Clive Crook: Was that liberal enough for you?

[babylonsister]

Was that liberal enough for you?

27 Feb 2009 02:03 am


It was nothing if not bold. Far from sliding away from his promise to reform healthcare, Obama affirmed it by proposing a $635 billion "downpayment" on the cost, financed about equally by high-income taxpayers and by squeezing Medicare payments to private providers. To announce an initiative of that scale and scope in the same budget that predicts a $1.75 trillion deficit in 2009, and a full-employment deficit of 3% of GDP even after ten years of brisk recovery and steady growth, took some nerve. Obama clearly has plenty. Left-leaning Democrats who have spent recent weeks moaning about centrist appointments and attempts at outreach to Republicans should hang their heads in shame. This is the budget they have been dreaming about for years.

I am not what you would call an instinctive leftist Democrat, yet so far as substance goes I like a great deal of what is there. The intelligence of this administration shines through at many points. My objections are mostly about the gaps.

I am for comprehensive healthcare reform. It would have been easier to do in a strong economy, of course--but Obama has the momentum to get this job done. It is urgent and has already waited too long, and so I applaud his determination to press on. It is good that he plans a big reserve to cover perhaps a third to a half of the likely eventual cost: better to leave that crucial line in the budget half-blank instead of entirely blank. I am also glad to see substantial cap-and-trade revenues make their first appearance. A carbon tax would be better, but still.

Obama and Peter Orszag seem intent on cleaning up the budget process, too, which is good. No more nonsense about expected revenues from the alternative minimum tax; no more off-budget accounting for military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan; and so on. Congratulations on switching from a current-law to a current-policy baseline. (Shame they had to go and spoil that by extending current spending in Iraq into the out years, just to get them to their phony $2 trillion of "savings". Current policy on Iraq is not to stay there forever, any more than current policy on infrastructure is to spend at the stimulus-package rate for the next ten years.)

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http://clivecrook.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/02/was_that_liberal_enough_for_yo.php