"Yesterday, the Senate immigration bill received its Congressional Budget Office budget score, which is kind of like a bar mitzvah for major legislation. They did great! In budget terms, the bill would reduce the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars over its first two decades, by bringing in and legalizing younger workers, who pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. But what the report really offers, beyond a guess at the impact on the government ledger, is a window into President Obama’s vision of long-term economic growth. For various reasons, Obama’s strategy to foster long-term prosperity has failed to attract attention. Liberals have generally, and understandably, concentrated on his response to the short-term economic crisis. Many of Obama’s growth initiatives are also wrapped together in social goals, which have instigated political controversy and obscured their growth-generating goals." "When conservatives consider this list, they see a litany of big government that could be motivated only by class warfare. Economic growth is a slogan conservatives have managed to own for themselves, and they have defined it as almost synonymous with low taxes and regulation. The idea that some other strategy could induce growth while also advancing liberal social goals strikes them as literally incredible. That mentality can be seen in the conservative response to the CBO’s immigration bill score. Jeff Sessions, last seen peddling fantastical claims about Obamacare and the budget, gawked, “The bill’s drafters relied on the same scoring gimmicks used by the Obamacare drafters to conceal its true cost.” The CBO also found that Obamacare reduces the deficit by a trillion dollars in its second decade, a prediction that, at the moment, looks if anything like a large underestimate. Noam Scheiber’s history of Obama’s response to the economic crisis, The Escape Artists, captures an irony of the Obama presidency. Fashioning a long-term growth strategy is, and has always been, Obama’s deepest passion. He’s been caught up in an economic crisis and a culture war over the role of government that he wants badly to escape."
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:59:02 +0000
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