Climate of Change<\/strong><\/a>
By Paul Krugman
February 27, 2009<\/div>\nElections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\nThe budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished…<\/p>\n
And even if fundamental health care reform brings costs under control, I at least find it hard to see how the federal government can meet its long-term obligations without some tax increases on the middle class. Whatever politicians may say now, there’s probably a value-added tax in our future.But I don’t blame Mr. Obama for leaving some big questions unanswered in this budget. There’s only so much long-run thinking the political system can handle in the midst of a severe crisis; he has probably taken on all he can, for now. And this budget looks very, very good.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
While the
Right<\/strong><\/font> contemplates sedition, the Left<\/strong><\/font> is evaluating Obama based on his adherence to a Progressive Agenda. We knew he was going to be sitting in a hot seat, but it’s a lot easier to predict the conflicts than to live with them. Truth is, there seems to be no compromise position. It simply doesn’t appear to exist.<\/div>\nI don’t find the current public debate very helpful. There’s no clear separation between the government’s response to the catastrophic economic crisis, and the two different visions of America being put forward. The Republicans are arguing against "pork," claiming that Obama’s Stimulus Plan, the Mortgage Plan, and the Budget Proposals are filled with Liberal "pork." The Democrats are saying all of these proposals are ultimately aimed at the economic problems. For example, the Health Care portions of these programs are "socialism" and "big government" to the Right,<\/strong><\/font> and "getting control of health care costs" and "delivering health care to everyone" to the Left<\/strong><\/font>. <\/p>\nIt’s hard at this point to imagine this dichotomy resolving any time soon. The divide is too fundamental. It’s not just a conflict over specific policies. It’s a class war, a philosophical dysjunction, a basic disagreement over how people relate to each other. Given the unresolvability of things, it seems like our team should stop playing so nice. I don’t mean start some news service, an anti-Fox news, but let the hearings begin. The best arguments at this point are the results of the last eight years. Why not? It’s their story…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John Bolton: The Mustache Lives By Matthew Cooper Talking Points Memo February 26, 2009 If you imagine Paul McCartney at Shea Stadium in 1965 you have some idea of the reception that the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, gave John Bolton this morning. The former United Nations Ambassador packed the largest ballroom at Washington’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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He saved his strongest attacks for the Obama administration, saying that it had appeased Russia during the campaign when then Senator Obama called on both sides of the Russian-Georgian conflict over South Ossetia to show restraint. He condemned Hillary Clinton for not making more of human rights issues on her recent trip to Asia and said that the administration’s diplomatic approaches to Iran and North Korea were only allowing both nations to fuel their nuclear ambitions.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/misc\/nytlogo379x64.gif\")
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