Obama's Budget Reconciliation Strategy Is For Adults
By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Human beings like narratives, and analogies. They make things easier to understand. It is not surprising, then, that Americans have often been described as a big, fractious family. And, in recent years, the family analogy has been stretched to include the Daddy Party and the Mommy Party. The daddy was supposedly the GOP, all stern and disciplined. And the mommy was the Democrats, all caring and understanding.
I have always preferred a different family-based metaphor, however, which more accurately divides Washington between the Grown Ups and the Babies.
It is a matter of fact in the nation's capital that at any given moment there is a small group of Grown Ups that actually get things done. And then there are the Babies, crying and whining and messing. You don't have to be a Democrat to be a Grown Up, and you don't have to be a Republican to be a Baby. Or vice versa.
When I look at the current economic crisis, and what is being done to address it, I must sadly conclude that we are suffering from an overabundance of Babies, especially in the Republican Party, the Senate, and the media, who are all taking turns crying, "Too hard! Too complicated! Nooooo!"
Take the Obama administration's current proposals to expand post-secondary education; reform the health care system, and take an initial market-based step to cut emissions of greenhouse gasses. These are Grown Up ideas that deserve to be studied seriously. If they are flawed, then other Grown Ups should offer serious alternatives. But if they have no serious alternatives, the Babies should not be stunned to learn that the Grown Ups are going ahead with their plans.
It's called "reconciliation," children. An arcane budgetary tool. It's not nice. But it gets things done.
And that is what the Grown Ups do.
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Tags: federal budget | Barack Obama | Obama administration
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Reader Comments
The only people who use the term "Grown Ups" are infantile.
Anyone who offers a solution should be able to explain how it will work. The problem here is that you have Obama offering ridiculous solutions, which historically have either worked poorly, or have made things worse.
It is very simple minded to assume that because someone has enough historical preference to know when an idea is flawed, that somehow that person is “whining”. Because someone does not offer another solution does not mean that the current proposed solution is not flawed.
Your metaphor works poorly to describe a mouse that is shocked every time he goes for the cheese. The mouse’s eventual lack of will is not ignorance, but proof that the mouse is learning.
The Obama administration is either too ignorant to know that their ideas are flawed, or knows they are and wants them that way. Either way this does not make their actions “mature”.
Grown Ups
The problem with this article is that John Farrell thinks he is the only one who knows what grown up is. It does not occur to him that many of the offered solutions are worse than the problems. We are being forced these days to either get on board with some version of current "solutions" or we are called babies and whiners. Mr. Farrell, the babies are the ones who think that the government should do everything for them. I am not rich and never have been. I don't know what it is like to live even your life style. But, I don't want any more government solutions that reward people for being on the same political page instead of rewarding them for their effort. Perhaps you should come out here in the real world and see the all these people who are becoming a part of the "help me" economy. It is becoming a load that is going to break those of us who would like to pay our own way.
Furthermore, we are spending money we do not have. We have borrowed enough. It is time to stop. That means you have to say "No!" to a lot of programs. There would be a lot less fuss if we just did what we could afford.
Grown Ups Behaving Badly
The House Democrats are pushing for this reconciliation maneuver so they will not have to stand and vote for Obama initiatives, such as raising taxes by a trillion dollars or so. Is this the high-mindedness you have in mind?
This is not a new maneuver, but to use it to move massive, landmark legislation is revolutionary, and tantamount to making an end run around our Constitution.
Yes, there are Grown Ups who would do that, too.
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