Here’s why Obama and the Tea Party are both right
The horrible train wreck that just consumed America’s political system — and nearly devoured our economy — has been largely cast as a collision of two rigid ideologies.
Republicans want to cut spending sharply, in an effort to bring the Federal deficit down to manageable levels. Democrats want to hike taxes and other forms of revenue, to curtail the dangerous debt gap while sustaining social programs.
But the ugly reality, one that both parties are afraid to tell their constituents, is that to close this gulf we will have to take the most painful parts of both plans and merge them together.
Currently, we spend nearly two dollars for every dollar taken in by the IRS and the Treasury.
The most progressive economists will tell you that that disparity needs to be slashed pretty quickly, though some would argue that cuts shouldn’t begin until the recession is over.
The most ambitious conservative plan — known broadly as “cut, cap and balance” — would gradually phase spending back from current levels, which hover around 22.5% of America’s GDP.
The goal would be to spend around 19.9% of GDP by 2021. That may not seem like a huge change, but it means that roughly ten percent of total Federal spending would be eliminated.
When you’re talking about a government as big as ours, that’s huge.
This has been characterized by some on the left as draconian, tea party driven crazy talk. And there is no doubt that cuts of this size will be painful. But in fact that 19.9% figure is about the norm for the post-World War 2 era.
If it was good enough for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, surely our Federal government can live within those same means now?
But if liberals need to accept the reality of some common-sense belt-tightening, conservatives need to face an even tougher reality when it comes to taxes.
Currently, Federal taxes account for only about 15% of GDP. Which means that even if we hit the tea party’s goal for shrinking government, we would still be running enormous and unsustainable deficits into the future.
Some on the right insist that taxes can’t be hiked, even to the levels we saw during the Clinton years. (The post-War average for Federal taxes is roughly 18% of GDP, well above current levels.)
They pretend that we can close the gap simply by cutting government and supercharging the economy. But it’s exactly that kind of easy-answer fantasy that got America into this trouble in the first place.
So here’s the simple, fiscal reality: In order to pay for the size of government that even tea party activists say they want (again, 19.9% of overall GDP) Federal revenues will have to rise at least as much as President Obama has requested.
Tags: politics
Good points.
These guys don’t even want a budget that is flat, they are screaming about that as “dangerous” let alone one that actually makes real cuts.
Mervel, giving a good example, said: “They should be conservative Democrats, but for some reason the Democrats lost this group of people…”
I submit that one of those reasons is the right-wing media and astroturf (fake grass roots) political machine that’s built up over the last four decades, including the Murdoch empire, Regnery publishing and, yes, the Koch Bros. I think they have affected your life, Mervel, by affecting the views of your friends and relatives cited above.
From the bunker:
George Bush’s TARP (or “bailing out Wall Street” as some like to call it, was a smashing success. Although I seriously doubted that it would work at the time. The current administration extending that to auto companies may have been a mistake, we will have to wait and see. Right now it looks like we will lose on that one in the long run. Hopefully not. TARP stabilized the equity markets and prevented a collapse that would have hurt regular American’s much more than it would have hurt the wealthy. Since we all depend on the same capital markets it was not really a “bail out of wall street”. But if some people see it that way so be it. TARP is also why we will not see the severe crash of the markets that we saw in 2008 as they react to the terrible economic news that is coming out right now.
Charles Krauthammer summed it up well in his Washington Post opinion piece on this subject:
“Obama faces two massive problems — jobs and debt. They’re both the result of his spectacularly failed Keynesian gamble: massive spending that left us a stagnant economy with high and chronic unemployment — and a staggering debt burden. Obama is desperate to share ownership of this failure. Economic dislocation from a debt-ceiling crisis nicely serves that purpose — if the Republicans play along. The perfect out: Those crazy Tea Partyers ruined the recovery!”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-great-divide/2011/07/28/gIQAeOtifI_story.html
Sure and there are a select number of Left wingers doing the exact same thing, big deal.
Not even close. Go to the library, check out the book, read it, then give me a similar example where the left has done the same thing.
Too busy to read the book? Then go to the Merchants of Doubt website and read some of the key documents.
The same people (scientists in many cases) have been involved in pedaling doubt on dangers of tobacco, lack of effectiveness of SDI, dangers of ozone, dangers of second hand smoke, climate change, acid rain …… the SAME people and an interconnecting web of right wing organizations.
Please show me how the left has done the same thing. Just more equivalency.
Wow Paul. I hope you don’t beleive any of that trash from Krauthammer.
I am not buying into these conspiracy theories. There is not some evil cabal of people to blame for our problems. The interconnecting right wing secret organizations with some master minds pulling the strings. I mean this is no more than the old Jewish Bankers conspiracy that the far right used to spin it is like all conspiracy theories it is the same set up.
