Making Sense

Now that Congress has voted to bailout Wall Street bankers, what about the rest of us? No one seriously believes that the $700 billion bailout will stop the oncoming recession. This morning, we learned the economy continued shedding jobs in September. Yet this week, Senate Republicans used a filibuster to kill a modest stimulus bill. We need help for the real economy, not just for the mess on Wall Street.

Over 80 percent of Americans believe our health care system needs to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt. While progressives and conservatives have both proposed health care reforms, polls show that when the opposing plans are explained to Americans, they clearly favor the progressive solution. Conservatives such as John McCain use sound bites about not “putting a bureaucrat between you and your doctor” and “restoring control to patients.” But conservatives don’t say much about what their policies would mean for an average American family. Progressives shouldn’t let them obscure the real-life impact of their proposals. Americans need to know the truth.

With little fanfare, Congress gave final approval last Saturday to a 2009 defense authorization bill with a price tag of $612 billion. That legislation includes only partial funding for the Iraq war. When the full cost of the Iraq war is included, military spending will total about $700 billion in the coming year. If we really wanted to make America more secure, we’d divert a huge amount of this money from waste, fraud and misadventure to projects that would strengthen our nation.

National security is a subject on which progressives have struggled to find a winning message. It’s a topic where conservatives get away with surreal talking points, such as, “Let’s fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” which Sarah Palin repeated as recently as last week. [New York Times] McCain simplistically asserts that America’s choices in Iraq are “victory” or “retreat.” [Washington Post] How can progressives turn the debate from a recitation of absurd slogans into a serious reconsideration of America’s role in the world?