[Mb-civic] New Team, Old Plan - Robert J. Samuelson - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

New Team, Old Plan
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By Robert J. Samuelson
The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 26, 2006; A25

The second-term White House shake-up is an old tradition, driven 
variously by scandal, exhaustion and ambition. Presidents need to be 
protected and reinvigorated. Scapegoats for past failures need to be 
dumped. The Bush administration is undergoing this ritual. There's a new 
White House chief of staff. The press secretary has resigned. Karl Rove 
has lost one of his two jobs. Other changes are rumored. This is, on the 
evidence so far, mostly a public relations exercise.

The administration's central problem is its policies, not the people 
executing the policies. Some new players may outperform the old: They 
may call the right senator at the right time, cope better with 
unforeseen calamities (Hurricane Katrina) or provide stronger public 
defenses of administration actions. But these improvements, should they 
occur, cannot offset larger failings. These relate to Bush's agenda -- 
or lack of agenda. If you're driving in the wrong direction, or not 
driving at all, changing chauffeurs doesn't help.

In offering this appraisal, I'm staying away from Iraq and terrorism -- 
subjects on which I have no special insights. Instead I'm concentrating 
on domestic policies that I know better: the budget, taxes, health care, 
energy policy and immigration. On all these, the nation has serious 
business to do. But the administration isn't doing it.

We should be preparing for aging baby boomers. Projected Social 
Security, Medicare and Medicaid costs could expand the federal budget by 
30 to 40 percent by 2030. To limit these huge increases -- implying much 
higher taxes or draconian cuts in other programs -- we should gradually 
raise eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare, as well as curb 
benefits for wealthier retirees. Instead, Bush worsened the outlook by 
enacting the biggest-ever expansion of Medicare. The new drug benefit 
will cost $792 billion from 2006 to 2015, the Congressional Budget 
Office estimates. Not surprisingly, Bush's ill-fated Social Security 
plan also would have increased spending.

On energy, we need a grand compromise between producers and 
environmentalists. We have sizable natural gas and oil reserves in 
Alaska and along the offshore continental shelves. Many are now 
off-limits to exploration and production; they shouldn't be. But greater 
conservation is also imperative. In 2005 the United States had 226 
million cars and trucks; by 2030 that will rise 46 percent, to 330 
million, the Energy Information Administration projects.

Unless these vehicles become vastly more efficient, fuel demand will 
reach unmanageable levels. Much tougher fuel economy standards and a 
higher energy tax would move us in the right direction. Bush spent four 
years on an energy bill that, despite some good provisions, won't 
substantially improve either production or conservation.

You can go down the list. Unless we control health costs, they will 
squeeze out other public and private spending. In 1993 health-care 
spending was 13.8 percent of national income (gross domestic product); 
in 2005 it was 16.2 percent of GDP. The administration promotes health 
savings accounts, but by its own projections, these won't help much. In 
2015, health-care spending will hit an estimated 20 percent of GDP. 
Similarly, unless we curb the flow of poor immigrants, we will 
inexorably expand the nation's poverty rolls. Bush opposes illegal 
immigration (who doesn't?) but would legalize many of the same people by 
reclassifying them as "guest workers." The social consequences would be 
similar. Bush's notion that most would go home is a fantasy.

Shuffling top presidential aides can't redeem this bleak record. To be 
fair, all these are hard problems; none has simple solutions. But 
sensible policies could lessen them all. Barring a miraculous recovery 
of his political fortunes, Bush has largely missed his chance to provide 
these. The needed steps are often initially unpopular; raising gas taxes 
or Medicare's eligibility age wouldn't be a crowd-pleaser. A popular 
president might take the risk. An unpopular president will be less 
inclined -- and less likely to succeed if he does.

Bush's heavy reliance on Republican congressional support creates a 
further obstacle. The Republicans are defecting "because they're up [for 
reelection], and he's not," says Norman Ornstein of the American 
Enterprise Institute. Meanwhile, "Democrats have zero reason to bail him 
out."

For this failure, Bush bears most of the blame. He equates his own 
short-term political interests with the nation's long-term interests. 
How else to explain the Medicare drug benefit, a mega-handout intended 
mainly to win votes among seniors? He seems to mistake stubbornness for 
judgment and rigidity for principle. How else to explain his obsession 
with tax cuts, designed to please the Republican base, without any 
parallel discipline on spending?

The Bush mind-set produces proposals that speak to partisan preferences 
more than national needs. Therefore, they do not command broad public 
respect. Having governed from a narrow base at home, he has left his 
presidency hostage to events abroad. It is a precarious place to be.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/25/AR2006042501588.html
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