Stuffing the Sausage
Barack Obama's op-ed piece in the Washington Post today is a bit of a disappointment. It reads like political boilerplate. And it's unnecessary: the President is far more effective when he speaks--and he has gotten a bit more pointed in the past few days, making it clear that the sort of "stimulus" that Republicans support represents the failed economic policies--the fetishizing of tax cuts--that helped lead to the current mess. I have reservations about the stimulus package. Any sentient human would; I'm sure Obama himself does. But the bottom line remains the same: the government needs to take an active, immediate role in goosing the economy lest we fall into a deflationary spiral. If I were a member of congress, I'd even, reluctantly, vote for a bill that included funding for a John McCain-Joe Lieberman buddy movie--think of all the grips and make-up people who'd be employed--or a new military kazoo band. We need to put people to work, get money flowing through the system. It needs to be done now.
Some further points:
1. Obama comes to office needing to do three things--stimulate the economy, rebuild the infrastructure after thirty years of neglect, and reform (and refund) necessary government services. As I've written elsewhere, it may have been a mistake to include all these projects into one bill. The reform and refunding of government services should have been done separately. There needs, for example, to be a serious national discussion about how and whether to fight sexually transmitted diseases--it deserves more consideration than the mockery it's getting in the current debate. Harold Pollack makes a compelling argument for all the health funding that's being dropped from the bill here. I could make a worthy case for retaining the much-derided $50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts--it would stimulate immediate jobs and rectify the scandalous national decline in the teaching of music and art. As I said, it would be nice to deal with these items more deliberately and carefully--and I would hope that they will be, even if they're dropped from the bill. But the job before Congress right now is to get something passed that injects money into the system, as quickly as possible. If that means worthy programs have be delayed, so be it.
2. In 1993, I did a pretty shabby job of covering Bill Clinton's economic plan. It was, in sum, a very good plan--it worked wonders for the economy--but I focused on the mishaps. (Clinton, for example, pulled the rug out from under House Democrats by offering a carbon tax, which they voted for...and then the President removed it from the bill.) Clinton couldn't get any Republican votes for the package. A disaster! He had trouble getting Democratic votes for it; he had to beg Bob Kerrey for his vote to get it through the Senate. His presidency was in ruins! He had lost all credibility! (Actually, those of us who had focused on some big ugly trees rather than the blooming forest were the ones who had lost credibility.) It pains me to watch normally reasonable colleagues overreacting to Obama's situation now--which is far less dire than Clinton's was. Some form of stimulus will pass. If it doesn't revive the economy, then more stimulus will be passed. Obama's maintaining the proper balance of reaching out to Republicans, making some compromises, but staying firm on the need for a bill that includes public works as well as tax cuts. A Republican Senator, a vocal opponent of the bill, told me the other day: "The guy has really impressed us. We may not vote for the bill, and he may have to learn that you have to give us more than he wants to give us to make us happy, but he's made a really strong start that will work to his benefit down the road."
3. The legislative process is as ugly as a wart. We only notice it when an earth-shattering monstrosity like the stimulus bill comes gallumphing down the track, but there is no such thing as elegant legislation. You always have to throw in a little sweetener--the museum of organized crime in Las Vegas, the military kazoo band, whatever--if you want to cobble together the votes needed to win. This is business as usual--and Barack Obama is guilty as charged: he's trying to get this thing through the old-fashioned way. So what? What's new is his priorities: his efforts to put the needs of the working poor and the unemployed ahead of the wealthy, to build a new green economy, to fund inner city education and remake the health insurance system. That is what the American people voted for after an era of Republican neglect. The messiness of the current process is not only inevitable, it also says very little about Obama's ability to deliver on those very necessary goals.
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1
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090205/pl_politico/18444
... ... ... ... ...
What's new IS old, again. -
2
Again you are just like the colleagues you lampoon Joke Line when you call it a monstrosity when as President Obama pointed out all of the objectional provisions add up to less than 1 percent of the total package. But what do you AND they focus on? The less than 1 percent. By the way dumb ass its not a stimulus bill. ITS THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT. Maybe when you stop using your own term for the bill you will realize that it does exactly what the title implies and what its meant to do.
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3
I'm just relieved to see Obama taking the wheel back. The main paragraph from his op ed about not returning to the failed theories that got us into this mess in the first place should be said over and over again. And Joe, reporters like yourself can help this process by asking Republicans chanting their tax cut mantra why, if they know so much about how to manage the economy, have they been holding out on us for so long.
