From the Party of “No” to the Party of “Go”
All efforts by President Obama to get Republicans on board for the economic stimulus package fell to pieces, but will one of his next efforts garner more support? It seems that he’s planning to grab hold of the third rail of politics and attempt to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Depending how it’s handled, he might have the GOP in his corner on this one, unless they truly do plan to be nothing more than the Party of No.
WASHINGTON — President Obama is eager to seek a bipartisan solution to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security, people who have spoken with him say, but he is running into opposition from his party’s left and from Democratic Congressional leaders who contend that his political capital would be better spent on health care and other priorities.
This month, Mr. Obama unexpectedly approached [Senator Lindsey] Graham when he was at the White House to meet with Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff. Mr. Graham, who was a vocal foe of Mr. Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan, said in an interview: “I know he’s sincere about wanting to do something about entitlements generally, health care and Social Security. And I want to help him.”
Unfortunately, a planned meeting on this (called a “fiscal responsibility summit”) which had been scheduled for next Monday seems to have been “shelved” because of opposition from Obama’s own party. I noticed that Andrew Sullivan seem to be encouraged by the prospect, though.
And so we have a tough-on-spending budget and a desire to convene the long-anticipated, endlessly delayed fiscal sanity summit to make the deal we all know needs to be made. The GOP will have to accept some tax hikes and the Dems will have to accept some entitlement cuts.
It seems to me that a key sign of the Republican party’s maturing back to sanity will be a willingness to join Obama in this endeavor.
Will President Obama be able to bring his own party to the table to finally accomplish something on this front? I will hope for the best, but I must admit to not being terribly optimistic. I still believe that Obama’s original vision for the economic stimulus package was very different from the final product and could have brought along significant GOP support. The deal fell apart when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid got hold of it. The President’s inability to put a leash on them and hammer out a compromise led to the complete breakdown of bipartisan efforts in that field.
Will he now be able to command that kind of party discipline on a topic which the Democrats have fiercely opposed for all of living memory? Again… anything is possible, but I’m not holding my breath.
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8 Responses to “From the Party of “No” to the Party of “Go””
Well, if Ezra Klein is to be believed, the whole point of Obama's roll out of fiscal responsibility is to convince everyone that entitlement reform means 'healthcare reform', which means he's going to claim that universal healthcare and a few reforms like computerizing medical records is going to magically reduce the costs to make Medicare sustainable.
So of course the GOP is going to oppose that (a conventional liberal Democratic plan that's been in the works for decades, now dressed up as entitlement reform.)
I'm seeing a pattern here; Obama puts the old Democratic ideas into these Trojan horse plans and calls for bipartisan support of them; GOP rejects them and gets labelled the 'party of no.'
And, really, who doesn't believe Ezra Klein?
I think there's little doubt we would all be better served if both parties could put a “leash” on their more extreme elements, since it is they who usually screw things up for the rest of us. By the way, I don't see anything mutually exclusive about so-called “universal” healthcare and fiscal responsibility in the long run. It's worked well for Canada and they aren't suffering the same degree of economic warp that we are here. I don't think they've even had any banks fail either. Sure, things may be rough in the beginning, but we need to be looking at the long run, not the short one (which is what has been happening for so long now). No pian, no gain. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, etc….
If Obama wants to be a one termer, all he has to do is mess with Social Security Benefits, the republicans will support him (they have always hated Social Security), a couple of blue dogs might go along and after the Republicans have gotten what they want, they will drop him like a hot potato and find any way they can to f**k him over, and he will have lost his base.
Comes 2012, If Palin runs, she will win because someone will run to the left of Obama and siphon more than enough votes for any Republican to win.
That's odd. The pattern I see is a party so conservative that the only ideas they have date back to the 1920s. If only we could eliminate all those nasty social programs everything would be paradise because the free market will fix it all, is what they seem to claim. Thus, they distort and misrepresent everything in the name of discrediting those programs.
Right, Jim, because pointing out that the system will be bankrupt soon if we don't make adjustments is EXACTLY the same as distorting and misrepresenting everything in the name of discrediting the programs.
“It's worked well for Canada and they aren't suffering the same degree of economic warp that we are here. I don't think they've even had any banks fail either.“
Sure. It's easier to have things working well when NAFTA has us pumping an 87B trade deficit in their favor up that way and we're buying all the oil they can pump. That's not an argument against your basis premise, but Canada is in better shape than us in the respects you mention, at least in part, because of so called “fair trade.”
Medicare is going to be more critical than Social Security as it will go bankrupt by 2019 at the current pace. The best way to save money in health care is to limit access and treatment options a la Canada but I really doubt the US consumer or either party is ready for that. The talk of computerized records saving money is really so much BS – both McCain and Obama espoused that approach but both are wrong. They can talk about cutting payments to physicians, nursing homes, hospitals, etc but frankly Medicare reimbursements already barely cover costs and cutting payments will mean less participating physicians and more hospitals shutting down. I doubt Obama or any other politician has the stomach for that.
I hate to say it as a free market guy but either a radical change in the health care system is needed or Medicare taxes will have to be raised. Neither of these options is attractive.