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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: brushwud who wrote (78244)	6/14/2010 3:01:04 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 149317

IS THE GOP AFRAID TO GOVERN?.... In April, NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) was speculating about his expectations for the midterm elections. With Republican hopes sky-high, Sessions said anything less than a GOP takeover of the House is worth "a warm bucket of spit." The message has changed quite a bit since April. Last month, NRCC Recruitment Chair Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that some leading Republicans have told him privately that they want to make gains -- but not enough to actually get a majority. This attitude is apparently more widespread than I'd expected. Republicans have been engaging in some premature drape-measuring for a few months in anticipation of winning back control of the House of Representatives. Some top GOP aides privately admit that they got ahead of themselves. Turns out, not all Republicans are rooting for their own to win the House. "I want Republicans to make massive gains but I want them to fall one vote short of taking the House," said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary to President George W. Bush. "I want to see more evidence that Republicans are ready to govern. I want to see more substance, particularly on what spending they will cut." Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who has been tasked with recruiting candidates by House Minority Leader John Boehner, confirmed that this view is held by numerous party operatives and leaders, though none in Congress. There are apparently a variety of factors driving this motivation -- including the notion that President Obama would be more likely to win a second term if he ran against a GOP House -- but the core concern seems to be that governing next year will be hard, and their proposed cuts might spark a backlash, so Republicans might as well let Dems worry about doing the heavy lifting. DNC spokesperson Hari Sevugan said fear of holding the House is a sign that "Republicans aren't interested in producing solutions to America's problems." I think this truth was already apparent, but I suppose it's helpful to have another reminder.

To: brushwud who wrote (78244)	6/14/2010 4:51:23 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Too close to another economic cliff By E.J. Dionne Jr. Monday, June 14, 2010 Will politics slow our economic recovery? Will world leaders who pulled us back from the brink of a new Great Depression throw in the towel before the global economy gets the unemployed back to work? These are the moment's central questions, and I posed them last week to Larry Summers, President Obama's top economic adviser. Summers is often cast as an economic conservative because he was a serious budget balancer in the Clinton years. In fact, he is a pragmatist who thinks economics involves the art of tailoring policies to conditions. And right now, the pragmatist thinks that the job of getting us out of the economic doldrums is not done. "Different economic circumstances require different approaches to economic policy," Summers said, using a bit of economist-speak. "Today, when interest rates are at nearly zero and the central challenge is a shortfall of demand, the policies of immediate fiscal consolidation that were appropriate to address the crowding-out problems of the 1990s would be harmful, not helpful, to economic growth. That's true at home and around the world." It would be nice if Congress and policymakers elsewhere who seem to be racing prematurely to fiscal austerity would give Summers a listen. The last thing we need is to undo much of the good done last year by governments that chose not to repeat the big mistake of the early 1930s. Instead of imposing austerity when the global economy needed a big boost, they opted for stimulus. And the world avoided catastrophe. Summers is nothing if not careful. In the interview and in a speech last month at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he was clear that long-term deficits can also endanger growth and that the administration intends to contain them. He also emphasized that no single policy could be applied across Europe given the fiscal difficulties of the Mediterranean nations, starting with Greece. But he was plain about this: We will never deal effectively with our deficit problem until we get the economy moving. As Summers put it at Hopkins: "It is not possible to imagine sound budgets in the absence of economic growth and solid economic performance." If you don't think growth needs to come first, consider these numbers from Summers: We could cut the debt as a share of GDP by half a percent with $75 billion in either spending cuts or tax increases. But we would achieve exactly the same result with an extra three-quarters of a percent of GDP growth. "Spurring growth, if we can achieve it," Summers said at Hopkins, "is by far the best way to improve our fiscal position." That's why it is mystifying that a Democratic Congress is having so much trouble passing the most elementary forms of economic stimulus. Assisting the states with extra Medicaid money and helping them avoid massive teacher layoffs could save or add at least 300,000 jobs. It's Democratic reluctance that required Obama to write a letter to congressional leaders on Saturday urging Congress to act quickly to avoid the layoffs and support the still-fragile economic recovery. Do Democrats honestly think that nickel-and-diming on stimulus now will have a substantial impact on the long-term deficit or be of greater help to them in November than more robust growth? Make no mistake: Summers has not gone squishy on the deficit. In his careful and unapologetic rendition of the two-handed economist act, he is at pains to make clear that he thinks long-term fiscal profligacy would endanger growth, now and later. "Jobs are the top economic priority," he said in a follow-up e-mail to the interview, "which is why the president is pushing Congress on measures to strengthen small-business hiring, promote clean energy investments, prevent teacher and police layoffs, and support unemployed workers. It's also why we're working to double exports." Then he added: "But for a policy centered around economic growth to be credible in the short term we must show a commitment on returning to a fiscal sustainable path over the medium- and long-term. That's why the president has taken important steps to bring responsibility back to the federal budget through health care reform and in creating a bipartisan fiscal commission." Okay, those are not exactly ringing sound bites in a political environment that limits economic discussion to cries of "Big Spending!" and "Big Deficits!" And, yes, in the parlance of political consultants, it "muddles the message" to argue that we need to tilt toward growth now and fiscal discipline in the long run. But it happens to be the right policy. Does that matter anymore? washingtonpost.com