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Don't look now, but the Democrats are about to do something incredibly stupid, which:
(1) Betrays their base.
(2) Empowers a powerless opposition.
(3) Gives credence to a narrative trope that can be used to bash them repeatedly in the future.
(4) Totally misses the opportunity to start building a new narrative--the sort of thing that's absolutely vitale to long-term political success.
What's this all about? Simple: Caving into GOP pressure to remove contraceptives from the stimulus plan. AP reports:
House Democrats are likely to jettison family planning funds for the low-income from an $825 billion economic stimulus bill, officials said late Monday, following a personal appeal from President Barack Obama at a time the administration is courting Republican critics of the legislation.
Several officials said a final decision was expected on Tuesday, coinciding with Obama's scheduled visit to the Capitol for separate meetings with House and Senate Republicans.
The provision has emerged as a point of contention among Republicans, who criticize it as an example of wasteful spending that would neither create jobs nor otherwise improve the economy.
Under the provision, states no longer would be required to obtain federal permission to offer family planning services - including contraceptives - under Medicaid, the health program for the low-income.
Whatever happened to "states' rights"?
Democrats considered the politically-potent change as congressional budget experts estimated it would take slightly longer for the overall legislation to achieve an impact on the economy than the administration projects.
The Congressional Budget Office said the economy would feel the effects of almost two-thirds of the money over the next year and a half. The administration claims 75 percent of the funding would be absorbed in that period of time, and Obama has pledged that the bill he signs will meet that target and either save or create up to 4 million jobs.
While the debate surrounding the overall impact of the measure pits economists and their statistics against one another, Republicans quickly seized on the family planning money as evidence that the Democrats were advancing an agenda that went beyond the economy.
Yes, how dare the Democrats try to walk and chew gum at the same time! How dare they propose policies that have more than one intended purpose! Remind me again... who won the election?
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It should be axiomatic that the stimulus bill should try to do more than one thing. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman certainly takes that for granted. For example, back on Jan 11, he wrote:
First, Mr. Obama should scrap his proposal for $150 billion in business tax cuts, which would do little to help the economy. Ideally he'd scrap the proposed $150 billion payroll tax cut as well, though I'm aware that it was a campaign promise.
Money not squandered on ineffective tax cuts could be used to provide further relief to Americans in distress - enhanced unemployment benefits, expanded Medicaid and more. And why not get an early start on the insurance subsidies - probably running at $100 billion or more per year - that will be essential if we're going to achieve universal health care?
The underlying prescriptions here are clear and obvious: (1) spend money in ways that deliver more bang-for-the-buck, and (2) spend money that does other important things as well--such as taking care of people who are hurting most, and laying the foundations for a comprehensive health care system. Why either of these should be the least bit controversial is utterly beyond me. And yet, Obama and the Democrats seem to shy away from both.
Let's be clear: every dollar in the stimulus package is going to do more than one thing. It's going to help the economy generally, and it's going to help someone in particular. Anyone with a functioning brain can see that.
So the question really is, are Democrats going to let Republicans veto their spending priorities--particularly those that would benefit their base?
According to this AP report, the answer is "yes."
Which leads me back to a point I've made several times--that this realigning election we've just been through may well be much more similar to 1896 than to 1932. For all of Roosevelt's vaunted vagueness and "conservatism" (promising to balance the budget), the realignment of 1932 was the most coherent, systemic and far-reaching in American history. In contrast, the realignment of 1896 was one of the most muddled and ambiguous ones of all time, in which the forces of "modernization" and "progress" triumphed, without any real consensus on what that meant, as "lassez faire" monopolists and progressive trust-busters were both part of the same coalition.
To make a more coherent realignment, a stimulus bill should--at the very least--begin by laying the groundwork for connecting different aspects of the Obama agenda: economic recovery, universal health care, transition to a green economy that can minimize the harmful long-term impacts of global warming, and restoring fairness and broad opportunity for all.
It should also reaffirm Democratic values that are broadly shared by the American people, but that Republicans have consistently ignored. Chief among these would be the notion that we, the people are our own most valuable resource, and that spending money on social programs--health, education, and basic economic security--is an investment in our common future that is second to none in its long-term effectiveness as well as its immediate morality.
Including reproductive health care in the stimulus bill is not just catering to a particular base constituency--although it is surely that, and is perfectly justified on that grounds alone. It is, rather, an affirmation of the binding vision of what Democrats stand for, of how Americans should stand together, and of how that base constituency is not a fringe "special interest", but rather a key part of the vital center of all that America is and can be.
And, of course, it's a much more effective form of economic stimulus than an equal amount of tax cuts are.
Details, details....
See, also, my earlier diary, How You Can Spend Hundreds of Millions on Contraceptives... from last Saturday. |
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