H\T to front-pager Joan McCarter for bringing this important and timely story to the forefront.
In a Politico piece by Timothy Noah titled: Obama’s go-for-broke Budget we see an indication that the Obama administration has finally come around to the type of political philosophy that Berns within the Sanders supporters and eschewing the type of pragmatic, bipartisan small ball philosophy HRC supporters claim to be so important.
the president will propose a sweepingly progressive policy agenda that includes a $10-a-barrel oil tax, an expensive Medicaid expansion, a $4 billion initiative to promote computer science in public schools and the first down payment on a “moon shot” research initiative to cure cancer led by Vice President Joe Biden.
Never mind that Congress, in a break with tradition, said it won’t even hold hearings on this year’s budget request.
Here we have a great example of this dynamic going on in the Dem primary. We have a Con controlled Congress that is hell bent on obstructing every possible policy that would be beneficial to regular Americans. Instead of offering the type of “pragmatic, incremental, and serious” budget that the corporate media “liberal intelligentsia” say is the true path forward for Democrats and thus why we should all support the realist candidate HRC, the president followed a different path. The thought process is succinctly summarized by former Obama budget director Peter Orszag, who we all know is a pie in the sky Democratic socialist revolutionary (who strangely enough for a crazy socialist went to work as a Vice president at Citigroup in 2011 after he finished working for the Obama Administration….those clever pinkos, infiltrating the ranks of red-blooded American capitalist bank wholesomeness)
“If the document is legislatively irrelevant,” Orszag said, “you might as well use it to expand the policy dialogue and lay out sensible proposals even if they will not become law this year or next.” This year’s budget proposal “lays the groundwork for Democrats to refine and embrace a more ambitious legislative agenda over time.”
Whoa there Comrade!!! You are going to upset the Very-Serious-Person brigade with all that idealism. I truly feel for brother Orszag, as you just know he is about to become the object of scorn from Krugman, Ezra Klein, Wapo wonks. etc etc as they tell us all about how this theory of change is wrong. We are not supposed to propose bold, progressive policies that have no chance of passing a Con controlled Congress. Its hopeless to try and change the national dialogue and move the Overton window back towards the center of the country and away from the corporate right on economic policy matters. At least thats what HRC supporters seem to be telling me. After all these years of trying the HRC theory of political change, it seems President Obama disagrees with them now and has come to realize that small ball, incrementalism is just not going to accomplish anything when GOOPers are simply so rabid.
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