When bad things happen people often rush to find someone or something to blame because it is easier and more comforting. I am not denying that some of these guys try to influence public opinion, wow imagine that in a country with free speech! Sounds like MOVEON.org to me.
I could link you to Glen Beck’s site and he also has a list of left wing secret groups trying to influence public opinion and pulling the strings behind the scenes. It is the same deal, the far Left and the far Right, sorry I am not buying any of it. Particularly when your guy is the President of the United States. This is like bizaro land when liberals control the White House and most of Congress and yet the countries problems are caused by the secret cabal of the Koch brothers? The direct explanation is often the most likely and sometimes the most painful. Maybe Liberal ideas just don’t work?
Mervel,
You don’t think people who have money and influence try to maximize their money and influence. I’ve read some history and disagree with that. I also disagree with your notion that liberals control the White House and most of Congress. Ask any liberal if they think Obama or Harry Reid are liberals. In fact, try to find a single comment from either Obama or Harry Reid identifying themselves as liberals. They’re Eisenhower Republicans. Remember those?
And Mervel, with all due respect, name for me a liberal idea that’s been enacted recently. Then name one that didn’t work. The only victories liberals have had in the last 10 years that I can think of have been on a few social issues, mostly gay rights. Lost on the war. Lost on tax cuts/reining in the deficit. Lost on a big-enough stimulus package. Lost on single-payer health care to a Mitt Romney plan-thing. Losing on abortion rights, social security and public-worker protections. Lost on Patriot Act/Habeas Corpus preservation. Lost on torture. Lost on campaign financing. Lost on mortgage “cramdown” relief. I know I’m forgetting stuff. So I’m asking, again, how many liberal ideas can you name that government has tried recently?
Last one, I promise. I agree, Mervel, that the direct explanation is usually the most correct. And the direct explanation is that big money wins. Almost always.
Mervel, respectfully, please read the book or visit the website. This is no conspiracy. Everything was done up front and legal with the help of our “liberal media” and the necessity to report everything as equivalent. The main players in the Merchants of Doubt were once respected scientists funded by right wing think tanks.
Wait, so most of the current Democrats in office including President Obama are not liberals but moderate Republicans? I guess that is a good way of blaming Republicans.
I just think both sides need to focus on the technical issues of creating jobs, but what I see are both sides equally trying to come up with reasons that this recession-depression is not their fault and is the fault of the the other side. This is where someone like President Clinton is needed. I do wonder if our current team is up to the task?
President Obama is the best your going to get as a Liberal voter, if he cannot cut it for you I honestly think it is all over for the Liberal side in this country.
I will look at the website and read about merchants of doubt, although as a conservative I don’t like things messing with my pre-conceived small minded views.
OA, the entire Obama program is basically a Liberal leaning plan. I know it is not enough for the purists, but it is. From the massive and ongoing stimulus, to the bailout and take over of some of our major auto companies, to the health care act.
I actually feel sorry for the President, he goes out on a limb and does these things and then when we get bad results everyone bails on the guy calling him a conservative. You would all be rejoicing about how well liberal ideas worked if things were going better in the country right now.
But Brian is correct you can’t do this by just raising taxes or by just cutting, both parties lie about what any good solution is going to take.
Mervel, maybe “moderate with some aspects leaning slightly to the left but much of the plan solidly centrist with many right-leaning elements”, I would agree with. But no major policies to come out of the Whitehouse have been even approaching Liberal.
Liberals asked for a much larger stimulus (along with corporations), the bailout and takeover of the auto companies was endorsed by corporate leaders, and Obama sold out the left on the health-care bill by removing the option of a single-payer bill from discussion before negotiations began.
Brian Mann,
“But in fact that 19.9% figure is about the norm for the post-World War 2 era.
If it was good enough for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, surely our Federal government can live within those same means now?”
a much smaller percentage of people were collecting social security, medicare and medicaid were new (some states did not enact medicaid programs until the 1980s, and health care costs were much lower. The 19.9% figure is not realistic over the long term.
Mervel,
Obviously we disagree on defining liberal, but you seem to accuse me and others here of being frustrated and calling Obama’s policies Republican because they don’t work. That’s not what I’m doing. Much of what Obama has done has averted catastrophe, for a while anyway. I’m saying actual liberal policies haven’t been enacted, is all. And I’m not pulling this out of thin air. Check out the fiscally conservative Andrew Sullivan, defining Obama (and Clinton) through the Bartlett link:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/08/the-best-conservative-president-since-bill-clinton.html
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/08/05/Obama-The-Covert-Conservative-Liberals-Have-to-Love.aspx#page1
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