Obama: Time to play hard ball
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
In
essence, the [Treasury’s] plan [to regulate the market] is a rebuke
of raw capitalism and a reassertion that regulation is critical to
the healthy function of financial markets and the steady flow of
money to borrowers.
–
The Washington Post, March 26, 2009
After
years of the rawest capitalism and of being steamrolled by the
Republicans, you might think the Democrats would be eager to return
the favor now that they have the White House and majorities in both
houses of Congress. But there are two problems. The Democrats are
just short of the supermajority of 60 votes needed for a
filibuster-proof victory in the Senate. Moreover, there is a new
group of sixteen “moderate” Democrats led by Evan Bayh, Tom
Carper, and Blanche Lincoln, who seem ready to work with “moderate”
Republicans to slice and dice Obama’s budget proposal and possibly
other administration proposals.
Thus,
while Obama has presented an admirably progressive budget tackling
among other things health care, energy, and education, the question
is what will emerge after the budget cutters in his own party and in
the GOP have carved up the proposal.
Already,
North Dakota Democratic Senator Kurt Conrad, chairman of the Senate
Budget Committee has announced plans to cut out some money for
Obama’s proposed expansion of health care and for a permanent $800
tax credit for working families.
The
austerity-minded Republicans and Democrats were handed a weapon last
week when the Congressional Budget Office came up with a deficit
figure that significantly exceeded that projected by Obama’s
economic team. Bring out the budget knives.
While
the proposed cuts so far are significant, they are not so serious as
to gut Obama’s budget. The key as to whether Obama’s budget will
emerge more or less intact may depend less on the mood of the
moderates as on an arcane procedural issue, namely whether a
legislative maneuver known as “budget reconciliation” will be
used to push all or part of the budget bill through the Senate. In
that case, only a simple majority would be needed to pass
legislation, which means Democrats would not need to compromise with
Senate Republicans to enact the budget measure. But Democratic
leaders of the Budget and Finance Committees in the Senate oppose
ramming through the budget using the ‘”budget reconciliation”
procedure. This could set the stage for a major dismemberment of the
budget proposal, which would then be marked as the first major defeat
for Barack Obama.
Meanwhile
the Republicans presented a pseudo budget proposal of their own,
which consisted of a series of Republican dogmas and no dollar
amounts. The only idea contained in the proposal is hardly a new one,
namely a further cut in taxes for higher income groups by reducing
the top marginal rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. It seems that
for Republicans there is no problem that cannot be solved by putting
more money in the pockets of the rich.
Thus
the stakes are high, and Obama knows it. Using every media outlet
possible, President Obama has been working hard to sell his budget
and overall program to the American people. That will help. But is he
also ready to use hard ball tactics to push reluctant Democrats and
bulldoze recalcitrant Republicans?
The
issue is key because Obama’s budget, while hardly a socialist’s
dream, is a blueprint for a different America than the one we have
been moving toward since the Reagan years. Witness the howls of
“socialism” and “America becoming Europe” from the mouths of
right-wing pundits and GOP Congressional leaders. But, speaking of
Reagan, it was he who, a generation ago, used the budget
reconciliation process to avoid a filibuster and ram through his huge
tax cuts for the rich. George W. Bush did the same thing for the same
purpose. It would only be poetic justice if Barack Obama and the
Democrats in Congress would now use the same weapon to partially
level the playing field for the middle class and the poor.
