Curated and elaborated from my Twitter stream, here are some raw, incomplete, somewhat disjointed thoughts on last night’s State of the Union address:
After that underwhelming speech, I have little hope for 2011 and, of course, none for 2012. Obama failed to inspire or lead. And so the nation creeps ever closer to its day of fiscal reckoning, with no one apparently willing to make us make the hard choices. #PANIC
I don’t mean “no hope for 2012” in reference to Obama’s re-election bid, by the way. I mean agenda-wise. Nothing will get done in 2012, because it’s a presidential election year, so the only hope to credibly tackle the long-term deficit during Obama’s first term is/was to address it head-on now and make it a priority in 2011. Obama touched on it last night, but made no concrete proposals and declined to endorse any of his commission’s politically difficult options. Instead he did what politicians always do, proposing short-term deficit measures that are either nonspecific (across-the-board spending freeze!), relatively painless (no more pork! eliminate waste!), or both. Above all, they’re measures that will do precious little to actually solve the problem they’re being offered as solutions to.
Yes, Obama acknowledged that his proposals only address a small percentage of the budget. That, at least, makes him a bit more honest than much of the GOP, which seems endlessly willing to use the public’s inability to process the difference between millions, billions and trillions to its advantage. (OMG, we’re wasting tens of millions of dollars on Fannie Mae legal bills! We should stop doing that! Look at me, I’m a deficit hawk!) But despite acknowledging that long-term structural deficits are the core of the problem, Obama didn’t propose anything to address them. He only paid them lip-service, neither offering nor endorsing any potential solutions (not even kinda sorta quasi-specific ones!). And he took several options off the table. Thus, in terms of actual proposals, Obama’s deficit cutting agenda is Republican Lite. Totally unserious, focused on the small-bore and short-term instead of the big-picture and long-term. By endorsing an earmark ban, a spending freeze, etc., he vindicates GOP bulls**t instead of pivoting to the real problem (long-term structural deficits).
He needed to call GOP’s bluff, to call out its ridiculous focus on short-term deficits and small-bore measures. Instead he joined ’em. He needed to say, OK, so you’re deficit hawks and Tea Partiers? Great, let’s make X, Y & Z painful choices to fix the long-term budget. Challenge them to come along with him, or face presidential scorn and mockery for their hypocrisy if they don’t. If necessary, go over Congress’s heads, like Reagan did, and use his soaring rhetoric and communication skills to sell the public on the necessity of making these hard choices now (a tall order, I know, but if he’s not going to try it, who will?). Instead he said, meh, we gotta do something, I haz a commission, they said some stuff, let’s think about it some more. Tom Coburn is right: he voted present.
Obama has said he’d rather be a one-term president who gets things done than a two-termer who doesn’t. After last night, I say: “YOU LIE!” What we needed was rare, courageous leadership from him. What we got was politics as usual. Where we’re going is Hell in a handbasket. After last night’s speech, I’m more convinced than ever that we’re going to #LoseTheFuture.
Obama was supposed to be different. If I may channel Obi-wan for a moment: “You were supposed to be the Chosen One!!!” 😉 Instead, he’s just a typical politician, doing the easy/obvious thing and trying to position himself to get re-elected. #FAIL
(Or, as Becky put it, “The Budget Deficit: brought to you by bloated entitlements that neither party has the political courage to address. #DemFAIL #GOPFAIL.”)
See also, everything Ross Douthat said:
If you were a visitor from Mars, watching tonight’s State of the Union address and Paul Ryan’s Republican response, you would have no reason to think that the looming insolvency of our entitlement system lies at the heart of the economic challenges facing the United States over the next two decades. From President Obama, we heard a reasonably eloquent case for center-left technocracy and industrial policy, punctuated by a few bipartisan flourishes, in which the entitlement issue felt like an afterthought: He took note of the problem, thanked his own fiscal commission for their work without endorsing any of their recommendations, made general, detail-free pledges to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent (but “without slashing benefits for future generations”), and then moved swiftly on to the case for tax reform. Tax reform is important, of course, and so are education and technological innovation and infrastructure and all the other issues that the president touched on in this speech. But it was still striking that in an address organized around the theme of American competitiveness, which ran to almost 7,000 words and lasted for an hour, the president spent almost as much time talking about solar power as he did about the roots of the nation’s fiscal crisis.
Ryan’s rejoinder was more urgent and more focused: America’s crippling debt was an organizing theme, and there were warnings of “painful austerity measures” and a looming “day of reckoning.” But his remarks, while rhetorically effective, were even more vague about the details of that reckoning than the president’s address. Ryan owes his prominence, in part, to his willingness to propose a very specific blueprint for addressing the entitlement system’s fiscal woes. But in his first big moment on the national stage, the words “Medicare” and “Social Security” did not pass the Wisconsin congressman’s lips.