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4
Joe,
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That first paragraph reads as if you are scared about losing your job. Seriously.
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Right now Obama is the decider. He was voted in as president to make the tough calls....good, bad or indifferent. I am getting sick and tired of Republicans and some moderates questioning the man. He promised an aire of inclusiveness. The Republicans have had their chance to make an argument, and in the end, there is only one decision that matters. It is his Obama's decision. He is the Captain of this ship. He is the one that signs laws into execution. If people don't like it, go try your luck in another country.
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It is a sort of rare hypocrisy that the Republicans are employing. The pot calling the kettle black. Asking Obama to hold his democratic party back from doing what they fundamentally think is right for the economy both in the short-term and the long-term. Just let the do it already and shut up about how those who aren't in power feel left out. You already got your vote. That is all you or I get. -
5
There is a certain irony in Obama -- the reincarnation of the Great Communicator -- having to peddle something this lame to The Washington Post, while the inane Bush-Cheney cabal rushed the bailout bill through with nary a check or a balance.
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I guess it just goes to show that threatening elected officials and directing scare tactics at the general public work better than rational explanation and respecting folks' ability to understand complex issues.
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Looks like Obama's confidence in the public's ability to grasp these complexities overshot the reality.
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Oh look! American Idol! I get it! Talented/sucky. Black/white. Good/Evil. The world of Bush-Cheney will haunt us for generations. -
6
Obama is in the postion Gorbachev was - trying to reform from within.
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It's really almost impossible, when you think about it. How do you change things using the mechanisms of a machine that resists change? How do you stay clean when you have to swim in the same dirty water everyone else did?
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Seperation of powers keeps him from forcing Reid and Pelosi to stop allowing unrelated additions to the stimulus bill. They are on their own quest - to maintain their power by allowing shortsighted compatriots to grab what they can while the grabbing is good.
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It's microscopic compared to the GOP Treasury feeding frenzy in Bush's waning days, but it's also much more visible. Dems need to get a longer view on this... -
7
It IS a monstrosity, sg. Ari Melber just twittered that what would really make sense is a series of individual bills, voted up or down on their merits, than one enormous pile of sh!t. A functional legislature would have considered this package as a couple of dozen or so bills, passed or rejected over a week or two of time. These omnibus bills are sure to have stuff in them that sucks, and make more of these "sweeteners" necessary.
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But this is how it's done. Which is the longer explanation of my "Duh" comment to the MS post that this appears to be a response to. -
8
It's nice to hear a journalist admit error, how long before we get a substantial retraction of your FISA failure? And you did fail Joe. Journalists wiretapped, service members phone calls taped and passed around for a few giggles...everything you were warned about but arrogantly dismissed.
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The Dems on my teevee are doing a horrible job selling this btw, the black guy who isn't Roland Martin was absolutely awful on the Andy Vanderbilt Show last night. David Gergen was laughing at him and shaking his head. -
9
This headline from the MSNBC coverage of the op-ed certainly got MY attention:
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In op-ed, Obama warns of irreversible recession
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The first two commenters on their Newsvine site reference Bush fear-mongering and Chicken Little. I'm not sure how Obama is going to counter the "boy who cried 'wolf'" effect of the last eight years. It's not his fault that "the boy" in this case is the previous administration (not-so-previous, since Cheney is still at it).
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What is the responsibility of the press in either verifying or refuting these claims? When our civil liberties were at stake, they took them seriously, laying the foundation for our current "panic-fatigue". If the sky really is failing, it would be considered news, right? -
10
The Republican's have gotten gotten their groove back to a certain extent in the last couple of weeks. They have done a good job of thowing out simple words and phrases to re-define this bill on their terms. And it seems to be working. People are increasingly thinking it is a big fat porky spending bill. Obama needs to cut through this and get his message back on target. And he needs to whip up the Democrats to fall in behind him. It doesn't help to have them sniping behind his back at times.
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11
#2: I really appreciate that you are willing to make an honest assessment of your mistakes from that period. Would that more journalists and politicians had the same attitude. If GWB had had the same attitude, maybe he would have learned something. (In the same spirit, I've posted some comments I regret!)
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#3: Yes, thank you for saying this.
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WSJ: "unemployment benefits jumped last week to the highest level seen since 1982" - I want some Republican to tell me how a tax cut is going to help the 625,000 people who just lost jobs. -
12
Oh, and I think the governors and mayors who are in favor of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act should get much more media attention than they have.
