Are Obama’s Budget Proposals Too Reasonable?
Thinking about the fine whine Ben Nelson, Even Bayh, and others are currently enjoying over the dastardly idea of returning the marginal tax rate on the richest two percent of the population to where it was back when Bill Clinton was destroying the economy, I’m growing concerned that the Obama administration may have made a mistake by putting forward such a reasonable budget proposal.
I can see why they did it. The key administration players—Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Tim Geithner, Jason Furman, etc.—are nothing if not reasonable, moderate people. But the key legislative players aren’t reasonable, moderate people they’re “reasonable” “Senate moderates.” A “Senate moderate” is someone who takes his party’s proposals, objects to them, waters them down a bit, and then congratulates himself on a job well done. Which is great if his party’s proposals are unduly immoderate. But it’s big-time trouble if his party puts a reasonable, moderate agenda on the table.
After all, you don’t maintain the painstakingly achieved Nelson/Bayh “Senate moderate” brand by clapping politely. You need to bitch and moan and be quoted in inside-baseball only media outlets that none of your constituents pay attention to, and hold conferences and have meetings at the White House where people hold your hands. You need to be praised by the opposition party, and extract your pound of flesh from the proposal. Then when it looks like it might go down to defeat, you can vote for the somewhat-watered-down version and be the hero who saved the day and nobody will mention that you saved the day from yourself.
But you really do need to do that stuff. You can’t just say “well, this is a reasonable proposal so I’ll back it.” Then your moderate license gets taken away.
But I think that means that proposals need to deliberately overshoot the mark. Say Obama had proposed a top marginal tax rate of 43 percent. Well Evan Bayh couldn’t stand for that! He might propose some reasonable alternative like letting the Bush tax cuts expire so that post-recession rates will be back where they were in the 1990s. How reasonable! How moderate! How judicious!
54 Responses to “Are Obama’s Budget Proposals Too Reasonable?”
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March 5th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Did someone piss in your Wheaties this morning?
March 5th, 2009 at 11:11 am
word. also it’s strange that they’ve framed the budget as transformational, like it’s really radical. that just gives moderates like Bayh and Nelson more space to cut it back.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Unless I am mistaken, you’re saying Obama should propose policy that’s not necessarily true to what he wants, so that he can manipulate a process where truth doesn’t matter, and can’t matter, to get what he secretly really wants.
Maybe I’m misreading your proposal, but that sounds like exactly the kind of shallow, condescending politics Obama was running against in the first place.
Now you may think that Obama’s style of politics is too honest or naive to work, but based on the stimulus package — particularly the relationship between what Obama wanted, policy wise, and what he got — I’ve got some optimism in me yet.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:16 am
1. A budget bill doesn’t need 60 votes; it needs 51. Nobody is going to filibuster the budget, ie, shut the government down.
2. Time to crack the whip. Obama’s at 60%+, his economic policies are at about 80%. You wanna be on the other side of that? Go get ‘em, Rahmbo.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Everything that beats Republicans and/or advances a progressive agenda is “the kind of politics as usual Obama promised to change,” duBois. Haven’t you noticed?
