point factory AEI telling Obama what to do (like Mitch McConnell):
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A key issue facing the new Obama administration is to what extent the economic stimulus should take the form of spending increases versus tax reduction. One way to think about the issue is the size of the fiscal policy multipliers. The multipliers measure bang for the buck--the amount of short-run GDP expansion one gets from a dollar of spending hikes or tax cuts.
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...these findings [by conservative economists] are inconsistent with the conventional Keynesian model [which proposes government spending]. According to that model, taught even in my favorite textbook, spending multipliers necessarily exceed tax multipliers.
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One hypothesis is that that compared with spending increases, tax cuts produce a bigger boost in investment demand. This might work through changing relative prices in a direction favorable to capital investment--a mechanism absent in the textbook Keynesian model [See! Keyensian, or Democratic/New deal economics are out of touch with reality!].
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Suppose, for example, that tax cuts are not lump-sum but instead take the form of cuts in payroll taxes (as suggested by Bils and Klenow). This tax cut would reduce the cost of labor and, if labor and capital are complements, increase the demand for capital goods. Thus, the tax cut stimulates demand not only by increasing disposable income and consumption spending (the textbook Keynesian channel) but also by incentivizing more investment spending. A similar result might obtain if the tax cut included, say, an investment tax credit.

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What does Obama say about this?
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In the past few days, I've heard criticisms that this [stimulus] plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place, the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems, that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care, that we can somehow deal with this in a piecemeal fashion and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.
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I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.

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So the Republicans object to the very idea of spending as a means of spurring economic recovery on theoretical grounds --and are understandably reluctant to concede that their ideology doesn't work in practice. The Democrats' message is: the minority's position is "do-nothing", and the country won't have it.
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The Republicans respond two-fold:
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1) McConnell says that he's in favor of action, but only "job creating" action.
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Hmmm...what's the Republican definition of "job creating" action? Oh, that's right: it's tax cuts for industry! Therefore spending is inherently "wasteful" and doesn't "create jobs" simply because Republicans believe that this is the case.
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2) Talk radio, Fox ("the New Deal worsened the depression") News, and other institutional and grass roots Republican organs go about making the case for waste comprising the bulk of and the concept of the package, instead of "measures aimed at job growth".
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What does this sound like?
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That's right: ...a small but growing number of moderate Republican and Democratic senators are opposed to a bill they claim has become loaded down with pet projects and spending that have little to do with spurring immediate job creation and economic growth.
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My question to you, KT, is:
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How are the Republicans able to get political reporters to ignore what they believe about how the economy works? What successful mechanism are they employing that allows them to talk about what should or shouldn't be in a piece of stimulus legislation, without anybody asking them "Are tax cuts the only effective weapon in the government's arsenal against an economic crisis like the one we're facing? Did FDR's New Deal fail, in your opinion, Senator?"?
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In the face of an obvious, fireworks-in-the-sky, plain-as-day ideological conflict over what does or doesn't work (a conflict on which even the President manages to take a side), how exactly do Republicans prevail in encouraging national political reporters (like Massimo) to basically black out a huge, doomsday-like war of ideas from the story, KT?

I think you're right, wvng (and thanks for the Python - always worth linking to), but at this point Obama's got to re-tool a little and accept the fact that the Republicans want him to fail, and are willing to let the country suffer to see it happen. He obviously heard Limbaugh issue the marching orders - did he really think the Republican Rump would shrug off the Word of their Idiot God?