The Fighting Conciliator
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Published Monday, February 9, 2009 by the Washington Post
http://tiny.cc/PGGm2 (http://tiny.cc/PGGm2)
It took less than three weeks for the real Barack Obama to come into view. He turns out to be both a conciliator and a fighter.
These are not contradictions in his character. They represent different sides of a politician who sees some issues as more susceptible to compromise than others and who wants his adversaries to know that his easygoing style does not make him a pushover.
The sudden clarity emerged in the two best speeches of his short presidency and in the ongoing saga of the stimulus bill.
Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday with a warning against the use of religion "as a tool to divide us from one another -- as an excuse for prejudice and intolerance."
Obama did not cite Isaiah's injunction that we should come and reason together, a favorite biblical passage of Lyndon B. Johnson's, but it seemed to be on his mind: "For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God."
That was in the morning. By evening, when the president spoke to Democratic House members in Williamsburg, he had cast aside his efforts to placate Republicans who had no intention of reasoning with him on the stimulus bill. Obama had turned the other cheek often enough.
"Don't come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis," the born-again campaigner thundered. "We are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin."
Deploying a preacher's unapologetically judgmental cadences, Obama denounced "the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face." He reiterated that argument in his Saturday radio address and will press it in speeches on the road this week.
The Williamsburg speech let loose a great gnashing of teeth from those who seem to believe that bipartisan form matters more than substance. But the new tone reflected the very thing about Obama that has won so much notice: He's a pragmatist who takes a method and tries it until it no longer works.
Initially, Obama hoped to win broad Republican support for his stimulus package, but most Republicans preferred to bloody up this new, young president. Obama adjusted. If the GOP wanted a fight, he would not back down.
Obama's tougher rhetoric and terrible new economic news helped push a handful of wavering senators to agree to a compromise stimulus bill on Friday. Still, there was a cost to Obama's delayed response to Republican provocations. By giving conservatives a week to savage the House-passed stimulus, Obama weakened his negotiating hand.
The changes made in the proposal to pick up votes from a few Republican senators made it less effective than the House bill. Programs that would spur the economy -- aid to fiscally ailing states, more help for the needy, spending on health, education and the environment -- were cut back. Kept in were tax cuts of limited stimulative value that the Senate had added.
Nonetheless, Obama staved off defeat, and the Senate bill is better than it might have been. A House-Senate conference should fix some of the inequities in the compromise, whose critics can use Obama's own arguments to explain their insistence on a better final product.
But fighting for his recovery program does not preclude Obama's efforts to ease the cultural conflicts that have divided the country since the late 1960s. If Obama is happy to wage war on right-wing economic theories and overpaid Wall Street executives, he does not want to pick gratuitous fights with those who are moderate or conservative on cultural and religious matters.
Obama's own cultural instincts run right down the middle of the road. His politics are more neo-Truman than neo-Woodstock, more compatible with "It's a Wonderful Life" than "Easy Rider."
He supports abortion rights but argues for fewer abortions. He supports religious liberty but thinks religion has a legitimate public role. He wants to fix but not abolish George W. Bush's faith-based program. MTV loyalists love him, but he models a family life more likely to play on the Disney Channel.
So Obama's decision to fight Republicans on the stimulus bill doesn't mean he's lost his conciliatory instincts. It means he's neither a chump nor a wimp. There are rank-and-file cultural conservatives willing to join Obama to end the feuds of the 1960s. But Washington conservatives, insisting that tax cuts are the one and only important matter in American life, are stuck in a 1980s time warp.
This is a useful short editorial regarding President Obama's first couple of weeks in office. The stimulus bill is crucial to the American economy, and how that economy affects the world. All we can do is hope the people in DC work this out. Millions of lives are hanging in the balance.
Whether or not this massive stimulus which will inject a Niagara Falls worth of money into our economy will work or not is something pundits and scholars can argue until many a cow comes home. This is something I can accept. I only hope that proper restrictions and oversight are implemented to prevent this type of thing from happening to such an outrageous degree in the future. Hopefully something that cannot be easily undone by another administration the likes of Cheney & Bush...
