Don't Squander The Chance

By Ron Beasley

I'm probably not going to like a lot of the Obama foreign policy but I was ready for that.  The  Pappy Bush  realists will still be a lot better than the shrub Bush lunatics.  My real concern is domestic policy and economics.  With the economy in a shambles this is an opportunity to put Supply Side/trickle down economics in the ideological trash heap where it belongs along with laissez-faire capitalism.  Now Obama is saying some of the right things but not with as much enthusiasm as I would like.

MR. BROKAW:  Have the economic conditions changed what you hoped to do about taxes?  When Bill Daley, your friend and economic adviser, was on this broadcast two weeks ago, and I raised the question about whether you would raise taxes on those earning $250,000 or more a year, he gave a very strong indication that you would probably not do that, you would let the Bush tax cuts play out until 2011.  Is that your plan?

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA:  Well, understand what my original tax plan was.  It was a net tax cut.  Ninety-five percent of working families would get tax relief. To help pay for that, people like you and me, Tom, who make more than a quarter million dollars a year, would play--pay slightly more.  We'd essentially go back to the tax rates that existed back in the 1990s.  My economic team right now is examining do we repeal that through legislation? Do we let it lapse so that when the Bush tax cuts expire they're not renewed when it comes to wealthiest Americans?  And we don't yet know what the best approach is going to be, but the overall thrust is going to be that 95 percent of working families are going to get a tax cut, and the wealthiest Americans, who disproportionately benefited not only from tax cuts from the Bush administration but also disproportionately benefited when it comes to corporate profits and where the gains and productivity were going, they are going to give up a little bit more.

The Bush Tax cuts should be eliminated at once and I would go a step further - eliminate the Reagan tax cuts.  Those tax cuts 28 years ago were the beginning of  the failed supply side economic policy.  Now these were the right words:

Well, as I said, my economic team's taking a look at this right now.  But, but I think the important principle--because sometimes when we start talking about taxes and I say I want a more balanced tax code, people think, well, you know, that's class warfare.  No.  It, it turns out that our economy grows best when the benefits of the economy are most widely spread. And that has been true historically.  And, you know, the real aberration has been over the last 10, 15 years in which you've seen a huge shift in terms of resources to the wealthiest and the vast majority of Americans taking home less and less.  Their incomes, their wages have flatlined at a time that costs of everything have gone up, and we've actually become a more productive society.

So what we want to do is actually go back to what has been the traditional pattern.  We have a broad-based middle class, economic growth from the bottom up.  That, I think, will be the recipe for everybody doing better over the long term.

"Economic growth from the bottom up" - if there are customers with money the supply will follow.  Demand side economics which is what we had in the 20 plus years following WWII when the US became an economic power house. 

And we need bold moves - the time for single payer health insurance is now.  Part of our current economic problem is that 20 percent of the health care expenditure is being siphoned off by the insurance companies. 

I am not confident that an Obama administration will take advantage of the opportunities to undo the damage of Ronald Reagan.  I hope that I'm wrong!