Obama Expands Government's Role, Not Size
Posted at 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 22
While President Obama’s second term agenda faces significant hurdles in Congress, Marc Ambinder explains why President Obama’s liberal vision breaks the normal conceptions of big versus small government.
“Four years hence, the government is almost certainly not going to be appreciably larger… The government will have grown much more (percentage-wise) during the Bush administration than it did during the Obama administration. Where Obama’s liberal vision will come to fruition is in the decrees of the administrative state.”
“The bureaucracy will impose, through taxes and mandates, a cap on emissions. Regulators will come to the aid of students with outstanding loans… Pay equity for women; tax benefits for gay couples; the implementation of immigration reform… The size of the surveillance state will increase, too.”
