To intervene or not to intervene? That is the question.
Apparently NATO has become sensitive to the outcry by Libyan rebels for more air strikes against Gaddafi's forces. The French and British are now pressing other members of NATO to become more involved in the air strikes to protect the rebels. The pressure is directed particularly at Germany who has refused any involvement in the Libyan intervention and the U.S. who led the air campaign at the beginning but passed the baton to NATO to take the lead in the air campaign. Germany is sticking with its non-involvement but despite our supposed commitment to play a secondary role in the Libyan civil war, it has been reported that we are indeed still participating in air strikes against Gaddafi.
And our seemingly firm commitment to NATO about a secondary role stands in strange contradiction to a statement by a U.S. army general to Congress that "some consideration" might be given to the U.S. being part of any international ground force to help the Libyan rebels. However, General Ham, a former NATO commander, said any such U.S. role might make it more difficult for continuing Arab support of the international coalition. Certainly any such U.S. participation would run counter to another supposed commitment that we would have no "boots on the ground" in Libya. Stay tuned for further backtracking on our supposed commitments on intervention policy.
While the U.S. role in Libya apparently has a malleable arms-length character, the same does not apply to Iraq whereby former President George W. Bush's agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all U.S. troops to be out of that country by the end of this year. It has been obvious for some time that we would like to retain a military presence in Iraq beyond the withdrawal deadline to continue the training of Iraqi security forces and to act as a deterent to any Iranian ambitions to directly intervene in Iraqi affairs. In what was supposedly his last visit to Iraq before leaving office, Defense Secretary Gates said the U.S. would be agreeable to maintaining a presence in Iraq, if that country wanted us to stay. As could be expected, the Gates offer was challenged immediately by Muqtada al-Sadr, the virulent anti-American cleric with close ties to Iran and a partner in the coalition government of Prime Minister al-Maliki.
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The budget melodrama. President Obama has now come forth with his own long-term plan for reducing the deficit via changes in the big entitlement programs -- social security, medicare, and medicaid. Since the two health care programs are central to any plan for long term deficit reduction, the absence of such a plan in his February budget plan for fiscal 2012 was clearly noticeable. With the GOP's recent 2012 budget alternative which includes major restructuring of the two health care programs, Obama's plan released today has the appearance of playing catch up with the GOP.
As indicated in a previous posting, the Republican plan should be seen as dead on arrival (DOA) since it reads like vintage Republican efforts to cut out the federal role and turn both money and program substance over to the insurance industry and the states. It is highly unlikely that the GOP approach could make its way through Congress. But there are central features of the Obama plan that also are likely to make it DOA. A key feature of his long-term deficit reduction plan is to pay part of the deficit reductions through increased taxes on upper income earners. The key to this is allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire at the end of 2012, while retaining the cuts for the middle income earners. Obama sought to do the same thing last December but had to give up the effort in exchange for GOP support of continued assistance for the unemployed and a one year reduction in the social security payroll tax, a disguised form of stimulus spending. Obama's plan would also cap itemized deductions for the wealthiest two percent of taxpayers.
On spending, Obama proposed reductions of both domestic discretionary and defense spending.
On the two health care programs which are the chief drivers of the deficit spending and debt problems, Obama did not propose any restructuring of the programs but would limit the growth in spending per individual for medicare. By contrast the GOP has proposed major overhauls of both medicare and medicaid.
We now have the frameworks of both the President and the GOP for reducing deficit spending by $4-6 trillion dollars over the 10-12 years, but the proposals are so fundamentally different that it can only be said, to use poker terminology, that these are just openers. Having declared their openers, they can now proceed to the politically ugly task of seeing what kind of plan can be cobbled that will be acceptable to both parties which will be under heavy pressure from their extreme wings.
It should be noted that neither the GOP nor the Obama plan would do anything about paying off some of the national debt, but only reduce deficit spending. Perhaps it is time for the politically unthinkable -- to consider letting the Bush tax cuts expire for all income groups and do something about both long-term deficit reduction and debt repayment.
I am wondering how much of Obama's talk about wanting to reduce spending is real or if it is just an election year. He seems to be an advocate of big government. We can't afford to become a nanny state and that is where less government is needed. Less government with less spending. There are people who truly need help and should get help but we are generating more more and more freeloaders. The governemnt is spending almost twice as much as it did in 2000. Yes, there are the wars, but we are spending a lot more in social programs and it doesn't seem that people are better off now than they were in 2000. The opposite seems true.
ReplyDeleteIf we go boots in the ground after all the political speak that we will absolutely not go boots on the ground, the credibility of our leaders will be sorely shaken. Let the countries with more at stake take a more active role and let the US focus on the two wars in which we are already involved.
whittler1b
ReplyDeleteYes, Obama was certainly engaged in election year politics. But that's only half of the problem. The Republicans are doing the same thing with their 2012 budget proposal. Both are playing to the left and right political bases.
