Hooray For Things Passing

I looked at a newspaper over someone's shoulder in the hostel last night and saw that New START was going to pass the Senate. The media is reporting that it's a victory for Barack Obama, and I suppose that's right. People more willing to comment on matters of substance might note that it's a victory for those of us averse to the destruction of humanity.

On the other lame duck stuff, I'm fine with the tax cut / stimulus deal -- it's a decent compromise that could put the Democrats in a better position in 2012 when we have to decide whether to renew the tax cuts. More obviously, it's good that gay people can serve openly in the military now. Andrew Sullivan, this may be time to say something nice about Harry Reid. Telegenic talking head skills < Senate Majority Leader skills.

A Man Who No Longer Wishes To Be A Senator

By my count, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) has voted against the earmark ban and for the new START treaty.

Do you think he prefers golf or fishing?

Preemption

I have two pieces of news for the Obama administration, which seems to think that they need to propose Social Security cuts in the State of the Union in "to pre-empt an even more draconian set of budget cuts likely to be proposed by the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), as a condition of extending the debt ceiling."

• In the past election, Republicans ran about $500 million worth of ads attacking Democrats for cutting Medicare.
• The President has a much more direct way of preempting Ryan's hypothetical cuts. He can veto them.

Sigh.

Obama's Glass: More Than Half-Full In Some Places; Less In Others

As Kevin Drum points out, in the grand scheme of things the Obama administration is two-for-three on the major priorities of the day. Health care reform happened, even if it wasn't pretty. And our misadventure in Iraq has come to an end. In addition, Don't Ask Don't Tell has finally been repealed (and credit to Harry Reid for basically daring Republicans to vote against a standalone bill), the financial reform bill, compromised as it was, was certainly better than what would have happened under a Republican President. Behind the scenes, the Obama administration has made progress on rebuilding the country's regulatory apparatus in various places, notably EPA and antitrust but also mundane but important agencies such as the FDA, FCC, and so forth. Those are some serious high lights.

The lowlights are also pretty clear:

• Obama got everyone to say some nice things at Copenhagen, but really, doing anything to slow down carbon-based pollution has been a total bust.
• Immigration reform hasn't happened, though it was pretty obvious bipartisan cooperation there was dead for a long time halfway through Bush's second term.
• As Drum mentions, despite some early positive indications, unwinding Bush's travesties on civil liberties basically hasn't happened.
• The health care reform bill leaves a lot to be desired. Forget the lack of a public option; the climbdown on end-of-life care, on covering non-citizens, on doing more to make insurance more affordable for those living at working class wages, left much to be desired.
• Appointments to subcabinet positions have been bad, and to the judiciary have been even worse.
• There's a general distate for Obama's habit of negotiating with himself. How this is perceived by the median voter is still unclear to me, though.
• There seems to be a lot of fear that deficit-reduction hysteria is going to lead to some terrible budgets in the near future, along with an awful reduction in promised--and paid for-- Social Security benefits.

It's hard to say that the bad outweighed the good here. The first two years of the Obama administration alone mean that he will end up as the most progressive President since LBJ (or, if you like the Kennedy/Johnson years) when it comes to domestic policy, and the mess in Afghanistan pales in comparison to what we had in Vietnam. If he ends up working out an awful Social Security "compromise", that could change the calculus, but we'll have to see what happens there. I have a hard time believing anyone wants to look like they're cutting Social Security during a Presidential Election year. For now, though, a solid A- for Team Obama.

cc photo by flickr user Ibn-Ar Rashid

Our Completely Unserious Discourse

Various budget chickenhawks have banded together to hand out some awards to their favorite elected officials. This year, they've chosen Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN). As you can see, "concern" about the deficit is bipartisan.

Yes, the same Kent Conrad who in mid-November thought we ought to temporarily extend all of Bush's debt-financed tax cuts and then "get serious" about deficit reduction. And that's the same Mitch Daniels who was the OMB director under George W. Bush. Say what you will about Orszag's new job at Citigroup, he managed to shepherd a health care bill that is modestly deficit reducing in the short term and substantially deficit-reducing in the long term. Daniels, on the other hand ... well, let's turn the mic over to Brad DeLong:

One of the threads of Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty is that Mitch Daniels simply did not do his job as Bush's OMB Director. The OMB Director is the principal--indeed, the only--voice inside the White House for fiscal prudence, for trying to ensure that the money the government spends is spent well and that the resources the government raises are adequate for the spending plans the White House evolves. While he was Bush OMB Director, Daniels simply did not do his job.

Very serious!