Why Barack Obama may turn out to be a great President

This is, I think, a tempting non sequitur: no legislation of substance is going to pass the US Congress until the Republicans succeed in taking back the House and gain enough seats in the Senate for bills to be crafted on a truly bipartisan basis. From an electoral point of view, it would be foolish on the Republicans’ part to do anything more than obstruct until they make significant electoral gains, which may come as early as this November.

All true as far as Republicans are concerned, but the President and his party might still get their act together and pass legislation through the reconciliation process and by other means. Barack Obama may yet turn out to be a great President, despite a first year in office in which his signature cause, the effort to pass health insurance reform, failed.

Obama would turn out to be a great President if two things took place. First of all, between now and November, Obama and his party need to pass legislation that mandates the purchase of health insurance by the federal government, the states, employers, and/or individuals, in the case of all US residents. Of course, the President has to do that with the majorities he has, not the ones he wishes he had. A stark irony: there is no politically feasible way to pass such legislation except by not raising taxes and not cutting benefits. In short, passable legislation will make federal and state deficits even more unsustainable than they are now.

But it is necessary to make the budget crises of federal and state governments worse before making them better. Let me explain.

That’s because the second thing that needs to take place under Obama’s watch is that all three major entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, are put on a sound financial basis. A coalition of conservatives and liberals might accomplish this if and only if health insurance was universal: otherwise liberals have no incentive to sign on.

What entitlement reform must consist of is not rocket science. Robert Samuelson:

At age 65, average Americans live for another 18 years. Government now subsidizes each of them an average of about $25,000 a year (almost $14,000 Social Security, $11,000 Medicare). We cannot sensibly afford all these subsidies without oppressive tax increases (see above), deep cuts in defense and other programs or immense budget deficits that someday might trigger another financial crisis. . . . By the administration's estimates, that publicly held debt (the accumulation of all annual deficits) balloons from $5.8 trillion in 2008 to $18.6 trillion in 2020.

Eligibility ages for both Social Security and Medicare should be gradually raised to 70, coupled with a requirement for people to buy into Medicare at 65. Wealthier retirees should receive lower Social Security benefits and pay more for Medicare. Programs that have outlived their usefulness need to be abolished: farm subsidies, for instance. Even with these cuts, future taxes would need to rise. Unless you're confronting these issues -- and Obama isn't -- you're evading the central budget problems.

Samuelson’s list is good as far as it goes, but it is too short. Health care reform is also essential, not just health insurance reform. I’m a pastor; I see end-of-life situations all the time. It has to become routine for doctors to tell their patients, “Look, I can do this and this; if I do it, the tab will be $60,000 / $120,000. Much of the tab will be passed on to your children and grandchildren. Chances are, the intervention will prolong your life two weeks / two months / two years. It’s your call.” This would lead to hospitals and doctors slashing the amount of business they do. Realistically, it needs to be slashed by 20 or 30 per cent going into the future.

Will doctors and hospitals voluntarily shrink their business? Of course not. So we are talking about reform of a deeper kind: a new social compact, in which people over the age of 65 and people in general voluntarily become thrifty about making use of the benefits they are entitled to, so as not to mortgage the future of their children and grandchildren.

Furthermore, a number of things we all pay for on behalf of others if we are part of the same insurance pool need to be paid for by the individuals who want them. This applies not only to abortions but to Viagra and sex changes.

The prison business (it is a very big business) also needs to be reformed. Total expenditures in this area need to be frozen and therefore (due to inflation and other factors) gradually shrunk. SSI payments (another out-of-control entitlement) need to be revised so that, once again, total expenditures are frozen and gradually shrunk. A significant number of military bases are redundant and need to be closed. Rumsfeld was right about this. 

A cross-section of responsible Republicans and Democrats might tackle the problems referred to, when neither party has overwhelming control and with the help of a first-rate community organizer. That will be the current President. Or not. 

Comments

[Colin Toffelmire]

American military expenditures is an area that's always puzzled me terribly. I find it very hard to believe that the US military really needs the astoundingly large percentage of the US budget that it has, in order to provide a sound and effective national defense.

[JohnFH]

That's true.

It might also be argued that the benefits offered to those who enlist date back to a different kind of job market. They could be scaled back at least temporarily. The military-industrial complex, furthermore, is famous for cost overruns and the continuance of obsolete weapons programs.

[Colin Toffelmire]

To say nothing of the fact that it's an industry founded on the perpetration and proliferation of death and violence.

[JohnFH]

Or is that a caricature?

Just up the road from where I pastor, a truck company makes the armor-plated vehicles that save the lives of ordinary soldiers (US, Iraqi and Afghan) who would otherwise be perforated to pieces by exploding homicide bombers and IEDs.

The larger context is that the system of NATO and US bases around the world and the global force projection the bases embody remain the linchpin of the international order. From my neck of the woods, kids go off to South Korea or Italy as often as they go off to Iraq or Afghanistan. Quite possibly, they are in Haiti right now.

[Colin Toffelmire]

It's not a caricature. The military-industrial complex exists on a diet of chaos. Some of that, like the earthquake in Haiti, is unavoidable. Some of it is much more avoidable.