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13
People who should be seen on TV and in print right now instead of pundits: college presidents, small business owners, auto dealers, auto suppliers, state unemployment office officials, state legislators, city managers, county managers, retirement/estate planning advisors ...
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14
btw, I thought the op-ed was pretty good. It was sober and plain-spoken.
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I wonder if splitting the bill into smaller chunk would lead to its death by a thousand cuts. The Republicans would be able to complain about every single item instead of whining about a few select things they hate, like family planning and music teachers. -
15
CEO pay is chump change, when compared to the $$$ we've flush down the failed inner city school and bogus social welfare programs the last 30 years. When will Obama go after the slacker unions, make work government agencies in the Executive branch, steroid pumping corrupt cops at every level, ancient tax policy, and all the other real issues that have real impact, on average Americans? Some change, that one. Move On indeed.
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16
53_3
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I don't think you are quite right about Pelosi and Reid on this one. Congressman Obey put in most of the objectionable stuff in the last bill but the truth is just about all of it would have helped the economy. It just wasn't "politically" viable. Its not Pelosi and Reid doing Obama a disservice its the Rethugs and the media focusing on less than one percent of the bill. Now if you are really trying to say that Pelosi and Reid are trying to hurt Obama by "loading up" the bill with all of less than 1 percent of the whole build then good luck with that. I don't see how you could possibly make that case even though every MSM outlet is frantically trying. -
17
build should be bill
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18
TPM tells me that only Four Republican Senators are Open to Working With Obama.
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President Obama talks about seeking bipartisan accord ... and he reaches out to GOP senators ... but how many Republicans are even open to the need for fixing the economy through government spending?
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As The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel points out, that question seems to have been answered in a Senate vote last night. When Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) offered an alternative stimulus plan that would replace all government spending in the stimulus with a series of tax cuts, 36 Republican senators voted for it.
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To emphasize the point, that means all but four GOPers were perfectly happy with scrapping the core assumption of the president's plan. Here, then, are the four Republican senators whom Obama has the best shot at working with: Susan Collins (ME), George Voinovich (OH), Arlen Specter (PA), and Olympia Snowe (ME).
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As for the bill being messy, Keynes wouldn't care, as long as jobs of some, any sort are created. And I don't think it has people digging holes and filling then in, does it? -
19
jayackroyd
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Here is my point, excusing Ari Melber for a moment. If there was a lot of "junk" in the bill that people actually thought should never get done then I would tend to agree with him. But I have to ask that if the same people calling it "junk" believe that stuff like the family planning provision or the mall renovation or the smoking cessation provisions are things that SHOULD be done, why exactly, other than political motivations, wouldn't we do it in this bill? If the conversation shifts into a political conversation instead of one on the merits of those provisions then I say its a bunch of bullsh*t. If those things would help the economy, the truth is we shouldn't be worried about political attacks behind them if we REALLY want to change the way Washington works. Otherwise what Melber and others is really advocating IS more of the same. "Lets keep this stuff out of the bill because if we don't the Republicans will make fun of us and the Villagers will laugh". Sorry I have a very hard time getting all flushed and flustered over less than 1 percent of the bill. Especially when I agree with that less than 1 percent -
20
"...music teachers..."
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As long as they keep their paws off the kiddies, we love the show tunes.Unfortunately, like the fat thonged wrestler in Minnetonka and myriad clowns from Chicago, more than a few of the over-protected arts educators seem more interested in full on sex than just sex education.
But enough about Barney Frankly and BJ Clixon.
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21
joyomama: Yes. Matthews had on Charlie Crist (R), at least.
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22
pourme,
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I ask that question myself. Why aren't the regular people on tv? I am going to do an ireport tonight for the first time ever. It is critical that the little people are heard from.
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Find a real plumber, a farmer, a teacher, a laid-off construction worker, etc. Put THEM on TV! This Recovery and Reinvestment Act will determine their future....whether their house is foreclosed, whether they have a pot to piss in or even a chicken to boil in a pot. Real people need real help...both short-term and long-term!! They need health care, health prevention, bridges, roads, public works, etc. We are in a 1929 situation...and many of those folks, my grandparents lived off of jobs doing public works in an era where private enterprise did not have the ability to hire. Tax breaks or not! -
23
Why do my kids have to pay for YOUR poor health habits, President Chain Smoker?
Same old libs.
Do As I Say, Not As I Toke.
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24
Obama's on Tee Vee being his own best advocate again.
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25
Yes, everyday people -- but even more so economic stakeholders a little further down the rung from Big 3 Auto CEO's. A little further down the supply chain, please.
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