Colin Powell Cautions Obama On Big Government

WASHINGTON — Colin Powell worries that President Barack Obama is trying to tackle too many big issues at one time and he offers this advice: take a hard look at costs and consider the additional red tape that will be created.

"The right answer is, `Give me a government that works,'" the former secretary of state said in a television interview to be aired Sunday. "Keep it as small as possible," added Powell, who said he has spoken recently with Obama and stays in touch with him. Powell, a Republican, endorsed Obama last year over the GOP presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Obama wants to overhaul the health care system and take on climate change while also helping the country emerge from the recession.

"I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president _ and I've talked to some of his people about this _ is that you can't have so many things on the table that you can't absorb it all. And we can't pay for it all," Powell said.

"And I never would have believed that we would have budgets that are running into the multi-trillions of dollars, and we are amassing a huge, huge national debt that, if we don't pay for in our lifetime, our kids and grandkids and great grandchildren will have to pay for it."

It's not a new theme for Powell

He complained about the government's size and intrusiveness in his 1996 speech to the Republican National Convention. He said then that the nation no longer could afford more entitlements, higher taxes and more bureaucracy. In the interview with CNN's "State of the Union" that is to air Sunday, Powell said he hasn't changed his mind.

"Keep it as small as possible. Keep the tax burden on the American people as small as possible, but at the same time, have government that is solving the problems of the people," he said.

He said Obama "has to start really taking a very, very hard look at what the cost of all this is. And, how much additional bureaucracy and will it be effective bureaucracy."

CNN released excerpts of the interview in advance of the broadcast.

Comments

[maisnon55]

For years, Dems have acted like McCain and Powell were saints. I NEVER liked either of them. I DO NOT CARE WHAT COLIN POWELL HAS TO SAY......HIS ADVICE IS TRASH, IN MY MIND

[Kuuba]

Powell surely realizes that government tripled in size under Bush...surely he must?

[1088]

Republicants goes in office to destroy Government, because they hate it! Democrats goes in office to make Government work for the American people. Powell is a true blue Republicant, because as you see it , he put his party first with his ideology.

[allpeopleunite]

The state is the capitalist apparatus of exploitation, of course it is too big and intrusive. What i preferable to me, though it may sound like a dream, is for us to be our own government, run the country with workers and citizens councils from bottom to top. We are capable of managing the country! Not a lightbulb shines, not a wheel moves without the will of the working class. We are the power!

[dredeize]

I hate to burst some people's bubble, but President Obama should ignore this dribble. HEALTHCARE OVERHAUL IS NECESSARY. PERIOD. Would we rather pay the cost with money or our, our kids', or our grandkids' lives(health)? Seems a small price to pay now if we truly want to help our kids and grandkids for the future.

[tvlandman]

No, were are paying for this with our kids, and grand kids, and great-grandkids money.

[wdw505]

my kids have insurance ..

[TheGoodShepherd]

Government healthcare overhaul is unconstitutional.
If you want to pay for someone else's healthcare, go ahead.
It's not the government's business to reach in my pocket and steal my money to give it to someone else. That's about as un-american as you can get!

Stay out of my pockets!

[macpozeur]

Powell needs to get in the game with Obama. Commenting from the fringes is counterproductive. Plus, he needs to realize, as few seem to do, that the economy, the environment and health care are interlocking issues. We have a car with two flat tires, a bad alternator, a clogged fuel injection system and it's out of gas. It ain't gonna get running by fixing only one of those things at a time.

[BrotherOrchid]

The GOP have recently undergone a "Colin-oscopy"....The Dem's would do well, to follow suit.

[timewaster2dcore]

Has anyone watched John King's State of the Union? The guy is a right winger. He pushes negative stories against Obama every single time. For example, he goes to the deep South (Alabama or something) and ask whether Obama's healthcare proposal is a good one or not. What does he expect thosewho did not vote for him to say? He then pretends as if those people represent the whole country. It's a sham of a show. I am all for fairness when broadcasting. If you showed the negatives of the Obama Administration, do same for the positives, no matter how meager.

Even in this Powell interview, he showed some really old clip of Powell at a GOP convention (I don't know why he went that far into the past if he doesn't have any agenda). Then he asked Powell whether Obama was fulfilling what Powell said about small govt and lower taxes. Obama is not Powell and Obama is not a Republican or a conservative. He's a progressive.

I used to enjoy Blitzer's Late Edition. But I can't stand King, so I watch something else until Fareed Zakaria's GPS starts. King is a GOP plant. He's kinda arrogant as well.

[jakiew]

definitely. can't stand him either.

[dredeize]

I concur. He and his long faced wife, Dana Bash are right wing plants. The loved the way McSame stokes their egos.

[rsprags]

Mr.President, I respect the advice but continue to reform healthcare, improve education, and put in place energy reform. In the long run this is going to place our country at the forefront of history again; this is revolutionary work and remember many leaders are always behind the revolution and the will of the people. Look at history it will tell the story.
CNN and John King; slow wits or us!

[masher]

And keep programs like H-1B that put Americans out of work! I think you are missing the point.