None of this was particularly surprising. It’s clear that both parties have decided that a period of divided government twelve months before a presidential election is the wrong time to make big moves on entitlements and the deficit. Better to wait, jockey for position, and hope that the correlation of forces after 2012 will be more favorable to their preferred solutions. And it’s clear, too, that they’ve decided (with honorable exceptions) that it’s too risky to even begin building support for the unpopular cuts or tax increases ahead. The bet, on both sides, is that there’s still time to work with, and that the other party will blink, or at least give ground, before the real crunch arrives.
Let’s hope they’re right.
I have little hope of that. There’s always another election less than two years away. I thought 2011 might be the year Obama would seize the moment and show his true leadership. Will 2013 instead be that year? Maybe, but ugh, I’m done giving free passes to this guy based on the potential that he might show real seriousness at some point. If he’s still our last best hope, and he may be, it’s only because the alternatives are so poor. (But cf., Mitch Daniels ’12?) For the first time, though, I fairly strongly suspect that Obama is not the right man for this moment. Would McCain have been better? Certainly not. Hillary? I dunno. But Obama is looking more and more like an near-perfect example of squandered potential. And America really can’t afford that right now.
P.S. Clive Crook: “[T]his was not the speech of a president focused, as Mr. Obama should be, on the country’s fiscal condition. He expressed concern about it, but no great sense of urgency. The thrust of the speech, in fact, pushed the other way. … Did he start to prepare the country for the coming fiscal restraint? The ‘Sputnik moment’ says no. Did he give even an outline of the path back to fiscal control? No.”
P.P.S. Reason‘s Matt Welch:
[A]s Rep. Paul Ryan rightly emphasized last night, the only real policy issue in America right now is that we are on the verge of fiscal catastrophe because cannot afford the government we’re paying for today, let alone the one we’re promising for tomorrow. And the president, though he is much more serious on this issue than a huge swath of his political party, is nonetheless not remotely serious about this issue. Vowing to cut $400 billion over 10 years (a plan that, judging by the two people clapping when he proposed it, will likely be cut to ribbons if it survives through Congress), at a moment when the deficit for this year is more than three times that, indicates that Democrats (and a helluva lot of Republicans as well) are hunkering down in our awful status quo–half-heartedly tinkering around the edges of spending, making incremental changes this way and that, then launching new moonshots and redoubling old impotent efforts. Politicians have put us on the precipice of financial ruin, and they show no indication of doing a damned thing about it.
And I think they know it. Look at the plaintive, semi-desperate, Stuart Smalleyesque mantra Obama kept repeating at the end: “We do big things.” By his insistence his anxiety shall be revealed. We don’t do big things, America, not in the moonshotty Marshall Plan way of speechwriters’ cliche box. Increasingly, we don’t do little things, either — like keeping libraries open five days a week in California. What we do is snarf up ever-larger portions of your grandkids’ money for purposes that are usually obscure and often criminal. …
No, these people are not serious about the task at hand. The state of our union, as measured by the competence of people in power, is a f***ing disgrace.
P.P.P.S. More good analysis from Doug Mataconis.
Like I said on Twitter, you want him tomslam on the breaks and suddenly do massive budget cuts? You thinkmit will help the economy and people if suddenly money from tons of programs that people rely on suddenly goes poof overnight? Better to slow down, stop, then reverse deficit growth a little more gradually. That way we don’t end up flipping the car and end up right back in the ditch we are just getting out of. Besides, where is it written that the SOTU is everything the President will do for the next year?
David, don’t be obtuse. I’m not suggesting that we cut Social Security and Medicare benefits in half tomorrow. That’s fiscally unnecessary, economically unwise, and politically impossible. What I’m suggesting is that we need an at least somewhat specific plan to address these medium- and long-term solvency issues, in the medium- and long-term, and we need to start working toward implementing that plan now… gradually, as you say. We don’t need to fix everything now, but we need to START ARTICULATING A PLAN FOR HOW WE’RE GOING TO FIX EVERYTHING NOW, because if we can’t even start to do that now, when the Hell are we going to start? And if we don’t start soon, bondholders are eventually going to freak out, and everything will get infinitely worse. (See, e.g., Greece, Ireland, soon Portugal, Spain, U.K., etc.) Plus, even if bondholders don’t freak out, the fiscal realities themselves will just get worse and worse.
