Just wanted to follow up my diary from yesterday which seemed to have inadvertently caused a site-wide meltdown (I didn't mean to! Honest!) with some more thoughts on the spending freeze.
As Jed Lewison writes on the front page, the freeze isn't as broad as was feared in the initial reports. Already some of Obama's defenders are taking this to say there's nothing wrong with what was proposed and that we who criticize it are wrong, are hyperventilating, on and on.
Predictably, I reject all of that. Yes, there are new details to the spending freeze. But no, that does not change our initial assessment of it as Hooverism.
Just because a policy isn't as bad as it could be doesn't make it inherently good or worth supporting. Sure, the economic crisis could have been worse. But just because unemployment nationwide hasn't yet hit 15% doesn't mean that 10% is good.
The Obama spending freeze fails on both policy and political merits, and I'll briefly take both in turn.
Policy
We are told that the freeze will kick in after the 2010 budget year, so there will be another increase now, and then a freeze. The freeze will not be applied across the board, but it will be applied. Some programs will be exempted, but many others will not - including elements of education and health care services. Yes, the White House has said that their initiatives on education and health care will still proceed, but unless the White House is going to exempt the entire Departments of Education and Health and Human Services from this directive, there WILL indeed be cuts made in those areas.
Marcy Winograd, a teacher and progressive candidate for CA-36, pointed out that feds fund things like ESL, field trips, and such. By the terms of this freeze, such discretionary spending is subject to cuts if the White House wants to find money for some other initiative.
The economics of this are also quite damaging. Government spending really means jobs. Every program that the feds fund employs people. Most spending goes towards salaries. So when we are told that some departments will face a freeze, that means new hiring will be frozen as well. Sure, there might still be a jobs program, but it will be limited in its effectiveness by this freeze.
Further, we are told that the freeze will NOT be adjusted for inflation. As costs rise, federal spending necessarily must rise with it. But if that won't happen thanks to this freeze, a budget dollar in 2010 will not go as far in 2013. Program budgets won't be able to keep up, and something will have to give - either salaries or program services to the public. Either outcome is deflationary and recessionary.
It also likely means greater costs in the future, both to government and the private sector, as important things get left undone or postponed. You probably already know this country faces a massive infrastructure backlog. Our roads are falling apart, our national parks need maintenance. But as The Transport Politic points out, those backlogs are likely to continue under this spending freeze, meaning that whenever we do get around to fixing those things, it'll cost more money in the future - and will hurt investment and economic growth in the interim.
In other words, the overall amount of federal spending, including discretionary spending, needs to be higher to produce economic recovery, reinvest in our infrastructure, and ensure that individual and family needs are met. We need more, not less, and not a freeze, even a limited freeze.
Again, the freeze could be worse. But it is still a bad idea.
Politics
The politics of this are even worse. By far the worst aspect of it is that it embraces the right-wing tea party argument that government spending is out of control, unsustainable, and must be reined in. It suggests the White House views that as a winning political argument, which is quite concerning as it indicates they are unlikely to further embrace progressive economic policy in any meaningful way.
And if it's a "limited freeze" then Obama will please exactly nobody. The progressive base rejects it on both policy and framing grounds. Republicans will reject it because they'll point to other spending increases he has done. And the independents, who Obama thinks this will sway, will likely agree with the Republicans, since the freeze is incomplete and therefore will not address their concerns. At worst they might see it as a sign Obama isn't being straight with them.
Many of us were elated at Obama's victory in 2008 because we hoped and expected it would produce progressive change and beat back right-wing arguments and framing. We never expected that Obama would, once in office, embrace John McCain's proposals, certainly not the spending freeze. But here we are. For those of us who see our primary organizing task as being permanent defeat of the right-wing and its ideas, this is a big blow, and helps explain why so many of us have reacted as strongly as we did.
The precedent this sets is also troubling. Many of us have been arguing that we desperately need MORE spending, not less. Spending to help states in crisis. Spending to help improve existing programs that have been defunded and underfunded and screwed over since Reagan took office.
That will become much more difficult when Obama has set a precedent that spending is something to be limited, not embraced.
Instead of fighting the battle to expand our government's role in helping grow the economy, we have to fight rear-guard actions against our own president's embrace of neoliberal policy.
Finally, I've become very troubled to see people defending the president turning to conservative framing to do so. For example, those who claim government spending is "full of waste." We hear that all the time from right-wingers here in California who want to stop new spending programs and new taxes on the wealthy to save our schools. But what we've seen in the studies, even those studies conducted by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is that "waste" doesn't really exist in any meaningful level. What will happen with this spending freeze instead is that people will lose their jobs, see their wages cut, or find the programs they rely on become less effective or go away completely.
All of those are right-wing outcomes. Not anything any progressive can or should support.
Conclusion
It's unfortunate, but there it is. Yes, the details matter, but progressives can and must fight this. Congress may block it, but only if we organize to ensure that happens, and even then we'll have to battle our own president.
I know some people want to turn this into the usual pie fight over whether we back Obama enough or not. But for me that's not what this is about. I fight for progressive policy no matter who is in office. When they choose to embrace non-progressive policy, we must organize to stop it.
