Many of the arguments about the Obama administration that have played out among pundits and activists alike are based on whether or not the Obama administration is living up to the abstract vagaries of Obama campaign rhetoric. Is President Obama changing the government enough? Is he being bipartisan enough? Is he really avoiding ideology? It was an intentional part of then-Senator Obama's campaign strategy for these terms to be vague, thus allowing voters to read their own hopes and desires into Barack Obama. That we are still arguing over these terms is a testament to the success of the execution of that strategy.
Personally, I am tired of these arguments, because they don't seem to ever lead to new knowledge. Instead, I now find it much more interesting to actually try and quantify how much the federal budget has changed from the Republican trifecta (FY 2002, 2004-2007) to the Democratic trifecta (FY 2010-2013). This way, we can develop a quantitative metric for understanding what our electoral fights in this country are really all about. What sort of change really takes place from strong Republican control of the federal government to strong Democratic control of the federal government? Rather than arguing over vague abstractions-which essentially means we don't even know what we are arguing over--let's put a price tag on change.
I have already done some work on this front. Two weeks ago, the total spending difference from the 2009 to 2010 budget, broken down by federal department, were listed here on Open Left. Also, earlier this week, I was able to quantify the difference in total social spending between the Republican trifecta, the Democratic trifecta, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The overall results were surprisingly minimalist: shifting from Republican to Democratic control of the federal government resulted in a shift of about 2% of the national economy away from what might loosely be termed "private enterprise" and toward "social investment" in things like education, energy, health care, infrastructure, and pensions. Lest people think this is only an issue of the wrong type of Democrats being in charge, my research also showed that if the Congressional Progressive Caucus was running the show, the difference would have been 3% of the national economy instead of 2%.
Apart from these big-picture analyses, it is important to catalogue all of the differences on a more specific level, as well. For example, yesterday, the Huffington Post took a look at the differences between spending on the "drug war" from 2009 to 2010. Again, the results were minimal (more in the extended entry):
In the 2010 budget, prevention takes a 10.6 percent hit while domestic law enforcement gets a boost of 2.3 percent, with "interdiction" (military and police actions designed to stem the flow of drugs into and about the country) gaining 4.4 percent. On the positive side of the ledger, treatment shows a 4.4 percent increase. And what of the never-ending seesaw battle between supply and demand initiatives? Unfortunately, demand reduction efforts (education, prevention) are down 0.8 percent, while (generally futile) supply reduction initiatives (enforcement, burning or poisoning crops) gets a 2.7 percent bump.
Interdiction: $4.004 billion (2010) vs. $3.836 billion (2009)
Domestic Law Enforcement: $3.737 billion (2010) vs. $3.654 billion (2009)
Drug Treatment: $3.566 billion (2010) vs. $3.416 billion (2009)
Drug Prevention: $1.602 billion (2010) vs. $1.791 billion (2009)
International Enforcement: $2.160 billion (2010) vs. $2.174 billion (2009)
Overall, there is a slight shift away from treatment / prevention (combined, they are roughly static), and toward law enforcement (which experienced a slight overall rise). Adjusted for inflation, this means that federal drug treatment / prevention spending went down slightly, while federal drug law enforcement spending stayed roughly static.
Quantifiably, there will be basically no real change in federal drug policy from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2010. This is a pattern that we will see when looking at most areas of federal spending (which I intend to do in much more detail next week), once the stimulus and bailout spending packages have run their course. Spending patterns under Democrats and under Republicans are not dramatically different from one another. Even most of the 2% shift of the economy toward social investment will be due to mandatory spending from previous laws on Social Security and Medicare.
I am not arguing that this shift is unimportant, and that we should stop fighting for it altogether. It is still important, even if it is small. For example, while it would start at only 0.5% of GDP, over the long-term a public health care option has the ability to potentially change the overall picture quite a bit. Further, I am certainly not arguing that people interested in wider change should look to third parties, given just how ineffective the third-party electoral route has been at changing public debate over the past several cycles. Rather, I am just trying to help people better conceptualize what we are actually fighting over in electoral and legislative campaigns.
There are few types of human interactions less valuable than arguments where the participants do not even know what they are fighting over. If more people began to realize that are only arguing over how to manage 3% of the economy, the entire course and tone of public political debate might change. Not only could we argue over specific amounts rather than amorphous rhetoric, but we would come to better understand the broad national consensus on government spending.
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