Instead of any of that, we got a bunch of warmed-over nonsense that fails to address the actual problem and instead joins the Republicans in focusing primarily on the wrong issue (short-term spending). In that sense, he went in exactly the wrong direction, ceding the framing of the argument to the Right without advocating anything in terms of policy that will actually help in any meaningful way.
As for “where is it written that the SOTU is everything the President will do for the next year?” … give me a break. The SOTU is a president’s best opportunity to set the agenda for the year. If he barely even mentions topic X in the SOTU, it’s a pretty clear sign that topic X is not a priority for him. What’s he going to do, call another joint session of Congress next month to talk about entitlements? No, he’s clearly made a choice to kick this can down the road, again, just like every president since Reagan and before has done. Blindly hoping that he’ll radically change course later in the year is completely foolish.
GOOOOOO America! BEEEAAAAAT the Future!
What bugs me about all of this is that we need a leader to articulate this stuff NOW.
The US government can’t just keep this deficit spending up. And we need a plan to keep us out of a mega Greece type of situation. Dint care which party does it, but right now, neither are. I’m about done with the Ds and Rs. Third parties are getting more and more attractive.
Unfortunately I’m too deep into my third 60+ hour week in a row to give this the attention I’d like but: I think you’re getting far too caught up in a “great man” model of history and the notion that there’s a measurable impact of a State of the Union. I also think that you’re discounting the ameliorative affects of being a reserve currency country in terms of staving off crises.
Let’s say for example that Obama did try and talk past Congress to the general population. The general population is completely unserious about spending and debt reduction also. You only have to look at the number of people screaming for spending control and also no cuts to their favored programs to know that there’s a complete cognitive dissonance here.
In the short term, I’m not getting annoyed at Obama because this is *exactly* the style that people were bitching about in the run up to health care reform and DADT repeal. And if in fact this is not legislative rope a dope, then I’m not going to go mental that he’s not somehow overcoming structural issues of long standing. I voted for a reasonably bright consensus building centrist and this far that’s what I’ve got, who has delivered more substantively in 2 years than Clinton did.
If calendar year 2011 doesn’t bring massive change, oh well. This is a long crisis, and short sharp shocks are not the American way. I’m not invested in one leader as a savior – this is about us, as a polity. Whatever our individual merits, we are stupid and lazy and unwilling to change as a group. I’m not hanging that on the Republicans even though I think their policy provisions are moronic kitchen-table economics, because it’s not just them.
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Random comments:
–I think both Dems and GOP are statists..they just have a soft spot for different “special interests”.
–Seriously? You really think, given how hard it is to reform farm subsidies that benefit a few thousand farmers, that entitlements that benefit tens of millions will ever be touched? Kotlikoff and Burns wrote abou this in “The Coming Generational Storm” years ago. They think it’s more likely that we’ll default on debt than shed entitlements. Bush tried before 9/11…got shot down (regardless of whether you agree with his plan or not…it was DOA).
–Many commenters said that Obama wasn’t up to the task and had inadequate experience. Many of them were dismissed as party hacks or racists.
–Stephen Roach, former chief economist at Morgan Stanley, wrote extensively about “Global Labor Arbitrage.” Friedman “borrowed” extensively in his “flat” books, and I understand that Tyler Cowen has a book out (which I haven’t read) that extends Roach’s theory back about 200 years to argue that the US has had a series of advantages, starting with cheap/free land, bad decisions made by our rivals, and being the only world power not hampered by bankruptcy/cities bombed to ruin after WWII.
–IMHO the past 20 years have been an exercise in Americans trying to defend an unrealistically high standard of living…global (PPP-adjusted) living standards will reach an equilibrium. Unfortunately for Americans, we’re outnumbered…so the equilibrium will be closer to China/India than current American levels.
–I’m optimistic about my own future…pessimistic about my fellow countrymens’. David Rothkopf wrote a book called “Superclass” that describes the coming bifurcation within countries. I attended a lunch in November with the chair of the Dallas Fed where he commented that cheap money is being used to buy capital assets and do M&A…which will beef up corporate profits at the expense of employment. Seems to me that capital is more in demand than labor, so control capital and you’ll do very well.
As a partisan and all-around jerk, I’d love to blame unions/democrats/environmentalists/PC/whatever, but honestly, to do so would be as ridiculous as claiming a partisan cause for earthquakes. This is beyond any political party.
Shorter Brendan: EVERYBODY PANIC.
I can’t say I disagree.
If I had any confidence in his (and Congress’) ability to actually DO anything he said, and at least attempt a pale shadow of the New Deal, I’d be listening more. But the bureaucratic morass we have nowadays makes the New Deal look like a paragon of efficiency.
