Obama To Focus On The Deficit In 2010
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Economy, Money, Obama
We all know we’re on an unsustainable course with all of this spending. And this is why I voted for this guy: he’s a realist. We needed a short term shot in the arm when he first got in here, but now we have to worry about the long term consequences.
On the practical side, Obama has spent more money on new programs in nine months than Bill Clinton did in eight years, pushing the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion. This leaves little room for big spending initiatives.
On the political side, Obama can help moderate Democrats avoid some tough votes in an election year and, perhaps more importantly, calm the nerves of independent voters who are voicing big concerns with the big spending and deficits. Even if Obama succeeds – and that’s a big if – it will be tough for many Democrats to sell themselves as deeply concerned about spending after voting for the stimulus, the bailouts, the health care legislation and a plan to address global warming, four enormous government programs.
“Democrats have to reassure voters we are not being reckless,” said a Democratic official involved in the planning. “The White House knows this and that’s why we’ll be hearing a lot about reducing the deficit early next year. Democrats owned this issue for the past four years and cannot afford to cede it to Republicans now.”
And sure, some of this is political, but it’s still a refreshingly logical decision and goes completely against the “socialist” meme that Obama’s critics are trying to smear him with. It makes even more sense when you consider that Independent voters are starting to grow weary of the Congressional Dems.
So then, will a focus on the deficit and jobs in 2010 put Obama in a better position for 2012?
This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 and is filed under Barack, Economy, Money, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 14th, 2009 at 9:28 am
I voted for Obama, but his spend, spend, spend philosophy is starting to make me have doubts about the wisdom of my vote ! It’s fine to spend money that you have, but it is another thing altogether to spend money that you don’t have ! Down the road our children or grand children will have to pick up the tab.
November 14th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
So let me get this straight, the man who has “has spent more money on new programs in nine months than Bill Clinton did in eight years, pushing the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion.” is a “realist” and is the one who is now going to cut the deficit. That’s not taking into account the bank busting Obamacare and the even more idiotic “Cap and Trade” *(both of which you CANNOT afford and will crush business even more)…bwahahahahahahaha!!!…Wow, this is comedy gold…you can’t make this stuff up…
It’s ok Justin, like the Bushbots, the Obamabots need to support their man to the bitter end…
November 14th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
You know where there is a lot of money allocated that could be cut? Defense spending. i really feel that any talk about deficit reduction should start with cuts to defense rather than the social welfare programs that keep people from falling into poverty. The deficit talk is nonsense. It only appears when democrats come into office and try to actually fix the disaster left by republicans.
You know what might fix part of the deficit? increasing revenue. you know what does that? sane taxing policies where wealthier citizens have to actually pay more than poorer ones. Obama’s health care proposal and the cap and trade proposal are deficit neutral. Conservatives refuse to believe this but it is the truth. They are paid for as part of the proposed legislation. Thats what all the cbo scoring is supposed to and does show.
If you really want to cut the deficit you have to cut defense spending, get out of iraq and afghanistan, raise taxes, and create future legislation that doesnt give away the revenue and cost cutting aspects. If deficits are your concern than im interested to see the full throated advocacy of a public option with Medicare rates.
Instead we can see republicans shouting about the deficit they created during the Bush years without any credible plans to reduce it.
November 14th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Guys,
Obama’s been better on the deficit than anyone else since February. Granted in January he pushed through a massive stimulus program that hasn’t worked well enough yet, but since February pretty much everything the deficit hawks have proposed has been worse for the deficit than Obama’s proposals.
The House health bill reduces the deficit. The Senate bill will probably do the same once Harry Reid finishes it. Both will help save us from increasing Medicare costs, which are a true deficit nightmare.
The only place Obama’s proposals have been bad for the deficit is his desire to permanently eliminate automatic cuts in Medicare payments to Doctors. Those automatic cuts will never happen, because Congress hates screwing Doctors, but they are difficult to take off the budget for future years because Congress thinks they’re a useful accounting trick.
OTOH deficit hawks support that accounting trick, want to reduce taxes without substantially reducing spending, have no idea what to do about Medicare, etc.
November 14th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Justin:
President Obama has already focus on the deficit more money on new Programs than President Clinton when he’s all ready made deep cuts military with 680 million dollars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/business/29defense.html
November 15th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
I missed the part where “democrats owned this issue.” Republicans owned it for awhile in the early 90s, and Clinton jumped on board. With the help of a favorable economy, the budget was briefly balanced. We saw plenty of lip service after that. Since then, neither party has shown demonstrable concern as a matter of basic philosophy. Not if you only give points for action, as opposed to rhetoric.
This is absolutely the right time to care about the federal budget. The last Bush and first Obama budgets overspent on a scale of “collect 3, spend 4 or 5.” That’s WAY out of control. So, I fully support scaling back the overspending as soon as possible. that Obama and his team are floating this idea is at least a good non-idiotarian sign. But I’m not scoring points in either side’s column for lip service. No way.
As I predicted in an email to a buddy last week, I expect the best-case scenario to be that there will a lot of backpatting for the insufficient achievement of scaling back from “collect 3, spend almost 5″ to “collect three, spend a little more than more 4.”
That’s insufficient. we need to get back to something like “collect 3, spend $3.10″ within 2 or 3 years. As it is, we have dug a huge hole in the last 2 years, and we WILL have to pay for it, probably in the form of a reduced standard of living as we begin to see higher interest rates and inflation. And we’ll only see those if and when we are lucky enough to see a decent rebound from the recession.
That’s no guarantee. Let’s face it, it’s hard to miss how the gov’t deficit spending via the stimulus propped up real estate, car purchasing, and many grossly unbalanced state budgets. If the fed gov’t eschews another stimulus in the name of trying to return towards fiscal balance, there’s no telling what ripples we might see next year. We are still in an extremely tenuous fiscal situation across the country.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Hawks will remind you that the US is already 28th in terms of defense spending as a percentage of GDP (see World Fact Book).
But as a percentage of our annual budget, 2008 saw defense spending at just over 29% of the budget, with Social Security at nearly 44% (but its important to remember that Social Security taxes are still collected at a higher rate than the program’s total costs). 13% of the expenditures were for other “mandatory programs” with only 15% in the “discretionary” programs that Gaucho wants to see expanded. (Source is http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=125).
With less military interventionism, less emphasis on “nation building” and a move to implement the “lighter footprint” Donald Rumsfeld wished for prior to 9/11, we could reduce military expenditures by about a third. But we should resist the impulse to “spend” that money we don’t have on welfare programs. Poor people want good jobs, not handouts.