Get yourself some Tylenol. This might be a little painful to read.
Obama needs a budget to match his progressive ideals
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Tuesday, April 19, 10:53 AM
For perhaps the first time since being sworn into office, President Obama has articulated, in eloquent terms,
I truly don’t understand the myth of Obama’s eloquence. He says “let me be clear” and follows it up with platitudes and nonsensical contradictions. “Let me be clear: the United States will always stand firm with our NATO allies so long as it’s done third phase of the new moon and so long as we don’t seek input from nations in the general North Atlantic region.”
what it means to be a progressive.
There will never be an eloquent defense of what it means to be a progressive because it’s a manufactured catchall term for a political philosophy of expediency in the furtherance of state-controlled society. Publicly acknowledging and supporting the true nature of progressivism, a euphemism for liberalism, would have ordinary Americans running in horror. This is because at its heart, it always devolves into communism.
In his budget speech last week, he spoke of our obligation to the broader community
So we owe ourselves, basically. Doesn’t this kind of sound like a trophy wife whose friends tell her that she owes it to herself to spend two weeks in an Icelandic spa?
to provide a basic level of security
What’s that old saying? Those who are willing to sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.
and dignity.
No free good in the history of mankind has ever engendered dignity. All it does is create dependency, which is ugly, brutal, and destabilizing.
Speaking of programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, he said what every good progressive believes: “We would not be a great country without those commitments.”
This is too destructive to be snarky about. The idea that America
He fused a defense of progressive governance with a scathing critique of Paul Ryan’s cruel budget,
How is raising already confiscatory tax rates on a small portion of the population less cruel than returning spending to 2008 levels?
which all but four Republican House members have now voted for. And he demanded that the rich finally pay their fair share,
Sigh. How many times does it have to be said? The rich already pay most of the taxes. Raising the rates on the rich is simply designed as a mechanism for class warfare, not as a serious attempt to raise revenues. By this point, even a mongoloid chimp understands that lowering tax rates increases the tax base enough to keep revenues roughly level.
vowing to let the Bush tax cuts expire.
Why is that claim taken any more seriously than Republicans’ claims that they would repeal Obamacare? Of course they can’t; they only have one house of congress. Similarly, Obama would personally have to hold about 200 House members’ children hostage to get that tax increase.
It was a powerful speech,
This is getting beyond the point of verbal fellatio.
in many ways reassuring to progressives who have been demoralized by a president who appeared missing in action.
*was* missing in action.
But rhetoric and policy are not the same thing.
And yet you continue to let this jackass skate on rhetoric alone.
And in this case, as in far too many, the policy agenda the president has laid out is not worthy of, in his words, “the America
But not an America
To begin with, the president continues to let Republicans define the playing field in almost every instance. Why is the debate we are having not about whether to cut, but how much to cut?
Is that really a question that you need someone to answer? Because the American people collectively shrieked in horror about three months after electing Obama and scrambled to sweep Republicans back into government en masse about six months ago.
Why isn’t it about the urgency of joblessness instead of the perils of deficits?
The two aren’t connected?
The budget the president proposed is clearly influenced by a discredited conservative economic worldview.
Discredited by whom? Paul Krugman doesn’t count.
It shouldn’t be accepted as the “progressive” alternative in the negotiations soon to come.
The President’s plan may have been influenced by conservatives in the same way that Allied military strategy was influenced by German troop movements in WWII. It is by no means conservative, and it is not accepted by anyone at all.
What’s worse is that, even on this narrow playing field, the president isn’t fighting harder for those who need government’s support the most.
Military families?
He has jettisoned the Keynesian thinking this era demands,
Oh Jesus. She might as well start quoting Marx.
prematurely embracing what might be described an austerity-lite policy, one that all but guarantees mass unemployment as the new normal.
Please elaborate on such an outlandish claim. Seriously. How do tax cuts hurt the economy? It truly baffles me that liberals are somehow allowed to believe (allowed in the sense that they’re not laughed out of every serious economic forum in existence) that adding a quarter of a point to the cost of debt via Fed open market operations can cripple an economy, yet adding about 5% to every tax bracket is completely painless.
In his speech, he spoke eloquently of how there was “nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.”
Small businesses?
Nothing courageous, indeed. And yet it is President Obama who has said that for every $1 in tax increases, we should create $2 in spending cuts.
Which itself is asinine, because you can’t assume that rate changes, which is the only thing the government adjusts when altering income taxes, corresponds to nominal dollar figures. This is because tax rates have a dynamic and sometimes uneven effect on economic growth.
Faced with the choice between new cuts to the social safety net and new taxes for the richest few, it is not just Paul Ryan but President Obama whose acceptance of the way this choice is framed leaves the poor shouldering most of the burden.
The poor don’t shoulder ANY of the burden. They haven’t for years. Put simply, the poor don’t pay income taxes. At all. None. Zero. 0.00%; $0.00.
The most progressive president since Lyndon Johnson
Hilariously, she means this as a compliment.
should be willing to embrace a bolder opening gambit.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this issue didn’t just begin when Paul Ryan proposed a budget. You guys had two years to shove a healthy dose of John Maynard Keynes down our throats. It didn’t work, and the American people have taken notice. Your turn is over.
He should not be so willing to compromise on principle, even when ultimate compromise may be necessary.
No. Just no. He shouldn’t compromise even though he has to compromise? Fuck off, Katrina.
Real leadership might require compromise, but it cannot be defined by compromise.
So…he should play hardball, but with the understanding that he’ll eventually cave?
