Did the White House A/V dude load the wrong file into Obama’s teleprompter? While the president’s class-warfare attack on Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” would probably have earned rousing applause at a Jefferson-Jackson dinner, the speech failed to accomplish its advertised purpose: outlining Obama’s long-term blueprint to avoid a debt crisis.
Even if a) his doubling-down on Obamacare’s unproven cost controls works and b) his trillion-dollar tax increases don’t slow the economy, this new plan only stabilizes government debt as a share of the economy for maybe a dozen years. After that, the march to financial crisis continues apace.
Of course, if Obama had actually offered a multi-decade blueprint, like Ryan did, he would have had to concede that there’s no way he can pay for all his spending over the long term without Washington raising taxes on the middle-class and probably instituting a value-added tax. (On that count, one nonpartisan budget expert told me, the Obama plan is “ridiculous.”)
Now that’s no way to launch a reelection campaign. It’s also no way to win the economic future. Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund kvetched that the White House had no credible plan in place to cut U.S. debt. Some 24 hours later, it still doesn’t.
— James Pethokoukis is Money & Politics columnist at Reuters Breakingviews.