March 5th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Spot on. These folks seem to care very little about understanding the problem and crafting policy that actually works. It’s all about process and media attention and reputation. One of the few upsides of the horrible situation we find ourselves in is that the song and dance might not work. People want and need real solutions and I don’t think it matters much anymore whether Even Bayh and the “bipartisan”- obsessed media affix their seal of approval.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Sorry, Evan, but you’re not the only Democrat who can win statewide elections in Indiana any more.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Look, this is entirely right. All Bayh and Nelson are interested in is looking moderate by bargaining you down a notch.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:26 am
This post seems a bit premature. Didn’t Obama get pretty much exactly what he proposed with the stimulus bill? No set the bar high and work down on that issue. Don’t be surprised if he gets pretty much exactly what he’s proposed on this too.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Fortunately, Bayh and Nelson and Landrieu can cast their no vote and retain their moderate credentials, because the budget doesn’t require 60. Which I imagine they will.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:28 am
But that plays into the moderates’ hands. If you think they are a malicious force, as I presume you, Obama, and all right-thinking people do, then the only way to marginalize them is to force them to be publicly malicious. If you give them the chance to demagogue something that actually deserves demagoguing, then that will enhance their appeal. Whereas if you force them to publicly attack something that the public is largely in favor of (as Obama has forced the Republicans to do), then the public is going to turn against them. And while the Washington insider’s club can do a lot to insulate politicians against public opinion, in the long run if people hate you, you’re going to be out of office. Obama’s insistence on being reasonable about the stimulus, even though it resulted in a not-quite-ideal law, has pushed the GOP into a situation where not only are their approval ratings 26%, but any attempts to increase their appeal will cause their base to attack them with pitchforks. It’s a good situation.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:30 am
No, advancing a more extreme agenda to eventually get what Obama wants isn’t the kind of politics that Obama ran against. What Bayh and Nelson are doing is the kind of politics that Obama ran against. And what the fuck is Evan Bayh doing? Obama won Indiana! Bayh doesn’t need to take cover behind his “moderation” anymore and Obama should call him out.
And let’s recognize “moderation” for what it is: conservatism, and not of the Eisenhower/Nixon/Ford kind.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:30 am
The key administration players—Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Tim Geithner, Jason Furman, etc.—are nothing if not reasonable, moderate people.
Summers and Geithner are not reasonable, moderate people.
Have you ever read Geithner’s speeches or testimony, Matt? He is a radical reactionary, when it comes to defending the status quo on Wall Street.
Summers is even worse and has been for years.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Jesus H has a good point. Nancy, Chollie – put something in the House bill for Evan to take out in the Senate version.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I have to say, it’s all a bit weird. Perhaps someone should make it clear to Mr. Nelson, Mr Bayh and others that these tax rates are well below what was in place during the Reagan years. And if I’m not mistaken, no one was calling Reagan a socialist back then.
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/.a/6a00d834515c2369e20112791ead9b28a4-pi
March 5th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Point thinks the practice of bargaining is dishonest. Why does Point hate capitalism?
March 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am
“Everything that beats Republicans and/or advances a progressive agenda is “the kind of politics as usual Obama promised to change,” duBois. Haven’t you noticed?”
Let me restate what — to my understanding — Matt was saying:
“to propose policy that’s not necessarily true to what he wants, so that he can manipulate a process where truth doesn’t matter, and can’t matter, to get what he secretly really wants”
Let me break that down: (a) “proposing a policy that’s not true to what he wants” to “get what he secretly wants“, to “manipulate” (b) a “process where truth doesn’t matter, and can’t matter“.
I referred to this kind of suggested politics, which has been used before, as “shallow” (because it sees no value in the value of allowing citizens to make an informed judgement of the process) and “condescending” (because it assumes said citizens to be incapable of such a judgement).
Now, it is my understanding that Obama rejects this very kind of politics and ran against it in the campaign — it may be the case that I am wrong, but it is certainly not an invention of mine.
And some, as Joe seems to (7), believe this “style of politics is too honest or naive to work”, but, again, I would point out “the stimulus package — particularly the relationship between what Obama wanted, policy wise, and what he got”.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Asking for more than you need isn’t dishonest, or bushian, or corrupt. It’s negotiation 101.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Nelson and Bayh can rail all they want against the scary “tax increase” on the rich, but the bill that included that tax increase passed 8 years ago. If Congress does not renew Bush’s tax cut on the rich, it automatically expires. Blame the 2001 Republican congress if you don’t like it.
There’s no way a renewal of this tax cut passes Congress and gets signed by Obama. No way. These guys are railing against the one aspect of Obama’s budget that’s not actually going to be part of the bill. Maybe that’s their game somehow. I really don’t know.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Yes, Point, clearly Obama wants a 39.6% top rate and no other number is remotely true to his vision. Asking for 42%, or 39.7% for that matter, would be an evil lie.
