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<DIV class=timestamp>September 20, 2011</DIV>
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<H1><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">Are We Going to Roll Up Our Sleeves or
Limp On?</NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE>
<H6 class=byline>By <A class=meta-per
title="More Articles by Thomas L. Friedman"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
rel=author>THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN</A></H6></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody><NYT_CORRECTION_TOP></NYT_CORRECTION_TOP>
<P>It becomes clearer every week that our country faces a big choice: We can
either have a hard decade or a bad century. </P>
<P>We can either roll up our sleeves and do what’s needed to overcome our
post-cold war excesses and adapt to the demands of the 21st century or we can
just keep limping into the future. </P>
<P>Given those stark choices, one would hope that our politicians would rise to
the challenge by putting forth fair and credible recovery proposals that match
the scale of our debt problem and contain the three elements that any serious
plan must have: spending cuts, increases in revenues and investments in the
sources of our strength. But that, alas, is not what we’re getting, which is why
there remains an opening for an independent Third Party candidate in the 2012
campaign. </P>
<P>The Republicans have come nowhere near rising to our three-part challenge
because the G.O.P. is no longer a “conservative” party, offering a conservative
formula for American renewal. The G.O.P. has been captured by a radical antitax
wing, and the party’s leaders are too afraid to challenge it. What would real
conservatives be offering now? </P>
<P>They would understand, as President Eisenhower did, that at this crucial
hinge in our history we cannot just be about cutting. We also need to be
investing in the sources of our greatness: infrastructure, education,
immigration and government-funded research. Real conservatives would understand
that you cannot just shred the New Deal social safety nets, which are precisely
what enable the public to tolerate freewheeling capitalism, with its brutal ups
and downs. </P>
<P>Real conservatives would understand that we cannot maintain our vital defense
budget without an appropriate tax base. Real conservatives would understand that
we can simplify the tax code, get rid of all the special-interest giveaways and
raise revenues at the same time. Real conservatives would never cut taxes and
add a new Medicare entitlement in the middle of two wars. And real conservatives
would understand that the Tea Party has become the Tea Kettle Party. It is
people in real distress about our predicament letting off steam by trying to
indiscriminately cut everywhere. But steam without an engine — without a
strategic plan for American greatness based on spending cuts, tax reform and
investments in tomorrow — will take us nowhere. Countries that don’t invest in
the future tend to not do well there. Real conservatives know that. </P>
<P>I’ve argued that the only way for Obama to expose just how radical the G.O.P.
has become would be for the president to put out <EM>in detail</EM> his version
of a credible “Grand Bargain” and then go sell it to the country. But that
proposal had to include real long-term spending cuts in Medicare and Social
Security so they can be preserved, tax reform that raises revenues by asking
more of the rich — but also demands something from everyone — and an agenda for
investing in our growth engines, like schools and infrastructure, right now to
stimulate the economy today in ways that also increase our productivity for
tomorrow. That plan should have been a combination of the Simpson-Bowles deficit
reduction proposal and Mr. Obama’s new jobs agenda announced last week. </P>
<P>Such a credible, fair “Obama Plan” for deficit reduction married to a
credible jobs initiative would have captured America’s radical center and made
life very difficult for the G.O.P., which can’t accept any tax increases and has
no investment agenda other than tax cuts. It was the only chance for maneuvering
the G.O.P. into a Grand Bargain. </P>
<P>Mr. Obama gave us the credible $447 billion jobs program, but his deficit
reduction plan announced on Monday to pay for it and trim long-term spending
does not rise to the scale we need. It may motivate his base, but it will not
attract independents and centrists and, therefore, it will not corner the
Republicans. </P>
<P>As The Washington Post reported: “The latest Obama plan ‘doesn’t produce any
more in realistic savings than the plan they offered in April,’ said <A
href="http://crfb.org/biography/maya-macguineas-0">Maya MacGuineas</A>, the
president of the bipartisan <A href="http://crfb.org/">Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget</A>. ‘They’ve filled in details, repackaged it and
replaced one gimmick with another. They don’t even stabilize the debt. This is
just not enough.’ The most disheartening development, MacGuineas and others
said, is Obama’s decision to count $1.1 trillion in savings from the drawdown of
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan toward his debt-reduction total. Because Obama
has no intention of continuing war spending at last year’s elevated levels, that
$1.1 trillion would never have been spent.” </P>
<P>A Financial Times editorial summarized my feelings: “American voters are not
looking for champions of their preferred redistributive stance, but responsible
attitudes to the country’s challenges. If Mr. Obama suggests a millionaire’s tax
can save ordinary voters from pain, he will fail, economically and politically.”
</P>
<P>My fading hope is that this is Obama’s opening bid and enough Republicans
will come to their senses and engage him again in a Grand Bargain. My fear is
that both parties have just started their 2012 campaigns. In which case, the
rest of us will just sit here, hostages to fortune, orphans of a political
system gone mad, hunkering down for a bad century. </P><NYT_CORRECTION_BOTTOM>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>___________________________</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>Wayne A. Fox<BR><A
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