I wish Obama the best and he has my sympathetic support.
,Caul
I have doubts about the efficacy of this trickle down stimulus plan.
lw
Congress Reaches Deal on Stimulus Plan
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE
Published February 12, 2009 by the New York Times
http://tiny.cc/HyMre (http://tiny.cc/HyMre)
WASHINGTON — Senate and House leaders announced Wednesday evening that they had reached agreement on a $789 billion economic stimulus bill, clearing the way for final Congressional action and President Obama's signature, perhaps by the end of the week.
"The differences between the House and Senate versions, we've resolved," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said in a Capitol news conference. The differences were resolved by a lot of intense "give and take," Mr. Reid said, "and if you don't mind my saying so, that's an understatement."
Hours later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi emerged from a meeting of negotiators and said, "We have come to an agreement with the Senate."
The accord reached in the early evening came after an awkward, if temporary, delay. Ms. Pelosi was not present at the late-afternoon news conference presided over by Mr. Reid, even though he praised her effusively for her role in the talks and spoke as though the deal was already iron clad.
Even after Mr. Reid's announcement, House Democrats reportedly held out for some changes important to them, including more money for school renovations.
By early evening, Senate and House leaders were seated at a conference table, and a short time later Ms. Pelosi emerged and said that the accord was indeed final. Assuming that there are no other last-minute stumbling blocks, the path seemed clear for final Congressional action and President Obama's signature on a package intended to pull the country out of the worst recession in years.
Before Mr. Reid's slightly premature statement that an accord was final, negotiations had been going on all day, following extensive talks on Tuesday night, to close the gap between the Senate and House versions. In the end, the package that Mr. Reid said had been agreed upon would pare back Democrats' proposed spending on education and health programs in favor of tax cuts that were needed to win Republican votes in the Senate.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a centrist Republican whose role has been crucial, said the final package includes $150 billion in spending on infrastructure, including transportation facilities, and considerable tax relief. Moreover, she said, it includes significant money to aid state governments.
Ms. Collins also seemed to think that all of the wrinkles had been ironed out before they actually were. "This was a good-faith effort on both the House and the Senate's part, and it shows that, working together, we can indeed accomplish great things," she said.
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, was another who initially thought the agreement was more final than it was. "Without a great spirit of compromise from the White House, the House and the Senate, we would not be able to announce this agreement today," he said.
Despite intense lobbying by governors, the final deal slashed $35 billion from a proposed state fiscal stabilization fund, eliminated $16 billion in aid for school construction and sharply curtailed health care subsidies for the unemployed.
In driving down the total cost of the stimulus bill — from $838 billion approved by the Senate and $820 billion by the House — legislators also sharply reduced proposed tax incentives for buyers of homes and cars that held huge public appeal. Senator Collins said getting the final number to under $800 billion was more than symbolic; it meant "a fiscally responsible number," she said.
But the final bill retained a $70 billion tax cut that would spare millions of middle-class Americans from paying the alternative minimum tax in 2009, which some Democrats decried as wasting a large chunk of the bill on something that would do little to lift the economy and that Congress would have approved regardless of the recession.
In announcing the agreement, Mr. Reid credited the efforts of Speaker Pelosi, who he said had been indispensable in resolving differences between the two chambers of Congress.
After huddling in the office of Ms. Pelosi on Tuesday until nearly midnight, top White House officials and Congressional leaders had all but ironed out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the recovery package by noon on Wednesday.
"I think we are way down the road from where we started and I don't think there is that much more of a distance to travel until we are able to have it put together," said Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska who is a leader of a bipartisan group of senators whose support is so crucial that they effectively hold veto power over the final legislation.