Similarly, if I’m negotiating for a job and ask for a salary of $100k when I’d be willing to take $90k, that’s lying. And that holds for all negotiations. Our entire capitalist system is a tissue of lies and must be destroyed.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Also, Point is being very silly.
Say you’re selling a house for $140,000. I’m willing to pay $130,000. I offer $120,000. Point would say I’m manipulating a process where the truth doesn’t matter and can’t matter. I would counter that I simply have a goal (buying a house for $130,000) and have adopted a time-tested and perfectly reasonable strategy (not opening with my best offer) of achieving that goal.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:47 am
KCinDC
To the degree that bargaining involves lying about what you actually want, it is dishonest. To the degree that bargainers are dishonest, they leave little way for third parties — even those that, say hired them to do the bargaining — to judge them on their effectiveness.
I like capitalism; I like democracy. It doesn’t mean they’re the same thing.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Point, if you hire someone to buy a house for you, and they don’t start off the negotiation by proposing the maximum price you’re willing to spend, then they’re a dishonest broker whose effectiveness you’re unable to judge?
March 5th, 2009 at 11:54 am
No, capitalism and democracy (or politics in general, for that matter) are not the same thing, but both involve negotiation. There’s nothing nefarious about that.
You don’t open with your best offer in either politics or in capitalism. Your vision, Point, would elevate the finer points of process over results. If you want to insure 30 million children and can achieve that goal by claiming you want to insure 40 million children and allowing the other side to get you to compromise so that you reach your actual intended goal, well, that’s just smart strategy, and it achieves a positive result. These are the kinds of negotiating skills we expect politicians to have.
The world you envision where every politician is always honest and wears his heart on his sleeve might work well in Smurf Village, but everywhere else it is little more than a fantasy.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
When I read that Matt Yglesias is “Thinking about the fine whine Ben Nelson, Even Bayh, and others are currently enjoying,” I assume that must mean that those fellas are literally pouring each other Chardonnay.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I think it’s high time that Rahm Emanuel send somebody another dead fish.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
“The world you envision where every politician is always honest and wears his heart on his sleeve might work well in Smurf Village, but everywhere else it is little more than a fantasy.”
Since most responses thus far have been some variation of this, let me re-state something, which was also stated by Jesus H (11) one last time:
“Now you may think that Obama’s [and my] style of politics is too honest or naive to work, but based on the stimulus package — particularly the relationship between what Obama wanted, policy wise, and what he got — I’ve got some optimism in me yet.”
March 5th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
And…you just set yourself up for failure by not achieving your stated goal or make yourself sound unreasonable by asking for something everyone knows you won’t get. That matters as well in the sphere of public opinion, which many other negotiations do not entail.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
A good point, but the only reason that worked on the stimulus was that the House (and Senate for that matter) both added extras to the bill which were then negotiated away in a manner that elevated the grand “moderates” of the Senate. Perhaps this was always the Obama team’s strategy, though I doubt it. It’s more likely that they thought their bill would sail through and attract a respectable number of Republican votes.
What they got was precisely three Republican votes. Not a great result. A more liberal bill would likely have gone through the same process and gotten passed in exactly the same way. Such a bill might have even attracted more Republican support if the Republicans were allowed the opportunity to remove provisions Obama’s original bill.
Regardless, I’m also fairly confident that the budget bill will pass roughly as it is now. Actually, Dems in Congress are more likely to succeed in making in more liberal because no filibuster is allowed on this one. My point isn’t so much about this particular bill, it’s that there’s nothing inherently dishonest about asking for more than you think you can get in any type of negotiation.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
But in this case, with Orzsag pushing this thing through via the reconciliation process, can’t Nelson and Bayh go fuck themselves? I mean, I just cannot see Obama accepting a continuation of the Bush tax cuts, not when he needs only 50 votes in the Senate.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
And…you just set yourself up for failure by not achieving your stated goal or make yourself sound unreasonable
Nonsense. You set yourself up to look reasonable by ultimately coming to a compromise–and you still get all of what you want.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
President Obama should have started by proposing the highest tax bracket of the Eisenhower era: 91 percent.
91 percent. Think of it!
