A Presidential Agenda
President Obama is turning up the heat.  You can watch (or read the complete transcript) his most recent speech at Knox College, which has been attracting a lot of attention in the media, at this NewYork Times page.

The right is focusing on a story about ten College Republicans wearing t-party t-shirts who were prevented from entering for security reasons.

The president noted that it was a growing middle class that was the engine of US prosperity and innovation after WWII, and that… 

“…over time, that engine began to stall…the link between higher productivity and people’s wages and salaries was broken. It used to be that, as companies did better, as profits went higher, workers also got a better deal. And that started changing. So the income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, but the typical family’s incomes barely budged.”

The president calls attention not only to the growing income inequality gap (largest since 1929), the fact that US worker productivity continues to rise while wages have been stagnant since 1979, and worse yet that even the recovery since 2009 remains unstable because our economic fundamentals have yet to be addressed. 

But it is important to hear his reminder of the recovery we have just passed through…despite an obstructionist Congress:

·        We saved the auto industry and

·        Passed a private-sector driven remedy to our health-care system

·        Invested in ‘all of the above’ energy technologies for energy independence

·        Issued tougher rules for big banks, credit card companies, and mortgage lenders

·        Reformed the tax code to cut taxes for 98% of Americans

·        Ensured that the top 1% pay more to support the American dream

·        Created 7.2 million jobs in the past 3 ½ years

·        (Which is the strongest private sector job growth since 1999)

·        Increased foreign investment and job creation in the US

·        Increased exports of products Made in the USA

·        Increased oil and gas production

·        Slowed the rise in the cost of health care to lowest rate in 50 years

·        Ensured that deficits are falling faster than anytime in the past 60 years

·        Cut deficit by 50% as a share of the economy since he became president

·        Increasing manufacturing jobs in America for the first time since the 1990’s

·        Put in place a recovery that is faster and deeper than in any other industrialized country today

While a patriotic Republican Congressional delegation would have allowed the government to do a lot more, this is still an impressive list of accomplishments.  All the more so, given the near-treasonous obstructionism and sound-bite sabotage from the right.

But, he also reminds us that we need to do more. 

“Even though our businesses are creating new jobs and have broken record profits, nearly all the income gains of the past 10 years have continued to flow to the top 1 percent. The average CEO has gotten a raise of nearly 40 percent since 2009. The average American earns less than he or she did in 1999. And companies continue to hold back on hiring…

…more students are earning their degree, but soaring costs saddle them with unsustainable debt. Health care costs are slowing down, but a lot of working families haven’t seen any of those savings yet. The stock market rebound helped a lot of families get back much of what they had lost in their 401(k)s, but millions of Americans still have no idea how they’re going to be able to retire.

So in many ways, the trends that I spoke about here in 2005 -- eight years ago -- the trend of a winner-take-all economy where a few are doing better and better and better, while everybody else just treads water -- those trends have been made worse by the recession. And that’s a problem.”

He is, again, correct.  These are the problems we should be focusing on, the conflicts our leadership—as the president is trying to do here—should be making salient and putting on the top of our policy agenda. 

But, despite the president’s ongoing efforts to reach across the aisle (including embracing so many Republican ideas that progressives in his own party worry), addressing these economic problems is made more difficult because of problems in our political system that the president wrote about in Audacity and Mann & Ornstein analyzed in It’s Worse Than It Looks. 

This speech highlights the fact that this president has been consistently moderate, and consistently focused on reaching across the aisle to forge pragmatic approaches to solving our most pressing problems.

So, he focuses on what we need to do now, starting with rejecting the ‘endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phone scandals’ that insist America will not pay its debts, ensure opportunity or fairness that will protect retirements and provide health care and education and jobs.

Happily, the president will (again) seek a bipartisan effort to problem solve, but in this speech he also makes clear that if obstruction is the only response in Congress he is preparing Executive Branch action on his own…on several fronts, including implementing the Affordable Care Act.

If you have health care you do not need to change, but your situation improves with free checkups, mammograms, discounted medicines, no lifetime limits, plans competing for your business (market solution) reducing costs, and no denial or extra charges for pre-existing conditions. 

“…despite the politically motivated misinformation campaign, the states that have committed themselves to making the Affordable Care Act work are finding that competition and choice are actually pushing costs down.

So just last week, New York announced that premiums for consumers who buy their insurance in these online marketplaces will be at least 50 percent lower than what they’re paying today -- 50 percent lower.”

How will States refusing to participate explain their leadership failure to their own citizens?  I would expect them to continue to bullshit, spreading carefully constructed falsehoods about the Affordable Care Act.

Read or listen to the speech.  It is a good place to start to prepare yourself for the misinformation from the right, should Congress continue to choose obstruction over problem solving, party over patriotism.