Even trimmed to $789 billion, the recovery measure will be the most expansive unleashing of the government's fiscal firepower to fight a recession in modern history. And yet it seemed almost trifling compared with the potential price tag of $2.5 trillion for the rescue plan for the financial system announced on Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
Even before the last touches were put to the bill, the emerging deal infuriated some Democrats who said that President Obama and Congressional leaders had been too quick to give up on Democratic priorities. Some critics also suggested that the final figure was too small to be effective because of the grave condition of the American economy.
"I am not happy with it," said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. "You are not looking at a happy camper. I mean, they took a lot of stuff out of education. They took it out of health, school construction and they put it more into tax issues."
Mr. Harkin said he was particularly frustrated by the money being spent on fixing the alternative minimum tax. "It's about 9 percent of the whole bill," he said, "which we were going to do later this year in a tax bill. Why is it in there? It has nothing to do with stimulus. It has nothing to do with recovery. This makes no sense whatsoever."
But even as Congressional leaders and top White House officials went through the package with a carving knife, it was clear that the three Republicans who agreed to support the bill in the Senate wielded extraordinary power, and along with conservative Democrats in their coalition, had put a firm stamp on the stimulus package.
For instance, even as negotiators accepted many of the Senate's reduced spending provisions, they were careful to maintain an additional $6.5 billion for medical research that was inserted at the insistence of Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is a cancer survivor.
Republican opponents of the stimulus measure continued to criticize it on Wednesday as a bloated and ill-designed spending bonanza by Democrats that would not help lift the economy out of recession but would plunge future generations of Americans deeper into debt.
"Yesterday the Senate cast one of the most expensive votes in history," the Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said. "Americans are wondering how we're going to pay for all this. Judging by the market reaction to Secretary Geithner's announcement yesterday and the newspaper editorials this morning, it's clear that everyone is looking for a little more detail."
In hammering out a final agreement, the negotiators not only had to settle on overall dollar amounts for the various provisions but in some cases had to resolve bitter disagreements over the formulas that would be used to divide some of the largest categories of money to be directed to state and local governments.
The stimulus plan includes $87 billion in federal aid to states for rising Medicaid costs, and powerful blocs of lawmakers, largely divided between urban and rural states, had been fighting over whether to divvy up the funds according to the traditional Medicaid reimbursement formulas or to give extra help to states with high unemployment.
Kate Phillips and David Stout contributed reporting.
LW - I have my doubts too, but sitting around waiting for a miracle isn't a good idea. Obama is right that work has to be done, and things are going to be bad a long time. Bush took quite a shit on the world, didn't he? Republicans don't even mention his name anymore when they can help it. Anyway, a lot of the money is going to help poor folks, and start up construction projects, build schools, etc. I'm hopeful better days are coming, and that we have finally begun on the road to them.
Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
— Thomas Jefferson, 1802
Btw....
As an answer to the question above about what we are to do in the current situation. My answer would be to question why anything needs to be done immediately when the problem didn't develop in a similar instantaneous manner.
Imo, the current action of throwing money at the captains of industry isn't the right response to the situation at hand. As a matter of fact, its the wrong knee-jerk reaction that will lead to more pain and no gain. But desperate people do desperate things and uninformed people are more likely to go along with the desperate acts in question than an informed populace.
The current actions by the gubmit are doing nothing more than putting a band aid on a self-inflicted wound made by a "cutter," imo. Its going to happen again unless the root-cause is addressed.
My answer: Let the market take care if its own. The U$ gubmit needs to revert back to the day of being the gubmit of the people and come to grips with the fact that the long-term well being of "we the people" mean less to corporate america than their short-term quarterly profits. As a matter of fact, due to pure greed, there is nothing wrong with providing "we the people," with a degree of protection from being taken advantage of by the captains of industry and the minions who do their bidding. Translation: The U$ people are currently being forced to live or die by capitalism while corporate entities are being offered a socialistic safety net by the U$ gubmit. In my reality, the people deserve the safety net while the corporate world has market forces to set things straight.
Why should we the people pay for poor bidness practices of corporate america? Small bidness owners don't have that safety net. If they fail, they fail.
