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Obama’s Budget Will Rebuild Economy on a Solid Foundation |
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A new ad (see video) backing President Obama’s budget blueprint hit the airwaves today as Senate and House budget committees unveiled their spending resolutions. Those resolutions followed much of the administration’s outline but made significant changes in some priorities.
Yet while Democratic leaders of the congressional budget panels offered alternatives to the changes they seek in the administration’s proposal, Republican lawmakers sit on the sidelines, offering no alternative, just the par-for-the-course carping criticism that has come to mark their opposition.
The new ad by Americans United for Change—a coalition of unions including the AFL-CIO, community, environmental, progressive and other groups—urges viewers to call Congress to support Obama’s budget because it:
…will rebuild our economy on a solid foundation. Jobs, health care, education, clean energy reform. On this foundation we can build real, long-term economic prosperity for all Americans.
During his nationally televised press conference last night, Obama said he wasn’t surprised Congress made changes to his original proposal.
We never expected when we printed out our budget that they would simply Xerox it and vote on it….The bottom line is that I want to see health care, energy, education and serious efforts to reduce our budget deficit.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says Obama’s budget
is a carefully crafted blueprint to address the enormous economic challenges we face and help working Americans by making serious and necessary investments in infrastructure, health care, green jobs and clean energy and education.
This morning, Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said both the Senate and House budget versions follow Obama’s priorities to cut the federal deficit in half by 2013 and increase resources for clean energy, health care, education and other priorities.
While both bills establish a reserve fund for health care reform, they seek different ways to provide the $634 billion the Obama budget plan calls for as a down payment on health care reform.
In addition, the Senate plan cuts $15 billion and the House bill trims $7 billion from Obama’s request for discretionary spending on such programs as workplace safety, wage and hour protection, education, highway construction, transportation and other areas. If the funding cuts survive in the final resolution, the specific cuts won’t be made until the appropriations process begins.
In a letter to the House Budget Committee this afternoon, AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director Bill Samuel says:
Over the last eight years, programs serving millions of working families have been the first casualties of the previous administration’s misguided budget priorities. President Obama’s budget proposal would restore critical funding for programs such as education, housing, nutrition, home energy aid, safety and health, and job training. We are concerned that any reduction in non-defense appropriations would result in continued cuts for these programs
Meanwhile, Republicans in both houses offered up their usual scorn and criticism, but no alternative of their own to the eight years of co-rule with the Bush administration. During those eight years, the TV ad points out, the administration “turned our economy into a house of cards,” adding:
Last fall, that house came tumbling down.
Last night, when asked about the ”just say no” stance Republicans have taken on the budget, Obama said:
Their alternative is to stand pat and to simply say, “We are just going to not invest in health care. We’re not going to take on energy. We’ll wait until the next time that gas gets to $4 a gallon. We will not improve our schools. And we’ll allow China or India or other countries to lap our young people in terms of their performance. We will settle on lower growth rates, and we will continue to contract, both as an economy and our ability to provide a better life for our kids.”
That, I don’t think, is the better option.
The congressional committees are expected to finalize their budget resolutions by the end of this week or early next week with votes by the full Senate and House before they adjourn for the Easter recess the week of April 6. A conference to iron out differences between the two bills will follow the recess.
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There could be no better investment in America than to invest in America becoming energy independent! We need to utilize everything in out power to reduce our dependence on foreign oil including using our own natural resources. Create cheap clean energy, new badly needed green jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.The high cost of fuel this past year seriously damaged our economy and society. The cost of fuel effects every facet of consumer goods from production to shipping costs. It costs the equivalent of 60 cents per gallon to charge and drive an electric car. If all gasoline cars, trucks, and SUV’s instead had plug-in electric drive trains the amount of electricity needed to replace gasoline is about equal to the estimated wind energy potential of the state of North Dakota.We have so much available to us such as wind and solar. Let’s spend some of those bail out billions and get busy harnessing this energy. Create cheap clean energy, badly needed new jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. What a win-win situation that would be for our nation at large! There is a really good new book out by Jeff Wilson called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence Now. http://www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com
It is easy to rightly denounce brain-dead Republican proposals after a little critical thinking. But that same critical thinking skill must also be applied to Obama’s populist rhetoric. Here are two such critical articles, links below, based not on prejudice but on the realities behind Obama babble.
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Two months on: The class agenda of the Obama administration
26 March 2009
Barry Grey
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pers-m26.shtml
Over the past two months, culminating in the events of the past week, the Obama administration has single-mindedly worked to win the confidence of Wall Street. It has sought to reassure the major banks and investment firms that it will not support any policies that threaten the wealth, prerogatives or power of the American financial aristocracy.
The administration, and Obama personally, view the economic crisis entirely through the eyes of the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. All of their actions have had as their central goal covering the losses—dollar for dollar and at the expense of the American people—of those who are responsible for the economic catastrophe.
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From the World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org
Here is the link to a second critical article on Obama referred to above.
Obama “town hall” meetings in California
No answers for joblessness, austerity
By Dan Conway and Kevin Martinez
26 March 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/cali-m26.shtml
“Recent weeks have seen a marked acceleration of the state of California’s economic woes. The state’s official unemployment rate increased to 10.5 percent in February, the highest recorded in 26 years. Separate teams of University of California economists recently predicted that the rate will rise to as much as 15 percent by spring 2010, even though monies received from the federal stimulus package were included in the projection.
The state’s deteriorating employment outlook was also a significant factor in a March 13 announcement by the state legislative analyst office, which stated the state faces an additional $8 billion shortfall through fiscal year 2009-2010. The announcement came a mere three weeks after the state legislature passed a budget including nearly $20 billion in spending cuts and regressive tax and fee increases …”
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Friday’s town hall meeting in Los Angeles was introduced by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, “one of the great innovators of state government,” according to Obama and “an outstanding partner with our administration.” This is a man who has decimated social services depended upon by millions of Californians and thrown into jeopardy the education of future generations.”