The President's Story, and the Progressive Response

President Obama's speech last night was one of his best ever delivered, and thank goodness he is making a huge political push on the all-important jobs issue. It was a good night for him, and he needed this badly for his political standing. But progressive activists should neither fall into a posture of uncritical support, or just focus on the negative sides of the speech, policy, and political strategy, as sometimes is done by our more hardcore brethren. We should take a critical eye to what is good and bad about the policy, and enthusiastically support the good side while strongly opposing what is bad; we should applaud that he has gone bigger and bolder than conventional wisdom in D.C. said he would or should, while calling for even more boldness because this package isn't enough to get this economy out of the deep, deep hole it is in. The president needs to have a left flank, not just because of political positioning but because progressives have a moral imperative to stand strongly for what the right thing to do is.

We should not let the fact that we are conflicted on the president's proposal slow down our willingness to take action to fight for what we believe in, either. We need to be strong and clear in what we are calling for, and fight for everything we believe in with every muscle we have.

Let's start with the negatives:

• The president using right-wing talking points on how Medicare and Medicaid have to be cut is unconscionable. The fact that he wants to focus on jobs is wonderful, but claiming that we need to make cuts in Medicare and Medicaid benefits to pay for it is a terrible Sophie's Choice: who do you want to sacrifice, workers or seniors? It's terrible politics and terrible policy, and should be completely rejected. The problem with Medicare and Medicaid costs has to do with the health care industry -- many providers, drug companies, insurers -- driving up both public and private health care costs. We don't need to cut benefits, we don't need to squeeze already hurting states on Medicaid costs, and we don't need to raise the retirement age.
• This Georgia "jobs" plan the president has adopted as his own is right-wing economics at its worst: make unemployed folks work for free, and rob unemployment benefits to pay for it.
• No analysis I have seen of the trade deals the president is supporting as part of his jobs package suggest that these trade deals will produce a net increase in exports. More exports, sure -- but it's the net number that matters in actually producing more jobs. The way these trade deals are structured, they are not likely to be a net plus in producing new jobs.
• Way too much of this package in general is more tax cuts for business, which economists generally agree has far less of a direct impact in creating jobs than direct spending to create jobs. As Rep. Jan Schakowsky said in introducing her terrific short-terms jobs bill, the best way to create jobs is to simply create jobs: in other words, to directly hire more teachers and cops and firefighters and road construction workers.
• One of the biggest disappointments about this package is a missed opportunity: the president shouldn't just be focused on jobs, but on good jobs with good pay and good benefits. He should have announced that he was creating a White House office on good jobs, and executive orders to make sure that in all federal government contracting and procurement, the priority would be to work with companies that paid decent wages and had decent benefits. He could still do this, but the fact that in spite of some great rhetoric at the beginning of the speech about the importance of good jobs, none of the policy proposals in the speech seem directly related to insuring that new jobs that are created as a result of these measures will have decent pay or benefits.
• Another big missed opportunity: we should be helping pay for all these jobs programs with more taxes on the financial speculation that destroyed the economy in the first place.

On the other hand there is a lot to feel good about in the president's policy proposals, including:

• The fact that he is targeting help to small business rather than the big business behemoths that usually get most of the benefits out of government because of their lobbyists, the same companies that do most of the outsourcing of jobs overseas, is a great thing. Democrats and progressives need to be firmly and passionately on the side of helping small businesses, who have been so hard hit by this long and deep recession, survive and grow.
• Similarly, while as I said above I am leery of business tax cuts in general, targeting them specifically to companies that are actually creating new jobs is far preferable to the Republican approach of just throwing wads of money at any business or individual who is rich, and hoping that as a result they will trickle the money down the masses in the form of some new job somewhere someday.
• While I remain nervous about the long-term politics of cutting the payroll tax, Obama's focus on cutting taxes for working class people and raising them for the wealthy is exactly where we need to go.
• These road and school construction jobs are crucially important to rebuilding our economy, both in the short and long-term.
• With all the teacher layoffs over the last couple of years, class sizes are ridiculously big. The new teacher hires are incredibly important, again both in the short and long-term.
• The size of this package pleasantly surprised me. Given that early discussions in the White House had people advocating something far smaller, and given the conventional wisdom from the D.C. establishment about how modest he should be, the fact that Obama is pushing for $450 billion is better than I expected. I had told people at the White House that this package needed to focus on three words: big, urgent, and now. It seems like this meets that test. Now, just to be clear: I do not think it is enough. We need to be spending far more than this to really jolt the economy the way it needs to be jolted. Progressives need to be crystal clear that this is not enough. But given what it might have been, I am pleasantly surprised.

