Obama

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Federal Spending Facts

Like many people I am perplexed by claims that federal spending has ‘exploded’ on Obama’s watch. The claim is generally made by someone on the right of center in politics and is stated as if it is a well known fact. So well known that no one can possibly refute it. The conversation is then meant to proceed immediately to what we can do about said ‘explosion’ and how we can restrain the Federal government.

The problem I have is factual.

Here is a chart of Federal spending from way back when:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, spending has risen substantially through the years, but take a closer look. Let’s inspect that past decade:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the picture is somewhat different.

Instead of spending ‘exploding under Obama, it has been under control. The explosion, such as there is, took place under George W Bush. There was a sharp upward shift when the recession hit and safety net spending took off, but since then the trajectory has been fairly flat. Spending is clearly higher now than when Obama took office, but most of that increase occurred in the midst of crisis. There is no sign of the mythic explosion right wingers like to talk about.

So why do they? And where do they get their facts?

The first question is easy to answer.

Right wingers want there to have been an explosion because it allows them to argue for draconian cuts, especially in social programs. So inside their world the chatter is about a burst of spending that requires urgent cutting back. This is despite, as the charts show, that there has been no such burst. The ideologically pure position on the right, nowadays, is that government spending is way out of control and, that if left unattended, it will throttle the economy. Apparently runaway government spending is now a problem whereas during the Bush era it was not.

For the record: during the first four years of the Bush administration spending rose a cumulative 30%. In Obama’s first term it rose just 9%.

There is something extremely odd about this. The same folks in the Republican party who, presumably, felt fine with a 30% increase in four years, now think it is outrageous to have a 9% increase over the same timeframe.

That is absurd and hypocritical.

It would be reasonable to have objected to both. It is not reasonable under any circumstances to take the position we see today.

That second question is impossible to answer.

I have no idea where they get their facts. I have seen some right wingers claim spending has risen 37% under Obama. I cannot find such numbers. Not, at least, in any of the major databases of governments statistics. Perhaps they made it up. If so, it makes sense that the made up figure tops the Bush profligacy.

In any case, it simply isn’t true that federal spending has exploded.

Our annual budget deficit has grown sharply, not because spending grew, but because revenues slumped. That annual tax take shrank, as it always does in recessions, and it will recover in due time as the economy recovers.

We have no great immediate fiscal crisis. None.

That may be inconvenient to those who wish we did so that we would be forced to slash social spending. But the facts don’t lie.

Not the real facts at least.

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Sequester and Jobs

You may not have noticed – perhaps you have more interesting things to do – that the next big crisis is unfolding in Washington. As the economy wallows in semi-stagnant directionless mode our fearless leaders in Congress are getting vexed over another of their self-inflicted wounds. You’d have thought that by now they’d stop doing this.

The current crisis is the sequester. This is an absurdity that civilized and grown up countries don’t have. Here in the US things are different. The ongoing conflict between the past, as represented by a minority of right wing Republicans, and the future, as represented by everyone else, threatens to force us into decline and irrelevance. After all a nation that cannot even organize a national budget is one that cannot be taken too seriously.

The problem, as we all know, is that we no longer have a national consensus on what sort of society we are or want to be. There is one that worked well in the 1950’s and 1960’s but was tossed aside by Reagan and replaced by his right of center notion of deregulated individualism. Then there’s the even more right wing radical idea of the current Republican party.

The issue is that the Reaganite America failed. It wasn’t just him of course. The entire last four decades has been dedicated to the pursuit of right wing ideas. The economy we live with now is the natural outcome of that pursuit. If you want to know what old fashioned Republican economics does take a look around. That’s what we have.

True, there are vestiges of a left of center past. We have a modest set of social programs. Social Security and Medicare in particular are very successful and very popular. They protect the vast middle class from the dangers of downside risk. They have enabled us to limit poverty in old age which was a scourge only a few decades ago and is largely forgotten by our younger generations.

