Making Sense

Later this week, a House-Senate conference committee will begin to decide the most important matter in the federal budget debate—whether health care reform can be enacted by majority rule. The House version of the congressional Budget Resolution includes “reconciliation” language that would—if necessary—allow health care reform to be adopted by the Senate without requiring 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Senate version of the budget does not include reconciliation. In order to enact serious health care reform in 2009, progressives must insist that the conference committee adopt the House reconciliation language.

President Obama convened a “fiscal responsibility summit” at the White House on Monday, February 23. CAF Co-Director Roger Hickey was one of the participants. Progressive leaders, such as Hickey, support fiscal responsibility, of course. Every mainstream economist tells us that in a deep economic downturn—like the present one—the responsible course is to stimulate the economy with deficit spending. After a recovery, which may take years, everyone agrees that we will need a strategy to reduce deficits over the long-term.

The problem with a debate over “fiscal responsibility” is that right-wingers try to turn it into an opportunity to claim we have a problem with “entitlement programs” that require us to make drastic cuts in Social Security and Medicare. This is both factually and morally wrong.

In his farewell speech last night, George W. Bush said, in essence, his presidency wasn’t so bad. But numbers don’t lie. And the cold, hard facts show that the Bush Administration was an unmitigated disaster.

The American economy is in its worst downturn since the Great Depression. President-Elect Barack Obama is calling for “swift and bold” action on his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan to stop the hemorrhaging of the economy. Predictably, conservative ideologues are attacking the Obama plan from every direction. Here are some common sense responses to conservative assaults.