President Obama released
his 2013 budget proposal on Monday. It proposes a 0.2 percent increase in
spending, $1.5 trillion in new revenue (primarily from letting tax cuts for
those making more than $250 thousand expire), and a $1.33 trillion deficit. The
proposed spending would pay for (among other things) $350 billion in job
creation measure, $850 million in Race to the Top education funding, $141
billion in non-defense R&D, and $476 billion in infrastructure investment.
Meanwhile, it is the first budget to operate under the Budget Control Act that
mandates $1 trillion of cuts in discretionary spending. Pentagon and health
care spending would see decreases of $260 billion over five years and $360
billion over ten years, respectively.
But with a divided government, increasing partisanship, and
a looming election, it is widely understood that this budget has no real chance
of actually becoming law. It is, rather, a statement of priorities—a political
document that sets out a roadmap for the 2012 election and highlights competing
visions for the future. Is this a bad thing? Should we expect budget proposals
to be actionable pieces of legislation rather than political documents?
Obama’s previous efforts to craft legislation that would draw
support from Republicans—from the structure of the ACA to placing entitlement
cuts on the table in the near-disastrous decision to tie the debt ceiling
negotiations to spending cuts, to the creation of the Supercommittee that tried to reduce
the deficit with far more spending cuts than revenue increases—have not led to
any bipartisan support. By this point, it seems clear that this is not because
Obama is unwilling to negotiate.
Given this dynamic, what would Obama or the American people gain
by repeating the process of proposing legislation that plays for Republican
votes only to have it rejected? While it may appear unseemly to propose a
budget that is primarily political, perhaps it is the only option in the
current climate. And if, unlike earlier attempts at concessions, the budget can
highlight rather than obscure the differences in priorities for Democrats and
Republicans, both sides might feel more pressure from their constituents to
come together after the election to compromise. So in a strange way, this more
ambitious, less conciliatory budget might make voters more aware of gridlock
and create a space for it to be defused.
I too was excited to see Obama start with a proposal that represents the platform on which he was elected. He has far too often made the mistake of starting with compromise and being pushed right. Rather than, starting with a proposal representing the left and being pushed the center. Perhaps some centrist compromise will come from this budget, as opposed to the right of center policies that have dominated the later part of Obama's presidency. It is frustrating that it has taken the President almost an entire term to put forth policy that begins to represent the Democratic platform.
ReplyDeleteThisissue comes up with the question of whether Obama should have endoresed the Bowles Simpson report. While I share some of B/S's disappointment that he did not, I can also see that strategically, it may have been a bad idea. If Obama wanted that to be the end point of the negotiations, he couldn't endorse it at the beginning. Republicans would have pocketed the concessions and started the negotiations there.
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