On se pr\u00e9pare, \u00e0 Washington, \u00e0 une majestueuse bataille, \u00e0 coups de milliers de $milliards, soit $billions pour nous et $trillion<\/em> pour les Anglo-Saxons. Parlons donc en $trillion<\/em>, comme font les commentateurs de la bataille entre le pr\u00e9sident Obama et les r\u00e9publicains. Dans cette perspective, il s’av\u00e8re donc que la bataille autour de la fermeture<\/a> du gouvernement n’\u00e9tait qu’un avant-go\u00fbt, une sorte de galop d’\u00e9chauffement.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tDans le Guardian<\/em> du 13 avril 2011<\/a>, Ewen MacAskill donne les principales informations \u00e0 propos de cette bataille o\u00f9 Obama intervient avec son propre plan de r\u00e9ductions des d\u00e9penses publiques ($4 trillion<\/em>, soit $4.000 milliards), contre les $6,2 trillion<\/em> qu’exigent les r\u00e9publicains. Ces chiffres sans aucun doute consid\u00e9rables sont n\u00e9anmoins logiques puisqu’ils se r\u00e9f\u00e8rent \u00e0 un d\u00e9ficit public qui d\u00e9passe les $14 trillion<\/em> ($14.000 milliards).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abBarack Obama has set the stage for a new and bigger budget showdown with the Republicans, proposing a staggering $4 trillion (\u00a32.4tn) in spending cuts over the next 12 years aimed at reducing America’s runaway deficit. Although the cut is enormous, it still falls well short of the $6.2tn the Republicans are demanding.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe battle is set to dwarf last week’s 2011 budget row that came within an hour of seeing the federal government shut down. The size of the deficit, more than $14tn, is one of the biggest political issues in the US, especially with the country in hock to China, which has accumulated a hoard of dollars. The deficit was one of the main reasons for the rise of the Tea Party movement and contributed to the Republican victory in last November’s congressional elections.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbObama has proposed to tackle the deficit by curbing defence spending and ending tax breaks introduced by George W Bush for wealthy Americans those earning more than $250,000 a year. In a move that will anger the Democratic base, Obama is also suggesting further cuts in the deficit would come from reforms to Medicaid, which provides basic health provision for the poor, and Medicare, which provides health care for those over 65.<\/em> []<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe focal point in the next few weeks is the raising of the country’s debt limit above $14.3tn. Normally this would be a technical move that would be voted through without much bother but it has become entangled in the battle over spending. If this is not agreed by the Republicans, the country would be in default, which would be embarrasing for Obama and would have implications for economies round the world. The deadline is 16 May.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbRepublican leaders said that if Obama did not agree to major debt cuts, they would not vote through the rise in in the debt ceiling from $14.3tn. The Republicans, who have a majority in the House of Representatives, are scheduled to pass a bill later this week to cut $6.2tn over the next decade without raising taxes. But it has no chance of getting through the Senate, where the Democrats have a majority. Even if it did, Obama could use his presidential veto to block it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe battle over the deficit has consequences not only for the US as it stumbles out of recession but other economies round the world. Democrats warn that the spending cuts being advocated by the Republicans would send the country back into recession.<\/em> []<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbSome economists and political scientists also raise what they see as the danger of Republican cuts slowing or even reversing America’s climb out off recession. Thomas Ferguson, professor of politics at the University of Massachusetts, said there was a danger of repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression by chopping spending. The US would surely take a rather large plunge. They will get Ireland and Greece outcomes. You will crater the US economy if you were to enact the [Republican] bill, Ferguson said.