Ezra Klein interview with the leader of the House revolt, Peter Welch

[cali]

Rep. Peter Welch: 'We don’t know whether we could’ve gotten a better outcome'
By Ezra Klein


Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) is leading the charge in the House against President Obama's tax-cut deal. The problem, he says, isn't just the deal itself, but the process that led to it. We spoke this afternoon, and a lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Ezra Klein: Tell me your concerns with the deal.

Peter Welch: The context for the House Democrats is that this was presented after the president made his deal with the Republican leadership. But in terms of policy, the central issue we should be focusing on is the economy. Ideally, our decisions, whether to borrow money or adjust taxes, should be based on where we get the most bang for the buck. If this is a stimulus bill, we have to ask whether we should have a stimulus where we’re borrowing money and using tax policy or where we’re building things. After this money is borrowed, we won’t have more broadband or bridges or roads.

And many Americans are skeptical about debt and borrowing. Even if economists can argue that the payroll cut, for instance, is a good thing, Americans are skeptical. Last night, I had a telephone townhall for my constituents back in Vermont, and we had 11,500 people on it. And I had people on Social Security saying if getting fewer benefits will help us on the debt, they’re for it. And I had a farmer saying that he’s had subsidies for 35 years but we can’t afford them anymore. And if you look at the bond market, it’s skeptical of this deal, too.

But isn’t there a tension between saying that jobs and the economy should be our top concern and saying that we need to worry about deficits? If the economists are right that recovery could be aided by more short-term deficits, wouldn’t making the economy our top priority suggest we should borrow more?

You are correct, there’s a tension there. I favor the extension of the middle-class tax cuts because in a recession they’re stimulative and they help with demand. And what the president is doing here is using tax policy to get more stimulus, to increase aggregate demand. And if you add up how much he gave and how much he got, he probably got a pretty good deal. But what the Democrats are saying is that to have reached this agreement without a fight, we don’t know whether we could’ve gotten a better outcome.

<snip>

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/12/rep_peter_welch_we_dont_know_w.html

[soryang]

1. Oh yeah! Please please cut my Social Security benefits!

That's a real popular sacrifice people want to make. What is wrong with these people?

[FirstLight]

2. More intelligent reasoning...not posturing

second paragraph...where he says if this is 'supposed to be a stimulus" and when done we don't have any more broadband , etc...

Personally, THAT is the one they should hammer home!

and UI should be debated and passed completely SEPARATE from all other legislation.

stand by those principles, man! Go Dems!
I am sorry, but showing backbone to Obama is actually FINALLY something I am happy to see...

[BeyondGeography]

3. This is how many of us sanctimonious puritsts feel

If the president had really fought for the Democratic position on this, if he’d given speeches around the country and gone on a whistlestop tour and hammered the Republicans and they just proved implacable on this, would the Democratic reaction be different if he made this same bill when the clock struck midnight on December, 31st?

I think a lot different. One of the things I give Nancy Pelosi a lot of credit for is that she’s able to get things passed and hold her members together because she shows us that she’s doing everything possible to get our views into these bills. I was a single-payer person, and I was disappointed in the health-care bill. But I supported the public option, and I watched as Nancy Pelosi fought and fought and fought to get the public option into the bill. But then it came back from the Senate without it. And I knew Pelosi had done every single thing she could possible do to get it in there. So I knew it was really the best we could get, and I had to decide whether to vote for it or not. And I think the president had the opportunity to do something similar here. This policy gets to a central question in economic policymaking, which is whether we’ll let the wealth transfer to the rich continue. And we should’ve engaged on it.

[Gregorian]

4. It's easy to play armchair Senator/President.

I imagine Obama is the keenly intelligent man I voted for still. And if he were being hogtied, I think we'd have heard about it by now.

The way I see things is that this country is in survival mode. If those making enough to qualify for tax cuts aren't going to participate, we will have to do this without them. And I believe we are going to be paying more taxes. And that doesn't mean income tax. It may mean higher prices on goods.

I still believe Obama is the best man for the job. And he is obviously not doing this alone. These guys are scheming to get the job done with Republicans dragging them down.