Obama, Jobs, Poverty, Taxes & the 'Enthusiasm Gap'

Left Margin

Obama, Jobs, Poverty, Taxes & the 'Enthusiasm Gap'

By Carl Bloice,
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Black Commentator
September 23, 2010

http://www.blackcommentator.com/394/394_lm_enthusiasm_gap.php

Toward the end of last month, the New York Times said
editorially:

"If President Obama has a big economic initiative up his
sleeve, as he hinted recently, now would be a good time to
let the rest of us in on it." The editors went on to suggest
what the elements of such a plan might be. First, they
wrote, "he needs to keep driving home that he is committed
to addressing the deficit, and that he will call for
widespread sacrifice to do so - starting with letting the
Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans expire at year end.
Mr. Obama must tell Americans that claims from Republican
leaders that the country can both cut taxes and tackle the
deficit are absurd and cynical. Next, he needs to explain
why too much sacrifice, too soon, especially from the middle
class, would do more harm than good while the economy is
weak. More government support is needed until conditions
improve."

"Mr. Obama also needs to inspire Americans who have been
ground down by the economic crisis and Washington's small-
bore sniping. He needs to rally the nation around a big idea
- a project that is worth sacrificing for, worth paying for,
worth working for. One that lets them know that there is
more ahead than just a return to a status quo of lopsided
growth in which corporate profits surge while jobs and
incomes lag,' said the paper. "That mission could be the
`21st century infrastructure,' that Mr. Obama mentioned on a
multi-city trip this month, `not just roads and bridges, but
faster Internet access and high-speed rail.' It could be
energy independence, with high-tech green jobs and a real
chance for addressing global warming. Either of the above
would make sense, economically and politically."

Well, he's gone and done it.

Is it too late? Perhaps. But that depends on what it's too
late for. Changing the Democratic Party's outlook for the
November election? Probably not. (However, the latest
polling figures paint a picture not quite as bleak and the
monkey-see-monkey-do media pundits keep repeating.) In any
case, a call for actually retooling the economy for today's
challenges and granting preferential tax treatment to
struggling working people could stir some enthusiasm among
people now seeming inclined to sit out the election.

Is it too little? Perhaps. But that depends on what it's too
little for. Rescuing the nation from the capitalism latest
crisis? Of course not. But it does point in the direction
many liberal and progressive activists and opinion
influencers have suggested going for some time. These latest
economic proposals coupled with a firm commitment to defend
Social Security and Medicare - not just from privatization
but from cutbacks (something the President has not yet
done). Last week, American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner
offered an apt bit of advice to the White House: ". Make it
clear that your administration will not support cuts in
Social Security. Declare that if the fiscal commission comes
up with a formula that reduces benefits for seniors, its
recommendations will be a dead letter. Dare the Republicans
to follow suit."

All this should be accompanied by a stronger resolve to
bring the ghastly and costly foreign wars to a close, a move
that could also light a fire under those not inclined to
disengage from politics. In any case, it would help gear up
for the critical battles on tap for after the mid-term
election.

None of this will happen, however, without three things
being present:

   1. a commitment by the White House to really follow
   through, as opposed to a Chicago-style rollover,
   splitting the difference with the political opposition;

   2. some backbone displayed by the Democratic Party
   Congressional leadership and

   3. united actions by labor, liberal and progressive
   groups and movements to press forward, including street
   mobilization.

And the so-called blue dogs have to be confronted. It is
true that some of them are influenced mostly by the powerful
vested economic interests that help them acquire and hold
onto their offices, but some of them are simple
ideologically on the other side. Last week, the Financial
Times' Edward Luce, one of the most perceptive political
analysts in the major media, commented on the "hazard-strewn
political environment" confronting the President and the
"increasingly Alice- in-wonderland quality of American
politics ahead of the midterm elections." Citing Sen.
Michael Bennett (D- Colo) - whom the White House had
supported in a tight primary race this summer - who slammed
the President propose infrastructure spending plans when
Obama had barely gotten the words out of his mouth, Luce
wrote that with friends like these Obama "has no need for
enemies."

"Republican obstruction means that the best we can hope for
in the near future are palliative measures - modest
additional spending like the infrastructure program
President Obama proposed this week, aid to state and local
governments to help them avoid severe further cutbacks, aid
to the unemployed to reduce hardship and maintain spending
power," wrote economist Paul Krugman recently. Where he
finds the basis for hope is anybody's guess, for later he
says, "it's by no means certain that we'll do even that
much. If the Republicans go beyond obstruction to actually
setting policy - which they might if they win big in
November - we'll be on our way to economic performance that
makes Japan look like the promised land."

