A Debate Perhaps?

Congressional Democrats led by Kent Conrad have begun to raise doubts today about the massive tax cuts offered in the latest leak of the Obama plan. This is an encouraging development, because the President-elect must have his own party on board first. The majority of the comments raise doubts about tax cuts relative to infrastructure spending in their effectiveness or "Bang for the Buck."

On a historical note, this development is quite similar to FDR's New Deal. The part of New Deal history that usually goes untold or undertold is that it was congressional Democrats, and not FDR, who were the catalyst of truly progressive economic policy. FDR was of course their voice, but in reality he was was much more moderate than the programs indicate. My guess is the debate then sounded quite similar to the debate now, lets just hope we learned from history. By that I mean that the stimulus should be larger as a percent of GDP than was the WPA (along with other New Deal programs) that were never quite large enough to give the economy the jolt it needed.

FDR and Obama both spoke in a tone that trumpeted BOLD action, but in reality it is Congress and not moderate Presidential positions that will actually be the catalyst for such action. I do not actually think this is a bad thing. I believe that the leader of the free world should be a Radical Moderate, meaning he or she should be the person asking tough questions and pushing the ideological assumptions of both the right and the left.