Voters now have two competing economic theories to choose from: Obama's Keynesian stimulus and Boehner's seemingly pre-Keynesian Republicanism.By Doyle McManus
August 29, 2010
Republicans are on a roll.
Swing voters have fallen out of love with President Obama and his party, and many are willing to give the opposition a chance. Washington's chief prognosticator, Charlie Cook, forecasts that Republicans are increasingly likely to win control of the House and even stand a chance of taking over the Senate, an idea that seemed far-fetched only a month ago. And weeks of bad economic news have only made the Democrats' problems worse.
But do the Republicans have workable solutions? It's worth taking a good look at the economic platform House GOP leader John A. Boehner of Ohio outlined for his party last week, since he may well take over Nancy Pelosi's job as speaker.
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Boehner said a new, Republican-led Congress would focus its initial efforts on two areas: First, it would stop the stimulus program, cancel billions of dollars in spending that hasn't been committed and push for "aggressive" further cuts in federal spending.
Second, it would reject any income tax increase on "families and small businesses," no matter how high their income — specifically including the increase on households earning more than $250,000 a year that Obama has proposed.
Boehner argued that Obama's economic stimulus policies have not only failed to produce economic recovery but that they are actively preventing a recovery from taking hold.
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Voters now have two competing economic theories to choose from: Obama's Keynesian stimulus, which holds that short-term deficit spending by the federal government will make a recovery come faster (though some liberals would say he hasn't spent nearly enough to turn things around), and Boehner's seemingly pre-Keynesian Republicanism, which holds that federal spending always hurts and that lower taxes spur the economy.
Which vision will voters buy? Boehner, in his conservative orthodoxy, may be making an argument that goes too far for most voters.
It's true that polls show most Americans don't think Obama's stimulus spending has done much good; with unemployment stuck at 9.5% — who can blame them? But that may not mean that they actually want to stop the spending and find out what happens.
A USA Today/Gallup poll in June found that 60% of respondents said they actually favored more federal spending "to create jobs and stimulate the economy." If Democrats bring out a chorus of economists and governors to warn about the layoffs that a stimulus halt could bring — think teachers and police officers — Boehner's position may look less attractive.
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But the Democrats are going to have to do better if they want to win this argument. For one thing, Boehner and his colleagues have renounced the economic policies of the Bush administration; they now say Bush, like Obama, spent too much.
"We need a more consistent focus on the economic message," a leading Democratic strategist fretted to me last week. "It's an issue we can win on, but the focus on it in the White House has only been episodic so far."
That should change after Labor Day, when the Democrats send their two best persuaders, Obama and former President Clinton, onto the campaign trail. Boehner has laid down a clear challenge for them. It has the makings of a first-rate debate.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-republicans-20100829,0,3966733.column
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