We also had a small dose of left of center economics with the 2009 stimulus, but the effects of that effort have now dissipated. It was a success in that it stopped the rot. It was always insufficient to turn the economy around.

Which brings us to the sequester.

The reason we were unable to get a decent stimulus, and thus end the crisis quickly, was that the notion of government spending as a positive aspect of a modern economy is such an anathema to contemporary Republicans that they were determined to prevent anything more substantial. They thus doomed us to stagnation. This was deliberate. For some reason they are still hanging onto the outdated economics of the Reagan era. Worse, they now want to double down on their philosophy. With Reaganism exposed as a crass failure – it produced the inequality, wage stagnation, loss of competitiveness, and lack of jobs we now suffer from – the only logical next step for those committed to a right wing ideology is to eradicate all further vestiges of the golden era of the 1950’s and 1960’s. This is why we hear so many claims from the right that they keep losing elections because they are not conservative enough. It is a scream for purity and a search for an idealized, but unattainable world. A neo-libertarian vision now drives them forward. Augmented by a good dose of 1800’s puritanical belief in the power of the scourge as incentive.

Central to this vision is the notion that the government can never be a positive force in the economy. Government jobs we are told endlessly are not ‘real’ jobs. Only private sector jobs are ‘real’. Government spending cannot generate ‘real’ jobs. Only private investment can. This is nonsense. But it is powerful nonsense and often sways voters who rarely concern themselves over such things and only experience the government as an intrusive force – red tape and taxes are the usual limit of most people’s contact with government. So divorced are most folks from government that became quite possible for Tea Party activists to protest against Obama by calling for government to keep its greedy hands off their Medicare payments. The irony was lost on them, but we must note it well. This is not an argument about nuanced details in an otherwise shared vision. This is about the destruction of what we know and its replacement by a totally different world.

The sequester is an outcome of this radicalization of the discussion.

I noted our inability to write a national budget. People regularly complain about its absence.

But how can we write a budget when we cannot even agree what it is supposed to cover?

So dramatic is the split in our nation that there is no common ground on which to start the budgeting process. The voters themselves are to blame. They seem unable to vote for, and support, a national vision. We have two nations co-existing in one boundary. One wants to slash government spending, the other wants to maintain it. Until the two halves are reconciled nothing can happen.

The sequester is simply a recognition of this reality.

An interesting aspect of the demise of Reaganism is the convoluted arguments the right has to resort to.  On one hand Republicans scoff at the possibility that more government spending could create jobs, on the other we get John McCain moaning about the possible loss of 350,000 jobs if we cut defense spending. Obviously he sees defense spending as legitimate and social or infrastructure spending as illegitimate. And he clearly thinks that a teaching, police, or fire protection job is less important than a defense contractor job. But either government spending creates jobs or it doesn’t. He seems not to get the contradiction in his argument.

But we do.

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Obama’s Week

The only point worthy of comment this week was the reaction by the Republicans to Obama’s inauguration speech in which he gave a fairly straightforward defense of expansive government and what used to be leftish social policies.

They immediately jumped on its progressive tone and hurled the word ‘liberal’ around as if it were the ultimate curse word. It may have been thus when Reagan spat it out and launched his three decade long attack on the middle class.

But it isn’t now. Not any more.

And therein lies the Republican problem.

They are still looking at the world through a 1950’s lens. Back then the public was decidedly more conservative. Or should I say less tolerant? Public opinion was firmly against all sorts of things that we now take for granted. So traditional conservatism could claim to be mainstream and view liberalism as a nasty and unrepresentative intrusion into the great American way of life.

Women’s rights. Civil rights. Gay rights. All sorts of things have changed along the way.

But the GOP hasn’t. America has moved. It is far more diverse, more tolerant, and more collective than is was fifty years ago. Far, far more.