On the speech itself, I have one thing beyond the policy I am really happy about, and one thing I'm really troubled by. Let me start with the latter: I didn't agree with everything my friend Drew Westen said in his now famous NYT op-ed about the president, but I do wish the president listened to him more when it comes to the need to tell a story. I really think it was important for the president in the beginning of his speech to explain to people how we got to this terrible economic place. He just launched right into the policy, but without an understanding of how we landed in this awful place, I fear voters won't understand how what Obama is proposing solves the problem. He needed to talk about how the irresponsibility of the last ten years -- no oversight of Wall Street speculators, not paying for wars and big tax cuts to the wealthy -- created an entire decade without job or income growth, and created the housing bubble -- the combination of which wrecked the economy and put us in the deepest hole we have been in since the Great Depression. He needed to explain that times are not business as usual, that times like these create the need for bold and urgent action. By not doing that, I fear voters will not get why what he is proposing is different and needed, and will make it far easier for Republicans to just attack this as the same old stimulus policies that didn't work before.

On the other hand, the speech's summary was great at context setting. When the president lays out the broad philosophical basis for why government action is needed, and why we need to all be in this together, he strengthens his case immeasurably. It was a wonderful closing, and really important to make those points. The language he used sounded like it came out of the speeches progressives have been giving for a while, and it is very politically powerful stuff.

It is great that the president is out there with a big, bold jobs package. He took the advice of the progressive movement on that, and today he looks like a far stronger leader as a result. We still need to fight him on the things he is wrong about, and we still need to push him to do more, both in legislative proposals and in the things he can do through executive action. But he is in far better shape politically today, and as someone who strongly prefers a President Obama to a President Perry in the next term, I am happy.

 

Follow Mike Lux on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ProgressiveLux

Comments

[masanf]

05:08 PM on 09/13/2011

"It is great that the President is out there with a big, bold jobs package."

Hahahahahahaha. The president's "plan" is a scaled-down version of the failed "stimulus" bil. I challenge Mike Lux to tell me exactly which part of the same tired old "let's explode our debt until we are prosperous" plan is bold.

[masanf]

05:06 PM on 09/13/2011

"But he is in far better shape politically today, and as someone who strongly prefers a President Obama to a President Perry in the next term, I am happy."

Far better shape? Give me a break. As a matter of fact, the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll has his approval declining by one to two points since his gave a supposedly super duper speech that, by the way, went unwatched by 90% of the American public. To hear people like Mike Lux talk, one would get the impression that Abraham Lincoln is considered one of the greatest of American presidents not because he ended slavery and preserved the Union but because he gave a good speech in Pennsylvania. As I mention in a previous post, the economy has been in the toilet for far too long for a speech to revive Obama's political fortunes. Independent voters in swing states are not sitting around the dinner table saying "you know, I haven't been able to find a job in over a year, but boy, Obama gave a great speech on Thursday".

[masanf]

05:01 PM on 09/13/2011

"But he is in far better shape politically today, and as someone who strongly prefers a President Obama to a President Perry in the next term, I am happy."

Yeah, because when people go to the polling place next year, they aren't going to consider the record debt, the record deficits, the record long-term unemployment, the record string of months of 9% or greater unemployment, the record amount of foreclosures, the record number of people living in poverty, the preciptious decline in wages, the ramming through of a healthcare bil the majority of Americans didn't want, and according to every poll known to man, still don't, etc. etc. No, instead they are going to think of one single speech that 99.9% of Americans will have forgotten about less than a week after it was given, and it will make them forget all of the other terrible stuff that has gotten worse under Obama.

I struggle to think of a word to describe the belief that the American public is going to forget the absolute misery that has characterized the entirety of the Obama presidency simply because he gave a speech that consisted of nothing more than restating the same old failed "stimulus" policies that didn't work the first 960 days he was in office.
.

[masanf]

04:51 PM on 09/13/2011

•"This Georgia "jobs" plan the President has adopted as his own is right-wing economics at its worst: make unemployed folks work for free, and rob unemployment benefits to pay for it."

Whereby the word free is a euphemism for "taxpayer-provided benefit checks they in no way earned."

"President Obama's speech last night was one of his best ever delivered..."

Yeah, it was so good, unemployment went down immediately. Nah, I'm just kidding. It is still stuck at 9.1% despite the fact the stuff Obama proposed in his supposedly Gettysburg Address-quality speech is the same stuff that failed miserably after it was proposed almost three years ago. Seriously, almost three years in to Obama'd presidency it is absolutely amazing, and beyond hilarious, that there are still people out there who think a barometer for a successful presidency is how well Obama reads from a teleprompter a speech he didn't write.

"He should have announced that he was creating a White House office on good jobs..."
With this statement, the above article just rose to the level of self-parody. It is absolutey amazing that there are people out there that think because the government decrees something, it automatically comes about. Having that kind of faith in government is just plain sad.

[DougDeWitt]

12:32 AM on 09/12/2011

tragically ignorant... another Quixotic progressive, tilting at the windmill of attempting to reach social equality through traditional means.

