Ned Barnett (c) 2008
Based on what he's leaked, what he's said in several press conferences this week, and based on a bit of interpretation of what this all means - not for the economy so much as for his plans to change America - President Elect Obama has tipped his hand on what may be the closest we'll ever come to a presidential coup d'etat.
Here's how I put it together:
Earlier this week, on November 24th, Martha McCallum on Fox News said that Obama had announced that his new stimulus package would not be JUST a financial bail-out. McCallum noted that Obama said he would also use this to put in a “down payment” on all of his planned initiatives (infrastructure, healthcare, etc.) – that he would have money for these new programs in this omnibus bail-out bill – and that he will sign this bill into law as soon as he returns to the White House after his inauguration. I have found partial confirmation of this in the Wall Street Journal on his plans for the infrastructure jump-start, in the AP for his plans for healthcare for the poor, food stamps and infrastructure, and in a Bloomberg story that confirms the intent to sign on January 20.
On his second of three press conferences in the week before Thanksgiving, Obama seemed to underscore McCallum's point, saying: "a smart job of investing in health care modernization" could help in both the short term and the longer term.
Since I’m assuming that McCallum’s comment-in-passing was, in fact, accurate, and that the follow-on comments in the press and by the President Elect, here’s how I read this:
Normally, a major legislative change in Healthcare (as we saw in ’94) would take a year or two to put together – planning sessions, hearings, opposition, trial votes, testimony for and against, etc. Ditto for each of his other major-change initiatives – they would all require heavy-duty committee work, along with plenty of time for advocates and opponents to marshal their resources, make their pitches, and have their day in court (so to speak) before it passed. This process is why HillaryCare failed, and why Bush’s Tax cuts took until 2003 to enact and 2004 to fully implement.
However, by lumping major new-initiative programs’ “down-payments” (sure to be in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each) into a single bill which has virtually no chance of NOT passing, these programs will be – de facto – authorized. These bills (such as the warmed-over ObamaCare/HillaryCare redux) won’t need further hearings, detailed planning, and there won’t be any chance of lobbying for and against. The entire checks-and-balances process that has guided our law-making (and often protected us from the unbridled "tyranny of the majority") will be thrown out the window. The entire Obama package will be passed, virtually unedited, and beyond recall - all without debate or more than the most perfunctory up-or-down vote. As I said, that's as close to a coup d'etat we're ever likely to see, and this will bring us a true "imperial presidency" - one that Nixon might have salivated over.
By having his entire set of campaign-promise initiatives all written and passed between the first day of the 111th Congress (January 3, 2009) and the inauguration day (January 20) – a period in which they also have to swear in new members, organize committees, accept the report of the Electoral College and find the men’s room – there will be precious little time to do anything beyond cutting-and-pasting from Obama’s campaign wish list and sitting still long enough to vote it in by acclimation. No dissent will be heard – after all, it’s a crisis, and the Chosen One has spoken on how to solve it (OK, that’s a bit sarcastic). Literally the only way to derail this would be for President Bush to veto it before the inauguration (something I’m sure could easily be avoided by not delivering it to the White House until immediately after Obama takes the oath).
As I said, I’m drawing this conclusion from a smattering of news reports, as well as from Obama's own comments which - Obama being a supreme politician - could mean exactly what I fear, or they could mean something completely different. Check out the sources yourself, put the comments against the sum total of his statements and plans and his shifting priorities. Keep in mind how, since the election, how forceful and focused Obama has been in pushing those elements of his agenda that seem to touch his core, as well as how adroitly he's side-stepped those things he said just to win the election. Then draw your own conclusions.
