Obama’s Common Sense Rebuttal

Less government, lower taxes, and everything will be fine — that’s the simplistic credo of the tea party movement. It was about time for President Obama to propose a blueprint that would remedy the dramatic American budget situation. But now he has to step up and aggressively defend his proposals: higher taxes on the rich, slash defense spending and reform America’s welfare state.

It’s Obama’s style to take a professorial approach to difficult political problems. Adoption of his Afghanistan strategy was preceded by intensive rounds of discussion with his national security advisors. Health care reform, on the other hand, was debated back and forth with the Republicans for months and ended with devastating consequences: it was talked to death.

Obama lost the opinion poll lead on health care reform and was only able to force a compromise after much effort. The version that was eventually approved was a far cry from his original concept.

The same danger lurked for his plans to attack America’s oppressive debt. The Republicans were taking the fight out of Obama. Of course, he had always warned against indiscriminate austerity and drastic cuts in government outlays just as the U.S. economy was beginning to find its way out of the worst crisis since the Great Depression.

He gave his earliest warning in the State of the Union speech at the end of January, when he called for continued investment in education, green technology and America’s infrastructure. But the man who thanked his oratorical skills for his election success had to watch as his message sank in a steady staccato from Republicans. They had taken up the simplistic credo of the tea party movement: smaller government, lower taxes and everything will be just fine.

It truly was high time for Obama to propose a common sense alternative more suited to the complexities of the problem. In addition to calling for reductions in government outlays, Obama’s proposal was a three-pronged approach. First, he wants to stop the creeping redistribution of America’s vast wealth to the benefit of a small group of the privileged. The wealthy had been increasingly liberated from paying their share for government. For them, taxes would be raised because they could best afford the increases. Second, America could no longer afford further growth of a gigantic military complex that had become over-inflated after a decade of Republican leadership.

And finally, the welfare state was in need of reforming because America couldn’t afford to keep up with the increasing numbers of baby-boomers who were reaching retirement age.

Obama must now aggressively defend these three elements of his reform plan. The plan can be accepted by his own party (even though liberals will clench their teeth as they agree with it) as well as by the independents who abandoned the Democrats in droves during last year’s congressional elections.

It’s the only way Obama will be able to show that he takes America’s concerns about the debt seriously and simultaneously regain public approval for the future direction in which he wants to take the nation.