It’s another primary day in the US! Go Alex Sink!
On a day like today, the big news outlets are laser-focused on tracking the “Who’s Up/Who’s Down/Did Sarah Palin’s candidate win?” horse-race. But when friends talk to me about politics (say, prompted by another Meg Whitman ad on TV), I’m again and again reminded how little substantive debate on national policy occurs in our national politics.
British Emperor of Doom/Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.
Bracket that thought as we consider this headline from the UK’s center-left paper, The Guardian.
Poor families bear brunt of coalition’s austerity drive — George Osborne’s budget described as ‘clearly regressive’ by respected fiscal thinktank
The article demolishes a central argument of the coalition government — namely, that their billions in cuts aren’t disproportionately hurting poor and working class Britons.
A choice passage:
In a direct challenge to Treasury claims that the package of spending cuts and tax increases announced in June was fair, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said welfare cuts meant working families on the lowest incomes – particularly those with children – were the biggest losers….
The IFS said the poorest 10% of families would lose over 5% of their income as a result of the budget compared with a loss of less than 1% for non-pensioner households without children in the richest 10% of households. It added that the budget contrasted with the “progressive” plans for 2010-14 inherited from Labour, under which the richest 10% of households bore the brunt of the cuts.
Let’s leave the British side-track there (sorry, Ed Balls). Quite simply, the UK example is a classic case of conservative policy at work. A right-of-center government is pushing huge cuts in national social spending. You can argue about where precisely that desire for cuts arises (Could short-term deficits really affect interest rates and growth? Do Conservatives simply not care about the poor?), but it is in essence a supply-side/trickle-down economic model. And it means that those at the bottom of that pyramid feel the full weight of government cuts.
Meanwhile across the US, candidates for Senate and Governor are locked in a similar economic argument, one in essence pitting deficits against unemployment. Conservatives are concerned about big deficits; liberals point to out-of-control unemployment as the immediate threat.
This is one of two long-considered “major” axes of politics in modern democracies (the other being social conservatism/liberalism). But this economic debate, critical to the lives of literally everyone, receives virtually no sustained discussion in the US.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a report today stating “In practice… the stimulus plan is the main reason the U.S. economy grew during the second quarter.”
It’s clear the stimulus created and saved millions of jobs, avoided a Great Depression, and provided money for long-term investments in infrastructure and education. No one can dispute the fact that without federal fiscal policy adjustments in 2009, the recession would be even worse.
That said, there hasn’t been the non-stop focus on job creation and reinvigorating the economy many of us have sought. At the very least, President Obama has failed to articulate that focus insistently enough. But when Republicans say they are livid about the Obama administration’s spending, it’s hard to swallow. This is the party that lined up for George W. Bush’s ten-year, trickle-down tax cuts that overwhelmingly helped the rich. They paid for a deficit-busting Medicare Part D subsidy and a war of choice in Iraq entirely on America’s credit card with China.
Republicans and Democrats need to engage in real debate on what government can actually do to improve the dismal economic picture across the country. In the age of the Internet, 30-second television spots should no longer dominate our politics. It’s not enough for Republicans to complain about deficits. If there were no stimulus, the recession would be a depression, and millions more would be out of work. And, of course, tax revenues would plummet leaving the deficit worse than before.
So where are the ideas? The UK example shows us that conservative cuts do actually hurt people: on medical treatment, rent subsidies, heating allowances, food stamps, and the like. If the US’s Republican solutions are different, they should be explicit in identifying how. And Democrats, it’s beyond time to stand up for the progressive principles that are not only most Americans’ values, but the better policy choice for everyone who isn’t the super-rich.
Los Angeles and First 