President Obama
The Democrats’ Budget Blame Game
I have a new column up at National Review Online rebutting the Democratic Party’s recent efforts to cast themselves as the party of fiscal restraint:
The numbers speak for themselves. At the end of 2008, the federal government’s cumulative debt stood at $5.8 trillion. In 2009, the federal government ran its first-ever trillion-dollar deficit. And then did it again in 2010 and 2011. Over those three years, the government borrowed an additional $4.2 trillion. This year will be no better. The Congressional Budget Office expects another trillion-dollar deficit. During Obama’s four-year term, the federal government will have added nearly $5.5 trillion to the government’s cumulative debt total — nearly as much as was accumulated from 1789 to 2008!
You can read the rest of the article here.
posted by James C. Capretta | 2:08 pm
Tags: deficit, President Obama, Democratic party
File As: Health Care
The President’s Incoherent Economic ‘Philosophy’
I have a new article up at National Review Online on how President Obama has abandoned his original stimulus-based approach to the economy, but failed to replace it with anything resembling a coherent, positive economic philosophy:
...the president has chosen to define his “plan” (if it can be called that) mainly by saying what it isn’t: He wants it known that his approach to the economy most definitely bears no resemblance to the plan he claims his GOP adversaries favor. Indeed, the primary purpose of these speeches has quite clearly been to tear down the straw man of a plan the president says the GOP supports in the hopes that the public will look more favorably on the president’s miserable economic record.
And so we hear from the president that the GOP favors creating a “you’re-on-your-own economy,” wants to “end Medicare as we know it,” seeks to revert to “social Darwinism,” and plans to eviscerate the social safety net to pay for a tax cut for the rich. None of this is true. No matter. The president has decided that the only path to electoral victory is to become attack-dog-in-chief.
But what about the actual substance? Is there anything at all to what the president is saying?
All is answered here.
posted by James C. Capretta | 1:12 pm
Tags: President Obama, stimulus, economic philosophy
File As: Health Care
Unsubstantiated Budget Attacks, the Sequel
I have a new article up at National Review Online on the president’s volley against the Ryan budget:
In April 2011, President Obama went to George Washington University and delivered a highly publicized and very political attack on the budget plan put together by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. In that speech, the president called the Ryan plan, and especially its Medicare-reform component, an unconscionable attack on the elderly. He also accused it of being, effectively, un-American.
Fast-forward to April 2012. Congressman Ryan has again assembled a budget plan to head off national insolvency. He has again rallied his colleagues to take up this budget blueprint and pass it through the full House, despite the political risks associated with doing so. And, like night following day, the president has again delivered an incredibly partisan attack on the House’s handiwork, denouncing it with some of the most over-the-top political rhetoric ever heard in a presidential address.
In that regard, yesterday’s “address” was very similar to last year’s highly political budget speech. It was sort of like a movie sequel, trying to capture that same partisan magic that fired up his electoral base a year ago. Unfortunately for the president, his speech today was about as imaginative and interesting as most big-budget movie sequels....
Details on what President Obama got wrong in his speech here.
posted by James C. Capretta | 1:01 pm
Tags: Ryan budget, President Obama
File As: Health Care
The President’s Bad Budget Moves
I have a new column up at National Review Online on why the president’s actions on the budget are bad for himself and the country:
...inexplicably, the president has decided once again that he would rather preserve his political talking points for 2012 than achieve bipartisan legislation. There is no other way to interpret his highly partisan proposals on jobs and the budget. Once again, his speeches and legislative initiatives have earned hallelujahs from the liberal faithful, but they have doomed the prospects for bipartisan compromise. Indeed, it’s clear from the president’s threat to veto any deficit-cutting legislation that doesn’t raise taxes that he wants the supercommittee to fail. And the demise of the supercommittee would almost certainly mean there won’t be any jobs package either....
You can read the whole piece here.
posted by James C. Capretta | 11:33 am
Tags: President Obama, budget, jobs
File As: Health Care
On the President’s Speech: Got Jobs?
National Review Online has convened a panel to respond to the president’s jobs speech last night. Here was my response:
Let’s get this straight: The president, now in his third year in office, is worked up with righteous indignation because Congress hasn’t done enough on jobs. Really?
During his first two years in office, he had commanding majorities in the House and Senate. He could have passed just about any kind of economic agenda he wanted. What did he do? He passed an $800 billion stimulus bill that didn’t work and then spent a year and a half passing the most controversial and burdensome entitlement expansion in half a century. That’s pretty much the entire Democratic economic agenda.