If Obama is a Marxist, what was Ike?
March 5th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
See, my problem with this is, how do we KNOW that Obama’s proposal ISN’T more extreme than what he really wants? I HOPE it isn’t, but I have no way of knowing that.
This is what I’ve been trying to say for a while, a lot of the blogosphere says Obama is using bad tactics ’cause he’s not going to get outcome X from it. The thing is, we don’t know if Obama WANTS outcome X, though we often ASSUME he does because WE want outcome X.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t criticize Obama- we should just criticize his ENDS, not his MEANS (At least in the context of legislative wrangling).
March 5th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Also, yes, this IS a budget bill- so Obama could suffer the defections of Bayh, Nelson, and six more Senators and still get exactly what he wants.
Though I’d be surprised if Bayh is doing anything more than being a cranky-pants.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
“Though I’d be surprised if Bayh is doing anything more than being a cranky-pants.”
I’d be surprised if Bayh is being anything more than an exceptionally rich man with an even richer wife who stands to benefit from advancing the myth that raising the top tax bracket to the 1990s level is a dangerously radical idea.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I’ll restate my point: what I don’t think anybody’s appreciating is that Obama’s “reasonableness” is actually (IMHO) a much more aggressive, confrontational approach than anybody recognizes. Everybody’s using these analogies to buying a house, or negotiating a salary. But Obama isn’t doing either of those things. In those situations, whether the public approves of your negotiating tactics is entirely irrelevant. But in politics, public approval is everything. So if you use the negotiating tactics that you would use in buying a house, where you start out with an overly high asking price, the other side starts out an overly low asking price, and you negotiate your way to the middle, then it’s a wash, politically, except for the “bold moderates” who push the proposal to where it always would have ended up anyway. It’s how McCain built his career. Whereas if you do what Obama’s doing, and start out with an offer that you think will be accepted as is, then (assuming that you get about what you started with, as Obama did with the stimulus), then the narrative is that you won, and the other guys lost. And it cuts the legs out from under the “bold moderates”, they have no choice but to openly align themselves with the opposition, and go down to defeat along with them. Bayh and Co. can either align themselves with the 26% approval ratings of the GOP, or with Obama. Their usual tactics won’t get them anywhere this time around.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
yeah, spot-on. and can anyone here believe, even at this early hour, that Obama has yet, somehow, to learn this lesson? ugh.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
A “Senate moderate” is someone who takes his party’s proposals, objects to them, waters them down a bit, and then congratulates himself on a job well done.
No, that’s a Democratic Senate moderate. A Republican Senate moderate takes the opposing party’s proposals, objects to them, waters them down a bit, and then congratulates herself for a job well done. When it comes to her own party’s proposals (which are almost always unduly immoderate), she may publicly express some reservations so that her blue state constituents are reassured that they aren’t represented by a crazy person, does nothing to water down the proposal, and then congratulates herself for not being crazy, even though she took no action to stop the crazy people from enacting their agenda.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are two errors running around here that I think need to be cleared up:
1. The Budget may require 51 votes to pass, but it will require 60 votes to bring to the floor because o fthe Senate’s “unique” rules of operation. So these votes do matter procedurally.
2. It was said fairly early on that no one wants to shut down the government. funny, but it happened twice in the 1990’s. And if the Senate doesn’t get its act together so Mr. Obama can sign something before midnight tomorrow, it will happen again when the current Continuing Resolution runs out.
Oh, one other thing. There are actually two bills on federal spending/budgets that both Houses of Congress have to pass – first they pass a Budget Resolution which tells the Appropriations Committee how much money it should put in the federal budget (this one gets ignored regularly), and then the pass the actual Appropriations Acts that make collected tax monies available for spending. Let’s please try to be clear which we’re talking about.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I don’t think that. I worry about that they are a malicious force, but I suspect that it’s more about temperament and changing conditions.
Look, would you say that the GOP moderates, few as they are these days, are a “malicious force”? The moderates are the good guys when the policies of their party are immoderate, as MY says. While I don’t think that the Democratic Party has ever, in post-war times, been even remotely as immoderate as the GOP is today, I do think that it was immoderate about a number of economic policies in the 70s and 80s.