I don't want the band aid. I demand the cure.
lw
QuoteI don't want the band aid. I demand the cure.
I agree, these 'packages' are nonsense, and yet more evidence of the government working against the people. If Obama stood up and said he was going to scrap the financial system and replace it with something better, something that does facilitate trade between people without ripping off 99% of the worlds population then he may be onto something. In my opinin yet more evidence he's just another crook.
BP
Money as debt on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8)
Well, I'm not ready to say Obama is just another crooked politician based on this issue.
lw
Well, I am sure he very aware of how the basics of the financial system runs. Which means he either thinks it's fine like it is, or he doesn't care.
I think it i hard for us (in the wests rich industrial technological socieities) to see the problems with the monetary system because we are relatively very affluent. However it is my understanding that the aspects of creating money from nothing and charging interest on it (Usury) and the fractional reserve systems in place are set up in a way that does not provide a fair and reasonable form of trade between all parties. It seems to keep the rich rich (and in power) and essentially just an acceptable form of slavery.
Now I do not say this and have a solution, I do not know what the solution is however I am aware that there are options out there. And people with ideas of such.
When we hear articles like this, it just total undershoots the bar of whats going on, mainly because the majority of people just accept the monetary system as given.
It was JFK that made an attempt to remedy the monetary system by taking power away from the fed and back into the hands of the government - Exec order 11110.
http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/executiveorder11110.htm (http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/executiveorder11110.htm) (just quickly googled that link, prob many refs to it online...not sure how good that particular site is just a quick ref to read,)
He was kiled after, connected, who knows...suspicious---for sure.
BP
Well, I'm guessing the thought of completely gutting the banking system and starting over is too big a pill for many/most to swallow. Obama might not believe in that need or see it, yet. Maybe its just too radical a concept for a mainstream politician to get their head around.
Time may tell.
lw
Let's get down to some specifics and away from these arm-waving generalities. They're not throwing money at the banks and rich folks exclusively, though that did happen with Bush. Let's look at what the people get from this bill:
Per Talking Points Memo 2/12/2009
http://tiny.cc/c70U7 (http://tiny.cc/c70U7)
******
AID TO POOR AND UNEMPLOYED
_ $40 billion to provide extended unemployment benefits through Dec. 31, and increase them by $25 a week; $20 billion to increase food stamp benefits by 14 percent; $3 billion in temporary welfare payments.
DIRECT CASH PAYMENTS
_ $14 billion to give one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients, poor people on Supplemental Security Income, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.
INFRASTRUCTURE
_ $46 billion for transportation projects, including $27 billion for highway and bridge construction and repair; $8.4 billion for mass transit; $8 billion for construction of high-speed railways and $1.3 billion for Amtrak; $4.6 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers; $4 billion for public housing improvements; $6.4 billion for clean and drinking water projects; $7 billion to bring broadband Internet service to underserved areas.
HEALTH CARE
_ $21 billion to provide a 60 percent subsidy of health care insurance premiums for the unemployed under the COBRA program; $87 billion to help states with Medicaid; $19 billion to modernize health information technology systems; $10 billion for health research and construction of National Institutes of Health facilities.
ENERGY
_ About $50 billion for energy programs, focused chiefly on efficiency and renewable energy, including $5 billion to weatherize modest-income homes; $6.4 billion to clean up nuclear weapons production sites; $11 billion toward a so-called "smart electricity grid" to reduce waste; $13.9 billion to subsidize loans for renewable energy projects; $6.3 billion in state energy efficiency and clean energy grants; and $4.5 billion make federal buildings more energy efficient.
EDUCATION
_ $47 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cuts in state aid to school districts, with great flexibility to use the funds for school modernization and repair; $26 billion to school districts to fund special education and the No Child Left Behind law for students in K-12; $17 billion to boost the maximum Pell Grant by $500 to $5,350; $2 billion for Head Start.
