John Nichols: Doyle's smart on stimulus

John Nichols  —  1/11/2009 7:13 am

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle has not left Madison to take a job in the Obama administration. Instead, he has taken on a more significant responsibility: that of counselor and ally to the president-elect in the work of crafting a stimulus package to renew the American economy.

Doyle, who joined Obama for the announcement of the president-elect's stimulus plan last week, is not without self-interest in this regard. Wisconsin faces a gaping budget shortfall, and federal money would help the governor balance the books here at home.

But Doyle's contribution goes beyond helping Wisconsin.

For Obama's stimulus proposals to begin to succeed, they will need to bridge the long gap between Washington and Main Street America, and the way to do that is by working closely with state and local governments.

States, counties and municipalities provide frontline services to Americans. They build the infrastructure that is so much discussed by D.C. policymakers.

Unfortunately, the economic downturn has hit state and local governments hard. They do not have the money even to maintain existing programs.

They cannot balance budgets without making deep cuts in spending on infrastructure, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and schools -- or dramatically increasing taxes.

Neither scenario is a viable one in a time of economic uncertainty. Indeed, both scenarios threaten to make a bad situation worse.

Enter the federal government, which has the capacity to make resources available to prime the pump at the state and local level.

Of course, there are pressures to do so in a cautious manner. Already, we are hearing whining about budget deficits coming from Republicans who could not be stirred to speak up when George Bush was running deficits to fund needless wars and tax cuts for the rich.

Obama needs to heed the counsel not of budget hawks but of Democratic governors, who are on the front lines in the struggle to address a crisis.

Caution won't work in times such as these. That's why Doyle and other governors are countering the deficit-hawk whiners with counsel that the federal stimulus package must be robust. Doyle was among the Democratic governors who last week asked Obama and the Democratic Congress to develop a $1 trillion stimulus package -- and to steer much of the money to the states.

That's a big number, to be sure. But it is not an irresponsible one.

Doyle is no spendthrift. He has actually taken criticism from some fellow Democrats for being too fiscally conservative in his budgeting at the state level.

But he and his fellow governors recognize the need to think big in order to get the U.S. economy moving. And Obama is listening to them.

"There is no doubt that the cost of this plan will be considerable," the president-elect said Thursday. "It will certainly add to the budget deficit in the short term. But equally certain are the consequences of doing too little or nothing at all, for that will lead to an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes, and confidence in our economy."

That's the welcome sound of a president-elect who is listening to the wise counsel of governors like Jim Doyle, rather than Washington insiders. Doyle should keep prodding the man he supported for the presidency, and Obama should keep taking the wise counsel of Wisconsin's governor and his colleagues.

John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times, Wisconsin's progressive daily online news source, where his column appears regularly.

John Nichols  —  1/11/2009 7:13 am