Progressive change requires abandonment of the current unregulated, Money Talks capitalist, Democratic-Republican monolith. We, the People, must embrace a new political paradigm.

A grass-roots coalition capable of putting up candidates for every elected office in America, must retake what was once a government Of the People, By the People, and For the People. Congress must be elected with a predetermined agenda of sustainable universal access to those social services that keep the Haves' boot on the throat of the Have-Nots... Health care, education, legal and accounting services without the external restriction of financial means.

This will require fundamental realignment of our goals as a society, whereby government exists for the benefit of children, and the family... and no longer for the benefit of business, and the Almighty Dollar.

http://americanprogressive.org/

[masanf]

05:15 PM on 09/13/2011

Your post can be summed up in one sentence:
From Each According to his Abilities, to Each According to his Needs"

Funny, just like Obama's stimulus, your bold "new" plan didn't work in the past, and it won't work now.

"Health care, education, legal and accounting services without the external restrictio­n of financial means."

Yeah, who cares about external financial means when you can just confiscate money from those who earn it and give it to those who didn't in anyway earn it and thus have no legitimate moral claim to it? Boy, that is truly a blueprint for a for free society. I have a distinct feeling that "We The People" would reject your policy prescriptions at the ballot box. Those who ran the countries that did end up implementing your "new" strategy obviously felt the same, which is why they denied the people they "governed" the right to vote for 7 + decades.

[wayne the pain]

11:27 AM on 09/11/2011

Great speech! Get real, he gave another speech filled with proposals that have no chance! The only thing he proposed that has a chance are tax cuts and cuts to Medicare and Social Security! It was a political speech designed to put pressure on Republicans to give him a few crumbs at great expense to the poor and middle class. He will get nothing! He is hoping for a backlash against Republicans for not creating jobs! The only backlash that is going to occur is against Obama in 2012 for selling out his base and producing nothing but huge debt in four years!

[Gayle Boesky]

02:46 PM on 09/10/2011

Why would anyone think the people in Washington have any idea how to get the economy moving? To create jobs you have to spend money. If Washington isn’t willing to spend why should the private sector. The politicians clearly don’t think that spending government money will increase revenue. How are they going to convince private businesses that spending their money on new employees will bring them more income? How can the politicians convince us to spend money to help the economy when they won’t do so themselves? It’s not the people who have lost faith in the economy, it’s the politicians.

[masanf]

05:22 PM on 09/13/2011

Yeah, your "the government needs to spend money" plan really worked the last time Obama spent nearly a trillion in so-called "stimulus", didn't it. And the notion that the private sector isn't going to spend more is hilariously ludicrous, particularly when you consider that it is the private sector, via confiscatory tax policy, that has to finance any government spending binge that occurs. It is absolutely amazing that anyone can think taking even more money from individuals, as Obama wants to do through even more tax increases, is somehow going to spur those individuals to spend more of their own money, the same money that was just taxed out of their wallets by the government. The degree of amazement only increases when one considers that Obama tried to do just what you are advocating through his hilariously misnamed stimulus, only to have it fail miserably.

The "thinking" of Obama and the commenters on this site seems to be: if government intervention didn't work the first time, it obviously means we need more of it.

[MalleusMaleficarum]

02:24 PM on 09/10/2011

As a retired American on Medicare, I want Obama to cut out the fat of the health car 'industry.' Nothing Obama said in the speech indicated that he did not mean that - instead of what Lux implies - that benefits will be cut. Not one word, and not one syllable. I loved the speech, and I hope Congress does enact the bill without delay.

[Robert SF]

09:18 PM on 09/10/2011

Well, what's "fat" to you is "benefits" to someone else.

[Poboy]

10:42 AM on 09/10/2011

"He needed to talk about how the irresponsibility of the last ten years -- no oversight of Wall Street speculators, not paying for wars and big tax cuts to the wealthy -- created an entire decade without job or income growth, and created the housing bubble -- the combination of which wrecked the economy and put us in the deepest hole we have been in since the Great Depression."

Wall street speculators? His EVERY policy initiative has supported them, except the Consumer Regulatory Agency set up by the Bank Reform Bill. His weak support of Elizabeth Warren and tepid support of her replacement are instructive.

War Spending? He has embraced and continued, without pause.

Bush Tax Cuts? He has continued, mouthing only opposition because of his re-election.

Isn't it clear that he supports these policies?

The question is, knowing this why would liberals support him?

[masanf]

05:38 PM on 09/13/2011

Yes everything that has occurred is all the fault of George Bush and his policies. Absolutely nothing that originated from Obama has been responsible for the poor state of the economy. Sure thing.