The only consolation is that both side are agreed that the deficit/debt problem is real and large and so, presumably, needs to be dealt with through major changes in spending and revenue policy. As a left of center person I can't agree with you on who benefits and who doesn't and to me insufficient attention is given to raising revenues. As I said in the posting, the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire completely at the end of 2012 and return to the tax base of Clinton, along with some serious changes in the tax code to close both personal and corporate loopholes. Along with this, of course, is the need to seriously address spending cuts in both discretionary and entitlement programs. That's a lot of reform to expect in a highly charged political atmosphere.
Couldn't agree with you more on the boots on the ground policy. What concerns me is that strongest policy statements on what we shouldn't and won't do in Libya came from Secretary Gates who will be leaving office in the not too far distant future. If there is any backsliding now, I shudder to think what could happen when he leaves.
Germany is playing it smart and we should take notice of that and follow their lead. The French and Brits can pressure anyone else they want but we are already involved in two other wars and they should not expect us to become more involved in Libya. I would also find it unconscionable if this country gets involved with boots on the ground in Libya and shame on any leader who takes us down that road.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to all the budget mess I can say that we cannot spend our way out of debt. Any politician who is more concrened with their re-election and won't tackle the dark green money issues should not be in office. We need people who are willing to get the country out of the mess it is currentlyh in.
Germany is right but it's a little too late for us to follow their noninvolvement lead. It would not be a good idea to back away from our supporting role commitment. We are having enough trouble in the Arab world already with our image of not being a reliable ally. The real thing we need to avoid is expansion of our commitment to any boots on the ground.
ReplyDeleteBelieve there are few around anymore who argue that more federal spending is a solution to our problems, except perhaps Paul Krugman. In my view the seeming willingness to tackle the dark green money is a necessary but not sufficient solution to our fiscal problems. That must be flanked by raising more revenue and on that I would go beyond what both sides are saying and get rid of the Bush tax cuts entirely. There will be outcries about raising taxes on the middle class but I believe those taxpayers would be willing to have their taxes increased if it was needed to effectively deal with the problem. And don't forget, about 45 percent of taxpayers don't pay any taxes because of the structure of the tax code and that must certainly include the lower strata of the middle income class.
It would certainly make it more fair if everyone was paying some percentage of taxes. I have noticed that a lot of people who call for others to pay more taxes are those who do not pay any taxes at all and I always wondered why tax rebates went to everybody and not just the people who paid the taxes in the first place.But the loopholes should be closed for companies like GE who did not pay any taxes and some of the deductions that can be taken should be elminated. But I think the money can be had other ways instead of first jumping to raising taxes. I saw a piece yesterday about $286.7 million dollars being overpaid to the UN and a GOP report about $125 billion in unaccounted for expenditures. Obviously people do not like to pay more taxes but for me I like the idea even less because it might not be necessary if the government would get its act together and stop the waste, fraud and abuse. They want more money from hardworking people who are already paying most of the taxes (as you siad 45 percent do not) and it is just throwing good money after bad. It might not seem so horrible if there was any confidence that the money would actually be used to reduce the deficit and get the country back on track but it is probably going to be wasted or used for some new spending prorgram.
ReplyDeleteJeffrey
ReplyDeleteThe reason for such a high percentage of nontaxpayers is that a very large portion of this group does not make enough money to even get into the lowest tax bracket. There are certainly plenty of places to close personal and corporate tax loopholes but some of the loopholes are very popular generally and others are dear to the hearts of the corporate world, usually with the support of pro-business Republicans.
There is no question that there is a lot of waste and fraud in the system, but the heart of the problem is what is down the road in the demographics. The best example of this is the huge and growing burden of medicare. The number of those eligible will go from 47 million now to 88 million by 2040. And health care costs have and are likely to continue to grow faster than inflation. The revenues to support the program (payroll taxes, monthly premiums paid by those on medicare, and general revenues) are inadequate to pay the cost. Right now these revenues cover only 40 percent of the cost; by 2040 that will be only 30 percent. And, of course, politics contributes to some of medicare's high costs. When the prescription drug plan was added to medicare during the Bush administration, the plan itself had strong support in Congress but the GOP voted against letting the government use its great purchasing power to negotiate for lower drug prices with the drug companies. The VA can negotiate and consequently its drug costs are only 40 percent of the medicare drug costs.
In short, we do indeed have some major problems, particularly with the health care programs that keep making the deficit hole deeper. Without some fundamental changes in controlling these costs and significant changes in the tax structure to get more revenue there is no way out of the deficit and debt problems.