Robert Reich, Salon: Healthcare matters, but unemployment matters more

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Monday, Nov 2, 2009 06:03 PST
Healthcare matters, but unemployment matters more
Maybe Obama can turn on a dime from healthcare to jobs, but if not, there will be trouble
By Robert Reich

http://www.salon.com/news/unemployment/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2009/11/02/healthcare_jobs



People wait in line to enter a job fair in Seattle on June 16.

Presidents tend to overcompensate for the errors of their predecessors in the same party and in so doing sow seeds of their own mistakes. Bill Clinton wanted above all to avoid Jimmy Carter's fate -- losing reelection because the economy was heading south on Election Day. So Clinton made a deal with Alan Greenspan to slash the budget deficit and thereby jettison much of his ambitious campaign agenda (that was Greenspan's precondition for lowering interest rates and causing an economic boom in time for the reelection) and then Clinton took direction from Dick Morris, who told him to move to the right. The result: Clinton avoided Carter's failure and won reelection handily. But the Clinton years produced few if any major social reforms. Clinton spent so much of his initial political capital, as well as his time and energy, on deficit reduction that he didn't have enough left to enact healthcare in 1994.

Barack Obama came to the White House intent on not repeating Clinton's failure to enact universal healthcare. Did he overlearn the Clinton lesson? Obama seems to have made all the right moves to enact something he can credibly label healthcare reform: Rather than spend his political capital elsewhere, he reserved most of it for healthcare.

I sincerely hope America gets genuine health reform and I hope it's stronger than what's emerging in the Senate. (Whoever voted for Joe Lieberman last time around ought to pray for continued good health.) I worry, though, that Obama's strategy may turn out to be a mistake comparable to Clinton's overemphasis on deficit reduction. Obama's focus on healthcare rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits, could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused. While affordable healthcare is critically important to Americans, making a living is more urgent. Yet the administration's efforts to date on this more basic concern have been neither particularly visible nor coherent.

[Common Sense Party]

1. I'm glad someone's saying it.

I know, I know. Reich and I will be vilified and burned at the stake.

The economy and jobs are front and center in people's minds. If the administration could get those two right, and the economy humming along again by 2011, he will have so much political capital he could enact single pay universal with bells and whistles up the wazoo and people would thank him for it.

[tonysam]

2. Obama's putting cart before horse

His administration and Congress HAVE to do something drastic with the economy to get people working again. Health care reform can wait, as far as I am concerned.

[Common Sense Party]

3. I absolutely agree, but I fear we're in the small minority here.

[emilyg]

4. A lot of us agree.

[OHdem10]

5. Mostly like many more agree than disagree.

[dysfunctional press]

6. single-payer could solve both issues.

it would be the largest economic stimulus we've seen in awhile.

[Bitwit1234]

7. And as for unemployment insurance

where's the outrage in the press and why aren't they reporting that the republicans are blocking a bill to extend it...see that is what I mean. The MSM is still favoring the republicans. Even MSNBC isn't making an issue out of it.

[mmonk]

8. While true, they are not mutually exclusive.

Our expensive healthcare costs on business is one of the reasons our corporate lords ship our jobs overseas.