Obamaism

Mar 1, 2009 - Obamaism is the boldest manifesto ever issued by a U.S. President. Mr. Obama, who once noted that Mr. Reagan altered the trajectory of America as Clinton had not, sees himself a Reagan. Obama has made clear that he intends to be equally transformative. His three goals are (1) universal health care, (2) universal education, and (3) a new green energy economy.

(1) Health Care. Obama has publicly abandoned his once-stated preference for a single-payer system as in Canada and Britain. Instead, Obama will create a system one step away from a single-payer system, one he has modestly budgeted at $634 billion over the next ten years. Mr. Obama’s plan establishes a reformed system that retains a private health-insurance sector but offers a new government-run plan (based on benefits open to members of Congress) where insurance companies will have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, thus halting overpayments to insurance companies. If run efficiently, it will attract people to voluntarily move out of the private sector, thereby starving it.

(2) Education. Mr. Obama wants far more government grants, tax credits, and other financial guarantees for college education. The U.S. already has a Pell Grant program, grants which do not require repayment, based on a "financial need" formula. Applicants not qualifying can still get loans at reduced rates. Mr. Obama says that merely a high school education is not good enough in this high tech era.

(3) Energy. Obama wants to be to “green energy” what John Kennedy was to the “moon shot,” its visionary and creator. It starts with establishing a government-guided green energy sector into which the administration will pour billions of dollars from the stimulus package and billions more from budgets to come. To offset costs Mr. Obama plans to end nearly $30 billion in tax breaks to oil and gas companies. And to create new jobs and new industries he will start with a carbon cap-and-trade system. Cap-and-trade, the sale of emission allowances, will be an incentive to get local governments to switch from coal fired power plants (50% are now coal) to natural gas or something even better when they realize that the cost of retrofitting will be cheaper than paying out energy credits to more efficient and less polluting power plants elsewhere.

These revolutions in health care, education and energy have already taken life in Mr. Obama’s massive $787 billion stimulus package, a huge expansion of social spending constituting a down payment on Mr. Obama’s plan for remaking America. Obama sees the current economic crisis as his opportunity just as the Great Depression created the political and psychological conditions for Franklin Roosevelt’s enormous expansion of federally controlled social programs that grew under each administration following his to now include farm subsidies, Medicare, social security, No Child Left Behind, the Children's Health Insurance Program and Aid to Dependent Children, and Faith Based Initiate grants to churches, to name just a few. Just as Mr. Bush seized on 9/11 to openly go to war against a country totally innocent of the terrorist act, Mr. Obama is using the current economic crisis to take the country in an entirely different direction. However, if it’s all about spending (like Mr.Bush unabashedly did) then that would not be a new direction. Limits on how much China and our other debt holders will be willing to extent to the U.S. may in the end dictate that direction. Further, Mr. Obama will have a fight on his hands with longtime Washington special interest groups and lobbyists. In his radio address on Feb 28th, 2009 Mr Obama said, “I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I.”
http://gazettextra.com/news/2009/feb/27/obama-leads-us-down-slippery-slope/
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/obamaforamerica/gGxRgp