Boehner Now Concerned About Performance Of Package

This week as the proposed stimulus package makes its way through the gauntlet, it is front and center in the pundit-news circles.  Larry Summers of the Obama administration appeared on Meet The Press this morning to make his pitch for the Obama perspective on the stimulus.  He argued that doing too little is riskier than doing too much, but steered the conversation towards efficiencies rather than the big-small spectrum, echoing Obama's inauguration speech.  And that was what I came away with more than anything else: Summers does a fantastic job putting Obama's philosophy and style in the best light.

House Minority Leader John Boehner followed Summers to pitch a competing philosophy, arguing that the stimulus package contains too much infrastructure spending and not enough tax cuts.  He also notes the that the disagreement falls pretty clearly along party lines:

This is why we have Democrats and Republicans in this country, because we do look at these things differently.  They believe that all of this spending's going to help. But spending 44--or $200 million to fix up the National Mall, $21 million for sod, over $200 million for contraceptives, how does this going to fix an ailing economy?

So Republicans are coming out for tax cuts as the best solution and Democrats are coming out for spending.  Which to me are not so much opposing ideas but complementary ones.  Boehner acknowledges that in the long term, spending by the government may help.  Summers points out that tax cuts are an important part of jump starting the economy.  But each side feels that their preferred method should be the lion's share of the package.

That thought led me back to one of the most interesting lectures I've ever heard on politics, morality and psychology by Jon Haidt of the University of Virginia.  He talks about the psychological and evolutionary reasons for conservative and liberal philosophies in humans.

You should watch the talk because it's fascinating and so I won't recap much of it, except the very important concept he introduces at the end - that liberalism and conservatism, rather than being opposing values are in fact complementary and necessary to balance one another - like ying and yang.

The debate over the stimulus is one of the best examples I've seen of a clear but complementary difference between liberals and conservatives (sorry libertarians, I still don't get you).  Conservatives are fearful of infrastructure spending going towards things 'other people' use, like contraceptives or public transportation, while liberals see long term benefits from such spending.  Whereas liberals eschew the short term fix of tax cuts, however effective they may be, in favor or a long view.  It is interesting that the Obama administration is taking a pro-active stance on finding a common ground rather than taking sides.  In the end I think the bold infrastructure spending is what will help the country a lot more long term than the familiar call for tax cuts...but then that's why they're called conservatives.