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I’ve noticed a lingering claim that the reason we won’t see a pivot to jobs over the next several months is that the progressive movement hasn’t sold the concept of the public good and the proper government. I thought we were supposed to be the ones too focused on rhetorical flourish and not the hard calculus of votes and realistic options! Anyhoo, Greg Sargent uses some CNN poll results to highlight this.
As you may know, the agreement would cut about one trillion dollars in government spending over the next ten years with provisions to make additional spending cuts in the future. Regardless of how you feel about the overall agreement, do you approve or disapprove of the cuts in government spending included in the debt ceiling agreement?
Approve 65
Disapprove 30Sixty five percent approve of deal’s spending cuts. But it gets worse. Of the 30 percent who disapprove, 13 percent think the cuts haven’t gotten far enough, and only 15 percent think the cuts go too far. One sixth of Americans agree with the liberal argument about the deal.
Well, yes, that’s what happens when the leadership of both parties, including the President and top Democrats in Congress, agree with the Republican-led argument that we must cut spending now and that it will provide confidence to the business community to invest. There’s some good empirical evidence for this in this Kos/SEIU poll, showing that the priority gap between jobs and the deficit has reduced precipitously as this talk has widened over the last month. When the elite signal is that the deficit is of primary importance and that’s what gets broadcast, small wonder that’s where the debate goes.
But I’m going to take a different view here. It’s true that the public does not believe in a competent, activist government. That’s because government in America has revealed itself to be a total failure over two successive Administrations. Government gets us into wars we never get out of. Government allows Wall Street to destroy the economy and then bails them out for the privilege. Government stands mute in the face of rampant unemployment for going on half a decade.
I have said for over a year now that HAMP hurt liberalism in fundamental ways. Here was a perfect opportunity to show, rather than tell, the virtues of government. And the program ended up as a predatory lending scheme rather than $50 billlion in mortgage relief for struggling families. As Governor-in-Chief the President has not been the capable technocrat on the big issues that he promised. More often things went down like HAMP. We have a small business lending program that just started lending money a year after it passed. We have a financial industry virtually unchanged from the one that sank the economy.
It takes more than rhetoric. When given the opportunity to lead, it takes real-world examples to display the virtues of government. And we really just don’t have them. So I can hardly blame people. I remember talking to Jack Conway last year, and he told me his constituents don’t want to see more spending because they believed it goes into the hands of the banks, or at least not into the hands of the people who need it. Who am I to argue? Thomas Geoghegan said a similar thing when he ran for Congress in Illinois in early 2009. He said that people just don’t feel like they’re getting anything for their taxes. And so, when faced with a choice between taxes and spending cuts, they’ll take the cuts, because the taxes have no value.
We can elegantly construct a vision of government that is attractive and desirable. But when it’s undermined by real-world results, the vision is fatally compromised. Not only is the Washington Democratic rhetorical bias toward the deficit over jobs deeply problematic; so is their performance.
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Boy, a withering attack on FDR, in your argument.
A big endorsement or Reagan, the big deficit big government spending progressive.
FDR campaigned on the deficit and acted repeatedly to limit spending and keep down the deficit.
Reagan on the other hand, never saw a deficit that was too large to limit his ability to increase spending or cut taxes.
I have to agree. Although I DO believe “the stimulus” and the TARP were effective. The cost and degree are debatable.
I’m 60, and I rememebr when we had “effective and responsive” government on the fedeal level. Of course, that was trillion$$$$ and years ago. Now, with most of our fedeal government beholden to someone other than the American people, we find ourselves in quite a pickle. Wars we can’t win and yet, still can’t leave, greed rampant in corporate America and in the banking and financial industries, and corruption at almost every level of government. Boy, do we need Batman now.
In one way I agree with the republicans, we need less and smaller government OVERALL. But we can’t cut off lifelines to the people that desperately need it. And, let’s positively NOT cut MY social security. I think we can all agree on that.
Great article. I think this is free from rhetoric:
mulp said: Reagan on the other hand, never saw a deficit that was too large to limit his ability to increase spending or cut taxes.
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Republicans don’t dissaprove of spending money. They just disapprove of democrats spending money.
Again, another reason that Obama is such a disaster for the progressive movement–so much so that I wish he’d lost to McCain.
What people want is a secure and stable economy that does right by them. People say they want to cut the deficit because both parties insist that it is necessary for a secure and stable economy. You can get people to say they want to change things like the retirement age for Medicare and Social Security if all they hear is how necessary it is to cut those programs in order to save them. It is an echo chamber, and it is almost funny to listen to people in the media try to chalk up these things to some supposed American distrust of government (despite government programs like the Postal Service, Medicare, Social Security, Food Inspection, Disaster Relief, etc being wildly popular programs!).
If people are made to understand that cutting government spending at this time will lead to more unemployment and a prolonged recession, believe it or not cutting government spending will not be popular – supposed genetic distrust of the British King notwithstanding.
It is like saying that we must want to eat peanut butter sandwiches because of our inherent hatred of ham. No, we want to eat peanut butter sandwiches because we are hungry, and peanut butter and bread is all they have given us.
This is a strange comment for an article about the importance of action over rhetoric.
It seems that everytime I post here at the FDL, I end up harping the lack of any stellar behavior by both our Elected and Appointed Officials for perpetuating and expanding LBJ’s Great Society. Thus, I tend to be disappointed.
And yet, on the House vote, six of the seven Hispanics in the Progressive Caucus, voted against this abomination of legislation, approved by Obama at its inception and formalized with his signature.
So, I will keep raising the subject of the Great Society and probably much to the consternation from the folks that usually disagree with me. And yes, I know I am boring you too!
Jaango
Be advised that the “HOB’s Cranium” is coming to a theater near you.
America’s “racial and ethnic” historians will be looking back at today and from some date in the future and “measure” what was accomplished in the past twenty years, and come to recognize “HOBs Cranium,” and that being the acronym that is replete with Hoover, Obama, and Bush.
Moreover, HOB’s Cranium will reinforce Obama’s Legacy for an Era of Squandered Opportunities.
Jaango
Dan, Dan, Dan…if McCain had been elected we’d still have troops in Iraq, still be fighting and dying in Afghanistan, still have illegal wiretaps, Gitmo would still be operating, the banksters would have gotten off “scot-free” with their crimes………………………… ohhh.
I fear you may be right. He had quite a mandate and the people behind him. He AND the democrats squandered that in just two years.
Lately?
Government is – and has always been – the problem. Liberals cheer when Government takes something from others, but whine when they don’t get something or when Government takes something from them.