Is Obama tacking right?

I sent my column off to The Progressive Populist last night. Its focus: Obama’s economic team and what it means for his governing philosophy. Does his appointment of center-right economic advisors like Lawrence Summers mean he will govern from the center-right on economic issues? I don’t think so, but there is a need for progressives to keep the pressure on.

That said, I just read this post on Open Left, which makes some of the same points. The poster, Paul Rosenberg, correctly points out that, without progressives at the policy table, “the idea of creating equity among the beneficiaries of large-scale investments will not even be raised in a rigorous fashion.”

This is one very concrete reason why it matters whether or not you have progressives in the top ranks of Obama advisors. There are very real, very pragmatic consequences to excluding people on the basis of “ideology.” Without such advocates for the economic interests of the broad mass of people, the vast majority of the benefits flowing from Obama’s substantial infrastructure initiatives may be expected to flow to the already wealthy, much the same way that Bush’s tax cuts primarily benefited that same group.

The point, as he says, is not to table infrastructure projects, but to design them in such a way as to share the benefits and the costs.

Of course, the infrastructure will be beneficial in and of itself. But if tens of millions of people will not only pay for it with their taxes, and then pay for it again with higher rents, or costlier mortgages, while a relative handful of wealthy real estate investors, land speculators and the like pocket literally billions of dollars, then it should not be hard to see how this doesn’t exactly qualify as government for the people, of the people and by the people.

Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive (and editor of my work with the Progressive Media Project), adds another name to the economic mix that progressives should be wary about: Peter Orszag, who was named as his new director of the Office of Management and Budget. The reason for concern is that Orszag has bought into the notion that Social Security is in trouble. And while he does not agree with conservative calls for privatization, he has called for “a reduction in benefits, which would apply to all workers age 59 and younger.”

Orszag and Diamond say that there is no free lunch in making sure Social Security remains solvent. So they propose cutting benefits and raising Social Security taxes.

But cutting benefits is unnecessary. The system is not in great peril and may only need minor adjustments to continue providing for American retirees well into the future. Among the tweaks, we could lift the cap on paying into the system, making the tax fairer (the cap makes the Social Security tax regressive, with lower-income wager-earners paying a greater percentage of their salary into Social Security than higher-income wage-earners) and generating more revenue.

In the end, we need to keep Obama honest, so to speak, and remind him that he won because he generated a lot of effort and interest from the young and the liberal wing of the party.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet