Barack Obama’s war on me: part II (the economic part)

See, here’s the problem: There’s lots of stuff in this budget that I like, but, upon closer examination, it seems I’m going to have to pay for it all. I mean, I was reading the reports and listening to the learned television analysis from carefully balanced panels of rabidly partisan Republicans and smugly defensive Democrats. I even listened to George Stephanopoulos’s whole interview with Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag who is a) exceptionally well-equipped for his job and b) a dead ringer for Screech from "Saved by the Bell." I realize he has been on some lists of the hottest Obamamanians, and I take this personally. I mean, Rahm Emanuel was on this list. Say what you may about Rahm Emanuel, but he looks like the lunatic cousin of the Geico gecko. Why weren’t there lists like this when I was in the government? I would have had a fighting chance, anyway.

As Orzag and others laid out the budget — which really is a document of extraordinary sweep, truly demanding coverage by a magazine like Foreign Policy, because if passed it would dramatically redefine the role and priorities of the most powerful government in the world, and almost certainly will have a great impact on its relative power and international policies going forward — anyway, as I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself with extraneous clauses, when these guys laid out the budget, I thought, "Hey, not bad."

I mean, what’s not to like? We need health care reform and one good place to start is actually accounting for the money we are spending. (Ditto on putting the cost of war on the books.) Same with investing in energy security, energy choice and green jobs. Same with investing in education. We can’t succeed as a 21st-century nation without investing heavily in these three areas. Now is precisely the right time. If we are going to have to double-down on government spending to plug a hole in the economy, we might as well investment-spend in these three areas.

Further, we need to find ways to pay for these things now — we can’t put it all on our People’s Bank of China credit card and worry about it later. One great way to pay now is with a carbon tax. Another way is a cap and trade system, which would generate revenues and create healthy disincentives for carbon use (and incentives for clean energy use). Such systems have worked only marginally well overseas, often because the initial prices for carbon were set too low or there were too many offset mechanisms — essentially because political timidity diluted the approach. While Obama’s plan to use an auction to set initial prices is better than some, watching Orzag back-track whenever Stephanopoulos suggested that the program was actually a tax was uncomfortable. What he should have done — listen to me on this, Peter, I didn’t mean the thing about Screech, I’m a big fan, I swear it — is simply say, "Yes, it’s a tax." And, to take a page out of Tom Friedman’s book on this, say, "We don’t just want a tax, we want a big tax." The point is that it’s a tax. The point is that it makes carbon-laden forms of energy more expensive. But there is an easy form of tax relief: use other forms of energy and use less energy. The average citizen can offset the additional costs by changing just a few behaviors every day — which is why we want the tax. (Although we won’t mind the revenue either, will we? And just so we’re clear here: I strongly prefer a direct carbon tax to a cap and trade system. But either is better than nothing.)

So I’m kinda loving all this. And then I hear that there are going to be credits for people who are paying to put their kids through school and I’m thinking, "Bingo! That’s just what I need! This is a party! I knew there was a reason I supported you during the campaign, President O!"

But then the dark reality sets in: It turns out I’m not eligible. I make too much money. (Who makes too much money not to get some help, what with the $200,000-plus it takes to send a kid to college? And that’s after-tax dollars. I have to earn $400,000 a kid just to deal with college — times two kids who may want to go to graduate school — that’s after 14 years of private school ’cause public school really wasn’t an option in D.C. That’s another, say, $25K a year, times 14. In sum: $700K, post-tax, per kid. In excess of $2.6 million pre-tax to send two kids to school. How can I possibly make too much money not to get some kind of help with that? Especially since I’m already paying all the property taxes that support the public schools I’m not using. And since ultimately society will be getting a return on my investment. Because my beautiful, brilliant girls will definitely make a contribution. At the very least, they have already conclusively demonstrated that they will do their fair share of consuming. In fact, had I known when they were born what I know now, I would have named them Stimulus 1 and Stimulus 2.)

So, maybe there’s something else for me in here. 95 percent of Americans are going to get a tax break. Even people who don’t pay any taxes at all are getting a break. (Which is something like half of all taxpayers.) Surely, I must be getting some kind of break. I own a small business. We’re creating jobs. Not a lot. A few. But some jobs. And so I comb the proposals looking for something for me and my family. Not only do I find no breaks. I’m going to pay more. A lot more. I have become part of the only group in America it seems to be okay to raise taxes on in a deep recession. Somehow raising taxes on most people is a drag on the economy, but raising taxes on people like me is actually good for the economy.

And I keep looking. But everywhere there is something delicious, there is a clause that says, effectively, "Not for you, David." In fact, I believe my name is actually used several times in the budget document. I take a look at the mortgage stuff. Surely there is something in all this mortgage stuff that will help my family out. We pay our mortgage. We work to keep the value of our house up.  We’re responsible about all this. What’s in there for us? Ah, I see, we get to subsidize the people who weren’t responsible. Er, um, fantastic. I mean, I know I should be happy about this. Because I am a Democrat. I’m a liberal. I want progressive taxes. I want to adjust for the grotesque skewing of income to the top fraction of one percent. I wrote a book on how grotesque all that was. (Out in paperback this week, by the way, folks. It’s called Superclass. Have I mentioned that?)

So, why am I not feeling good about this? Why do I not feel great about this massive rebalancing? Because I don’t feel like the top two percent of anything. I don’t feel rich. I’m working my ass off to pay for all the things my parents could have at a fraction of the cost. Where I grew up, you could actually send your kid to the public schools. As for the house, the one we live in is almost precisely the same house my parents raised me in. It cost them $52,000 in 1967. That was a perfectly reasonable amount for a middle-class house. But that house, I discovered to my horror, now costs over $1 million. My wife and I have to work seven days a week to pay for what used to be a middle-class lifestyle — but without the benefits from the system that helped my folks get there. I don’t get a boost. I get a kick in the wallet. Yoiks. Why me, Barack? Why me? Can’t you go after the really rich? Or can’t we get more from everyone on a few of these things? And while we’re at it, could we remember that some of the people in America who make over $250,000 a year are not the evil wealthy, we’re also hard working Americans seeking to maintain, not even improve, the lifestyles we enjoyed as kids? And that it’s not getting any easier for us either? (Admit it. The baby boomers got screwed. You had to work five times as hard to maintain the lifestyle you grew up with and just as you got to the point we thought we could take a deep breath, the economy blew up and obliterated our savings and any hope of retirement. My financial planner has it worked out and I can get whole again if I a) put all my money in my mattress and b) figure out how to work for about 15 years past the point actuarial tables suggest I will expire.)

Of course, just when I get myself all worked up, I stop and think of the words of my psychotherapist ex-wife: "It’s not me," she would say therapeutically. "It’s you." I have to wonder: Is the problem not with Barack? Could it be me? Could I be having a hard time swallowing the kinds of policies that I have long forcefully advocated over brie, wheat thins, and Chilean merlot? It was easier being a Democrat when there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that our policies would ever be fully implemented. Now we have to ask, did we really mean all that stuff about a fairer society? About new priorities? Even if it meant we would have to shoulder the load? And that’s the unkindest cut of all. Barack has put the question to me (and possibly, I’ll admit it, to others as well): Are we the people we thought we were? Are we prepared to walk the walk as well as talk the talk? I’m frustrated and angry, all right. But, maybe the real question I’ll need to grapple with is whether my battle is with the President or with myself.