A criticism of President Obama that seems to be taking root is that he is trying to do too much at once. Concentrate on fixing the current economic crisis, the president is told, and forget about tackling major health-care reform and green-energy initiatives, as he begins to do in his 2010 budget proposal.
It’s baffling advice. Do these critics see no connection between long-term prosperity and developing a health-care policy that stems the chronic bleeding in business and government budgets? Are they arguing for another generation of dependence on foreign oil, with all the national-security and environmental hazards that come with it? Do they think this president can’t do more than one thing at a time?
Yes, the economy is the most urgent challenge. But our broken health care system and addiction to oil threaten to become our long-term undoing. They’re all intertwined: Failing to find solutions to our long-term problems will likely stunt future economic expansions, creating longer and deeper downturns.
New estimates of future deficits under Obama’s budget plan, released Friday by the Congressional Budget Office, will add fuel to critics’ fire. They show deficits exceeding $1 trillion a year for the next decade — a problem that Obama mostly inherited. It’s important to bear in mind, though, that such estimates are notoriously flawed. If the economy picks up steam faster than the CBO projects, deficits can shrink quickly and dramatically, as they did in the mid-1990s.
Such growth will be all but impossible if health care costs aren’t contained. Local efforts by the Everett Clinic, the Puget Sound Health Alliance and others have shown that cost savings and improved quality can go hand in hand. If serious progress on health-care reform can’t be achieved now, when providers, employers, insurers and patient groups all appear committed to it, then when? This nation can’t afford to miss what could be its last, best opportunity to forge a system that serves everyone while staying solvent.
Nor can it afford to wait in investments in green energy, which over time will increase our security and independence, and fuel the 21st century economy.
Are there risks to spending more upfront to address these challenges? Of course. But waiting could be the greater risk. And what’s to say that Congress will have any appetite for tackling them once the economy recovers? Decades have passed, good times and bad, with barely any progress.
It’s always easier to put off the big problems, but time is running out. This opportunity to meet some of our greatest challenges head-on mustn’t be missed.
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