> NY Times, January 8, 2009 > $1.2 Trillion Deficit Forecast as Obama Weighs Options > By DAVID STOUT and EDMUND L. ANDREWS > > WASHINGTON — Changes in Social Security and Medicare will be central to > efforts to bring federal spending in line, President-elect Barack Obama said > on Wednesday, as the Congressional Budget Office projected a $1.2 trillion > budget deficit for the fiscal year. > > "We expect that discussion around entitlements will be a part, a central > part" of efforts to curb federal spending, Mr. Obama said at a news > conference. By February, he said, "we will have more to say about how we're > going to approach entitlement spending." > > Alluding to the projected deficit, which was accompanied by grim > unemployment predictions, Mr. Obama said: "And we know that our recovery and > reinvestment plan will necessarily add more. My own economic and budget team > projects that, unless we take decisive action, even after our economy pulls > out of its slide, trillion-dollar deficits will be a reality for years to > come." > > Mr. Obama did not offer specifics on how he would address Social Security > and Medicare, nor was there any hint that he expects to ask Congress to > approve draconian cuts in benefits. The programs are vital to millions of > Americans, and talk of cutting benefits has long been considered politically > explosive. On the other hand, both programs face long-range problems, given > the growing legions of baby boomers nearing retirement and, in the case of > Medicare, the ever-rising cost of health care.
This is the standard "inside the beltway" merging of Medicare with Social Security. The former is in trouble -- because the whole health-care system is in trouble, centered on the private sector -- but the latter is not. I actually heard the bit of the press conference where BHO talked about this (after almost 8 years of avoiding presidential press conferences like the plague). Crucially, I don't think it's right to say that "Obama plans to go after Medicare and Social Security." Some reporter asked a broad question that included the "inside the beltway" merging. Then Obama gave a relatively rhetorical and thus meaningless response (quoted above) that really didn't suggest he'd go against either of these programs as much as say that even though humongous government deficits were necessary to counteract the private-sector deficits, the government doesn't want them to be _too_ humongous. He even dragged out that old chestnut, line-by-line examination of the budget to get rid of "pork." The only difference from previous efforts is that the examination is now to be led by a newly-created (and likely expensive) layer of bureaucracy, led by a "Chief Performance Officer." He didn't argue against the wrongheadedness of the reporter's question, however. We'll have to see whether or not he drinks the Kool-Aid and accepts the Capitol's consensus conflation of the two programs. It depends on how much pressure is put on him from the left. His administration's politics should be seen as mostly being a "dependent variable," where the contending political-economic forces are "independent variables" to a larger extent. At least pressure from the left is something that we might have some effect on. We should just assume that BHO will be on the receiving end of a right-wing shit-storm if he deviates from the DC orthodoxy. Without counter-pressure, he'll likely slide to the right the way his predecessor Clinton did... -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
