President Barack Obama President Barack Obama and health care reform

Obama Defends His Budget as Threat to the Status Quo

WASHINGTON (By Peter Baker, NYT) March 1, 2009 —  President Obama described his expansive budget proposal on Saturday as “a threat to the status quo in Washington” and cast himself as a populist crusader willing to do battle with special interests to expand health care, curb pollution and improve education.

“I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “I came to provide the sweeping change this country demanded when it went to the polls in November. That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I’ll be fighting for in the weeks ahead.”

The address hinted at the strategy the White House intends to employ to push for the spending plan released last week, a return to a more traditional Democratic approach of positioning the party as fighting against the rich and powerful. In Mr. Obama’s telling, he is taking on entrenched interests in the form of banks, insurance companies, large agribusinesses, oil and gas companies and others.

Beyond the $3.6 trillion budget for the 2010 fiscal year, the president’s spending plan outlines a wide array of ambitious initiatives for the next several years that collectively would transform American society. Mr. Obama wants to extend health coverage to more than 40 million uninsured, revamp industry so it stops producing so many emissions that cause climate change, develop alternative energy sources, and invest billions more in education.

At the same time, he wants to restructure the tax code to shift more of the burden from lower and middle income workers to the wealthy, effectively a redistribution of wealth intended to reverse the widening income gap of recent years. And he promised to bring the skyrocketing federal deficit, projected to reach a breathtaking $1.75 trillion this year, under control by the end of his first term.

The president said the “real and dramatic change” in his plan already has “special interests” gearing up for battle. He said “the insurance industry won’t like the idea” he would force competitive bidding for Medicare coverage and “banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea” of ending subsidies for student loans and “oil and gas companies won’t like” the end of certain tax breaks.

“The system we now have might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t,” he said. “I work for the American people.”

A number of his ideas have attracted criticism across party lines. Republicans deride the overall plan as a “job killer” intended to revive class warfare, soak the rich and burden business too much at a time of economic hardship. The plan means “the era of big government is back,” as Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, put it this week.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts told a conference of conservative activists on Friday “I’m afraid I know where the liberal Democrats want to take us.” Mr. Romney, a former and possibly future Republican presidential candidate, added, “As they try to pull us in the direction of government-dominated Europe, we’re going to have to fight as never before to make sure that America stays America.”

Certain provisions in Mr. Obama’s plan may strike special interests, but they also affect favored programs for Democrats as well as Republicans. Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, for instance, declared he opposed Mr. Obama’s proposal to phase out agricultural subsidies for farmers with gross receipts over $500,000.

Senator Kent Conrad, another Democrat from North Dakota and the Senate Budget Committee chairman, likewise opposed the farm subsidy plan but said limits on mortgage, charitable contribution and other deductions for high income earners “may well not survive” and expressed concern about the buildup of debt in the spending blueprint.

“I think we ought to go to work and take the good things in this president’s budget, especially the first five years where he cuts the deficit in half,” Mr. Conrad told CNBC. “But then he kind of gets stuck in the second five years. I think we can do better.”

But even as he criticizes special interests, Mr. Obama will have his own interest group allies fighting for his plan. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and a liberal advocacy group called Americans United for Change, have produced an advertisement chiding Republicans for opposing Mr. Obama’s economic stimulus plan. “Tell them America won’t take no for an answer anymore,” the advertisement says.