THE BUDGET DEAL

I personally deplore the concessions made by Democrats and the President in yesterday's budget deal. While I applaud the retention of funding for important programs like Planned Parenthood and the EPA, I deplore the cuts in other vital areas affecting, mostly, the most vulnerable in our society. I deplore the fact that the revenue side of the equation was not even part of the discussion, while the very wealthy and the corporations continue to be spared the burden of a proportionate share of taxes. I am persuaded by the arguments of economists like Paul Krugman of the New York Times that drastic cuts like those conceded in yesterday's agreement will serve only to further slow the already sluggish economic recovery.

And yet... it is the American electorate that is responsible for having naively handed so much power to the far right-wing zealots who apparently hold their own party and the US Congress hostage to their implacable and unreasonable demands. It required the ultimate threat of a government shutdown and its dire economic consequences to persuade these people to relinquish their demand that not one hundred but one hundred and fifty percent (and growing) of their radically right-wing policy and economic goals be met--that is, if the agreement survives the waiting period.

What will it take to awaken the vast middle class conservative part of the electorate to their own interests? Will the Paul Ryan "budget plan" gain traction and support amongst these people, when it so clearly benefits the already wealthy and further deprives the poor and needy? The Republicans are quick to rail against what they call a "redistribution of wealth" from the top down, but they're perfectly happy to redistribute it from the bottom up.

Obama is nowhere near achieving the results on the economic front that I had hoped for when I voted for him in 2008. He has, however, succeeded in turning the economy around, be it ever so slowly, against the powerful tide of financial industry and Republican political resistance. Would he have done better to have chosen a different administrative team? He has been roundly criticized from the left for choosing advisors from the same industry that brought us close to ruin. Again, I myself would have opted for more radical choices, and more radical policies.

But would a more radical ("socialist"?) approach have made for greater, speedier headway, given the political and historical circumstance? This is America, after all. This is America post-tax revolt, post-Reagan, post-trickle down economics. People have been willingly deceived for decades by the "fairy dust" that Krugman writes about; we believe we can enjoy a perpetual free lunch, that we can have all the services to which we have become accustomed without paying for them with our taxes. It's a mind-set that has proved resistant to reason and argument.

Oh, and then there are the trillions owed to pay for George W. Bush's unfunded wars and his simultaneous tax cuts for the wealthy.

That's the circumstance. You'd think America would be ready for significant change. Not so. Despite Obama's milder and more gradualist approach, conservatives successfully used the "socialist" slur to arouse old, knee-jerk fears among the voters in last year's elections. Had he applied some truly socialist mojo, might he not have put even slow progress at risk? I don't know. But I still plan to vote for him in 2012. Even distressingly slow progress, as I see it, is a whole lot better than regression.