The healthcare bill that an increasing number of businesses have stated has a)already made them reluctant to hire and b)will cause them to cut employee health care plans? That couldn't possibly have contributed to our economic problems, could it?. The so-called Consumer Regulatory Agency that will lead to increased businesscosts and mountains of paperwork just like Sarbanes-Oxley? Yeah, that is really going to put businesses in the mood to hire. The insane amount of regulations emanating from the EPA, regulations that at least one corporation has already stated will cause them to layoff employees, regulations that numerous senators, including Democratic senators, have stated will be ruinous for their states, those are reallly helping, aren't they? As is the moratorium on offshore-drilling, a move that has cost tens of thousands of jobs. That has been real good for business, hasn't it? The shockingly anti-business NLRB, an unelected body that actually believes it has the power to tell private businesses where they can and can't create jobs? Those clowns really make businesses want to hire again, don't they? The list goes on and on.

Multiple CEOs have stated that Obama and his out-of-control regulatory regime have created the worst business environment they have ever seen in their lives.

[nothingchanges]

09:56 AM on 09/10/2011

As a registered unaffiliated voter, I really do have to ask.

Are Democrats REALLY that stupid? Or are they now just a subdivision of the Republican party?

Why is it, that even when they STILL hold the majority, they let the minority party frame the debate?

As much as I dislike Fox News, and what it represents, seems to me it's a little redundant. The Democrats are doing their job for them.

How can Democrats even hope to win, when they won't even take the time and effort to explain to the people where we are, how we got here, and who's to blame?

Without that information, most people just believe what Fox and the Republicans are putting out there. Whether it's true or not, really doesn't matter.

The biggest weakness of the "Big Lie Theory" is having the LIE exposed to the truth.

Why aren't Democrats making that available?

[Chewelahboy]

03:17 PM on 09/11/2011

Good question.

The President's Plan, in my opinion, is crafted to get his party to stop attacking him, and to create a platform for his campaign. He's counting on being elected because people fear the Republican candidate more than they fear 4 more years.

I'm with you. Why are those supposedly progressive Democrats supporting the re-election of a President who continually delivers the extreme right-wing minority what they want?

It looks like the Democrats take Independent voters for granted. I think that's a dangerous strategy. Why are the progressives not upset about US taxpayer subsidies for Chinese manufacturers? (see Natural News http://www.naturalnews.com/033550_green_light_bulbs_Treasury_Department.html )

[Countess]

08:46 AM on 09/10/2011

I think we saw a very determined and enthusiastic president because as a conservative he really believes that this mostly republican plan will get unemployment down a notch or two before the next election which would obviously help him greatly and he seems especially proud to be able to do something even his idol Romald Reagan or no republican could do which is to cut medicare and medicaid while weakening social security even more with his payroll tax cuts. The president has sent a clear signal that he will get one of the democrats on the corrupt super committee to join the republicans in cutting the social safety net in order to keep the pentagon's budget from having to be actually cut and instead only cutting its rate of growth allowing us to continue wasting lives and money on his wars even at the expense of the poor who depend on medicare and medicaid.

[Watch The Vote]

02:24 PM on 09/10/2011

Glad that at least some one here can see the President's proposal for what it really is...not to mention, that you also can also see that Obama is working mainly for the benefit of the Republican agenda. Now if we could only get the rest of you voters to realize what Obama really stands for, we can get a primary going against him to elect a real Progressive President in 2012 and not one who talks the talk, but doesn't produce policies like a real Progressive....We don't need four more years of Bush in 2012.

[fairwitness]

11:13 PM on 09/09/2011

"I really think it was important for the president in the beginning of his speech to explain to people how we got to this terrible economic place."

It's inconceivable that he didn't take the opportunity to tell that crucial story; he (again and still) seemed afraid of naming names and calling out the culprits (just as when he prefers to be "looking forward" and away from the Bush era crimes and abuses). There is something cowardly in that, I think. Or complicit (he hired, and continues to hire, the central players who created the problem, as if they care about fixing it for anyone but their small tribe of wealthy bankers).

But hey, he hasn't given away THIS store completely, not yet. And he only hinted at the cuts in the social safety net that he'll have to explain later. (Guess that would be looking TOO forward?)

[Mistinguette Grandison]

09:39 PM on 09/09/2011

Would definitely agree.

[OliverTwist]

09:34 PM on 09/09/2011

I really like the observation that one way to create jobs is to hire people directly.

So why don't we do that?

[OliverTwist]

09:33 PM on 09/09/2011

Very nice.

I am more critical and more concerned about possible negative jobs impacts from the President's plan - especially help to small businesses which in some cases may just be businesses with few employees focused on outsourcing work overseas or introducing automation both of which eliminate jobs in larger organizations and have a net negative impact on total employment.

Beware of possible unpleasant mechanisms and rosy false assumptions associated with poorly understood data and consequent unpleasant surprises when policy is based on those poor understandings.