"For Obama, a chance to push big changes" by Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | November 30, 2008
Amid the almost surreal numbers that describe the nation's financial crisis, President-elect Barack Obama and his incoming team are positioned to take advantage of a changed political environment and push for programs and reforms that only a few months ago might have been unimaginable....
But it will NOT be the CHANGE YOU VOTED FOR, America. You know, an end to the wars and that sort of thing. And if it is not a good change.... (shudder)
The projected budget deficit this fiscal year may top $1 trillion - more than double the record - and the national debt has shot up a breathtaking $15 billion per day in the past 10 weeks, to $10.7 trillion and counting, according to the US Treasury's Bureau of the Public Debt.
Mounting job losses in a braking economy have provided an opening for the Democratic president-elect, who will enjoy an expanded partisan majority in both chambers of Congress, to join the ranks of previous presidents who have undertaken major initiatives in bad times. As Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago congressman who will be chief of staff in Obama's White House said recently, "Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste . . . They are opportunities to do big things."
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Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University's graduate school of public service.... predicted that the stimulus package will include such initiatives as Obama's campaign vow to expand national service programs like AmeriCorps.
Yup, gonna get that DRAFT THROUGH!
Obama has also said his economic team will identify waste and programs that don't work to find savings to offset some of the increases. Light, who has chronicled the growth of the federal bureaucracy under Bush, said Obama may be able to achieve his goal of cutting $40 billion in contractor costs, a modest sum in light of the skyrocketing deficit. By Light's calculations, the Bush administration added 3.2 million contract employees at a cost of $250 billion, mostly for national defense and antiterrorism.
But Light said Obama will not be able to duplicate the Clinton administration's reduction of the federal payroll by almost 400,000 civilian employees because most of those cuts resulted from defense cuts and widespread military base closings after the end of the Cold War.
Stephen J. Wayne, professor of American government at Georgetown University, said the political and economic climate should heighten Obama's clout.
"Presidents have more power during crises when they are elected to fix something," Wayne said. "He should be able to push through a variety of programs when he is the strongest and the fear of not backing him is the greatest. . . . There is a crisis that demands action, and Congress has a lower public approval rating than President Bush, which says something."
Alice M. Rivlin, a Brookings Institution fellow who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget in the first Clinton administration, said Obama should seize the opportunity in this climate to harness the price-setting power of Medicare's single-payer model to increase efficiency and reduce the cost of healthcare, and to insure Social Security's long-term solvency....
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has written biographies of FDR and Lincoln, said, "What happens in times of crisis is the president can mobilize the sentiment of the country in a way that goes over the natural competing interests in Congress and the smaller obstacles in the way of change," she said. "It allows you to take much bigger steps." --more--"
Gee, they told us not to PLAGIARIZE in college, and yet HERE is SOMEONE getting accolades for doing JUST THAT!!!
