Making Sense Alerts

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.

Last week, President-Elect Barack Obama promised to act quickly and boldly “to modernize our health care system for the twenty-first century; to reduce costs for families and businesses; and to finally provide affordable, accessible health care for every American.”

The health insurance industry is worried. And they have begun to attack the key feature of Obama’s health plan—his proposal that Americans should be able to choose a public insurance plan (like Medicare) in addition to a variety of private insurance plans. This idea of “public plan choice” has been endorsed by Obama, by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, and by Congressman Pete Stark and over 160 other Members of the new Congress.

Opponents of health care reform want to limit our options to the same health insurance companies that got us into the current mess. We can’t let that happen.

President-Elect Barack Obama has pledged to “create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.” To succeed, he needs our help.

The Campaign for America’s Future is launching an effort to mobilize support for a bold, multifaceted economic recovery plan—a program that is substantial, strategic, and sustained. The “Main Street Recovery Program” has already been endorsed by top labor leaders including John Sweeney (AFL-CIO), Anna Burger (Change to Win), Leo Gerard (Steelworkers), Dennis Van Roekel (NEA), Andrew Stern (SEIU), and Gerald McEntee (AFSCME); , the heads of nationwide progressive organizations including ACORN, Alliance for Justice, Americans for Democratic Action, Economic Policy Institute, Jobs with Justice, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, National Organization for Women, People For the American Way, Sierra Club, US Action, and US Student Association; and more than 120 economists including Dean Baker, Jeff Faux, James Galbraith, Heidi Hartman, Robert Johnson, Robert Kuttner, and Lawrence Mishel.

We’d like your endorsement as well. Please click here to read the plan and add your name to the hundreds who have already endorsed this program. We will publicly deliver these endorsements to the White House, Congress and the news media.

A lot of people are angry about the proposed $34 billion package to rescue the auto industry. Much of this anger is misplaced. It should be directed at the Wall Street banks that caused this crisis and have garnered literally trillions of dollars in guarantees, loans and investments without real commitments to change their business plans or executive compensation. In contrast, the auto companies and their unions have detailed plans, including concessions on CEO compensation and wrenching concessions by the unions. Ultimately, whether or not we are angry, we are in a major recession and America cannot afford to let our auto industry fail.

On Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research formally declared that the U.S. economy entered a recession in December 2007—the second economic downturn of George W. Bush’s presidency. We’ve lost jobs every month since then. This downturn, already long, is likely to be painfully deep unless our government quickly enacts an economic recovery program that is substantial, strategic, and sustained.

The 2008 election has come down to one overriding issue: our economy. In all recent major polls, the majority of Americans name “the economy and jobs” as the issue that is most important to them. In overwhelming numbers, people are looking for change. The winners of Tuesday’s election—from first-time state legislators to the president—will have one clear mandate: make the American economy work for working Americans.

On October 28, 1980, about 28 years ago, Ronald Reagan framed an election with the question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” That’s still an important question. After eight years of conservative rule, are we better off? No. The conservatives’ failure is complete. It is time to change course.