How should Obama spend his mandate. What are the biggest things that you hope to see him accomplish.
Please please post your thoughts below...
My thoughts over the jump.
Right now, he has a significant democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. These two years are the time to get all the major laws passed, because he may not get this oppurtunity again. But much of the second year will be spend on campaigns and elections. The first 100 days are quite possibly the only window that Obama will get. He needs to show up at the White House with completely thought out detailed plans on every issue. For example needs to get the specifics on his tax policy and healthcare proposal ironed out completely before he ever meets with the senate to discuss his agenda.
But even before healthcare, first and foremost, Obama should pass laws which strengthen his mandate. Changes that are widely popular, sought by both parties, relatively easy to pass and really important. That is why I place a two page tax form as the number one thing on his agenda. Because it is something that just about everyone would like to see, and is relatively easy to pass.
Other such popular measures include better funding for stem cell research, tort reform and an official holiday on election day. And some things go without saying. For example, Obama's tax plan, Iraq, enacting SCHIP, an executive order repealing all signing statements, repealing the Patriot Act, restoring habeus corpus and closing Guantanamo. I've excluded them from the list below.
But he also needs to act fast on every issue. Because as stated by patriotismoverprofits: "The right will reorganize faster than expected (100% of them discovering the existence of the debt within one second of the inauguration), and Obama's approval ratings will drop, simply because our problems need miracles and Obama can't actually walk on water. We need to do the tough stuff NOW, while it's still possible. If we hesitate for any reason, we'll have a worse-than useless bankrupt government to run, and then we'll see a Republican Congress and Senate in 2010 and President Palin in 2012."
- A Two Page Tax Form - As much as I dislike Guliani, his proposal
for a simple two page tax form is not a bad one. All these various
incentives and subsidies serve to do is create loopholes through which
corporations can avoid paying taxes. In addition, they make the tax
code incomprehensible. Even responsible citizens that want to pay
their fair share have a tough time figuring out what to do. It's
gotten to the point where pretty much everyone needs a tax expert to
fill out their taxes for them every year. It wastes money and time
both for the tax payers, and the IRS. The additional bueracracy needed
by the IRS to verify and authorize all of these claims is a massive
waste of resources as well. Keep it simple, stupid.
- Simpler, easier to understand laws - This goes along with the tax
code but it needs to happen across the board. A big part of this is tort reform. We must create a system that makes law suits less bogged down by complexity and absurd legal fees. Ob/Gyns and Family Practitioners are fleeing their fields of medicine in record numbers because of the 150,000 or so they get paid an year, roughly half that money goes into malpractice insurance. Why would anyone spends 12+ years in training and several hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans to practice medicine if they had to endure that? Obama took a great step forward by creating google for government so that anyone can look upand search through any legislation that congress passes, any projects and ear marks that they fund. Transparcency is important. But he needs to go that last step and make legislation logical and comprehensible. The fact is, pretty
much none of the senators actually understand what the hell they're
signing off on. The giant incomprehensible bueracratic filter placed
on all of the massive amount of federal legislation makes it near
impossible for even lawyers and judges, much less average citizens, to
figure out what the hell the law actually says. The legal code and the
budget need to be simplified enough that it's crystal clear to anyone
reading it what the law actually says, means, and the purpose it is
intended to serve. This is a long hard and thankless task, reforming,
rewriting, and simplifying the entire legal code. But it absolutely
needs to be done both to increase transparency, fairness and
efficency.
- A lean mean budget - Obama has repeatedly stated during the
campaign that he will go through the budget line by line and cut
everything from it without a crystal clear practical purpose and
evidence of that it actually works. McCain is right to oppose ethanol
subsides. There are many things, including subsidies that are simply
unneeded. Obama is going to have to make spending cuts across the
board, across every single agency. And some of these cuts won't be
popular among fellow democrats. But they ARE needed. We can't afford
to carry out big future thinking projects like energy independence and
healthcare reform without cutting back on less vital priorities. Obama
must be willing to do unpopular things because they need to be done.
- Massive cuts to the defense department - There are undoubtedly
numerous defense programs with no clear purpose that are eating up our
budget. We already invested so much into Star Wars that it might be
worth it to see it through to the end. And I think research into
unmanned drones is fruitful as it can save lives. But lets not start
any other new such projects right now. Lets responsibly pull out of
Iraq and Afganistan and cut back on our military forces.
- Advise from Smart Technocrats - I want the Obama Adminstration to
maintain a very close working relationship with Warren Buffett and
Micheal Bloomberg. Both men have proven again and again that they are
extremely knowledgable, insightful, and have good sound judgment.
Getting their input on policies is invaluable. Doing this would ensure that science and technology get the attention they deserve. Science and technology has done so much for society for so far, research funding is the SINGLE most important way to ensure that the USA remains the world's superpower. Stem cell research absolutely must be funded by the government. Technocrats are also essential in fixing the financial system which is without question broken. We must have a system that encourages prudence from banks and other major institutions, not wild greed driven borrowing and buying sprees.
And WE NEED TO STOP lending companies from taking advantage of low income people through absurdly high interest credit card rates, ridiculous fees and penalties. Technocrats like Warren Buffett who understand the financial institutions are best equipped to show him how to achieve this.
- Healthcare Reform - Exactly as Obama promised. I believe that a
responsible, efficient, reasonable government insurance plan will in
the long term lead to savings in healthcare. Preventative care
combined with a sound public health policy (see # 7) and reforms such
as portable electronic medical records will lead to massive saving in
the long run. Preventative care and public health are key ways to
ensure that health care costs go down in the future rather than up.
