Dan Henninger reads from 44's SOTU last week expansive language & commitments that augur for a radical re-ordering of economic arrangements. Perhaps short of socialism, but clearly the political class will allocate rewards, in place of the private sector. George Will dissects 44's program and notes that it places faith in government to help industries, just as Bank of America's market cap is half the $45B is has gotten so far from the feds, and as Detroit & AIG come back for more: "So it goes, as government, with a confidence disconnected from its current performance, toils to make more and more people more and more dependent on it."
Simply put, President Obama proposes to impose a corporatist state, with the government ascendant. WSJ pundit Kimberley Strassel dissects 44's language and sees "Republicans & tax cuts bad" and "investment" as a "good" 44 prizes:
"The only way to fully restore America's economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world." Translation: Big government. President Obama loves the word "invest." (He used a form of it 11 times in his congressional address on Tuesday.) It sounds so modern and free market, and, most important, not like what it really is -- "spending." The administration is aware that the deficit is now the story. Thus Mr. Obama's suggestion that blowing out hundreds of billions for health care, energy and education somehow isn't Washington as usual -- but will instead yield American riches down the road.
Of course, no country has ever made good on such a promise. Washington, D.C.'s return on investment for investing $14,000 a year per student is a 40% high-school dropout rate. Government can create industries, though only those, like corn ethanol, that can't cut it without perpetual government aid. We're still waiting for Medicare to turn a profit. Nevertheless, investment is a catchy term. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently described her giant $410 billion 2009 omnibus spending bill as a similar "investment." Never mind that it contains 8,500 earmarks and the largest increase in discretionary spending since Jimmy Carter.
Bill Kristol agrees that 44 is swinging for the fences and suggests how the GOP can resist:
Conservatives and Republicans will disapprove of this effort. They will oppose it. Can they do so effectively?
Perhaps -- if they can find reasons to obstruct and delay. They should do their best not to permit Obama to rush his agenda through this year. They can't allow Obama to make of 2009 what Franklin Roosevelt made of 1933 or Johnson of 1965. Slow down the policy train. Insist on a real and lengthy debate. Conservatives can't win politically right now. But they can raise doubts, they can point out other issues that we can't ignore (especially in national security and foreign policy), they can pick other fights -- and they can try in any way possible to break Obama's momentum. Only if this happens will conservatives be able to get a hearing for their (compelling, in my view) arguments against big-government, liberal-nanny-state social engineering -- and for their preferred alternatives.
NY Times columnist David Brooks sees a health care rerun of the stimulus fiasco in 44's surrender to Congress of the task of writing health care legislation. Liberal Old Bulls are salivating like Komodo Dragons; taxpayers and patients will feel reptilian teeth if an HC bill is passed. Charles Krauthammer sees a European economy coming our way, courtesy of 44:
Obama sees the current economic crisis as an opportunity. He has said so openly. And now we know what opportunity he wants to seize. Just as the Depression created the political and psychological conditions for Franklin Roosevelt's transformation of America from laissez-faireism to the beginnings of the welfare state, the current crisis gives Obama the political space to move the still (relatively) modest American welfare state toward European-style social democracy.
In the European Union, government spending has declined slightly, from 48 percent to 47 percent of GDP during the past 10 years. In the United States, it has shot up from 34 percent to 40 percent. Part of this explosive growth in U.S. government spending reflects the emergency private-sector interventions of a Republican administration. But the clear intent was to make the massive intrusion into the private sector temporary and to retreat as quickly as possible. Obama has radically different ambitions.
The spread between Europe and America in government-controlled GDP has already shrunk from 14 percent to 7 percent. Two terms of Obamaism and the difference will be zero.
Jed Babbin at Human Events sounds the clarion call to take 44 on directly before it is too late, noting the latest Rasmussen poll showing 44 at 58 percent approval--this is low for a new President:
As former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told the CPAC audience last week, “We’re at one of those rare moments in history, when the biggest tests come all at once. We don’t have the luxury of taking them one by one. We have to get a lot of things right, and all at the same time.” Just so.
The tsunami of destructive legislation coming out of the White House is moving so fast that many House Republicans feel overwhelmed. As fast as one bill comes up, another is queued up right behind it. This week the House will take up and pass the patently unconstitutional bill to give the District of Columbia a voting representative in the House.
But those House Republicans -- and the Senate conservatives -- have to shake off their fear of opposing Obama. His budget “state of the union” speech lifted the veil. Mr. Boehner and the rest of the Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill will lose many battles, but they will lose them all -- and destroy what credibility they are regaining -- if some continue to timidly refuse to say that their central opponent isn’t Pelosi or Reid: it’s Obama.
For epic hubris can one top the Global New Deal 44 is cooking up with UK PM Gordon Brown?
As I noted Friday n LFTC, the great danger is that if 44 rams through his agenda in 2009, it will create constituencies powerful enough to resist rollback. Which is, of course, precisely 44's aim.
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