The Obama administration's pipe dreams

[impik]

Brilliang colmn from Ezra:


The White House held a conference call today for Elizabeth Warren and various bloggers and writers. Most of it was what you'd expect, but Warren did mention that Rep. Barney Frank once told her that getting a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a "pipe dream."

I think some people will see that as a mark against Frank, but he was right, at least judging by Washington's record over the previous 20 or 30 years. In fact, a lot of the Obama administration's accomplishments were pipe dreams.

A near-universal health-care system? Why would Obama and the Democrats succeed when Truman, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton had all failed, and politicians as adept as FDR and LBJ refused to even make the attempt? They've seen the numbers, right? The health-care industry is bigger now, and richer, and there are no more liberal Republicans. There's no way.

A $787 billion stimulus? Yes, it was too small. But everything Washington does is always too small. And within the confines of that stimulus, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress managed to make a host of long-term investments that would've been considered huge accomplishments in any other context, but are largely unknown inside this one. Huge investments in green energy, in health information technology, in high-speed rail, in universal broadband, in medical research, in infrastructure. The Making Work Pay tax cut. The Race to the Top education reform program. No recent president has invested in the country on anything like that level.

Cont.:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/the_obama_administrations_pipe.html

[babylonsister]

1. Sure would be nice if some of those mainstream writers that

supposedly get the news out crowed about these accomplishments that hardly anyone knows about. I guess that's too much to expect.

[Pirate Smile]

2. K & R

[Inuca]

3. Ezra himself is brilliant

Love him.

[Parker CA]

4. K&R!!