{"id":341074,"date":"2010-02-19T13:59:14","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T18:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.36232"},"modified":"2010-02-19T11:48:39","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T16:48:39","slug":"should-obama-scare-americans-about-the-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/341074","title":{"rendered":"Should Obama Scare Americans About the Debt?"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Obama is stuck between a necessary deficit and a ballooning debt, and it’s hurting his ability to explain his economic policies. On the one hand, he wants to defend his latest budget, which comes with a $1.6 trillion deficit. On the other hand, he’s created a panel to brainstorm ways to make his deficits smaller. That’s not a substantively hypocritical position — it’s perfectly reasonable to run short term deficits and also worry about the long-term debt — but rhetorically, Obama has twisted himself into a pretzel. He’s actively trashing the idea of red ink<\/a> as its pours out of his budget.<\/p>\n

To get a better feel for the issue, I emailed with Jamal Simmons, a Principal at the Raben Group, who has worked in politics and communications for 15 years. Here is our discussion:<\/p>\n

Plenty of folks blame uber-partisanship in Washington for the
\nunwillingness to do anything about the budget. But you think there are
\nunderstandable incentives for politicians to avoid making hard choices
\nand taxes and spending. Explain.<\/b><\/p>\n

When political leaders
\nexamine the history of past efforts to deal with budget deficits there
\nare negative lessons to be learned. President George H.W. Bush struck
\nan agreement with Democrats in 1990 that reversed his “no new taxes”
\npledge and he was defeated in 1992. The Democrats in Congress passed a
\nbudget in 1993 that also helped close the budget deficit and they were
\nthrown out in 1994. It will take an external factor like the one Ross
\nPerot became in the early 1990’s to push the political system to act. <\/p>\n

Obama
\nlikes to remind listeners that he didn’t create this country’s dire
\nfiscal situation. And it’s true. But he does own it. Do you think it
\nmakes Obama look weak to blame a budget he wrote on a former president?
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

It doesn’t make him look weak. Americans tend to have short
\nmemories and someone has to remind them that Republicans created this
\nmess and they should help clean it up which they are not. <\/p>\n

Imagine
\nyou’re Obama’s speech writer: you have to make the case that your
\nbudget with a $1.6 trillion deficit is defensible, but that we need to
\nstart thinking seriously about reforming our long-term debt. How do you
\nthread that needle rhetorically?<\/b><\/p>\n

The President is the best speechwriter I know. He can find the words. <\/p>\n

At
\nthe Peterson-Pew conference on Tuesday, it seems you and the other
\npanelists agreed that the time to scare Americans about the debt is
\nnow. But what if that’s wrong? What if scaring Americans about the debt
\nis wholly counterproductive when running trillion-dollar deficits for
\nthe next few years? <\/b><\/p>\n

I disagree that Americans need to be
\nscared. Americans need to be informed. One of the things people liked
\nabout candidate Obama the most is that he spoke to us like adults. If
\nhe or someone else lays the case out and provides a reasonable course
\nof action, Americans will make the right adult decisions. The problem
\nis the political leaders will have to take lollipops out of our hands
\nand nobody likes to do that. <\/p>\n

Let’s talk about Republicans.
\nTheir behavior has been occasionally stunning. They shut down the
\nfederal govt in 1995 to force Medicare cuts, and now they’re against
\nMedicare cuts. Seven Republicans sponsored the deficit commission and
\nthen voted against it after Obama endorsed it. They are, and likely
\nwill be, against anything that can be seen as an accomplishment for the
\nadministration. Against an obstructionist majority like that, what
\nsense is there to push any kind of serious debt busting plan? <\/b><\/p>\n

If
\nthe GOP wins seats this year, they will bear more responsibility to
\ngovern. If they choose not to, I am sure the public will punish them
\nfor it. It’s time for a few leaders to emerge on the Republican side of
\nthe aisle. The country needs them. <\/p>\n

What would your debt-busting wish list look like? VAT, Medicare means-testing, defense cuts … <\/b><\/p>\n

Everything should be on the table. No sacred cows. <\/p>\n

___
Read my last interview on the debt<\/a>, with Reagan’s CBO director Rudy Penner. Penner explains what a responsible budget would look like in 20 years if we followed the Republicans lead and refused to raise taxes (or, alternatively, refused to cut spending). The results are shocking<\/a>.<\/p>\n



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President Obama is stuck between a necessary deficit and a ballooning debt, and it’s hurting his ability to explain his economic policies. On the one hand, he wants to defend his latest budget, which comes with a $1.6 trillion deficit. On the other hand, he’s created a panel to brainstorm ways to make his deficits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}