If The New York Times’ online headline is true, the focus of this year’s presidential election is unlikely to shift from the narrow deficit debate we have been mired in for the past few years.
“Obama Uses Budget to Set Election-Year Priorities,” it reads, followed by a story that focuses solely on deficit reduction, with a brief mention of the president’s stimulus plans.
There is good in this, to be sure — an increase in taxes on the wealthy and the beginnings of a change in the way we treat capital gains, both of which should generate needed revenue.
And there is bad, wholesale cuts in important departments and agencies — the Environmental Protection Agency, Labor — and a deceptively small cut in defense spending that should have been far greater.
Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog outlines the winners and losers — the biggest of which are the departments designed to protect consumers and the rights of Americans (Justice), workers (Labor) and the environment (EPA):
The heaviest cuts fall on the Justice Department (which would get $8.9 billion less for 2013, or a 33 percent cut in appropriations from 2012); Health and Human Services ($6.6 billion, or a 8.4 percent cut); Housing and Urban Development ($2.9 billion, or a 7.5 percent cut); the Labor Department ($1.2 billion, or 9 percent); the Treasury Department ($0.6 billion, or 4.5 percent); and the Army Corps of Engineers ($0.3 billion, or 6 percent). Also facing budget cuts are the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and the Department of Agriculture.
The base budget for the Department of Defense is being cut $5 billion — just 1 percent — but is being billed as a major savings because there are plans in place to cut the budget by nearly a half-trillion over the next 10 years. This savings is bogus, of course, because the budget at hand only set spending in the short term and there is no guarantee that Obama will be in office when the next budget must be pulled together. Backloading the savings plays to his base while appeasing the defense industry.
This is not the argument that we should be having at a time when unemployment stubbornly holds above 9 percent. Much deeper — and more immediate — cuts in defense spending are warranted, as are a much greater stimulus plan that puts state workers back to work and helps rebuild our decaying infrastructure.
The key thing to remember is that the federal budget deficit is a confluence of three things — the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the dramatic fall off in wealth and decline in jobs caused by the banking meltdown. Slashing money for the EPA and the Justice Department will do nothing to address these converging storms, and could help pave the way for further damage.
Yes, Medicare is a problem — but not because Medicare is flawed. Skyrocketing Medicare costs are a result of the failure of the American health-care system as a whole. We have created an incredibly efficient system that provides health care to seniors; we should expand the system to all Americans, taking private insurers — and profit — out of the mix, expanding the pool of those insured and spreading the cost and benefits in a more logical way. This would address Medicare and, just as importantly, expand coverage to all Americans.
A tangent, perhaps, but we are foolish to think we can address the problems with Medicare without addressing the problems with health care as a whole. And by creating a single-payer system for everyone, we would unlink health care from employment, cutting employer costs and making us more competitive.
Budgets are about priorities and this budget is not focused on job growth, from what I can tell. It is focused on a kind of austerity lite that is no good for anyone.
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