The White House announced that the President has scheduled a “fiscal-responsibility summit” on February 23, 2009 and plans to unveil a budget blueprint three days later. The aim is to put pressure on Congress to address the country’s surging long-term debt crisis. Analysts expect that the budget deficit will be in the range of $1.5 to $2 trillion this year. Projections for 2009 deficit range from Goldman Sachs’ $1.43 trillion to $1.9 trillion from economic firm Strategas Research Partners.
This seems a bit of mixed signal. On the one hand, the President has managed to pass a $787 billion stimulus but many economists and political economy observers deem it insufficient. My view has been that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was Act One in a several stage resuscitation effort for the economy. My expectation is the President’s budget include more targeted spending that creates jobs by investing in America.
As Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect notes the “recovery bill was about half the level needed, given how rapidly the economy is collapsing.” He goes on to cite the example of the impact of the downturn on state and local governments. Their revenues are likely to decline by $400 billion yet the fiscal stimulus only replaces only about $140 billion of that. He notes that “the result is needless layoffs, cutbacks in programs, and deferred public investments.”
Speaking Friday to business leaders at the White House, the president defended the surge of spending in the stimulus plan, but he made sure to add: “It’s important for us to think in the midterm and long term. And over that midterm and long term, we’re going to have to have fiscal discipline. We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying.”
I don’t disagree but I guess I’d like to know what the definition of midterm and long-term is. I can’t imagine that midterm is anything in the next four years. And long-term isn’t even in the picture for a decade. (more…)
The President has approved an increase of 17,000 troops in Afghanistan. The increase this Spring and Summer would come on top of 36,000 U.S. troops now there, an increase of almost 50%. More from the New York Times:
President Obama will send an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan this spring and summer in the first major military move of his presidency, White House officials said on Tuesday.
The increase would come on top of 36,000 American troops already there, making for an increase of nearly 50 percent. In issuing the order, Mr. Obama is choosing a middle ground, addressing urgent requests from commanders who have been pressing for reinforcements while postponing a more difficult judgment on a much larger increase in personnel that the commanders have been seeking.
White House officials said that 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., will deploy in the next few weeks, aiming to be on the ground in Afghanistan by late spring, while an Army brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash., composed of 4,000 soldiers, will deploy in the summer.
An additional 5,000 Army support troops and so-called “enablers” will also be deploying in the summer, administration officials said, which will bring the number of troops deployed as part of this presidential order to 17,000. The decision does carries some political risks for Mr. Obama, whose election was interpreted by many Americans as a mandate to bring troops home from Iraq. But Mr. Obama has now announced additional American troops are headed to Afghanistan before he has withdrawn any troops from Iraq.
But White House officials said both of the units being sent to Afghanistan were originally supposed to be going to Iraq.
“We have the ability to do this because we will be drawing down in Iraq,” a senior White House official said.
Mr. Obama is under pressure from his military commanders in Afghanistan, who have been pressing for reinforcements of about 30,000 soldiers, almost twice as many as the president has so far decided to send. The commanders hope to have additional forces in place by late spring or early summer as part to help counter growing violence and chaos in the country, particularly in advance of the upcoming presidential elections, which are expected to take place in August.
The Pakistani government and a religious group in the country’s Swat valley have agreed that sharia, Islamic law, will be implemented in the region.
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan reports from Islamabad, where the government hopes its deal with Tehrik-e-Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi will bring peace to the area.