It must instead be defined by a clear vision for the future,
Despite saying “let me be clear” about three times a speech, President Obama has never shown clarity of thought on any issue of public importance.
and most important, a willingness to defend it. It should be focused not on what is possible, but instead, on the most that is possible; not the path of least resistance, but the path of maximum potential benefit.
Seriously, it’s like the woman is discovering negotiation for the first time. It’ kind of like watching a child’s groping attempts at cursive. (Which, for the record, is a worthless “skill.”)
Failing to do so is what can produce a Tea Party budget, such as the one adopted last week. As Paul Krugman put it in his column this week,
I’m sure the Times appreciates the Post’s support. Also, did I call that she’d cite Krugman or what? Damn I’m good.
the two parties “don’t just live in different moral universes, they also live in different intellectual universes.”
In other words: not only are Republicans terrible people, they’re idiots too! This from the people who lectured us on civility.
Any embrace or acceptance of that Republican universe by the White House is a retreat from the reforms this country desperately needs — and was promised.
What a rallying cry.
“No surrender! Except when you have to surrender! But really, only kind of surrender, because surrendering is necessary but unpleasant! And we really really don’t want to surrender. Until we do.”
Yet the president has again telegraphed his willingness to compromise, admitting in his speech that he did not “expect the details in any final agreement to look exactly like the approach” he laid out. What, then, does he expect it will look like?
Probably something sane.
The further right this process moves
I.e. the further towards the American people this process moves.
— whether as a result of a political system warped and broken by corporate interests
It was an electoral trouncing in November, but blame corporations if you must.
protecting their privilege,
The privilege is to compete against the other privileged, a group which literally anyone can join. Apparently you’re privileged to squeeze out a profit by busting your ass to do things better, faster, and cheaper than everyone else. That’s how liberals define privilege.
or lobbyists actively gutting reform
Lobbyists spend most of their time actively pushing for reform. That’s why virtually everything passed in the last two years has been a legislative disaster jam-packed with special interest sweetheart deals.
— the more disheartening the definition of victory becomes. Is merely preventing Republicans from ending Medicare what victory looks like now?
Republicans have proposed a market-based voucher system, not dismantling all spending to Medicare.
Yes, we need a defensive opposition, but while Democrats control the Senate and the White House, they cannot act merely as a minority party.
No worries. It won’t be an issue much longer.
Shouldn’t they be laying out a clear vision of a sustainable and fair economy?
They don’t have one. And what the hell does sustainable mean in this context? It’s as if she views the economy solely as a vehicle to financing non-market programs.
As the extremists take over the GOP, is the Democratic Party really going to be content to define success so modestly?
Look, I get that you’re pissed that conservatives had so much success painting Obama as an extremist. They were helped by that fact that he was actually (and still is) an extremist. That doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. This is a center-right country. Don’t forget it.
There are at least 83 Democratic members of the House who believe that we cannot exclude alternatives that would solve this economic challenge more justly and fairly.
Jesus, you’re so deep in the euphemism you didn’t even say what it is.
They believe we must challenge the limits of our narrowing debate and expand, as President Obama once called it, “our moral imagination.”
It was a nonsensical term then, it’s a nonsensical term now. Moral imagination. Jesus Christ.
They are the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), who last week introduced what they are calling the “People’s Budget,”
Sure. After we get done with that, let’s all pound some vodka, call each other “comrade” and stage a purge of all non-party members. Oh wait. That was the 1910s in Russia
an alternative both to President Obama’s proposal and the unconscionable Ryan Budget.
I suppose we are fortunate that we have a president to the right of outright Communism, but that’s kind of like giving thanks that you don’t have a giant metal rod lodged in your chest.
It lays out what a robust progressive agenda should look like. It protects the social safety net,
The status quo.
promotes a progressive tax policy
Also the status quo, but (without reading it) I’m assuming that they want to make American tax policy “more progressive.”
and makes significant cuts to the Pentagon by bringing our troops home from Iraq
Also the status quo. Since before Obama took office.
and Afghanistan
Would have been the status quo, until Obama screwed things up.
It actually generates a surplus by 2021, according to Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chair of the CPC.
So, by doing nothing but raising taxes on the rich and leaving Afghanstan, they achieve surplus by 2021? I don’t even have to look at this nonsense of a plan to understand that their accounting is pure bullshit.
This is the kind of budget our president should be proposing.
He would literally get laughed out of office, so…be my guest.
This is the kind of budget the progressive community should be rallying around. One that makes millionaires, billionaires and corporations pay their fair share.
Compare that to a budget that just makes millionaires and billionaires.
It’s like they think that their own misguided, childish spite is more important than economic growth.
One that protects the poor and middle class. But it is the kind of budget that establishment Democrats and media elites are inclined to ignore and dismiss.
Yeah. Because it’s both embarrassing and crazy.
We can be, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently put it, a country “of the 1%, for the 1%, by the 1%.”
The 1% that pays for 34% of the government.
Or we can be a country that believes in — and embraces — shared sacrifice.
Which, of course, is a euphemism for shifting the sacrifice to someone else.
A country not defined by the greed of the few but by the needs of the many.
Holy shit. That communism stuff before was kind of tongue-in-cheek. This isn’t. This is flat-out, Stalin-loving, Mao-reading, beorgeois-hating, state-worshipping, gulag-populating, one party-ruling propaganda for communism. From each according to his ability; to each according to his need. Someone please get Katrina a little red star for her hat.
That’s the only kind of America
There is nothing to love about deference to need. By shackling America America
This is more serious than my snarkiness. Katrina Vanden Heuvel has issued a call to arms for communism in the United States
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