Excite Me
by digby
The NY Times Magazine reports:
Three days before Christmas, President Obama gathered his economic team in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room to review themes for his State of the Union address. The edge-of-the-cliff crisis he inherited had passed, but with more than 14 million Americans still out of work, he was looking for bold ways to bring down unemployment. The ideas presented to him, though, seemed familiar and uninspired. “You know, guys,” he said, according to someone in the room, “I’ve told you before, I want you to come to me with ideas that excite me.” Nothing he was hearing excited him. Obama’s frustration could set the tone for the remainder of his term.
Now I don’t know about you, but I find that a little bit strange. This isn’t fashion or entertainment. It’s about creating jobs, and there just isn’t a whole lot of “exciting” innovation in that arena because the economics are what they are. I guess old dudes like Keynes just don’t rock.
But then perhaps it depends on how you define excitement. Here’s one bipartisan centrist who thinks cutting social security benefits is thrilling:
When advocates challenge the new formula though, the conservatives and pseudo-Democrats hawking this proposal are no longer even bothering to defend the “Chained” CPI on its merits. (In fact, the current CPI is, if anything, too modest.) They simply coo at how brilliant and “exciting” of a new policy tool it is. Maya MacGuineas’s cheerful performance at a Senate briefing this morning was a case in point. MacGuineas, a former Wall Street banker and current president of the Pete Peterson-funded Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, was a panelist at an Urban Institute-sponsored Senate briefing, “The $5 Trillion Question: What Do the Budget Commissions’ Social Security Proposals Mean for Retirees and Taxpayers?” When asked what she would like to see from the President in the forthcoming State of the Union address, she joked about the “Chained” CPI, but not everyone in the audience was laughing. To paraphrase her remarks:
“I kid to my family that I may be the only one in the country who is waiting to hear the President say he’ll support the ‘Chained’ CPI in his State of the Union speech! I will literally be jumping off of my couch in excitement if he does.”
I guess excitement is in the eye of the beholder.