LAW ENFORCEMENT
_ $4 billion in grants to state and local law enforcement to hire officers and purchase equipment.
Taxes
NEW TAX CREDIT
_ Approximately $115 billion for a $400 per-worker, $800 per-couple tax credits in 2009 and 2010. For the last half of 2009, workers could expect to see perhaps $13 a week less withheld from their paychecks starting around June. Millions of Americans who don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes could file returns next year and receive checks. Individuals making more than $75,000 and couples making more than $150,000 would receive reduced amounts.
EXPANDED COLLEGE CREDIT
_ About $13 billion to provide a $2,500 expanded tax credit for college tuition and related expenses for 2009 and 2010. The credit is phased out for couples making more than $160,000.
AUTO SALES
_ $2.5 billion to makes sales tax on paid on new car purchases tax deductible.
******
This is money to help poor and middle-class Americans, create jobs, get the economy moving again. President Obama has said it's not perfect, but if it gets the economy moving again, that's what it's intended to do. He's not done. He's said there's more work to do. Once this bill is passed, he's onto the next step.
Cenacle,
If you have the fed reserve create a set amount of money, and charge interest on it, where does the money come from to pay the interest ?
Boooshpig
Doh!
I've finally seen the details of this current stim package of Obama's.
Isn't it interesting that the repug's rallied quickly to throw money at the banks, but scream bloody murder when Obama throws some money at we the people?
lw
Same thing with the war! Obamas package is way smaller than what the war in Iraq is costing.
I do think the banks need to be reigned in. Put a cap on interest rates. The banks are getting cheap money and still credit card accounts are at 20%+.
We are getting hosed on fuel as well, oil's goping down and gas is going up, at least here in Calif.
Here is an intelligen article on it:
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article8918.html (http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article8918.html)
BP
bushpig:
I think its too early to make all the claims of failure at this point in time. The problem wasn't created overnight and its not going to go away immediately no matter what steps are taken.
Your post is linked to one side of the propaganda machine and I'm not sure that's the right stance, either.
lw.
Please explain what you mean by one side of the propoganda machine ? This site is one dedicated to market analysis, it is not a 'conspiracy' site. I have followed him with interest as, so far he seems to have got it right, unlike the politicians. Which makes me wonder, if people such as this man have been getting it right, why are our leaders still barely admitting the extent of the situation ?
And indeed some of my reading will stem from sites others may deem as 'one side of the propoganda machine' it was such reading that alerted me to this financial crash way back in october 2007 with the BNP Parabas incident. Reported briefly in the press it was the underground media that really asked the correct question about the consequences and realised what was about to happen.
Boooshpig
Seeing that the article is dated Feb 16th and the bill was signed on Feb 17th maybe the rumors of our demise are a bit premature.
It's a brand new day, let the man come in and do the popcorn, to quote James Brown.
quote from article linked above by boosh: But based on the overall net results to date, every single one is an outright, unambiguous, proven failure:..... :bangry:
And as bruddah jrl pointed out above, the article was published a day before Obama signed any bill. Deeming his future efforts as currently failing is nothing more than propaganda. Clearly, everyone's opinion of what makes an "intelligent" read is just that.
As far as speaking in generalities about the current situation and reactions, at least Obama has been taking a trickle-up approach to the crisis. That is, he's attempting to get money into the hands of "we the people" under the assumption that most of the money will be spent on goods and services, thereby lifting the economy.
Bush, on the other hand, took the traditional republican trickle-down approach, assuming money thrown at the banks would help float the economy, However, imo, that approach is what's ultimately damaging the american way/quality of life for the average Joe.
lw
quote from bottom of article linked above: The main kind of confidence you need now is confidence in yourself —plus the tools to improve your timing and investment choices. That's not only possible; it's quite easy.
That's why I am holding a free online video summit on Thursday, February 26. And that's why I feel you must be there.
The details are below........
LOL
lw
Holmes is selling something, no doubt about it. makes everything he says suspect.