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| Author: | Michael J. Gerson, Roger Hertog Senior Fellow |
|---|
March 4, 2009
The Washington Post
After a month of personnel appointments and canine selection, last week was the Obama administration's week of revelation.
In a speech at Camp Lejeune, President Obama pledged "to succeed" in what candidate Obama called a "misguided war" in Iraq--slowing down his promised pace of troop withdrawals, pledging to retain a substantial military force to support Iraqi democracy and claiming credit for a "new strategy" that was largely the implementation of President Bush's own. The McGovernite peace candidate became the responsible commander in chief.
On domestic policy, the revelation was different. Candidate Obama was a tonal moderate--a pragmatist determined to muddle the old divisions of blue and red into a pleasing, post-partisan purple. His mainstream economic appointments seemed to confirm this intention. His stimulus package and bank bailout proposals were expansive and expensive, but not ideologically radical.
And then came the budget--ideologically ambitious, politically ruthless and radical to its core.
Obama chose a time of recession to propose a massive increase in progressivity--a 10-year, trillion-dollar haul from the rich, already being punished by the stock market collapse and the housing market decline. This does not just involve undoing the Bush tax reductions but capping tax deductions to collect about $30 billion a year. Despite all the rhetoric of "responsibility" and shared sacrifice, the message of the Obama budget is clear: The wealthy are responsible for the economic mess and they will bear the entire sacrifice so that government can "invest" in the people.
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