- Investments into Green Jobs for Energy Independence - The beauty of
building wind turbines, solar panels and such is that while they have
a high upfront cost, the rewards they reap in the future are
singificant, and lasting. Overtime, we make back the initial
investment ten fold. And during the infrastructure building, we create
jobs and grow the economy.
- A plan to improve public health - Bloomberg took up an unpopular
position on public health. As Mayor of New York, he fought for and
passed a law that banned smoking in all public areas, and another that
banned the sale of any foods anywhere containing transfats. Initially,
the lobbyists did everything they could to stop him. Both the
cigarette companies and the fastfood restaurant ran massive campaigns
to prevent him for going ahead with this. Republicans said that he was
creating a nanny state. But he stood up to everyone and enacted the
unpopular law anyways. And guess what, it worked. Smoking dropped by
35% in just a few years, and continued to drop year after year. That's
literally millions of people who now stopped smoking, millions who
won't have to endure heart surgeries, high blood pressure medications,
strokes, and cancer, and literally billions of dollars in healthcare
costs saved over the long term. As for transfats, McDonalds, Burger
King all the fast food chains had to make changes to cut transfats out
of their offerings. It didn't cost them much money and the food didn't
taste any different, but people were eating healthier. It was so
successful that all of these fast food restaurants wound up making
that same switch to no transfats across the country. Ask yourself,
does the cheeseburger you eat today taste different than the one that
you ate four years ago. No, but it's better for you (though still
unhealthy). This transfat ban too will over time lead to billions of
dollars saved in healthcare costs.
But we can go further. Why do you think healthcare costs are so much
higher in the US than the rest of the world? Why are people so much
healthier in small nations like Ireland? One key component is junk
food. Here in the US, junk food is everywhere. There's vending
machines and convenience stores selling nothing but Hoo Hoos and Oil
drenched slices of potatoes on every block. Fresh fruits and
vegetables are not anywhere near as accessible. And worst of all, junk
food is so much cheaper than healthy food. It's just cheaper and
easier to stuff yourself with crap. And this is why, obesity has
exploded. This is why over half the population above 60 suffer from
diabetes and high blood pressure, diseases that cost a crap load to
treat. This is why so many people (roughly a third of the population
above 60) ends up needing coronary artery bypass grafting, a surgery
that costs several hundreds of thousands of dollars. And basically one
out of every three people end up needing it. This my friends is why we
spend such ludicrous amounts of money of medicine. Because we designed
a society where it's about ten times easier and cheaper to stuff
yourself with junk food and fast food than it is to eat healthy. That
needs to stop now unless we want healthcare costs to keep rising
higher and higher and essentially devour our entire national gdp in a
few decades.
We need a war on obesity, because it's a war that will do more good
than the war on drugs/poverty/terrorism. We do need to incentivize
eating healthy, and to decentivize eating junk food. We need to tax
junk food and use that money to subsidize healthy wood. We have to
make it worthwhile for fast food places to put oranges and grapes on
the dollar menu and force them to move whopper jr's off of the dollar
menu. It may sting in the short term. But in the long run, everyone
will be better off for it.
- Regulations that serve to spur the free market and simultanously
curb run away greed. Yes, regulation can spur the free market. Here is
an example. If you notice, if you want cable tv where you live, you
have to go through one particular provider. At my current apartment,
it's RCN. Three blocks down, it's comcast. At my previous apt, it was
Time Warner. If I want a different provider for my cable tv, I am not
allowed to get one. Why is that? It turns out, these companies make
contracts with local governments. They pay them money, and the local
government makes a law saying that no other provider can offer cable
service for that area in exchange. The local govt. gets money out of
the deal, but the consumers get fleeced as a result.
By letting one cable provider completely monopolize a region, there is
no competition in that area. If you want cable, you better be willing
to pay what they want you to pay, and accept their terms, or you're
out of luck. There is no other service provider you can turn to
instead. That's not free market capitalism. Opening up these
monopolies will lead to healthy competition and more options and
better prices for consumers. And Congress can make that happen with a
simple law forbidding this monopolistic practice. Why don't they?
Because the cable industry has the money to lobby congress. They don't
want to have to compete amongst themselves, so they hire a lobbyist to
ensure that they never have to and can continue to gouge customers.
This an example where a law can actually end monopolization and spur
healthy competition.
10. Make sure that every person CAN vote and that every vote does count. This requires a number of changes...
a.) Election day should be a paid national holiday so that poor people can vote too. We have so many pointless holidays, why can't Nov 4th be Democracy Day, one of the handful of holidays that achieves something. Some people had to wait upwards of 11 hours to vote! How many of the people living paycheck by paycheck can afford to do that? We must also impose severe penalties for voter suppression.
b.) Establish a uniform early voting period across the US, preferably including the ability to vote absentee over the mail. Such a policy helped Ohio achieve record voter turnout. It can do the same across the country.
c.) Establish a universal ballot format that every local county can use. If you haven't heard, some districts in Florida had some laughably complicated ballots which required voters to make a thick dark line connecting two white boxes to have the vote count. Many voters using the ballot instead blacked in the boxes or checked them off rather than make a line connecting that box to the presidency. Why can't ballot be simple bubbles that you fill in like in any testing center. Having a uniform ballot would also basically make it so that all ballots have a clear paper trail. And lastly, bubbling the option to vote a straight party ticket should count that towards the presidential candidate too unless the voter specifically bubbled in their choice for presidential race as well.
d.) Have universal voter registration. For example, you should be automatically registered, if eligible, when you get a drivers license. If not that, at the very least, allow for same day registration.
Honorable Mention: The fairness doctrine. TV broadcasts that use the public channels are required to have fair unbiased coverage. So in principle atleast, radio broadcasts over public channels should have equal time for both viewpoints as well. But I know this is a touchy issue, so I think it should be one of the last issues tackled.