There are federal regulations, like H-1B, that need to be completely ended. Obama needs to cut government at the same time he is explaning it.

The problem is that Obama is keeping all the stupid regulations like these visa programs that hurt US workers and discourage US students from entering science and math and yet he is trying to fix schools. Looking around the states I see most are cutting access to education and raising fees.

Obama is failing miserably to make any difference in the lives of hard working Americans who play by the rules. He is so focused on the rich and Wall Street that he can't see it.

Obama needs to let half of his cabinet go.

[InfosolutionWiz]

TRUST ME, "YOU WOULD NOT" Take H-1B jobs that I see immigrant workers doing! I currently Know 2 people working in Alabama on the H-1B program and it is almost modern day slavery! Americans dont want those jobs. It cannot cover bills or pay the mortgage!

If we don't spend money now and invest in our future, there may not be a USA for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. Twenty eight years of "Vodoo Economics" have run its course and the country is at the precipice, yet still the same mantras that propelled us there are still trying to hold sway and convince people to stay the course.

[SamEllison]

Why would anyone take this mans advice?

[BossBabe]

Because he is incredibly experienced, incredibly knowledgeable, and incredibly smart. It's really okay to listen to people who disagree with you.

[dredeize]

.....and because he's black, people think that President Obama is more apt to listen to him; but Powell still sounds like a republicant.

[Mandorson]

Please, Mr. Powell - let's finally put to rest this nutty Republican idea that it is inherently bad to have our 'children and grandchildren' pay for investments we decide to make. After all, they may very well pay a much higher price for investments we DON'T make. What is really important is that the investments we make actually pay off, so that our children and grandchildren - and we ourselves, live sustainably better lives. Of course, that's what Obama is trying to do.

As far as 'taxes' are concerned, we should start to consider the negative impacts of a dysfunctional medical system and man-made global warming as hidden taxes that are much worse than conventional taxes. In this context, paying now for a public health insurance option or a carbon cap-in-trade system could be seen as actually reducing our future 'taxes'.

[jp5472]

Well stated. If we don't spend money now and invest in our future, there may not be a USA for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. Twenty eight years of "Vodoo Economics" have run its course and the country is at the precipice, yet still the same mantras that propelled us there are still trying to hold sway and convince people to stay the course.

[dongiovani11]

I bet that all the people that post about using taxes for everything work (or derive income) for the government. You cannot have 3 people's taxes paying for one person's income and expect that that can be sustained at any reasonable level.

Clearly none of you have lived in a country that has government run medical systems; I propose that you send your sick family member there for about 6 months and let us see how much you are willing to have it here when you come back???

Finally, and just in case that you missed this little fact, global warming was a term coined by Thatcher (yes, that Thatcher) to break the backs of the miners union in England in the 80's, and it had nothing to do with any warming, and all to do with the building of more nuclear plants in England. It is completely ludicrous to think that 6 billion people can create global warming when the sun has trillions of times more energy creating ability than those 6 billion people. And isn't it interesting that we do not call it global warming anymore (particularly given that the earth has been on a cooling trend for the past few years and scientists are contemplating now that this will continue) and we now call it CLIMATE CHANGE??? hmmmmm???

[ReedYoung]

[
I bet that all the people that post about using taxes for everything work (or derive income) for the government.
]

You bet how much?

Nobody derives more income from the government than Halliburton, its former subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root (KBR), Blackwater, Bechtel, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin (I'm not sure the last two haven't been acquired by larger holding companies but by now you get my point about the military industrial complex being historically the biggest swine at the government teat.), AIG, Citigroup, BofA, Wells Fargo, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, et al. Oh, wait, in spite of the urgent national need Paulson squawked (that's a reference to Chicken Little) about a few months later Bernanke let one of those collapse, didn't he? One that was a competitor of Goldman Sachs, wasn't it? Weird, that. Point being, that with all the Trillions given to the corporatist pull peddlers it's more than reasonable for all the rest of us to absolutely demand that the same government pays for 100% of our medical care. After all, you must admit it's no less "welfare" and much more "general" to make medical care available to everybody than to make bailouts available only to the richest financiers at the most colossally failed of corporations in the entire history of money. That was not very "general" welfare at all. Now, it's everybody else's turn.

[masher]

And by investments you mean corporate welfare and tax cuts for the rich? I don't get your point. Obama has just followed through on the pattern Bush left behind of taking money from the middle class and giving it to the rich.

The GM bailout, the PPIP program, the Chysler bailout, failed financial reform, the list goes on and on. Under Obama the federal government is still hard at work to suppress US workers wages by direct manipulation of the labor markets (look up H-1B) and yet Obama says he feels our pain!? Give me a break.

Obama is setting the US up for a mountain of debt but with nothing to show for it. We are still in Iraq and the war in Afganistan is expanding rapidly. He hasn't ended the outsourcing of war either.

And the GM bailout, that $50 billion is being used to help GM move more jobs to China so they can turn around and import cars into the US! Again Obama didn't fix the problem. We need "fair trade" not "free trade". We can never compete with a country like China were life isn't valued.

