Cogitamus

The Girl Effect

Our Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish President

[UPDATE: As some commenters suggested, I jumped to conclusions on the basis of bad reporting. In the immortal words of Emily Littella, "Never mind."]

And America's working (or, more to the point, involuntarily non-working) people are the ones who will pay the price.

Apparently Obama wants to do something about jobs.  But:

"The main thing that people are concerned about is jobs," said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.). "It is the number one issue."

But Obama's options are limited, as the administration already has signaled that it is unwilling to make any investments that would add significantly to the nation's ballooning deficit.

Well, how the fuck else is he going to do something about the job situation??  To create jobs when things just aren't getting any better in the private sector, the government has to spend money to create jobs, and to keep them from being cut by state and local governments.  There's nobody else out there.  And the only two ways the government can get the money to spend is (a) by taxing someone else, presumably rich people, or (b) by borrowing it, which will add to the deficit.  And if the government doesn't spend much, it won't create many jobs.  Period.

We know how well a tax hike on the rich would go over: all 40 Republican Senators would vote against it, and so would some of the Business Dog Democrats in the Senate.  Kiss that one goodbye, unless it's done via reconciliation, and we'd kinda like to save that for health care.

So Obama's pretty much tying his own hands here.  That would be fine if he was the only one suffering consequences, but 10% unemployment is going to hurt an awful lot of people.  They need help.  Just like bankruptcy and foreclosures are hurting an awful lot of people, but Obama wasn't willing to fight for cramdown. 

And even from a cold-blooded, technocratic perspective, it makes no sense.  Sure, a jobs program is going to knock another big hole in the 2010 and 2011 budgets, but lasting high levels of unemployment will knock big holes in the budgets for years to come: people who are unemployed or underemployed don't pay taxes, but they require more government services.  The biggest step to balancing the budget in the medium term - over the next decade - is to get people back to work quickly now.  You'd think a smart Democrat who's concerned about deficits would see win-win there.

And to balance the budgets in the long term, the biggest things we can do now are (a) pass a decent health care bill, so we start having some levers on controlling health care costs, and (b) make major forward-looking infrastructure investments now that will pay off over the coming decades.  These can be anything from really sexy stuff like SUPERTRAINS and a 'smart' power grid, to pretty gritty stuff like fixing antiquated water and sewer systems, and getting rid of bottlenecks in our freight rail system, and filling in some of its more significant missing pieces.

Needless to say, all that infrastructure spending that would make a big difference in our economic situation in 2020 and beyond would create a ton of jobs in the near term.  You'd think a smart Democrat who's concerned about deficits would see win-win there.

But to the extent that Obama decides it's important to keep deficits under control in the next few years, he sacrifices both of those goods: the opportunity to significantly improve the medium and long term budget situations, and the opportunity to keep millions of Americans working right now.

And if he's taking this approach to placate the Evan Bayhs and Fred Hiatts of the world, then shame on him: they don't have any good insights about the long haul, and they damned sure don't care about how government's failure to act will affect ordinary Americans now.

I can only hope that the WaPo has had another reporting malfunction, and that Obama's got the good sense to spend money now to keep people employed - preferably doing stuff that we'll benefit from over the next 50 years or so, but the main thing is to get people back to work.

Liberals Need to Grow the F*ck Up

Nathan Newman gives us a timely reminder of all that Obama has accomplished in ten months despite having to deal with unprecedented abuse of the filibuster by Senate Republicans and the constant need to cajole the weak-kneed and small brained "moderate" Democrats in the same body.  I think it is doubly important to remind ourselves of this in light of articles like this, which suggest that we on the left may essentially blow the chance to advance our cause by sitting out the 2010 mid-terms in large numbers. 

Look, enacting a progressive agenda is not going to be the work of ten months, or two years, or even four years.  It is going to be the work of a generation and marked by many frustrations along the way.  But I think there are a couple of things we should acknowledge -- number one, however much we may get impatient with him, Obama is as good a vehicle for moving our agenda as I have seen in my lifetime.  If he fails, we fail.  Period.  And without a continued large Democratic majority, he cannot succeed.  Yes, it sucks to have to work so hard to preserve the seats of so many gutless assholes, but what is the alternative?  Does anyone have a realistic suggestion?  As long as a simple majority will not work in the Senate, we are going to have to engage in coalition politics with a lot of tepid souls to get things like health care reform enacted.  And then we are going to have to work some more to improve what we are able to get through initially.  

We need to think about two things.  First, the media is loving the prospect of liberal failure.  If the mid-terms go badly, we are going to hear no end of the essentially conservative nature of the American body politic.  The Republicans will continue to obstruct and frustrate us at every turn.  It is crucial that they not be rewarded for these nihilistic tactics.  These people are not fit to govern.  They have left us in a profound mess -- a big part of Obama's difficulties are that he has had to step in to an astonishing series of debacles left by his predecessor.  He is operating from about the furthest thing from a clean slate.  

The second thing -- and this is really important -- is that our long term prospects remain very bright.  Long term demographic and ideological trends are very much in our favor.  We need to get through this economic crisis and the next election in relatively good shape and then things are poised to fall in line for us.  But it is imperative that we not allow this opportunity to get snuffed out so that young people remain politically engaged and continue to identify with the progressive agenda.

I know we would all like more from the Administration.  It is hard to roll with some of the things that have happened and still maintain the level of enthusiasm we mustered in 2006 and 2008 -- but that is what we are going to have to do in 2010 and 2012 if we are to have any hope of enacting the things that we hold dear.