Obama Calls for 'Grand Bargain' on Economy: 'Everybody's Going to Have to Give'

ABC News ^ | January 10, 2009 | George Stephanopoulos

[stevie_d_64]

In my exclusive interview with Barack Obama airing tomorrow on This Week, the president-elect told me that fixing our economy over the long term will require sacrifice from every American and scaling back some of his campaign promises.

"Our challenge is going to be identifying what works and putting more money into that, eliminating things that don’t work, and making things that we have more efficient. But I’m not suggesting, George, I want to be realistic here, not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped," Obama told me in his first interview since arriving back in Washington, DC as president-elect.

I asked the president-elect, "At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?"

"Yes," Obama said.

"And when will that get done?" I asked.

"Well, right now, I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you described is exactly what we’re going to have to do. What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government? What are we getting for it? And how do we make the system more efficient?"

"And eventually sacrifice from everyone?" I asked.

"Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game," Obama said.

[DrC]

“If by “giving” he means giving up an entitlement, then Mr. O and I could get along better than I expect”

When agricultural subsidies (which disproportionately benefit IL, among other states) are on the chopping block, you will know BHO possibly is serious. Until then, it’s just business as usual in DC, the only real change being the name of the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Isn’t that change we can believe in?

“It is evident that there are no economic justifications for retaining agricultural subsidies. The reason, therefore, must be political.”
http://oceangebhardt.com/docs/pdf/AgriSubsidies.pdf

“The ratio of subsidies to value is highest in the states that grow primarily program crops and that have relatively small livestock sectors. This includes Illinois, North Dakota, and Montana.”
http://www.card.iastate.edu/iowa_ag_review/fall_01/concentration.aspx