Obama’s legacy may be eternal debt
President Barack Obama’s first Christmas in the Oval Office has produced a lot of goodies and some sizable lumps of coal for Americans, many without jobs. By far the largest package under every taxpayer’s tree is the massive debt, a present that nobody wants and is only going to get larger as health care reform comes on line. By doctoring up the system that represents 16 percent of the economy, the president and his Democratic allies in Congress – Republicans are out of the picture – have assured us that the expenditures for this monumental task will be quite manageable, only $850 billion or so over the next decade. But if history is any judge that is unadulterated hog wash.
Anyone who was around in 1965 can tell you that Medicare and Medicaid cost projections were a fraction of what they actually became. In fact, as we all know, bankruptcy for the big Medicare program is just around the corner. It would surprise no one if the addition of 30 some million to the health insurance rolls and the variety of other new benefits might not surpass the $2 trillion mark by 10 years from now.
This is a president who seems driven to accomplish all the things a long line of predecessors have not. With 58 Dem-ocrats and two Independents in his party’s caucus in the Senate and a healthy majority in the House he is quite able to play Santa Claus to the Republican’s Grinch. For the time being at least.
Lurking just around the edge of his ambition is something called the national debt, much of it held by the Chinese who generally don’t believe in Kris Kringle. The enormity of that problem can’t be underestimated. This huge borrowing to finance the bail out, health reform and a new surge in Afghanistan is an increasingly large millstone for future generations. More troublesome is the fact that unlike the old days it isn’t something that Americans owe themselves.
The president as he completes one year also can look forward to a national mid-term election that historically costs the presiding party seats in both houses. In hammering through the health bill, the congressional leadership, particularly in the Senate, has managed to avoid all-out internecine warfare, but just barely. Wounds to the Democratic Party base are deep and divisive. Liberals believe their president, in the interest of expediency, gave away the key to true reform, a government run insurance alternative that would eventually lead to single payer universal health care. The liberal former party chairman, Dr. Howard Dean, even urged Democrats to vote against the final bill.
There is a distance to go before the final i is dotted. The House version does include a public option provision but there is little chance that it can survive in the negotiations to reconcile differences in the two bills. Inclusion would doom ultimate agreement. The prospects for quick passage in the Senate went from slim to certain when Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson accepted a compromise that would assure stricter limits on insurance for abortions. His was the 60th vote needed to break a Republican filibuster.
Polls show Obama has lost some ground in approval ratings and it will take much of the year to mend fences in his own party broken in his determination to become one of the most productive freshman chief executives in U.S. history. Only Franklin Roosevelt can come close followed by Lyndon Johnson who benefited in the one term he won on his own from his legislative knowledge and a boost from the assassination of a popular John F. Kennedy.
Before the voters go to the polls next November, Santa Obama will hope that the promises held out for success in Af-ghanistan, whatever that may be, are kept and that the economy mends enough to bring down the jobless rate. If neither occurs, the president could spend a far different Christmas next year, and Americans by then will have made the next two years more difficult with their votes.
If you have work, Merry Christmas.
E-mail Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at thomassondan@aol.com.