It’s hard to get beyond the deficit numbers — a shocking $1.75 trillion for the current year — in President Obama’s budget proposal. But, if the country wants to reform health care to lower costs and insure more people, to tackle climate change by lowering carbon emissions, to lessen our energy dependence by generating new forms of power and to help more young Americans complete college, this will cost money — a lot of money.
As much as it is a change in direction, the president’s budget blueprint, released Thursday, is a long overdue dose of fiscal reality. The president is to be commended for putting a price tag on the many initiatives he has long championed.
In the first honest accounting of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama booked $130 billion in expenses for these efforts in 2010. The president’s budget plan would set up a $634 billion fund to reform the health care system to expand insurance coverage.
The high cost of many of these proposals is the beginning of a conversation, not the end. The decision for Congress, many of whom, especially on the Republican side, are skeptical, is not whether overhauling our health care system or investing in new energy sources is necessary — they are — but how much America can devote to this work and how quickly it can proceed.
Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both members of committees that will play large roles in setting tax and spending policies, praised the president for raising issues that need attention. But, both are rightly concerned about the cost of his agenda and its impact on the national debt.
Many will argue that a recession is no time to so dramatically increase government spending. However, the U.S. government is the only entity with the resources (yes, many of them borrowed) to make the investments to end the economic downturn. Improving health coverage, for example, will help families avoid bankruptcy due to medical crises and will ease the growing burden on businesses that now devote limited resources to insurance that could be invested in job creation.
Likewise, investing in alternative energy will create jobs and reduce business costs, both of which will contribute to ending the recession.
The president would pay for these programs largely by increasing taxes and creating a new carbon trading program to reduce emissions of the gas linked to climate change.
On the tax side, the Obama administration would allow the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts for couples earning more than $250,000 a year. The top tax rate would return to 39.6 percent, the level during the Clinton administration, and the tax rate on dividends and interest would return to 20 percent for those earners. Middle- and low-income families would see tax reductions.
The president’s budget proposal is one vision for remaking America. Alternatives must be as focused on solving real problems and as fiscally forthright as his document.