It was commonplace in elitist and media circles to refer to the US as a right of center nation. This observation was based upon that 1950’s view of the world, and was used to decry any effort to expand government, enable more tolerant social policies, and broaden attitudes generally.

The Republican party embodied basic America values back then.

Things change though. America has moved way away from the norms of that era. This is despite Reaganism. Perhaps it’s because of Reaganism.

The outright privilege given to a few and the complete ignorance of the issues of the many that characterized the last three decades of government – by both parties – altered the experience lived through at grass roots level. Add in the well discussed demographic shift that is rewriting what the average American is, and the aspirations of our electorate has changed dramatically. And continues to change.

What has not changed is elitist and media opinion, and Republican sentiment.

So, when Obama captures the essence of modern America he is called liberal and far to the left, when, in fact, he is simply describing what we have become. He is being mainstream. Not by design, but because the mainstream has moved left.

America is becoming a left of center nation.

This is such a threat to contemporary Republicanism, which has moved rightward since Reagan, that it has no response other than a series of dazed curses. The media hasn’t caught up either. It lazily repeats its old lines without thought of what has occurred. And the elite is deeply concerned. After all it is the elite that gave us the intellectual framework for a right of center nation, and it was the elite who reaped the rewards of the Reagan shift. Any subsequent move to the left will threaten the privilege the elite garnered, so the hysteria and dire warnings gushing from our erstwhile leadership can be safely ignored.

This doesn’t mean that either the Republicans or the elite will go quietly. Far from it. Their entrenched capability to resist change cannot be underestimated. So our current political divide will continue bitter and enervating. But it will pass. The great wave of demographics will swamp the past. The rules will be re-written, and what was once intolerable will become included in a revised norm. The subject matter of discussion will have to reflect this change, and will exclude many issues that Republicans now hold dear as being irrelevant.

Continuing to talk about those old issues will simply consign the Republicans to the past.

Unless, naturally, they change too.

Given their reaction to Obama’s speech they haven’t yet grasped the new political reality dawning in America. They will eventually. Meanwhile they will act ever more anachronistically, look ever more quaint, and run the risk of fading from view entirely.

I only wish the media could catch up as well. Maybe that’s too much to ask.

It was Obama’s week. Or, perhaps, it was the new America’s week.

Either way, it wasn’t good for the Republicans. They really need to change.

 

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Obama: Whither Next?

There are more than a few of us trying to measure the extent of Obama’s sudden outing as a leader of the progressive cause. After four years of varying attempts to inhabit the supposed grey zone between the two poles of politics he announced, rather forcibly, his allegiance to the left. Perhaps he grew tired of being made a fool. Perhaps he has finally realized that appeasement of extremists is self-defeating. Or perhaps he, without a future election to run in, can now be himself.

I hope it’s not the last of these because that implies he would still be the mushy pseudo centrist punching bag of that last four years were he thinking of re-election. And we have no room for mushy pseudo centrist punching bags if we are to turn the tide on the Reagan era at long last.

I have a number of friends who think I have been too harsh on Obama thus far. I am often accused of overlooking or under-appreciating his victories, whilst agonizing over his many defeats. Naturally I don’t see things that way at all.

My Obama skepticism stems from what I saw as his opportunity back in 2009. It was an epic moment. The financial crisis came as a natural and massive punctuation mark at the end of a long and accelerating period of right wing domination of our political conversation. Since the 1970’s, and obviously brought into stark highlight by Reagan, our national discourse has been held largely on right wing terms. The left has either been inept or defensive. At many points during the last three decades the left tried to redefine itself in order to stay relevant in this increasingly right of center discussion. The feedback between the Washington elitist agenda and the sentiment of the electorate moved the pace of our rightward shift and produced the odd spectacle of Democrats enacting right of center legislation to win popular support. Clinton’s surge of financial deregulation is an obvious example of this strange effect.

