{"id":15,"date":"2026-11-03T05:06:53","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T05:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/?p=15"},"modified":"2026-11-03T05:06:53","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T05:06:53","slug":"robert-reich-why-obama-isnt-fighting-the-budget-battle-philsugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/?p=15","title":{"rendered":"Robert Reich: Why Obama Isn\u2019t Fighting the Budget Battle | PhilSugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

By **Robert Reich**
\nFrom
\nRobertReich.Org
\n.
\nIn the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take Makati sugar daddy<\/a> a more direct and personal role in that budget battle\u2014both for the economy\u2019s sake and for the sake of his reelection. But will he? Don\u2019t count on it.
\nWorried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the premium sugar dating Philippines<\/a> ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires.
\nMost importantly, they\u2019re worried the President\u2019s absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year\u2014large enough to imperil the fragile recovery.
\nBut Obama won\u2019t actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of sugar dating matching Philippines<\/a> how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail.
\nShortly after the Democrats\u2019 \u201cshellacking\u201d last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served Metro Manila sugar dating<\/a> in the Clinton administration. \u201cIt\u2019s 1994 all over again,\u201d he said. \u201cNow we move to the center.\u201d
\nThe supposed parallel between 2010 and 1994 is something of an article of faith in the Obama White House. That\u2019s partly because so many of President Barack Obama\u2019s current aides worked for Bill Clinton and vividly recall Clinton\u2019s own shellacking in 1994. It\u2019s also because the Clinton story had a happy ending, at least electorally. The fact that Bill Clinton went on to win re-election is a source of comfort to the current White House as it looks ahead to 2012.
\nFrom this, many in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton\u2019s campaign script\u2014distancing himself from congressional Democrats, embracing further deficit reduction, and seeking guidance from big business. If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama\u2014or so it\u2019s supposed.
\nThe superficial logic that so often passes for thought in Washington typically sees causation where there\u2019s only correlation. In fact, there\u2019s no reason to believe that Clinton\u2019s lurch rightward at the start of 1995 is what won him re-election the following November. He was re-elected because of the strength of the economic recovery.
\nBy the spring of 1995, the American economy had bounced back, averaging 200,000 new jobs per month. By early 1996, it was roaring\u2014creating 434,000 new jobs in February alone. I remember suggesting to Clinton\u2019s political adviser, Dick Morris, that the president should come up with some new policy ideas for the election. Morris scowled. This election will be about the economy\u2014nothing more, nothing less, he said. Morris knew that voters didn\u2019t care much about policy. They cared about jobs. \u201cThe president,\u201d said Morris, \u201cis going to say, \u2018You\u2019ve never had it this good, and you ain\u2019t seen nothing yet.\u2019\u201d
\n[M]any in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton\u2019s campaign script\u2026 If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama\u2014or so it\u2019s supposed.
\nThe 1991-1992 recession was relatively mild as recessions go. As is typical of most recessions, it had been brought on by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates too high in response to fears of inflation\u2014meaning that a recovery would occur when the Fed reversed course and reduced short-term rates, which then-Chair Alan Greenspan obligingly did.
\nPresident Obama won\u2019t be as fortunate. The Great Recession resulted from the bursting of a giant sugar dating platform comparison Philippines<\/a> debt bubble. Wall Street\u2019s irresponsible lending and speculating, negligible oversight by federal regulators, and the insatiable desire of Americans to use their homes as ATMs created a toxic mixture that exploded at the end of 2007 and continues to sicken the economy.
\nThe Fed has kept interest rates near zero for more than a year and has opened the spigots of its discount window, without much result. Unemployment continues to hover around 9 percent. Economic growth is pathetic.
\nWhile jobs used to follow corporate profits, American corporations now sugar dating site fees Philippines<\/a> rack up big profits without expanding employment. Their profits are coming mainly from buoyant sales by their foreign operations\u2014especially in China and India\u2014combined with cuts in jobs, wages, and benefits here in the U.S.
\nThe richest 10 percent of Americans, who own about 90 percent of all financial assets, are buying again (sales at Neiman Marcus and Tiffany\u2019s are way up). But most Americans still have little purchasing power. Under a huge load of debt, worried about meeting mortgage payments, and seeing their major asset\u2014their home\u2014continue to drop in value, they\u2019re holding back from the malls.
\nA strong recovery cannot be sustained by the richest 10 percent. Before the Great Recession, the top 10 percent received about half of total income, but they accounted for only about 40 percent of total spending. Forty percent of spending isn\u2019t enough to sugar baby dating privacy<\/a> convince businesses to invest in new capacity and jobs, which is why corporations are still sitting on $1.4 trillion of cash.
\nSo many jobs have been lost since Obama was elected and so many people have entered the workforce needing jobs that even if job growth were to match the extraordinary pace of the late 1990s, year after year, the unemployment rate wouldn\u2019t fall below 6 percent until 2016. That pace of job growth is unlikely, to say the least.
\nIf Republicans manage to cut federal spending significantly between now and Election Day while state outlays continue to shrink, the certain result is continued high unemployment and anemic growth.
\nObama\u2019s challenge in 2012 has nothing to do with Bill Clinton\u2019s in 1996. He must fight the Republican plans to cut the budget deficit this year and next, and explain to the public why he\u2019s doing so. And he must convince Americans that public spending during the sugar daddy educational support<\/a> next few years is necessary to get the economy moving, reduce the long-term debt as a portion of the total economy, and get jobs back.
\nCopyright 2011 Robert Reich
\n________________________________________________________________________
\nThis post originally appeared at
\nRobertReich.Org
\n.
\nRobert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three sugar daddy matching tips<\/a> national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written eleven books (including his most recent,
\nSupercapitalism
\n, which is now out in paperback). Mr. Reich is sugar dating photo privacy<\/a> co-founding editor of
\nThe American Prospect
\nmagazine. His weekly commentaries on public radio\u2019s Marketplace are heard by nearly five million people.
\nTo read blog entries from
\nRobert Reich
\nand others at
\nGUERNICA
\n, click
\nHERE
\n.<\/p>\n

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By **Robert Reich** From RobertReich.Org . In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take Makati sugar daddy a more direct and personal role in that budget battle\u2014both for the economy\u2019s sake and for the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"solace_meta_sidebar":"","solace_meta_container":"","solace_meta_enable_content_width":"","solace_meta_content_width":0,"solace_meta_title_alignment":"","solace_meta_author_avatar":"","solace_post_elements_order":"","solace_meta_disable_header":"","solace_meta_disable_footer":"","solace_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}