To look at his budget, we’d have to say he’s IGNORING it. The ideological expansion of government it promotes--through, for example, effectively nationalizing health care--is unaffordable (and counter-stimulative) in times such as our ours (LBJ was expanding government in the midst of prosperity--and saying that an affluent people could afford to do more). Meanwhile, the president is just not addressing the bad debt that has turned so many of our financial institutions into dead banks walking.
In his comments under 'Rush and tthe Mainstream', Peter Lawler writes: "Republicans, of course, are selfishly indifferent to personal suffering unless it's by the rich".
This is such a minor league, off base comment that, as a new viewer, I am re-evaluating the quality of your organization and my participation as a reader.
Jack Logan
One potential explanation for why Obama is waiting so long to reveal his policy for dealing with the financial crisis,
Any financial rescue package is going to be very expensive, and broadly unpopular with the country at large. It is also going to happen in one form or another because there seems to be a consensus among policymakers that some kind of rescue package has to happen. The administration that pushes for and gets this package will be weakened because it will have had to take on public opinion. There will also be some slackening of the public's appetite for spending both because of the program's expense and the lessening of the sense of emergency (after all if you pass another 700 billion + rescue package, you better have done alot of rescuing). That means it would be alot tougher for Obama to get alot of his more expensive ideas (whether in the form of taxes, spending or regulation) after Congress passes the financial rescue plan.
The political advantages of pushing the other issues before the financial rescue is that they benefit from the atmosphere of emergency and from being early in the administration where Obama still has a long line of credit with the public. Get those spending, regulatory, and tax programs first (and which Obama would like to have regardless of the state of the economy) and then take the hit on the financial rescue bill. This way you are more likley to get your trasformational programs through than if you put the rescue package out there first. Congress will still pass the financial rescue because there is no real alternative. He thinks. For Obama, it is the best of both worlds.
That would explain the otherwise inexplicable, like Obama announcing a cap and trade program before a financial program and Geitner being the goat for the Obama administration not being able to announce a financial resuce plan.
Mr. Logan, Peter Lawler was making a sarcastically ironic joke in that sentence. Is it antiphrasis? That word always make me think of an aged relation I had. You can complain about the quality of the humor here or find the humor elusive; honestly, some of the funniest things written on this blog are not done purposefully. However, I do not think you read that post as it was intended to be read. Keep reading a while, put off the evaluation for a bit, and then see what you think.
Kate is right. I was ironically summarizing the way Rush was characterized on the Today show.