Why are we worried about raising the debt ceiling this time around? We’ve raised it a multitude of times before without such a fuss?
Why does President Obama tell us this time that we need to control the government budget and debt just like a family does, echoing and reinforcing the talking points of his supposed Republican opponents? Why is he playing into their hands so easily when they are the principals who drove the deficit up with their crazy tax cuts and war frenzies? Why has he been standing aside, basically doing nothing more than provide token lip service, while they blame social servants, Social Security, Medicare and any other entitlement for all of America’s budget problems? Why isn’t he aggressively fighting back twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? Why is he putting social support programs on the chopping block when a vast majority of Americans oppose such action and it is more than obvious that our current crisis is really a revenue problem not a deficit problem? Why is he so into cutting things when we need just the opposite? Why is compromise more important to him than providing bully pulpit leadership for middle class job creation?
Is this an eleven dimensional chess move or is the answer actually much simpler? Perhaps President Obama, just like his Republican opponents, actually believes the economy exists to support the financial system and not the other way around. Maybe he truly believes the government is primarily here to promote Wall Street and the corporations. Maybe he believes that without their leadership and support America can go nowhere in today’s sophisticated world of finance. We are so tied to the financial world that there is no room to think about the big E economy anymore. Maybe the President, as Paul Krugman has pointed out time and again, is choosing the Milton Friedman side of economics which holds to trickle down growth from the corporate rich rather than increased consumer demand from the middle class to stimulate the economy. While his stimulus package barely kept us from complete disaster, perhaps he now believes more strongly that we must put on the brakes and compromise with the corporate elites to really improve the economy. Maybe he thinks that the corporations are sitting on all their cash and not hiring because they are too uncertain about the deficit. Get a handle on our finances and they will rush into the market place with loads of new jobs. Maybe for him the economic powers that be, the corporate and Wall Street elite, are crucial to America’s future progress. Perhaps, as a pragmatist, he sees things as they are rather than how they should be or once were. Maybe he truly believes our current financial system can no longer support social programs and we need to soften them, and therefore the economy, to save our financial position in the world financial community.
Such a belief could explain why social program reductions are so easily put on the chopping block by his administration. These programs can't be permanently sustained within the financial structure that exists today, so here's an opportunity to reduce them and solve a long term problem. It's either reduce them or significantly increase revenue generation which is anathema to existing corporate and Wall Street financial structure. A strong push for significant revenue generation would require changing the tax rules and even admitting that there might be systemic dysfunctions within our economy that require radical restructuring rather than incremental compromise. Primary focus on a revenue problem might require a more comprehensive look at the financial sector for the damage it has done, and continues to do, to the American economy. A big revenue fight most certainly would require that Obama more aggressively champion consumer demand and middle class purchasing power over the egregious accumulation of wealth and the resulting financial speculative bubbles that ensue when too much money goes to too few people. So maybe that’s why Obama appears to focus more easily on program reductions than significant revenue generation. Significantly raising taxes on the rich and powerful is far too radical for Wall Street and corporate leadership to accept. They just spent thirty years getting the tax structure into their comfort zone. If he does view their support as critical for America to be successful, why would he turn radically against them. Compromise with them makes far more sense within this context. Challenging their current structural integrity and leadership through significant tax increases would not only take a firm conviction that the current corporate and financial system is out of control and over paid, it would also require incredible leadership, commitment, energy and, most difficult of all, communication—all, with a minor emphasis on compromise!
Or maybe it really is eleven dimensional chess?