Now he has the audacity to suggest that Congress is to blame for not doing more? And, in the middle of yet another highly partisan presidential lecture, that anyone who opposes his failed approach to job creation is somehow doing so for partisan reasons?
That kind of speech may make the president and his partisan supporters feel better for a week or two, but it won’t produce bipartisan legislation that might actually help the country. What the president should be aiming for is real results for voters. That’s the only thing that can save him now. Instead he chose more partisan posturing. The result is that he will almost certainly go into 2012 with the worst economic record for a first-term president in modern history. Good luck with that.
You can read the whole panel here.
posted by James C. Capretta | 2:13 pm
Tags: President Obama, jobs
File As: Health Care
Yes, It Is Obama’s Fault
The downgrade, though questionable, is a richly deserved rebuke for the president.
Let’s start by partially agreeing with Paul Krugman’s weekend column in the New York Times, in which he correctly calls out Standard and Poor’s for displaying an unusual degree of chutzpah in downgrading the creditworthiness of the
Still, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that there is an element of justice in what has transpired because the S&P downgrade is such a clear and richly deserved public rebuke to President Obama. He and his allies have filled the airwaves since last Friday’s decision with their blame-game spin, trying to pin the downgrade on anybody but themselves. It won’t work. This happened on the president’s watch and was entirely preventable. But it happened because, at every crucial juncture over the past two and a half years, the president has cynically put his own political fortunes above what would be best for the country.
Recall that in February 2009, the White House convened a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” at which the president pledged a new era of discipline and promised to tackle the problem of rising entitlement costs. He could have done so in 2009 or 2010 without the need for any Republican cooperation, given the huge Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. But, instead of making fiscal consolidation a priority, the president chose instead to use his once-in-a-generation Democratic majorities to secure an activist agenda that liberals had been dreaming of for years. First, there was an $800 billion “stimulus” bill that was loaded with inefficient public spending projects. Then came the $1 trillion health care plan that included the largest expansion in entitlement spending since the 1960s. These efforts, both highly controversial, exhausted all of the energy in the Congress. Deficit reduction never happened, and never really came up.
Meanwhile, to fend off questions about how exactly he planned to head off the fiscal crisis that most experts could see was rapidly approaching, the president appointed a debt commission, led by Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson. Conveniently, the commission was given a reporting deadline after the November 2010 election, allowing the president and Democratic candidates to deflect questions about the deteriorating budget outlook during the election season until after the commission issued its report. In the end, this ploy did them no good, as Democrats were routed in an election dominated by mounting fiscal concerns around the country. The landslide put Republicans back in control of the House of Representatives.
In response to the election, the White House had a rare opportunity to create a political environment conducive to bipartisan compromise, especially on entitlements. But again the president chose otherwise. He completely ignored the Bowles-Simpson recommendations in his 2012 budget submission to Congress, and indeed avoided proposing anything controversial at all in what he submitted. The result was a budget request that called for an astonishing $11 trillion in deficit spending over the period 2011 to 2021, with federal debt rising to nearly 90 percent of GDP — well past the danger zone.
At the time, some speculated that the president submitted such an irresponsible plan because he wanted to preserve his ability to attack the inevitable Republican counter and thus boost his re-election prospects. Others said No, that couldn’t possibly be. Obama isn’t that cynical. Oh yes he is!
Led by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, the House passed a budget plan that cut spending by $6 trillion over a decade, stabilized federal deficits and debt on a permanent basis, and kept federal taxation at its historic average. If this plan had been adopted, there would have been no downgrade by S&P or anyone else. It was a serious plan, with fundamental and structural changes in the health entitlement programs — Medicare and Medicaid — to move away from the failed command-and-control model toward one in which the programs’ participants would call the shots.
Once again, the president could have used passage of the Republican budget in the House to move toward bipartisan compromise. But again he chose otherwise. In a stunningly partisan speech, the president launched a barrage of demagogic attacks on the Ryan budget. He essentially called it un-American and unworthy of any consideration whatsoever. And he pledged to fight to maintain the entitlement status quo, no matter the consequences.
It was plain from the president’s words that April day that he had no intention of ever working with Republicans on serious entitlement reform. What he planned to do was to relentlessly attack their plan — the one and only plan on the table that would actually fix the problem and reduce the risks of a debt-induced calamity — in the hope that such attacks would boost his chances of re-election. If his partisan political maneuvering meant that it would be near impossible to work with Republicans on the budget, and thus more likely that he was putting the nation at greater economic risk, so be it.
Democratic political operatives everywhere were ecstatic with the president’s choice. They sensed they were on their way to 2012 success.
