“Every corner of the federal government has to be looked at here,” White House adviser and ’08 Obama campaign quarterback David Plouffe said, in one of his numerous appearances on Sunday TV talk shows as a prelude to the President’s address on the budget and deficit today. “Revenues are going to be part of this”—by which Plouffe was, the New York Times reported, “referring to tax increases. [Emphasis added]."
That seems to be the expectation of official Washington along with most of the White House Press Corps: that when the President addresses a college audience today and lays out his plan for cutting the deficit now estimated at $1.6 trillion, one of the cornerstones of his remarks will be a call for raising taxes.
The Wall Street Journal headline on its article previewing the address made the point even more directly: “Obama Puts Taxes on the Table,” (WSJ, April 11, 2011).
Obama will surely discuss a lot of different endeavors to reduce the deficit. Administration watchers expect that, in his remarks, he will dust off some of the suggestions of the Bowles-Simpson commission—the panel Obama himself named to come up with a deficit reduction plan and whose suggestions he has barely mentioned since receiving them. (One of the suggestions of the commission headed by former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson was to cut off the nearly $500 million in annual taxpayer support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, something that most Republican lawmakers eagerly embraced but that the President has dismissed as one of his examples of “making political statements in the budget process.”)
Will Obama deal with entitlements? Sure. He obviously has to respond to the alternative budget sculpted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which has been winning rave reviews since it was unveiled. The 72-page Ryan budget addresses Medicaid and Medicare, the entitlements that are the major culprits driving up the deficit. Ryan’s budget also freezes discretionary spending at levels before Obama took office and has several plans for growth and opportunity.
So far the official line from the White House on Ryan’s alternative has been polite but dismissive. As Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters on April 5:
"But while we agree on his ultimate goal, Congressman Ryan’s goal, we strongly disagree with his approach, because any plan to reduce our deficit substantially must reflect American values of fairness and shared sacrifice.
"We believe that Congressman Ryan’s plan that he put forward fails that test. It cuts taxes for millionaires and special interests, while placing a greater burden on seniors who depend on Medicare or live in nursing homes, families struggling with a child who has serious disabilities, and workers who have lost their health care coverage."
Carney was clearly sending us a signal: “Ryan’s got his plan, but we’ll have something better soon.”
In many ways, Obama’s speech Wednesday will be a very late reaction to things he did not deal with in his State of the Union address. As for whether his proposals strike a resonant chord with voters and restore some of Obama’s political “mojo,” well, all we can say at this point is, “Stay tuned.”
[Stay tuned this afternoon for reactions to Obama's speech.]
