Obama On The Economy

The President gave a very interesting speech at Georgetown University today, the contents of which you can read here. He addressed many of the "talking points" that seem to be making the rounds of the "conservative brain trust" (an oxymoron, these days). On the stance that now is not the time to implement expensive initiatives like health care reform or energy cap-and-trade:

"Look, just as a cash-strapped family may cut back on all kinds of luxuries, but will still insist on spending money to get their children through college, will refuse to have their kids drop out of college and go to work in some fast-food place, even though that might bring in some income in the short-term, because they're thinking about the long term -- so we as a country have to make current choices with an eye for the future."

On the need for a new kind of politics in Washington, just as his opponents fall back on all the same old tricks:

"For too long, too many in Washington put off hard decisions for some other time on some other day. There's been a tendency to spend a lot of time scoring political points instead of rolling up sleeves to solve real problems.

There's also an impatience that characterizes this town -- an attention span that has only grown shorter with the 24-hour news cycle that insists on instant gratification in the form of immediate results or higher poll numbers. When a crisis hits, there's all too often a lurch from shock to trance, with everyone responding to the tempest of the moment until the furor has died down, the media coverage has moved on to something else, instead of confronting the major challenges that will shape our future in a sustained and focused way.

This can't be one of those times. The challenges are too great. The stakes are too high. I know how difficult it is for members of Congress in both parties to grapple with some of the big decisions we face right now. I'd love if these problems were coming at us one at a time instead of five or six at a time. It's more than most Congresses and most Presidents have to deal with in a lifetime.

But we have been called to govern in extraordinary times. And that requires an extraordinary sense of responsibility -- to ourselves, to the men and women who sent us here, to the many generations whose lives will be affected for good or for ill because of what we do here."

As I read the speech, I kept finding myself wondering what would be happening right now if George W. Bush were still President. Judging by his reaction to Katrina, I'd say: probably not very much. If he had a majority in Congress (as Obama does, with the Democrats, and as Bush did for most of his time in the White House), then we'd probably see a wide-ranging mixture of tax cuts to the rich (sold as "a stimulus plan") and cuts to social programs (under the guise of "responsible budgeting"). Assuming that many of the recipients of the tax cuts would hoard that extra income in response to seeing their net worth reduced by the economic meltdown, the U.S. government would essentially add to the contraction of spending that's already underway. The vicious cycle of "less available credit -> layoffs -> less spending -> less available credit -> ..." would simply be deepening, and any voices within or outside of America that might press for a healthier set of responses would be ignored, mocked or even vilified, in the typical fashion of the Bush/Cheney regime. What a scary thought, and how unbelievably fortunate we all are that there's an actual man of intelligence and integrity occupying the White House for the first time in the 21st century!