With President Obama, there’s always a catch. In the 2014 budget he announced last week, Obama proposed a more accurate way of calculating the inflation rate for annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security. It’s a technical change in pursuit of honesty and good government. And if adopted, it would cause benefits to grow more slowly, though almost imperceptibly so. Republican leaders in Congress ought to be delighted since they had “championed”—Obama’s word—the idea in the first place.
GARY LOCKE
Then came the catch. The president’s price for adopting this gentle reform was hundreds of billions in new tax increases. It was a price Republicans were certain to reject, as Obama surely knew. Rather than grounds for a bipartisan bargain, his “compromise” was a political contrivance to put Republicans at a disadvantage.
It may work. Now Obama will accuse Republicans of not being serious about deficit reduction. Now he will blame them for obstructing a deal on spending and taxes. Now he will claim their motive was solely to shield the wealthy. We’ve heard all this before—and it’s worked before.
But there’s something else involved as well. Under Obama, the presidency has been in decline. His use of the budget as a ploy against Republicans is an example of this. The biggest domestic issue is the looming fiscal crisis, but Obama has addressed it only rhetorically. Instead he’s used the budget largely as a political tool that cheapened the presidency.
Other presidents have done this, but far less crassly or brazenly. At least they presented their budgets on time, as required by law. Obama was two months late. He erased one of Washington’s oldest adages: The president proposes, Congress disposes. By last week, both the Senate and House had already passed budget resolutions.
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