And we need an early-’80s-esque plan on entitlements so those of us who know we’re going to be screwed can at least officially be TOLD “You’re going to be screwed” and act accordingly. Instead we get fed more “Social Security is fine, we’re not cutting benefits for anybody, and everything’s going to be fine until 2037 (used to be 2047), and who cares about the people who are retiring after that? They’re not baby boomers, so screw ’em.”
Mr Gwin (I assume) is on to something about unrealistically high standards of living. The change in labor demand in this country – away from relatively high pay for unskilled or semi-skilled labor – is unlikely to reverse, and the effects were masked somewhat by women in the work force and cheap credit. When expectations are based on an atypical and short period of history, it can be tricky to manage, politically speaking.
No one should need to be told they’re gonna be screwed on SS, particularly no one in Gen X or later, because it’s mathematically impossible not to be screwed as things stand now, and as others have said, it appears to be politically impossible to do anything about it. And forget 2037 — the $hit is gonna hit the fan much sooner than that.
Agree with Joe Mama….my friends and I were thinking that back in the late’80s, and it was as obvious as the eastern sunrise by 1993.
After listening to/watching both SOTU and GOP response, I am *less* depressed now than I was, while not exactly being giddy with optimism …
I damn near drove off the road when our First Occupant actually raised the topic of the need for medical malpractice reform … (DAMN, but those MIT students do top of the line pranks – getting *that* onto our TOTUS !) …
I was disappointed that I didn’t hear anything realistic from our First Occcupant about increasing domestic energy production … nor about increased domestic resource production … nor about increased domestic production of sellable goods …
I was disappointed that our First Occupant didn’t tell us that, in the light of the current economy, the new programs since January 2008 would be suspended until unemployment nationally was back below 6% (or even 7%) …
As for the GOP response, the important part of it is in the next 6 months, when the GOP-led House works on legislation which can help or hinder …
As an observer, both speeches were delivered competently … (grin) … it was entertaining listening to the First Occupant tell us about successes which were directly due to continuations of Dubya’s foreign policies …
It was less entertaining when he emphasised high-speed rail – not exactly likely to improve things when businesses don’t have domestic product to move in faster more expensive ways and unemployed folk cannot afford train travel …
One note about Brendan’s post … “I thought 2011 might be the year Obama would seize the moment and show his true leadership.” … Brendan – this *is* our First Occupant showing his true leadership – it’s just that some of us saw that *prior* to his election into the First Occupancy … I’m not sure if Obama is the first US First Occupant – I seem to think of Millard Fillmore as having fulfilled that role … alii alia dicunt … (Latin for YMMV) …
in the light of the current economy, the new programs since January 2008 would be suspended until unemployment nationally was back below 6% (or even 7%)
I’m unaware of any economic theory under which this suggestion is in any way coherent. Care to link to any economist who has proposed such a thing?
Also, I assume you mean January 2009. And I assume you would exclude new tax cuts, and new military spending, and would only include all new domestic spending “programs,” whatever that means, without regard to their merit, with regard to whether they were specifically targeted at creating jobs or whether they’ve successfully done so (my guess is that some programs have succeeded and some have failed, as is usually the case in life, but you’d throw out the baby with the bathwater).
Brendan – lack of awareness (apart from being something about which one customarily would not boast) does not prove lack of existence …
And, yes, you are correct that I mean January 2009 … (self-reminder: proof ALL comments before hitting Submit Comment) …
And, by “new spending programs”, I mean the spending programs which didn’t exist prior to January 2009 (when the First Occupant took office) and which require explicit additional expenditure … so – a new program to shrink numbers of Federal employees through attrition gets to continue … a new program which hires additional folk – new Czars and their minions – would be suspended …
Try the concept that a family decides to buy a new car each year, trading in the old one … budget gets tight … a sensible family chooses not to keep buying a new car, and makes do with the existing one …
If a new program does away with subsidising farmers to NOT grow some crop, then *that* new program gets to continue …
As for “throw out the baby with the bathwater”, think of it more as choosing to recycle the bathwater – and realise that, after 4 kids, they are trained to get rid of their own bathwater, so it’s not a risk … or were you projecting what *you* would do if *you* had used the words I used ?
(grin) I’m glad you implicitly acknowledge the accuracy of my final paragraph in #12 …
lack of awareness…does not prove lack of existence
No, it doesn’t. But I note you didn’t point to any evidence of existence, either. Again: “I’m unaware of any economic theory under which this suggestion is in any way coherent. Care to link to any economist who has proposed such a thing?”
I guess not.
Brendan #16 – how about a US Senator ?
“… offered by U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), would have frozen non-defense discretionary spending at fiscal year 2009 levels for two years, with a 1 percent annual increase for the following three years.”