The economic crisis was a natural consequence of the politics of the entire Reagan/Clinton/Bush era. I am tempted to say it was an intended consequence in that the relentless focus on deregulation, de-unionization, and globalization that characterized the period were all expected to create more structural flexibility within the economy. And, obviously, more flexibility implies more possibility for extreme outcomes. We cannot, therefore, claim to be surprised when one such outcome hits us full square in the face. We designed the economy with that possibility in mind.

Obama arrived on the scene at our darkest moment. He could have seized upon the crisis and hurled us in a different direction. He didn’t. He misunderstood the problem. It was a massive misjudgment. He, mistakenly, imagined that our primary problem was the bitter schism in our politics brought into sharp focus by his predecessor’s peculiar blend of ineptitude and arrogance. It wasn’t. That bitterness was a symptom not a cause. The bitterness arose from a growing awareness amongst many that the economy and society had run off the tracks. At least for them. The noisiest reaction, ironically, was coming from the right where the nation’s demographic and social shifts were arousing an extreme nativist throwback counter movement. Having a black president gave this movement an easy target and it coalesced into the Tea Party of 2010/2011.

The noise coming from the far right hid a deeper and more permanent shift going on. The country was moving to the left. There was, and is still even more, a growing awareness that the policies of the Reagan/Clinton/Bush era ignore most of the population. Most of us are left out as irrelevant when big policy decisions are made. The result is a massive skew towards a privileged few who thrive even as the rest wither. This has caused the pendulum to swing against the far right which explains their ever more heated and bitter opposition. They seemed to know where we were headed before Obama did. His attempt at calming the debate by appeasing and taking a centrist stance cured nothing. It inflamed the right who thought they could bully him, and it incensed the left who thought he betrayed them.

So in policy after policy he fell flat.

The 2009 stimulus was hopelessly inadequate. Yes the political divide probably implied a less than optimal policy, but the lack of a fight for a bigger strike against the problem left many of us questioning Obama’s intent or understanding.

Health care reform was the same. Tepid leadership spoke to unsure policy direction. So what ought to be seen as a landmark is looked upon with suspicion. It is a policy that will need several alterations before it achieves the kind of game changing result we all hoped for.

Financial reform was a flop. Wall Street squealed, but managed to morph the legislation into and endless bureaucratic discussion that is still unresolved. Our most dangerous problem – the too big to fail banks – remains looming over us. Another crisis could break upon us at any moment.

These three policy moments stand out in the memory as instances where the Reagan era’s pernicious hold on society could have been decisively broken, but was not. At each occasion the discussion continued to be carried out in right wing language and on right wing terms. Obama did not bully. He was bullied.

This behavior continued right up and through the recent election.

The so-called fiscal cliff resolution bears a marked right wing tenor. The Bush tax cuts survive in large amount. They were a target of Democratic venom for a decade. Now they are enshrined as bi-partisan policy. That is hardly a left of center victory. In that same negotiation the temporary roll back of payroll tax – that tax that more people actually pay – was surrendered. Again hardly a left of center win. A couple of hallowed progressive programs were protected, so that counts as an Obama win. But the fact that survival counts as a win speaks volumes about the nature and direction of our debate. The right is on offense. It smells blood and wants more.

Then we arrive at inauguration and Obama’s avowedly progressive speech.

And we stop to reflect. Is he now of the left? Is he now going to defend the 47%? Is he now going to stop appeasing? Is he going to carry the fight onto right wing turf? Is he going to change the nature of our national debate? Is he really really going to lead us on offense rather than keep us on defense? Will he move from pretty speechifying to actual policy making?

I don’t know. I simply do not know.

The first big test is coming up. The budget debate will be upon us shortly. Will Obama declare that the budget is not in disrepair? Will he disdain all spending cuts? Will he point out that Federal spending has not ballooned out of control, but is well under control? Will he point to the longer term and avoid the shorter term? Will he stop debating right wing talking points?

I guess we are about to find out.

