The Political Whore

The two hottest searches on Google today are for Americans for Prosperity and No Stimulus Petition, which links you to the anti-Obama stimulus package movement and an online petition. Evidence enough that Barack Obama faces an uphill battle for the hearts and minds, as his White House has allowed the anti-stimulus package forces to define the legislation and the terms of battle. Classic framing theory, and surprising to see just how rookie the Obama Administration handled it.

One reason is likely that he won’t/can’t stand up publicly to the self-destructive House Democrats. Sure, less than 1 percent of the House bill was really pork. But it was pork that was indefensible, and at a total tab of more than 800 billion, it was pork that individually ran into the tens of millions of dollars.

Out in Real America, that kind of cash is still big money and can’t be p’shawed away so easily. For the past week, my email inbox has been stuffed with pointed, funny and (mostly) successful anti-stimulus propaganda: The Libertarian Party, “America’s third largest party tonight urged Senate Republicans and Democrats to scrap plans their joint plans for a $780 billion package of wealth transfers and expanded government spending;” the National Black Republicans, “The fierce urgency of pork;” and the new House Republican plan website that “details the smarter, simpler stimulus plan proposed by House Republicans that will create twice the jobs at half the price “

(Take a look at this cool WaPo graphic on where the money would be spent if you need help visualizing where it is all going.)

So as Obama preps for his Fort Myers dog-and-pony on Tuesday and a prime-time news conference tonight to try to take back the high ground in his first major legislative battle, here are 10 Talking Points for what he must say and commit to do:

1. Obama must admit that the House leadership screwed up and included some projects that it shouldn’t have, and that he is disappointed in his Democratic colleagues, that even in the toughest of times, they can’t break their habits.
2. After that, Obama must say that even if the Democrats are guilty of throwing the first punch, Republicans responding disproportionately by going nuclear. The rhetoric from the GOP has been transparently clear, that, for many of the Republican congressmen, this is about giving Obama a black eye and not about what’s best for the U.S. economy.
3. Then admit that it is a failure of your first two weeks in office that you didn’t enforce your voter mandate for change properly by bitch-slapping both sides.
4. Announce that the bill must shrink further. The public has gotten the message that borrowing all this money is going to screw up our country in about a decade. Hell, even the Congressional Budget Office is saying this. And cutting either the Senate plan or the House plan further is going to require you to cut some welfare-related spending, in food stamps and health care. (Florida alone is in line for more than $5.3 billion in such funds.) Yes, those monies would go directly into the economy, as poor people have no choice but to spend them right away. But voters aren’t going to buy borrowing lots of cash today to expand safety nets. It seems to make more sense to build infrastructure, which will always be there once built, vs. providing safety-net help, a more ephemeral expenditure.
5. Obama must reject the tax cut-happy Republican plans as being, at best, inefficient in achieving short-term economic stimulus. Yes, go ahead and bring up President Bush’s poorly thought out stimulus tax rebate last year that gave us all $600 or $1,200 or some amount in between or lower and that mostly found its way into saving accounts or paying down credit card debt without any impact in the broader economy.
6. Play up the personal tax cuts in the House package, a $500 per worker cut that would be paid out in lower withholding over a period of months. Yes, it’s not instant stimulus; but studies overwhelmingly show that when workers believe they will have more money going forward (rather than in a one-time check) they are more likely to spend additional dollars into the economy. So in simple language, Obama has to tell the peeps: A one-time rebate wastes our valuable borrowed money, and my plan will give you a little more for a longer time.
7. And then promise longer-term tax adjustment when the economy rebounds. No reason to bankrupt the nation even further now, but folks deserve a reward for buckling down during this period. (Jeffrey Sachs disagrees, saying that taxes in the future will have to rise.) The only way to do this kind of cut is to follow through on your promises to critically analyze government functions and right-size the federal government.
8. Tell your Democratic congressional leaders to beef up (just a little) tax breaks for small companies. The House plan had a pretty good cut but it could be better, and it would both stimulate the economy and NFIB Republicans happy.
9. Talk a lot about the hundreds of billions in bricks-and-mortar projects that will transform our communities and nations to prepare us for the century ahead. The roads. The better energy grid that will allow us to really use solar and wind technologies under development. The transit systems that will take pollution-spewing cars off the roads. Naysayers are branding such government spending as “socialism,” but Salon has a nice answer to that in this slideshow. The projects, and the science/engineering innovation that they will fuel, will pay both short-term and long-term dividends.
10. Did I mention to talk about the science and engineering for the infrastructure? This is our generation’s shot “at putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.” The infrastructure spending isn’t just about cutting the backlog of planned state construction projects, although there is some of that; it is about a new future direction for the nation’s energy and transportation. And is anybody out there really happy either with energy or transportation?

Posted in Politics | Leave a comment