Or from ‘Americans for Tax Reform’ – “Freezing federal spending at the FY 2008 amounts would return the federal government to pre-bailout and “stimulus” spending levels. Such a spending reduction would bring the budget into balance by 2013 and cut the national debt nearly in half by 2020, even assuming that Congress extends the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and indexes the Alternative Minimum Tax for inflation. In contrast to the President’s current promise to “freeze” spending at FY 2011 levels, this would ensure the recent spending bonanza is not enshrined in the nation’s fiscal outlook in perpetuity.
Read more: http://www.atr.org/fourteen-ways-reduce-government-spending-a5332##ixzz1CC1mfToU“
The idea is “coherent” under the common-sense economic theory that, in hard economic times, a sensible person does not increase expenditures capriciously … oh, and I suspect that Krugman would hate the idea, so it would have that in its favour, too …
Thats not what you proposed Al, you proposed suspending programs, regardless of benefit or cost.
“(when the First Occupant took office) ”
Who the hell is the First Occupant anyway?
“Try the concept that a family decides to buy a new car each year, trading in the old one … budget gets tight … a sensible family chooses not to keep buying a new car, and makes do with the existing one …”
Or they get rid of some other expenditures they don’t need. Like tax breaks for millionaires. Or oil companies.
First Occupant is a stupid title coined, as far as I can tell, by Garrison Keeler for George W. Bush. Stupid for Bush, stupid for Obama.
Thats not what you proposed Al, you proposed suspending programs, regardless of benefit or cost.
Exactly. The links you provided are non-responsive to my query. Next.
Let’s get serious. We’ll be lucky if they even tinker around the edges.
That said, I’d vote in favor of simply rolling back the budget to 2008 and wiping out everything added since then….we were doing fine in 2008.
Every new government expenditure should have a built in sunset provision.
@gahrie Of course you are in favor of roll back all of Obamas changes. Now let’s have a serious discussion about actually practical ideas. As for the sunset provision, that would mean congress spends more time rehashing the same damn stuff. Really efficient use of time.
Of course you are in favor of roll back all of Obamas changes
First, I think it is more accurate to call them Pelosi’s and Reid’s changes.
Second, yes, I am in favor of rolling back all of the new government spending instituted in the last two years.
However, I would also be in favor of replacing government programs with new government programs with no increased costs.
As for the sunset provision, that would mean congress spends more time rehashing the same damn stuff. Really efficient use of time.
Actually, it would be a very efficient use of time. First of all, any time spent reviewing prior spending is more time they are not creating new spending. Also, we would finally force our legislators to actually examine the results of their actions. Is the program doing what it was supposed to do? What are the cost over runs? Has the program expanded beyond its original purpose? Finally it would allow us to kill the one true immortal animal on Earth…a governmental bureaucracy.
Seriously…when was the last time you heard any governmental agency, at any time, at any level, say…”OK..We’ve done what we were supposed to do. We’re shutting down next week.”?
Brendan #22 – given how “effective” the economists who advised Obama/Pelosi/Reid have proven to be, the two cites I gave you make a bunch more sense than the advisors were/are … still, it’s much easier to be dismissive of something about which you do not wish to have to think …
What’s that saying, again ?
It’s not just a river in Egypt !
David K #20 – subsidies to corporation s not to grow crops – get rid of those first … subsidies to oil companies for stuff other than producing more domestic energy sources, make that next … do we actually agree on something ?
Alasdair, PAY ATTENTION. As David pointed out and I seconded, the links you cited are supportive of an entirely different proposal that the one you made. I’m “dismissing” them because they are irrelevant. You have failed to offer a single link in support of your ridiculous, incoherent proposal. This has nothing to do with me being in “denial.” It’s not my fault you aren’t paying attention to the substance of your own comments and of the material you offer in support of them.
@David K. “Or oil companies.”
Can you be specific about which tax breaks you’re referring to?
The libs’ hand-wringing about the Obama speech has been quite amusing. I had quite a few thoughts I was planning to capture, but then we got walloped by a ridiculous snowstorm during rush hour yesterday and all “hell-frozen-over kind of hell” broke loose. I suppose if you somehow didn’t think the last two years were a total disaster for this country, and you actually thought any of Obama’s major initiatives the last two years were helpful to our country’s near- OR long-term financial condition, then yeah, the SOTU speech was a bit disappointing. But for me, viewed in the narrow lens for what it was — um, a run-of-the-mill, cliche- and fluff-filled SOTU speech — it was fairly decent. If anything, I’m actually more concerned for the GOP’s chances in 2012 today than I was before the speech.
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