Are Obama’s Budget Proposals Too Reasonable?

Thinking about the fine whine Ben Nelson, Even Bayh, and others are currently enjoying over the dastardly idea of returning the marginal tax rate on the richest two percent of the population to where it was back when Bill Clinton was destroying the economy, I’m growing concerned that the Obama administration may have made a mistake by putting forward such a reasonable budget proposal.

I can see why they did it. The key administration players—Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Tim Geithner, Jason Furman, etc.—are nothing if not reasonable, moderate people. But the key legislative players aren’t reasonable, moderate people they’re “reasonable” “Senate moderates.” A “Senate moderate” is someone who takes his party’s proposals, objects to them, waters them down a bit, and then congratulates himself on a job well done. Which is great if his party’s proposals are unduly immoderate. But it’s big-time trouble if his party puts a reasonable, moderate agenda on the table.

After all, you don’t maintain the painstakingly achieved Nelson/Bayh “Senate moderate” brand by clapping politely. You need to bitch and moan and be quoted in inside-baseball only media outlets that none of your constituents pay attention to, and hold conferences and have meetings at the White House where people hold your hands. You need to be praised by the opposition party, and extract your pound of flesh from the proposal. Then when it looks like it might go down to defeat, you can vote for the somewhat-watered-down version and be the hero who saved the day and nobody will mention that you saved the day from yourself.

But you really do need to do that stuff. You can’t just say “well, this is a reasonable proposal so I’ll back it.” Then your moderate license gets taken away.

But I think that means that proposals need to deliberately overshoot the mark. Say Obama had proposed a top marginal tax rate of 43 percent. Well Evan Bayh couldn’t stand for that! He might propose some reasonable alternative like letting the Bush tax cuts expire so that post-recession rates will be back where they were in the 1990s. How reasonable! How moderate! How judicious!