But a funny thing happened on the way to a second term. It turns out that the presidency can’t always be just about cynical political games. At some point, the leader of the country must actually lead and solve problems, even if that means cooperating with his political opponents.
Since taking office, President Obama had had multiple opportunities to steer the country away from the fiscal abyss. But at every point, he has had other priorities — passing a massive health care entitlement, satisfying his liberal base, and most especially protecting his chances for re-election. In normal times, he might have gotten away with such self-centered governance. But these aren’t normal times. In 2012, the president could very well find that what seemed like clever maneuvering on the budget has hurt his re-election effort as much as it has hurt the country.
posted by James C. Capretta | 5:31 pm
Tags: credit downgrade, President Obama
File As: Health Care
The President’s Health Care Predicament
A piece I wrote a few days ago for Kaiser Health News explains why President Obama cannot use the health care law, his signature legislative achievement, as the basis for his reelection campaign. Here's an excerpt:
Having spent so much political capital to secure its passage, one might think that the health law would feature prominently in the president's planned reelection campaign. Certainly other presidents have used early legislative successes, even on controversial measures, to make the case that their policies were working. President Bill Clinton's tax and spending-reduction measure of 1993 was highly controversial and polarizing. It contributed heavily to the loss of Democratic control of Congress in 1994. But Clinton also used it as the foundation of his economic message throughout his presidency, and especially in 1996, when he tied the economic recovery then underway to its passage.
But Obama is not likely to follow that model, because, unlike Clinton's budget program, the health law provides almost nothing that the president can claim he delivered for voters.
The main selling point of the law -- that it will cover everyone, or nearly everyone, with health insurance, at least according to official estimates -- won't be tested until at least 2014, when the "big bang" reforms kick in. That's when the individual mandate, the employer requirements, the Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies, and the new insurance rules regarding benefit packages and premium-setting all go into effect. Until those changes are actually implemented, they are simply theoretical selling points that may or may not work out as planned. That's not going to cut it with an electorate focused on results in the here and now.
You can read the whole piece here.
posted by James C. Capretta | 9:34 am
Tags: President Obama, Obamacare, 2012 politics
File As: Health Care
The President Can’t Run on Obamacare
On Obamacare’s first anniversary, let’s give the president his due: It wouldn’t be in law today without his persistent push for its passage.
Not that his policy arguments carried the day or were persuasive. They weren’t. No, in the end, Obamacare was passed because the president had so tied his political fate to it that it became quite literally impossible for most members of his party in Congress to oppose it. And so it passed.
Other presidents have staked their presidencies on early legislative initiatives too, and then used their success in securing their enactment to aid their reelection. President Reagan certainly comes to mind in that regard, with his 1981 tax cut featuring prominently in his 1984 campaign. And Bill Clinton made his tax-hike and deficit-reduction plan of 1993 the centerpiece of his economic message in 1996.
The problem for President Obama, however, is that, unlike the Reagan tax cut, Obamacare will do almost nothing worth running on before 2012. The main selling point for the law — the supposed “universal coverage” proponents erroneously say the law will deliver — doesn’t kick in until at least 2014. That’s when the “big bang” of Obamacare comes into play: the individual and employer mandates; the new entitlement expansions; and the one-size-fits-all insurance plans.
Between now and then, there’s a lot of regulation to be issued, but there won’t be any real action on the ground where Americans get their health care (other than some tax increases and Medicare cuts the administration will never mention anyway). And so the law’s apologists are left with nothing to talk about except the supposed “early benefits” of Obamacare, like coverage of 26-year-olds on their parents’ plans and the new high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions.
But these provisions are minor matters in the scheme of things. They certainly did not require a 2,700-page bill to address. And so few Americans have benefited from them that they hardly register at all in the public consciousness. Only about 12,000 people have signed up for the poorly constructed risk pools, and no one expects the other insurance regulations to help more than a tiny percentage of the population. For most Americans, these “early benefits” are simply non-events. If the president were to feature them as large achievements of his presidency in 2012, it would strike most voters as the trumpeting of the trivial.
