Despite the champagne and caviar soirée they’re having over at Goldman Sachs, the economic crisis continues to shatter the lives of average Americans. Almost 27 percent of workers are now unemployed or underemployed, and that number is projected to rise through 2010, carving out a path of poverty and hardship for millions.
Against this tattered economic backdrop, the Obama administration is discussing its options. The President’s aids however say they will not seek another stimulus bill like the one Congress passed earlier this year. But with 263,000 Americans having lost their jobs last month, how can the President discount that option?
Well, it’s easy–a stimulus battle would damage the White House. It would bog down Washington in a partisan swamp, leave President Obama without capital to push his agenda, and make him look like a “tax-and-spend” liberal who knows no other policy solutions.
Or so the conventional wisdom goes.
But to the contrary, the success of the Obama presidency depends on him pushing for the strongest available fiscal measures: a spending-based stimulus. If the White House does not stem the job-market bleeding, Obama will be a one-term president—he can not win in 2012 if one-quarter of Americans couldn’t find work or had their hours cut during his first term. Especially if he neglected to help them because he was afraid of a fight.
Can the President win another stimulus struggle? Yes he can, but he will have to get his hands dirty—that means writing the bill, taking personal ownership of it, and not wavering on its key proposals. Obama’s preferred method of creating policy—to delegate everything to Congress and then step in after months of bickering—will not work this time. It may have saved him some political capital in the past, but now he’s got to go all in. Economic concerns swept the President into office, and if ignored, they will sweep him out. Other agenda items—health care, Afghanistan, climate change—will be for nil if the President can’t restore America to job producing growth.
If Obama takes the reins and succeeds in the battle for another stimulus, then he will have four more years and buckets of political capital to complete his agenda. But if he chooses to avoid the risk and forgo aggressive fiscal policy, he will feel it at the polls.
And worse, millions of suffering American families will feel it in the meantime.
