Obama's Grand Bargain

12.01.2009

It didn't make as much news as the stimulus comments or the torture discussion or his coolness to investigating Bush-era crimes--or, for that matter, the labradoodle--but I think this was one of the most interesting exchanges from Obama's "This Week" appearance yesterday:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me press you on this, at the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of a grand bargain? That you have tax reform, health care reform, entitlement reform, including Social Security and Medicare where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And when will that get done?

OBAMA: Well, the -- right now I'm focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure that we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you describe is exactly what we're going to have to do.

What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government, what are we getting for it, and how do we make the system more efficient?

STEPHANOPOULOS: And eventually sacrifice from everyone.

OBAMA: Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game.

I know there have been murmurings in Obamaland about long-term entitlement reform, but I've never heard Obama sign on so explicitly to the idea of a grand bargain. It's a bold move, and one that I suspect will be pretty controversial on the left. If nothing else, I'd have expected him to hedge a bit since, as he says, we've got to take care of this stimulus thing first.

On the other hand, maybe "grand bargain" is precisely what the people in the center and on the center-right--the votes he's looking for in the Senate--want to hear at this point. (They're the gettable people whose biggest concern is the long-term budget picture.) So it could be pretty a savvy pronouncment. And, for that matter, maybe costless. It's not like he committed himself to any specifics on Social Security or Medicare...

--Noam Scheiber

Posted: Monday, January 12, 2009 1:46 PM with 7 comment(s)

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FWright said:

Controversial on the left? That's something of an understatement.

January 12, 2009 1:58 PM

lymon1 said:

Grand Bargain = Kids, you will 1) pay for current baby boomers to get their full retirement social security benefits while you will not, 2) Frugal, you will pay for the non-frugal to get to shed tons of tons of debt that they never should have taken on without penalty, 3) Baby Boomers-- you're getting the Medicare expansion of the Bush Administration, but no more -- hear me, no more, at least not this moment, ok, please?

January 12, 2009 3:34 PM

JEFF FREY said:

I'm glad Obama says he is going to take on the long-term problems of Social Security and Medicare. Somebody has to do it, and I sure as hell don't trust the Republicans. Lymon1 is probably right, but it has been doomed to end that way since the 1980s.

January 13, 2009 12:46 AM

butchie b said:

Oh, Jeff, like the Dems are trustworthy. But this is one more area where work had begun between WJC and Newt until Monica came along. Pity.

January 13, 2009 10:24 AM

teplukhin2you said:

"Everybody is going to have to give." A nice start, but now we need to know in detail what we give and what we gain.

Which is to say, Obama by failing to ring-fence this Grand Bargain and focus narrowly on something he and his team can actually deliver is settling himself up for death by a thousand congressional cuts.

Focus, Benjamin, FOCUS.

Just stick with reforming * * * health care spending * * * , which alone entails a big enough Grand Bargain for any administration, or Congressional class, to sink its teeth into for the next two years.

The GB there is simple: Obama needs to tell everyone that there will be single payor, and with it, cost controls, aka rationing. Everyone will pay, literally. All of us will start paying more out of pocket for basic care, and fewer procedures will be covered by insurers. SCHIP will be passed, and paid for by limiting deductibility of employer-paid health care premiums.

IOW, the poor, the elderly and those of us with young children at home will pay more or less the same as we do now, all in all, but we'll pay more out of our own pockets.

Those singles and wealthier families needing discretionary treatments eg arthroscopic knee surgery will pay a helluva lot more than they've been paying. As will the labor aristocrats at the UAW and elsewhere.

Many specialist physicians will make less than they've been making.

Many private insurers will go out of business altogether.

January 13, 2009 1:17 PM

"Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game."

Giggle. Our skin's _literally_ in the healthcare game and has been since every one of us left the womb.

Aside from the stimulus plan, just focus on fixing this colossal Rube Goldberg fraggy clusterf***. That's all.

If you can get single payor and rationing done, then count yourself the most successful president of the last 60 years.

January 13, 2009 1:50 PM

CAM2 said:

Where is the bargain? Does Grand Bargain mean codification of the status quo? And will that codification be based on the defined pension funds of the of the 50s - 70s being replaced by 401K plans that shift retirement costs to the employee? Does it mean health care will be rationed with the legitimacy of government policy rather than by an individual's ability to pay for it? If so, where are the bargains?

Or will Obama's administration stand out as the first able to make a declining middle class standard of living acceptable in the US?

January 14, 2009 12:22 AM