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The Founding Fathers and The Debt Ceiling Saga

This week has been dominated by the debt ceiling. This is another sign of the moribund nature of American politics. Elections, and I thought we recently had one, are meant to have consequences. Unfortunately America is not a democracy, which means that a minority of its politicians can dominate the discussion regardless of whether they have majority support in the electorate.

This oddball system was rigged way back when because the Founding Fathers, a phrase we all must say only in deferential and hushed tones, were obsessed with avoiding the ugly rule of the mob. They, like most aristocrats and quasi-aristocrats, were deeply suspicious of the ability of the average Joe’s understanding of matters of state. Then there was the small issue of the potential clash of interests between the landowning class – of which the Founding Fathers were mainly representative – and the great unwashed who had no property worth a lick. Property owners have long thought that wisdom is best acquired from the duties associated with that ownership, and that the duties of government largely revolve around preserving the values and prestige of the land being owned by the wise.

Thus the American system of government is designed with a series of bulwarks to prevent majority rule. Or at least to make it very difficult to get anything done. This allegedly classless society was thus launched with one class clearly privileged above all else, and its interests well protected to boot.

So here we are in the aftermath of a resounding win for the Democrats in the Presidential and Senate elections,mired in a total gridlock in terms of policy making because the Republicans were able to rig enough elections to the House of Representatives to preserve their rule in that House. Yes they did rig the election. In the American system House seats are allocated to each state based upon recent census counts in order to preserve the appearance of a democratic apportionment of representation. It is never exact, but it’s close enough. Where the game gets rigged is at the state level. Once the state knows how many seats it has it writes the rules of election and draws up the district boundaries. The process of setting those district boundaries is an open invitation to cheating. And back in 2010, right after the Tea Party’s climb to national pre-eminence, a number of more conservative states stretched the rules to the maximum to ensure that even a minority vote would return a preponderance of Republicans to the House.

Of course the Democrats cheat too. The issue this time is that the ability to rig things went disproportionately to the red states. That and the cheating was more rampant and blatant than usual.

So, despite getting a clear cumulative majority of the votes in House races, the Democrats still ended up in the minority.

What’s this got to do with this week’s top stories?

That House Republican caucus with its majority of seats but minority of votes, persists in trying to impose its will on the nation. With its policies rejected it carries on regardless.

This profoundly undemocratic activity is the source of our malaise and risks condemning us to perpetual stagnation.

It is one thing to advocate eliminating the safety net in the run up to an election, win that election, and then carry through with the elimination. It is another to lose the election and still try to achieve your rejected goal.

Without electoral support or validation the Republicans have had to resort to hostage taking and blackmail.

First they said that they wanted the government to default on its debt and to close down. This week began with a steady stream of Republican leaders opining out loud that a government shut down might be ‘necessary’ in order to force the Democrat lead Senate and the President to cave in and slash social spending.

When that ran afoul of public sentiment and, more importantly for the GOP, stock market reaction they walked back the idea and went to plan ‘B’.

This new plan is that they will graciously accede to raising the debt ceiling for three months with the proviso that in that time a budget is passed that slashes social spending.

Forgive me if I fail to notice the difference.

What they appear to have done is to exchange a hostage plan that has immediate dire consequences, for a new plan that postpones those dire consequences for a quarter. Nothing else changes. The economy is still held hostage. The electorate is still ignored. The end result is still the same.

The House Republicans remain determined to slash social spending no matter what, and especially no matter what the voters say. Apparently the Senate and the President are supposed to do the bidding of the House and propose Republican legislation, adopt Republican aims, and also ignore the electorate. All because the Republicans lost the election.

Not only is this bizarre, it is shockingly irresponsible, arrogant, and flies diametrically in the face of the voters recently expressed will.

So the American system’s odd bias towards minority rule and its outright encouragement of hostage taking tactics has led us to an impasse that threatens our prosperity.

Next time you take a moment to revere the Founding Fathers add a few curse words for the gridlock they bequeathed us.

 

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