[1088]

Because of the bail outs, I was able to save some of my 401k. Because of the GM bailouts, the employees able to save their 401k and pension, for if they were allowed to liquidate, they would have lost everything. Thank you President Obama!

[AlaninElkGrove]

27 years of voodoo economics and deregulation that imploded our economy and brought us zombie banks and bankrupted Wall Street have given the Soviet republican party absolutely ZERO credibility to speak to anybody about fiscal affairs.

General Powell, you kr.apt all over your reputation and credibility. With all due respect, we are not about to start taking economic advice from a hack general. Just join the parade of disgraced GOP operatives who are marching en masse off into the sunset.

Good day to you, sir...

[masher]

And what exactly is Obama doing differently? Obama's economic policy is basically the same as Bush's. Sure Bush started the bank bailouts but Obama finished them and even expanded them, massively expanded the bailouts with PPIP. Obama put Geithner, the head of the NY fed, into the Treasury position. And even worse, Obama hired Larry Summers, one of the main architects of banking dereuglation, as his senior economics advisor!

Obama just gives better speeches. Check out Obama's plan to give amnesty to the 13 million illegals in the country! That will be a huge blow to hard working play by the rules Americans at the bottom of the ladder. And for those of us who worked hard to get degrees in math or computer science, Obama is under cutting our salaries by importing foriegn labor into the US. Its simple economics that if the federal government imports labor that wages will not rise. More supply means wages pressure decreases. And the stagnant wages of the past 8 years testify to that. And Obama is perfectly happy with it.

So just remember, if Obama will cut the wages of engineers and programmers he won't care about anyone's wages being cut, well EXCEPT the wages of CEOs and there he has been very clear that we can't do that!

Geez people get a clue.

[cozen]

Wasn't he the very one who lied US into Iraq?

[Melissa]

Thank you General Powell, I think he is starting to realize what a horrible financial mess we are in.

[ReedYoung]

From what I can gather, mostly from "Chain of Command" and "Angler," he was set up. I believe he had no more access to knowledge of Cheney's manipulations of CIA than you or I had at the time. Colin Powell has some stupid ideas about economics but I don't believe he was in on the invasion for petroleum scheme.
http://www.truthout.org/070309J?n

[masher]

And didn't most of the Democrats agree? And didn't Pelosi know about torture too?

[maisnon55]

Yes. Powell and McCain have always been loved by the left. I never saw it and I was correct.

[mikeVA]

The last set of sustainable fiscal policy was under President Clinton. Now, the US has a balance sheet recession because of consistently poor policy from the godinosaur party. This is a Bush recession, a multi-dip recession because of the fiscal malfeasance of republicans - thirty years of it.

http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/06/the-fiscal-black-hole-in-the-us/

snip
The dynamics of US general government (Federal, State and Local) public debt since 1970 is shown in Figures 1 and 2 below. They show the fiscal irresponsibility of the George W. administrations; fiscal policy was relentlessly procyclical, with the sizeable primary surpluses of the Clinton years blown away in a series of regressive tax cuts. Figure 3 shows that, even before the economic downturn started raising the numerator and lowering the denominator of public spending as a share of GDP (from the second quarter of 2008), general government expenditure had been growing faster than GDP during most of the George W. years (all three figures are based on OECD data).
snip

[masher]

Right, and the problem is that the Dems are becoming a kindler gentler version of the GOP. On the polies that matter, like bailing out failed corporations and basically only doing what corporations want, there really isn't any difference.

Obama is happy to follow the same bailout ideas of Bush. The Geithner plan (PPIP) is just a more complex and vastly larger version of the Paulson plan. I heard PPIP was dead but now it sounds like its not.

The basic problem is that lobbiest for multinational corporations are dictating the agenda and our policy and Obama doesn't seem to mind.

What he should at least start talking about is abolishing corporate personhood. But he won't even start the conversation. You could start the conversation by suggesting we end all corporate taxes because corporations are just contracts and how can you tax contracts? And then start to raise the question of why corporations, bundles of contracts, get to lobby at all.

[hapiday]

We are going to have to spend money in order to move forward. If a man has a store he can't make money with no inventory. He is going to have to create debt in order to stock the store. He's going to have to spend money in order to make money. If he dies the next day and his son or daughter takes over the business they are going to be left with his debt. If they are intelligent they will see and understand that he did what he did so that it would benefit someone besides himself. It's not always how much is spent but why it is spent and who it's going to benefit in the end.

[masher]

The problem is we are taking the money and giving it to the richest guy on the block and hoping he will help us out. The Obama bailouts are a massive waste and the debt Obama is creating is foolish.

Taking your example, suppose the poor man is living in a country that imports cheap goods from a communist country where a worker's life has no value...how in the world can the store owner compete? Walmart will enter the area and put him out of business because the poor shop owner lacks the economy of scale to compete and if he tries to manufacture something he will be underscut by cheap imports form China where life has no value.

The Obama failure is a failure to understand that we need "fair trade" and we need to bust the trusts!

So Obama would say "hey we can't have the federal government dictating terms to corporations" but Obama is fine with using the federal government to suppress my wages with H-1B and all the other federal regulations on labor markets.

I think that dicotomy puts things into perspective.