Can Obama Stimulate Republicans - Road to the Middle Class

AFTER THE thunder of the Wall Street Journal conservative edit-page folks, now we get the opinion of the liberal news side (don’t ask why the Journal has two opinion pages).

Today the Journal’s Gerald F. Seib wonders whether President Obama will be able to sweeten the stimulus pot enough to attract some Republican votes. President Obama’s heart is in the right place, but the stimulus package creates a conflict between the need for fast action on the economy and his promise of an end to partisan wrangling.

The passage of the bill without a single Republican vote showed the tension between those dual Obama goals. By ceding so much authority to House Democratic leaders to write and then steer the initial version of the big stimulus package — as opposed to offering his own version and trying to dictate legislative strategy — Mr. Obama got action quickly. But he also got a bill with fewer concessions to Republican wishes than the president himself seems willing to make, and the vote showed it.

A stimulus plan without Republican support would be a replay of the first year partisanship of the Carter and the Clinton administrations. In neither case did the overt liberal partisanship turn out too well for the president and his party. That contrasted with President Reagan, who did get bipartisan majorities for his proposals.

Preventing a similar outcome now likely requires expansion and modification of the tax portion of the stimulus package to accommodate Republican wishes for a more business-friendly mix, and further reduction of the questionable spending provisions in the House bill. Republicans need a reason to swim against the tide in their party.

But here’s an idea. How about a stimulus package that actually stimulates the economy? Loyal partisan that he is, Seib rather dances away from the fact that the stimulus plan is nearly 90 percent to-the-victor-goes-the-spoils. There really is no reason for Republicans to sign on to any stimulus package that doesn’t genuinely stimulate the economy.

So far all we’ve seen from the Obama adminstration is silly subsidies and tax credits. That sort of thing reduces the real economic issues into special interest goodies.

If the Obama adminstration wanted to do one thing to help Americans rather than Democratic supporters (who really don’t work in the real economy, if they work at all) it would be to lower the corporate income tax rate. If it did that it could at least hold its head up at liberal dinner parties because it had avoided the awful sin of lowering personal income tax rates on the rich. And it would lower the water level in the economy so that more corporations could get their feet on the bottom of the pool.

Meanwhile here’s some unsolicited advice to Congressional Republicans. Don’t cave unless you get something that really helps the economy and really helps ordinary Americans.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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