With so little to work with, and intense opposition among those pushing for repeal, the president is unlikely to feature Obamacare at all in his 2012 campaign, and certainly not in the way Reagan touted his 1981 tax cut in 1984. President Obama will no doubt defend the new health law from every attack, even as he tries to deflate the repeal push with minor concessions. But, having exhausted his first term securing passage of Obamacare, the president will have to find some other rationale to justify requesting a second term.
posted by James C. Capretta | 2:21 pm
Tags: 2012 election, President Obama, Obamcare, risk pools, taxes
File As: Health Care
Obama’s Very Weak Hand
When all else fails, try bipartisanship
Over on National Review Online, I have a new piece about the president’s agenda, the national debt, and the political moment. An excerpt:
After Scott Brown’s stunning victory in the Massachusetts special election last month, it is now clear that the coalition President Obama was counting on to pass his health-care bill and follow-on legislation is in absolute tatters. The strain of the effort to ram health care through despite intense public opposition has taken a very heavy toll. Independent voters remain outraged at the arrogance of it all, and have swung decisively toward GOP candidates in recent contests. Congressional Democrats now know they are in peril, and are behaving accordingly. They are in no mood to take any more tough votes on behalf of a president’s agenda that their constituents have plainly rejected. Indeed, in the current environment, it’s hard to see how the House could pass the same health-care bill that it passed just last November.
This puts the president in a terrible bind, especially given the difficult budgetary choices now confronting him. His 2011 budget submission to Congress shows deficits rising to $1 trillion by the end of the decade and continuing thereafter. From 1789 through 2008, the U.S. government borrowed $5.8 trillion. If the Obama budget were adopted in full, government borrowing would exceed $18 trillion by the end of the decade. Debt accumulation at such a pace would almost certainly precipitate an economic crisis.
In their heart of hearts, most Democrats think the solution to the nation’s budget problem is a massive tax increase; if they had succeeded on health care, some might have been willing to use that momentum to propose one. But in the current environment, with so much distaste for out-of-control government, the White House and congressional Democrats know full well that it would be complete political suicide for them to push a tax increase at this stage.
Which brings us back to the president’s renewed interest in having Republicans share in, as he put it, “the burdens of governing.”
Unfortunately for him, he is now holding a very weak hand as he heads into discussions with his adversaries. His health-care program is so unpopular that Democrats themselves are walking away from it. He promised voters he wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class, and his Democratic allies want to expand government, not contain or shrink it. So, unless he changes course, he is stuck with presiding over an unprecedented borrowing binge that threatens to cripple his administration.
The whole article can be found here.
posted by James C. Capretta | 2:46 pm
Tags: budget, deficit, bipartisanship, President Obama
File As: Health Care
Entitlements, the Budget, and the State of the Union
In a new post over on NRO's Corner tonight, I comment on the health care and budgetary aspects of President Obama's State of the Union address:
On health care, he offered nothing new. He is sticking with the plan the public has quite plainly rejected. According to a recent CNN poll, a full 70 percent of Americans want Congress either to start over entirely or to drop the subject altogether. That’s because they recognize that the plan the president has been pushing so aggressively for the better part of a year would be a disaster, for the quality of American medicine and for the nation’s budget outlook. The president claims the bill would cut the deficit, but that’s based on completely implausible assumptions. The bill would stand up another runaway entitlement program, paid for with offsets that will never hold up over time and cost-control ideas that are weak and largely meaningless.
Yesterday, I had another post on the Corner, remarking on the administration's proposed budget "freeze." An excerpt:
In reality, the Obama freeze is a purposeful diversion and sideshow. The nation is rushing headlong toward a fiscal crisis because of runaway government spending, and the Obama administration has no serious plan to head it off. Between 1789 and 2008, the federal government ran up $5.8 trillion in debt. In just the first three years of the Obama administration, CBO expects the debt to increase by nearly another $4 trillion. In 2010, CBO projects total federal spending will exceed $3.5 trillion, more than $500 billion over what was spent in 2008. Further, in 2012 and beyond, with realistic assumptions regarding extension of the Bush tax cuts, relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax, funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and restoration of planned cuts in Medicare physician fees, the government is headed toward $1 trillion budget deficits every year for as far as the eye can see.
This massive run-up in debt is set to occur just as the baby boomers head into their retirement years, pushing up costs in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Between 2010 and 2030, the population that is age 65 and older will rise from about 41 million to 71 million. CBO expects spending on the big three entitlement programs to rise from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2010 to 14.4 percent in 2030 — an increase of about 4.6 percent of GDP in 20 years. That’s like adding another Social Security program to the federal budget with no plan to pay for it.
So far, the president’s primary response to this looming budget and entitlement crisis is to propose to pile another runaway health-care entitlement program on top of the unaffordable ones already on the books. According to CBO, the federal cost of the health-care commitments in both the House- and Senate-passed health-care bills would reach $200 billion in 2019 and would increase about 8 percent every year thereafter. Meanwhile, the offsets to pay for this new spending are completely unrealistic, and the so-called “bend the curve” provisions are far too weak to make a difference.
posted by James C. Capretta | 11:35 pm
Tags: budget, entitlements, President Obama
File As: Health Care
