http://israel-commentary.org/?p=5660
Wall Street Journal Editorial
(Via Susan Combs, Comptroller web page)
President Obama is expected to name Jack Lew as his Treasury secretary on Thursday, continuing
his cabinet’s second-term makeover in his own image. He is assembling a
team of personal and ideological loyalists whose job will be less to
offer independent advice than to advance and implement his agenda for a
larger, more redistributionist government.
Mr. Lew’s nomination will disappoint those (mostly naive CEOs) who
were hoping for a second-term agenda more hospitable to business and
private economic growth. Save for a stint in Robert Rubin’s Citigroup,
where Democrats go to monetize their political connections, and a few
years as an academic, Mr. Lew is a Washington lifer whose expertise is politics. He brings no special knowledge or experience in economic policy, private industry or global finance.
It’s notable how Mr. Lew’s reputation has changed during the Obama
years. As White House budget director in the Clinton era, he was viewed
by Republicans as a reasonable liberal they could do business with. But
as budget director and chief of staff in the Obama White House, Mr. Lew has been the President’s most partisan and implacable negotiator.
Our sources who have been in the room with the 57-year-old say he is now a fierce defender of entitlements
in their current form, resists all but token spending restraint, and
favors higher tax rates. In taking these positions he no doubt reflects
Mr. Obama, but no one should think he’ll emerge as his own man at
Treasury.
It’s also worth noting how different Mr. Lew’s selection is from most
modern Treasury secretaries, of either party. Democrats have tended to
select men with credibility in the business or financial worlds. JFK
chose Republican financier Douglas Dillon, while Bill Clinton chose
moderate Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen and then Mr. Rubin of Goldman
Sachs. George W. Bush picked former or current CEOs, though until Hank
Paulson economic policy was run out of the White House.
Mr. Lew’s selection signals similar White House dominance, as well as
a degrading of Treasury’s traditional role as the voice for pro-growth
policies. Mr. Lew is not the economic general you choose if you’re
looking for tax reform or a bold growth agenda.
He’s the man you pick if you expect months of political trench
warfare over taxes and spending. He’s the partisan you nominate if your
overriding political goal is to destroy House Republicans in the midterm
elections, not strike a deal with them.
Mr. Lew’s nomination would continue the post-election trend of Obama
Unfettered. There’s no more restraining his progressive agenda, as
during the last two years. Chuck Hagel will be unleashed to shrink the
Pentagon and reduce America’s global military footprint. John Kerry will
be dispatched to give engagement with Iran and other U.S. adversaries
another try, whether or not they’re interested.
But Mr. Obama’s main project is to reorder the relationship of
Americans to their government. His goal is to extend and entrench
entitlements into the daily expectations of the middle class—from cradle
to college to health care during the working years to retirement and
then the grave. The productive engines of the private U.S. economy are
to be reoriented to finance this income redistribution.
His first four years, at least before House Republicans rudely
interrupted, were about extending and entrenching the entitlements. His
next four years will be about protecting every inch of that expansion
while trying to find the means to pay for it.
Mr. Lew’s main job will be to cajole or pound that money out of
Republicans. And if he can’t do that, he’ll try to position Democrats to
retake the House in 2014. Then in Mr. Obama’s final two years, the
President and Nancy Pelosi could finish what they started and impose the
new energy tax or value-added tax they know is essential to finance
their dreams because it taps the middle class.
Mr. Lew only makes sense as a Treasury secretary if this is the agenda. Policies to grow the economy will be an afterthought. The GOP should calibrate its expectations and strategy accordingly.
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