Obey sees Washington changing already
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By MARK GUNDERMAN
mark.gunderman@lee.net
Sunday, December 7, 2008 11:05 AM CST
The new Congress doesn’t take office until next month, and the new president until Jan. 20, but Washington can feel the change already, according to 7th District Congressman Dave Obey.
In fact, part of that change hit close to home for the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
“The new president stole my staff director. Jim Nabors is the new deputy budget director,” Obey said in an interview at the Herald this past week.
That meant Obey had to spend the last couple of weeks filling a key position on the committee staff. But the process of the transition of power itself is one of the most positive signs, Obey said.
“The professionalism that both sides have brought to the transition of power is a welcome change,” he said.
Obey said both a higher level of professionalism and the speed with which events are happening in Washington are necessary given the circumstances.
“It’s the most serious economic crisis in my lifetime,” he said. “The economists we talk to say this recession is going to be much more serious than most and much more protracted, and could last three years or five years or 120 years.”
As far as solutions, Obey said it doesn’t matter where the ideas come from.
“The important thing is what works. We’re in unchartered territory, and if you don’t do something...” he said, adding that the government cannot be afraid to try things.
It is too soon to tell whether Congress will actually pass a bailout for the auto industry, but it is getting serious consideration because of the importance of the industry. Obey pointed out that normally the auto and housing industries lead the nation out of recession. Now those two are part of the problem.
Obey said he had steel industry executives in his office recently and they said August was their best month since World War II. But September was their worst month since then, and it was related to the auto industry.
“We can’t afford to have one of the major building blocks of the manufacturing sector go belly up,” Obey said. “This is not the (1979) Chrysler bailout. The entire (U.S.) economy is on the brink.”
Still, auto industry executives are not going to get a free ride. Obey said he was in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office when she pressed the executives for a plan for reshaping their industry.
Obey said Pelosi told them, “Until you show me the plan, I’m not going to show you the money.”
Combined with other problems are the pending state budget shortfalls, which are going to cause possible tax increases and layoffs in the public sector. The federal government will have to increase its aids to the states, he said.
“The feds will have to pump $200 billion into the economy just to stay even with losses in the states,” Obey said.
He has sympathy for both parties’ versions of how the nation got into this mess. The Republicans focus on the housing bubble while Democrats point to deregulation.
See Obey, Page A2
From Page 1
Obey calls both of those factors “trigger points,” but not the real cause.
The real problem, according to Obey, was that since the 1980s, growth in American income has been confined to the upper end, while middle class wages have stagnated. That forced people to use credit to sustain a standard of living, and policies enabled them to do so to keep the economy moving.
He said that since 1980, 80 percent of all income growth in the country has been limited to the top 10 percent of income-earners. He added that in the past eight years, 96 percent of all income growth has gone to the top 10 percent.
Obey sees the solution in increasing the buying power of regular working people, and investing in energy, education and infrastructure. A middle class tax cut will certainly be part of the package, he said.
These issues will absolutely dominate the new Congress, Obey said, dismissing concerns that solid Democratic control and a Democratic president will lead to quick passage of a liberal social agenda.
He called the “Freedom of Choice Act,” a measure to overturn anti-abortion laws in the states, a good press release for certain groups, but he does not foresee it passing.
Likewise, the Employee Free Choice Act, making union organizing much easier, is not likely to pass in its current form, Obey said. He predicted compromise on the controversial measure.
He does predict passage of major health care legislation, but says it will not be a Canadian-style single-payer government-run program. Obama has not backed such a program.
And he brushed aside fears of government-controlled health care, saying that with Medicare and VA hospitals, 50 percent of Americans are already covered by government-run programs.
Obey said the one thing on health care that will not happen is nothing. There will be action.
“You cannot fix the long-term budget problems in this country without dealing with health care,” he said.
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happygolucky wrote on Dec 12, 2008 8:58 AM: