Bruce Bartlett:
Barack Obama: The Democrats’ Richard Nixon? There is no question that Barack Obama is one of our most enigmatic presidents. Despite having published two volumes of memoirs before being elected president, we really don’t know that much about what makes him tick. The ongoing debate over the deficit and the debt limit is clarifying what I think he is: a Democratic Richard Nixon.
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Conservatives finally got the president they had always hoped for when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. But by then, key New Deal/Great Society programs like Social Security and Medicare were so deeply embedded in government and society that he never lifted a finger to dismantle them. Reagan even raised taxes 11 times to keep them funded.
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Here are a few examples of Obama's effective conservatism:
- His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
- He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
- He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
- He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
- And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.
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Bartlett: Reagan was the greatest!
Krugman cites Bartlett:
Obama the Moderate ConservativeNow, let's run through the list of evidence that President Obama "effective conservatism":
"His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary"
"He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary"
- In June 2009, U.S. Forces occupied 357 bases. U.S. Forces currently occupy 121 bases, and are expected to reduce that number to 94 bases by the end of August.
link
Obama Plans $42 Billion Cut in War Costs With Iraq, Afghan Troop Reduction
The Obama administration’s plan to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will cut the Pentagon’s war budget by $42 billion -- a 26 percent decrease from this year’s level, according to government officials.
The proposed $117 billion for fiscal year 2012, which begins Oct. 1, would be the lowest expenditure for the wars since fiscal 2005.
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The Pentagon today has roughly 97,000 troops in Afghanistan and 47,000 in Iraq. The 144,000 total is the lowest since July 2006, when the U.S. had about 148,100 deployed, according to military data compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of this year.
The war-spending number is the smallest since Congress approved $102.6 billion in fiscal 2005, said Amy Belasco, war cost analyst at CRS.
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First US troops leave Afghanistan as drawdown begins
"He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals"
It's funny that a former Reagan man is using the claim that Obama rejected single payer as proof that Obama is conservative. When the hell did Obama promise single payer and who expected Congress to pass it? Every health care plan since Nixon's, including Clinton's, contained elements of Nixon's plan and the 1993 Republican plan
The so-called RomneyCare was largely a bill written by a Democratic legislature and vetoed by Romney. The legislature overrode his veto of key provisions:
In fall 2005 the House and Senate each passed health care insurance reform bills. The legislature made a number of changes to Governor Romney's original proposal, including expanding MassHealth (Medicaid and SCHIP) coverage to low-income children and restoring funding for public health programs. The most controversial change was the addition of a provision which requires firms with 11 or more workers that do not provide "fair and reasonable" health coverage to their workers to pay an annual penalty. This contribution, initially $295 annually per worker, is intended to equalize the free care pool charges imposed on employers who do and do not cover their workers.
On April 12, 2006 Governor Mitt Romney signed the health legislation. Romney vetoed 8 sections of the health care legislation, including the controversial employer assessment.<17> Romney also vetoed provisions providing dental benefits to poor residents on the Medicaid program, and providing health coverage to senior and disabled legal immigrants not eligible for federal Medicaid.<18> The legislature promptly overrode six of the eight gubernatorial section vetoes, on May 4, 2006, and by mid-June 2006 had overridden the remaining two.<19>
Video: Nixon HMOs
Nixon gave us HMOs. President Obama established a path to get to single payer.
Not only did the President's health plan extend free preventive health care to seniors, it changed the MLR. List of provisions.
"He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever"
Just FYI: This right-wing controlled House is why Obama cut a tax deal last year
There were quite a few people who wanted the President to hand off unemployment benefits to the Republican Congress.
That would have been a recipe for disaster: handing the GOP a hostage that no one in the Republican Party cares about: Unemployed Americans.
Can you imagine? A bargaining chip to use over and over again for an entire year? First they would have let the unemployed suffer (they did for seven weeks last year), and then under pressure they would have raised it for about three months, but not before the MSM had a chance to blame Democrats. Then they would have repeated that cycle a couple more times.
Forget the other parts of the deal---Medicaid expanded funding, EITC, and other aid would have been history. The GOP would never have considered those.
The GOP's only bargaining chip now is the debt ceiling, which if allowed to expire would also affects Wall Street. That is why there is a civil war brewing among the GOP.
And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.
True. Reid's plan cuts $2.2 trillion, including $1.2 trillion in cuts to the defense budget by ending the wars.
It's easy to simply say Obama is conservative if one ignores that there is a Congress that impacts the legislative process.
President Obama is not Nixon, nor is he to the
right of Nixon.
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