Re-defining the divide

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

You may have noticed that President Obama submitted his first budget this week. David Sanger with the NYT certainly did.

There is a boldness to the strategy – the kind of boldness that worked for Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign – that is breathtaking. He is gambling that the combination of his political capital and the urgency created by the economic crisis gives him a moment that may never come around again…

If Johnson’s rallying cry was an end to poverty in the world’s richest nation, Mr. Obama’s is an end to the Reagan Revolution. With the proposed tax increases on couples making more than $250,000, Mr. Obama has declared that trickle-down economics – the theory that the entire country benefits as the nation’s richest amass and spend – was a fantasy. He denounced it in moral terms, declaring in his budget that “there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few.”

Some are even calling it the Shock Doctrine Reversed.

And then yesterday, Obama recorded another Weekly Presidential Address to talk about it.

The money quote starts at about 3:00.

I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy.  Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

‘So am I.’

The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t. I work for the American people. I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November.

During the debate about the stimulus bill, all of the talk was about bi-partisanship (or the lack thereof) between Democrats and Republicans. But I believe that Obama has known all along, just as we do, that the real fault lines lay between the people of this country and the interests he has begun to name in this address. Due to the obscene amount of money in politics, this poses a potential challenge for both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress.

So Obama has just declared “fight on.” This should get interesting!!!!