Moment of Truth
Robert Kuttner
HuffPost
March 2010 will either be remembered as the month when the scales fell from Barack Obama's eyes and he realized that the bipartisan fantasy, given the current Republican Party, is a fool's errand. Or it will go down in history as the moment when Obama had a chance to change course and emerge as a leader -- and flinched. Which will it be?
Right up until the moment of the February 25th summit on health reform, the administration seems determined to send out mixed signals. The president has been stressing all of the areas in which his own plan overlaps some Republican bill or another. But, as Obama surely knows, most of the supposed areas of consensus are superficial.
For example, in theory both Obama and the Republicans would allow health insurance policies to be marketed across state lines. But the Democrats' version would include consumer safeguards. The Republican counterpart would encourage insurance companies to re-incorporate in the state with the weakest regulation and promote a race to the bottom.
Bipartisanship was also the word du jour when the president announced his fiscal commission. Everything is supposedly on the table. Yet no Republican seems willing to raise taxes. And no Democrat worthy of the name would sacrifice Social Security. If we had the nerve to restore progressive taxation in this country, we could have our fiscal balance and our social investment, too. No bipartisanship there.
(More here.)
HuffPost
March 2010 will either be remembered as the month when the scales fell from Barack Obama's eyes and he realized that the bipartisan fantasy, given the current Republican Party, is a fool's errand. Or it will go down in history as the moment when Obama had a chance to change course and emerge as a leader -- and flinched. Which will it be?
Right up until the moment of the February 25th summit on health reform, the administration seems determined to send out mixed signals. The president has been stressing all of the areas in which his own plan overlaps some Republican bill or another. But, as Obama surely knows, most of the supposed areas of consensus are superficial.
For example, in theory both Obama and the Republicans would allow health insurance policies to be marketed across state lines. But the Democrats' version would include consumer safeguards. The Republican counterpart would encourage insurance companies to re-incorporate in the state with the weakest regulation and promote a race to the bottom.
Bipartisanship was also the word du jour when the president announced his fiscal commission. Everything is supposedly on the table. Yet no Republican seems willing to raise taxes. And no Democrat worthy of the name would sacrifice Social Security. If we had the nerve to restore progressive taxation in this country, we could have our fiscal balance and our social investment, too. No bipartisanship there.
(More here.)
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