"It's hard to overstate how destructive the economic ideas
offered earlier this week by John Boehner, the House
minority leader, would be if put into practice," continued
Krugman. "Basically, he proposes two things: large tax cuts
for the wealthy that would increase the budget deficit while
doing little to support the economy, and sharp spending cuts
that would depress the economy while doing little to improve
budget prospects. Fewer jobs and bigger deficits - the
perfect combination."

On September 9, the New York Times featured on its front
page an analysis by one of its newer editorial writers, Matt
Bai, which contained this assertion that the Administration
has erred by arguing that, in effect, stimulating the
economy today and reordering it for decades to come are
basically the same thing. "In this way, Mr. Obama risked
confusing the voters - and not for the first time," wrote
Bai. "By consistently conflating short-term and long-term
economic goals, the president and his Democratic Party may
have missed an opportunity to explain the crucial difference
between the two, and they have all but ensured that voters
this fall will give them credit for neither." I seriously
doubt that if the Democrats lose big in November it will
because the Administration confused short and long term
goals. As one perceptive letter writer to the paper put it,
"Contrary to Mr. Bai's suggestion, there is no `crucial
difference" between creating jobs today and investing in our
schools, highways, bridges, railways, electricity grid,
water supply systems, Internet access and other
infrastructure projects that will make Americans more
productive and America more competitive in the future.

"The people who are without jobs today should be given the
opportunity to go to work now on projects that will build a
better America for all the tomorrows to come."

The problem with making things clear to the general public
comes from the all-too-pervasive tendency of the
Administration to fall back into its we-didn't-create- this
mess stance. Of course, they didn't. In addition to
capitalism as a system being prone to periodic crisis, the
origins of the present pain can be traced back to policies
adopted during the reign of the last two administrations.
But what the prospective voters are looking for is a sign
that the government intends to do something meaningful about
the nation's plight in both the short and long terms.

Last week came the painful news that the percentage of
people in the country without health insurance has risen to
16.7 percent, and the percentage of Americans living in
poverty increased to 14.3 percent. Upon hearing the news the
White House issued a statement essentially saying the
poverty rate was going up before the recession and would be
even higher if the original stimulus package was put into
place. All well and true, but where do we go from here?

Well, the President has put forward a plan. It involves tax
relief for working people and increased spending on
infrastructure and development projects to put some of the
22 million unemployed women and men to work and provide some
jobs for the young men and women seeking entrance into the
workforce.

"On Labor Day afternoon in Milwaukee, President Barack Obama
finally began to vigorously push the kind of high-profile,
rebuild-America infrastructure campaign that is absolutely
essential if there is to be any real hope of putting
Americans back to work and getting the economy back into
reasonable shape," Times columnist, Bob Herbert, wrote
September 7. "In a speech that was rousing, inspirational
and, at times, quite funny, the President outlined a $50
billion proposal for a wide range of improvements to the
nation's transportation infrastructure. The money would be
used for the construction and rehabilitation of highways,
bridges, railroads, airport runways and the air-traffic
control system.

"Obama linked the nation's desperate need for jobs to the
sorry state of the national infrastructure in a tone that
conveyed both passion and empathy, and left me wondering,
`Where has this guy been for the past year and a half?'"

"Obama's proposal is only a first step," continued Herbert.
"Despite the $50 billion price tag, it's not in any way
commensurate with our overwhelming infrastructure needs or
the gruesome scale of the nation's unemployment crisis. But
it's an important step. It's a smarter approach to
infrastructure investment than the wasteful, haphazard,
earmark-laden practices we've become accustomed to, and it
will put some people to work in decent-paying jobs."

Nation magazine editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, wrote in the
Washington Post last week, "But even if passed, these
proposals aren't anywhere near what needs to be done to
reshape the economy and put people to work. Obama has been
eloquent on this in the past. In his Georgetown University
`Sermon on the Mount' speech last year, he argued that we
can't recover to the old economy that was built on debt and
bubbles - and should not want to. We have to build a `new
foundation' for the economy with investment in world-class
education, in research and development, in a 21st-century
infrastructure. Transition to new sources of energy will
help secure a lead in the green industrial revolution.
Curbing financial speculation and balancing our trade, so we
make things in America once more, are essential. To enact
this project, Washington will have to free itself from the
destructive grip of powerful corporate lobbies.

"This agenda is both good policy and a powerful political
message. It provides a context for what Obama has done to
date - from the recovery plan to financial reform - and the
case for staying the course."

However, wrote Herbert, "The question that remains, however,
is whether he and his party will fight with the skill and
tenacity needed to guide his proposal to fruition, and
whether they will finally focus on the difficult but
critical task of putting unemployed Americans back to work."

Unlike most of the people quoted here, I actually think that
if the White House did these things resolutely in the weeks
ahead it could have an impact on the November voting. It
could narrow somewhat the "enthusiasm gap."

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is
a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National
Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence
for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a
healthcare union.]

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