I followed Clinton’s career and the DLC with interest in the 80s and considered myself a “New Democrat”. But, today, my views on almost all public policy, excepting trade, is further to the left of most Senators and Obama. That’s partly because the political terrain has dramatically changed. While I think the Democratic Party needed to move to the center a bit in the 80s, and it did by the 90s, the GOP moved radically to the right, and the country at large moved somewhat leftward. So nothing is really like it was in the 80s, even though it seems like both the left and the right seem to think it is.
It takes a certain personality to be a dissident. Yeah, some moderates and centrists are the “cut the baby in half” idiots that all moderates and centrists are reputed to be. But some people really are moderating dissidents among an immoderate majority. And while some of those folks are very intellectually honest and that’s their motivation, another group is just temperamentally contrary. Worse, both groups are made up of people who are creatures of habit.
So when the political landscape changes, well-intentioned moderates and dissidents can become immoderate and unknowingly confused. I think that’s much more likely to be the case with most of these politicians.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
“I’d be surprised if Bayh is being anything more than an exceptionally rich man with an even richer wife who stands to benefit from advancing the myth that raising the top tax bracket to the 1990s level is a dangerously radical idea.”
Well, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, he can be both.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
This is exactly what Obama said at that first press conference — paraphrasing, from memory:
I shouldn’t have put any tax cuts in the stimulus bill, even though I wanted them, because then the repuglicans could have “demanded” them and I could have “given in,” getting us to the bill we have today.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
This just in: Barack Obama’s style of politics is not good enough for people who are opposed to him, and have always been. Boo-fuckity-hoo.
Your concern is noted, troll.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
OK, if Nelson doesn’t suck it up and get over his “reasonableness tantrum” quickly, I pledge to donate $100 to WHOEVER opposes him in the primary. Where’s the liberal grassroots organization that will let me do that?
March 5th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Keith, I didn’t meant to imply that moderate Democrats are, always and everywhere, a malicious force. But I think it’s plain that these particular moderate Democrats, at this particular time, are malicious, because the GOP is almost unprecedentedly malicious, and without the aid and comfort that the current moderate Democrats are providing them, they would be substantially less powerful. The policies the GOP is pushing would, quite literally, destroy the world economy and, for that matter, the world itself. Anybody who is helping them in any way is dangerous. They may be dangerous out of ignorance, rather than due to malicious intent, but the effect is the same.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
The House adds a bracket at 42.5% at 1M.
Senate moderates go into apoplexy about how bad this
is and prove their moderateness by removing the bracket
in the Senate.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Here’s Evan Bayh talking about the ARRA/stimulus bill in Fort Wayne, Indiana:
“things I would have done differently… Government doesn’t have all the answers, regrettably there’s no magic wand… There’s a chunk of money in there for the National Endowment for the Arts. It’s hard for me to see how that’s directly related to job creation. It may be a good thing, and in a different context it might be the kind of thing I’d support, but in a jobs bill designed to get the economy moving today, I kind of question how directly-related that is…”
That’s a bill the guy supports! Then he goes on to sing the praises of what the bill does for the middle-class in Indiana. Two weeks later, the middle class makes $250,000 plus.
March 5th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
every one and every group has their top 10 things they want to do
the top five for any should be the national debt, the national debt, the prospects for unsustainable deficits, the national debt, and the national debt
then whomever directs their concerns to the next five
March 5th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Krugman made the same argument about the stimulus.
The only possible defense to it is Rahm Emmanuel’s statement that all the administration needs to do is be seen trying to be bipartisan, they don’t actually have to succeed – and by appearing the reasonable people in the face of unreasonable opposition they create an environment of disgust at Republican obstructionism that will ultimately give them a freer hand than they have even now.
The question is whether there’s time for this kind of long game strategy.
March 6th, 2009 at 2:19 am
I buy the Bayh criticism in the post, but it’s bizarre to ignore the potential political costs to Obama of following this proposal.