And as to armor-plated trucks, they are needed because they are deployed in a theatre of war. I'm fine with the fact that they protect the lives of soldiers on the ground, but let's not pretend that a defensive weapons-system is any less tied to death and violence than an offensive system. If nobody were shooting at those soldiers they wouldn't need the armor-plating. The question is, Why is somebody shooting at them, and does that have anything to do with the fact that major corporations need people to keep shooting at each other in order to maintain profit margins? I think the answer is, Yes, very much so.

[Colin Toffelmire]

Oh, and as to military personnel working in places that are not theatres of war, and doing very good work in many places, I could not agree more. My point is that this kind of work need not be the purview of the military, even should not be the purview of the military

And, whose "international order"? is an important question as well.

[JohnFH]

Great conversation, Colin.

Like you, I am not inclined to de-emphasize the profit motive as a factor. But I want to be careful about how I describe the way it works. It's important not to discuss the profit motive in a vacuum. What are other, perhaps more important factors? For example, why does China have the army and navy it does? What is their force projection about? Chavez of Venezuela has sparked a regional arms race. Is the profit motive of arms producers behind this? I think not. The will to power and dominate plays a greater role. When all is said and done, conflicting views of good and evil are at stake.

I understand your point that the military-industrial complex exists on a diet of chaos.

We can choose not to intervene where chaos reigns. We have so chosen in the case of the Congo; to my mind that makes us co-responsible for the rape, torture, and killing of millions of people. The complicity is no different than you or I standing by in a playground and watching a boy pull a knife on an unarmed girl as he cuts off her ears and nose off. Then he goes to the next and the next. Then he leaves his victims to die. And we still do nothing. Nick Kristof of the NYT has been chronicling this of late.

To which you might counter that we make things worse when we do intervene. I wonder if the Iraqi Shia and the Kurds agree. I wonder if the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanians agree. Not to my knowledge.

By and large, I see the military-industrial complex as parasitic to conflicts which have origins elsewhere. In the same way, the health care industry is parasitic to a society's willingness to do whatever it takes, and spend whatever resources are necessary, to prolong the life of a person for one more week or one more month. The health care industry does not (usually) initiate the dying process. But it profits handsomely from it. $90,000 on average is spent on health care in the US in the last couple of weeks of a person's life.

With respect to violence, I think there is an analogy with sex and nitroglycerine (analogy courtesy of Don Needham). Sex per se is not a sin and neither is it salvation. The same applies to nitroglycerine. It heals hearts. It blows up bridges.

What did you think of Obama's Niebuhrian Nobel Peace Prize speech? My reaction to it was closer to that of Glen Stassen (though I am not a card-carrying pacifist) than to that of Kim Fabricius. Go here:

http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2010/01/obama-and-afghanistan-poverty-of.html

http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2010/01/peacemaking-and-afghanistan-another.html

[Colin Toffelmire]

There are, I think, two different conversations here, and I also suspect that we mostly agree on both of them. Here's the telling sentence for me in your last response:

"By and large, I see the military-industrial complex as parasitic to conflicts which have origins elsewhere."

I would have been perfectly happy to write that very thing. This is what I was trying to say when I noted that the military-industrial complex is founded upon the proliferation of death and violence. I freely grant that the military force of any given nation need not be used only for evil, and that sometimes it must make use of violence in defense of the innocent. I struggle with the idea of "just war" but, with Bonhoeffer I think, I can imagine many situations where all actions are sin and our only available option is to choose that sin which is least...sometimes that means we must choose war.

BUT, the corporations who found their continued existence on the proliferation of violence are, as you rightly say, parasites. I do not grant that there is no other way but to feed the parasite whatever it wishes, which is more or less what the US government does. How the government uses what the parasite gives it, well that's a whole other kettle of fish. My point is, the parasitic relationship is a very, very, very bad thing, and that it probably leads to needless death and destruction, and not just because of the products and services it provides, but because of the funding that it diverts into it's vast maw for the satisfaction of it's insatiable gluttony.

[JohnFH]

I've been trying hard to disagree with you, Colin, for the sake of understanding the issues better. But you're right; we're not that far apart.

There is enough for at least three conversations in what we've started.

Bonhoeffer is a very interesting example. On the theoretical plane, he was attracted to the pacifist tradition. On the practical plane, he became a co-conspirator in an assassination plot.

I'm not sure we should expect life to be devoid of such contradictions.

[Colin Toffelmire]

Yes, at least three conversations. And you are right, there are many subtle problems involved.

A good friend of mine, who is also a Bonhoeffer specialist, provides what I think is a wonderful analysis of Bonhoeffer, and I hinted at it above. He doesn't think that Bonhoeffer gave up his pacifism, but that the situation didn't offer any pacifist options that were not also sin. Sin was all that was available to him, and so he chose the best sin, if that makes sense. I prefer that to a facile attempt to either justify war or to justify not defending the innocent in the pursuit of pacifism.

Thanks for the conversation John. This is why I read your blog and interact with you, because I like that you don't revert to easy or predictable answers. And you like to argue, which (in my mind at least) is a good thing.

[JohnFH]

Thank you, Colin.

[Gary Simmons]

Good stuff! Thanks for posting this.

I just happened to hear on my iTunes: oseh shalom bimromav, hu yaaseh shalom aleinu.