While President-elect Obama has predicted "trillion-dollar
deficits for years to come" and wants to push through a roughly
$775 billion economic stimulus package on top of the $1.2
trillion deficit for 2009, he's also talking about the need to
restrain spending. As the AP notes,
"The incoming president has walked this same tightrope each day
this week - advocating fiscal discipline and taxpayer largesse
together at nearly every turn, though in every case with little
detail to back it up."
Pretty soon we'll witness the difference between speaking and
governing -- between being able to say whatever you want and
actually having to make decisions and sacrifice some things for
others.
During the campaign, Obama was brilliant at making everybody
think that he agreed with them and was sympathetic to their
goals. Rhetorically, it's easy to convince people that he could
give them everything they wanted while being fiscally responsible
at the same time. During the
first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer asked the candidates
what they would give up as a result of the cost of the bailout.
Obama started by saying, "there are a range of things that are
probably going to have to be delayed" and "there's no doubt that
we're not going to be able to do everything that I think needs to
be done. There are some things that I think have to be done."
Then he went on to say, "We have to have energy independence..."
and "We have to fix our health care system" ... and "we have to
do is we've got to make sure that we're competing in education"
... and we have to "make sure that college is affordable for
every young person in America" ... and "I also think that we're
going to have to rebuild our infrastructure" ... and "mak[e] sure
that we have a new electricity grid..."
So in other words, we'll have to make tough decisions, but
trillions of dollars in new spending is non-negotiable. That's
par for the course during campaigns, but impossible in the real
world because it's inherently contradictory. While it's typical
of presidents to not live up to the promise of their campaigns,
Obama set the bar so high during the campaign with his soaring
rhetoric, that the gap between election year fantasy and
governing reality will be more pronounced.
