What are our President's stated desires and core principles?
Although I have not read President Obama's Budget for Fiscal 2010 (see here) nor read all of his recent speeches and statements, I have gleaned certain themes which suggest an answer to this question. My understanding is informed by my reading, some of which is quoted at the bottom of this post. I encourage the reader to read to the bottom, to pursue links here and elsewhere, and to make up his own mind.
My understanding of President Obama's stated goals and core principles
- Stated goal: A healthy economy. Core principle: A larger and increasing government role in the economic life of the country.
- Stated goal: Affordable health-care for all. Core principle: A larger and increasing government role in health care, even at the cost of excellence and medical advancement and even if (or understanding that) a move to universal health care means health care rationing.
- Stated goal: Bipartisanship. Core principle: Speedy and bold government action.
- Stated goal: Reining in costs. Core principle: The agency of government (with one apparent exception, defense, where reining in costs is taken seriously).
- Stated goal: A vibrant private sector. Core principle: The public sector is the essential part of a great country.
- Stated goal: Personal initiative. Core principle: Government initiative, even at the expense of personal initiative. Government knows best.
- Stated goal: Addressing climate change. Core principle: Raising funds for the government though cap and trade and carbon auctions.
- Stated goal: Energy diversification. Core principle: Raising funds for the government.
- Stated goal: Energy independence. Core principle: Raising funds for the government.
- Stated goal: A strong defense. Core principle: Our enemies hate us for rational reasons, so it is our fault if we have enemies.
- Stated goal: Moving beyond tired arguments and failed approaches. Core principle: The president's own excellence.
The reader is not expected to take my word for it, but to read on and on and make up his own mind.
Some valuable sources for the suggestions made above
In the following quotes from recent articles, I have highlighted certain passages.
- Still, the $3.6 trillion Obama budget made me a little queasy. There is a touch of France in its “étatisme” — the state as all-embracing solution rather than problem — and there’s more than a touch of France in the bash-the-rich righteousness with which the new president cast his plans as “a threat to the status quo in Washington.” ...
Punish capital and it will punish you by saying, “Hasta la vista!” The former French President François Mitterrand learned that a little over a quarter-century ago when, after an initial wave of nationalizations, he reversed course. ...
I lived for about a decade, on and off, in France and later moved to the United States. Nobody in their right mind would give up the manifold sensual, aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures offered by French savoir-vivre for the unrelenting battlefield of American ambition were it not for one thing: possibility.
You know possibility when you breathe it. For an immigrant, it lies in the ease of American identity and the boundlessness of American horizons after the narrower confines of European nationhood and the stifling attentions of the European nanny state, which has often made it more attractive not to work than to work. High French unemployment was never much of a mystery.
--Roger, Cohen, "One France Is Enough," New York Times (March 4, 2009)
- New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%. This is potentially the most pernicious feature of the president's budget, because it would cement a permanent voting majority with no stake in controlling the cost of general government. ...
On the growth effects of a large expansion of government, the European social welfare states present a window on our potential future: standards of living permanently 30% lower than ours. Rounding off perceived rough edges of our economic system may well be called for, but a major, perhaps irreversible, step toward a European-style social welfare state with its concomitant long-run economic stagnation is not.
-- Michael J. Boskin, Professor of Economics, Stanford University; Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution "Obama's Radicalism is Killing the Dow"
- It certainly makes sense to keep poor people off the income-tax rolls, but removing a sizeable chunk of the middle class weakens the political bond between taxpayer and government, and will lead to pressure for more such spending. -- "Barack Obama's Budget: Wishful, and Dangerous, Thinking," The Economist, March 5, 2009
- "People are learning," says William Kovacs, vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which has been cautious about embracing a climate plan). "The Obama budget did more to help us consolidate and coalesce the business community than anything we could have done. It's opened eyes to the fact that this is about a social welfare transfer system, not about climate." - Kimberley A. Strassel, "The Climate Change Lobby Has Regrets" (Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2009)
- There is also mounting fury, among centrists as well as
conservatives, about Mr Obama’s budget, with its mixture of tax hikes
for the wealthy and ambitious plans for regulating greenhouse gases and
extending the government’s role in health care. Larry Kudlow, a
television journalist who is contemplating challenging Chris Dodd for
his Connecticut Senate seat, says that Mr Obama is “declaring war on
investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations and
private equity and venture-capital funds”. Many former supporters worry
that Mr Obama is treating the economic crisis rather as George Bush
treated September 11th—as a convenient excuse for pursuing a long-held
ideological agenda.
...But above all, people are angry that Mr Obama led them down the garden path. Bipartisanship? He is proposing one of the most liberal budgets in decades. Abolishing earmarks? The budget contains 8,570 of them. Honesty? The finance, property and insurance industries (all getting huge bail-outs) were the largest source of campaign contributions to Mr Obama after lawyers. Transcending racism? Eric Holder, the attorney-general, has accused Americans of being cowards when it comes to discussing race. -- "Anger Management," The Economist, March 5, 2009.
- Americans like their current health care, its plethora of choice and its intensive, high tech approach to fixing our ailments. A Gallup survey in December reported that "on balance, Americans still favor maintaining the current system, 49% to 41%." But the CBO is very clear that saving money on health care involves doing less of the very things Americans like the most.
"Studies attribute the bulk of the cost of growth to the development of new treatments and other medical technologies," the CBO notes in a report issued last December, later adding, "Given the central role of medical technology in cost growth, reducing or slowing spending over the long term would probably require decreasing the pace of adopting new treatments and procedures or limiting the breadth of their application."
In other words, reducing costs means rationing the care of those who currently have private insurance and Medicare. -- Sally Pipes, CEO, Pacific Research Institute, "Health 'Reformers' Ignore Facts: Debunking the Democratic argument for government-run health care" (Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2009).
- The White House proposes to spend $533.7 billion on the Pentagon, a 4% increase over 2009. Include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, which would be another $130 billion (or a total of $664 billion), and overall defense spending would be around 4.2% of GDP, the same as 2007.
However, that 4% funding increase for the Pentagon trails the 6.7% overall rise in the 2010 budget -- and defense received almost nothing extra in the recent stimulus bill. The Joint Chiefs requested $584 billion for 2010 and have suggested a spending floor of 4% of GDP. Both pleas fell on deaf ears. The White House budget puts baseline defense spending at 3.7% of GDP, not including Iraq and Afghanistan. The budget summary pleads "scarce resources" for the defense shortfall, which is preposterous given the domestic spending blowout. -- "Declining Defense: Obama's budget does cut one federal department," (Wall Street Journal, Review & Outlook, March 2, 2009).
-- H. A. Massig המשיג
Postscript, April 8, 2009
On this theme, see now "Obama's Ultimate Agenda" by Charles Krauthammer (The Washington Post, Friday, April 3, 2009; p. A19).