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLa r\u00e9action au discours d’Obama des lib\u00e9raux (progressistes) soutiens d’Obama, et, ces derniers temps, soutiens plut\u00f4t d\u00e9sappoint\u00e9s d’Obama, est variable. On note celle deMichael Tomasky, qu’on a suivi lors de la bataille de la fermeture du gouvernement, o\u00f9 il montrait le plus grand d\u00e9sappointement vis-\u00e0-vis du pr\u00e9sident. Cette fois (le 13 avril 2011<\/a> dans le Guardian<\/em>), Tomasky montre une certaine satisfaction concernant le sens des mots prononc\u00e9s par Obama, avec des r\u00e9serves concernant ce qu’on per\u00e7oit de la volont\u00e9 du pr\u00e9sident dans sa fa\u00e7on de les dire… <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abThere’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. And this is not a vision of the America I know.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbPretty astonishingly direct stuff, coming from the man who likes to lay back. The one-sentence takeaway on this speech: he showed today that is willing to fight the GOP on straightforward ideological grounds, and not just by saying hey, my numbers aren’t quite as severe as theirs. So I give him credit for that. This is a fight this country has to have. He obviously decided somewhere in there, since the last election and since extending the Bush tax cuts, that he just couldn’t play around anymore.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt was a tub-thumper of a speech, on paper. And yet, no tubs were thumped. He delivered it (usually) as if he was reading an annual report. I kept wondering how those words would have sounded coming out of the mouth of, say, Bill Clinton, who liked his fire and brimstone. Obama seemed almost afraid of his own words, as if those strong words and a fiery delivery would have been too much.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tTout de m\u00eame, on retient cette r\u00e9serve qui para\u00eetrait formelle, qui est en fait fondamentale, de la part de Tomasky, pourtant pr\u00eat \u00e0 tous les sacrifices intellectuels pour avoir encore l’occasion de soutenir son pr\u00e9sident Obama : \u00abObama seemed almost afraid of his own words<\/em>\u00bb Certes, pour beaucopup, de tels reproches n’ont gu\u00e8re de substance puisqu’ils ne portent pas sur la substance, justement, du d\u00e9bat. C’est n’y rien entendre La substance du d\u00e9bat, dans ce cas, c’est la question de la confiance qu’on peut avoir dans Obama. Le pr\u00e9sident US a tellement d\u00e9\u00e7u ses soutiens essentiels, le parti d\u00e9mocrate en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, tout ce qui compte de lib\u00e9raux (progressistes) de gauche mod\u00e9r\u00e9e, etc., qu’il y a d\u00e9sormais en formation, on s’en aper\u00e7oit, une v\u00e9ritable et tr\u00e8s profonde crise de confiance psychologique vis-\u00e0-vis de ce pr\u00e9sident. Un peu comme dans le cas des Noirs<\/a> US, il y a la question de plus en plus pressante de savoir si cet homme, ce pr\u00e9sident, a les tripes et la conviction pour soutenir sa position, m\u00eame si celle-ci est compl\u00e8tement fond\u00e9e. Sa propension presque obsessionnelle pour le compromis, pour l’accord bipartisan, pour un homme qui avait bas\u00e9 toute sa rh\u00e9torique de campagne sur le changement \u00e0 un point tel que certains croyaient entendre rupture, a fini par \u00e9roder, peut-\u00eatre saper la confiance fondamentale de ses principaux partisans. Cela n’a rien \u00e0 voir avec le soup\u00e7on d’int\u00e9grit\u00e9 douteuse, de manipulation, de corruption, etc., qui n’a pas vraiment lieu d’\u00eatre consid\u00e9r\u00e9 comme essentiel dans un syst\u00e8me o\u00f9 tout le monde l’est peu ou prou, douteux, corrompu et manipul\u00e9, et cela a tout \u00e0 voir avec quelque chose de plus fondamental qui est simplement la confiance de ses partisans. Ce n’est pas une question de vertu mais une question de conviction et de fermet\u00e9 psychologiques, fussent-elles partisanes et d\u00e9testables. Enfin, cet homme a-t-il quelque chose en lui qui ressemble \u00e0 la fermet\u00e9 de caract\u00e8re, qui est n\u00e9cessaire m\u00eame pour la d\u00e9fense d’int\u00e9r\u00eats douteux et critiquable ?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLa bataille qui s’annonce, \u00e0 laquelle BHO a \u00e9t\u00e9 contraint plus qu’il ne l’a voulue, risque \u00e9videmment de secouer terriblement le centre du Syst\u00e8me, et le Syst\u00e8me tout court, lorsqu’on mesure le poids formidable des sommes en jeu. Elle risque aussi de secouer violemment la stabilit\u00e9 de la position d’Obama, et Obama lui-m\u00eame. Nous irions jusqu’\u00e0 dire qu’il y a dans cette affaire deux batailles qui se profilent, aussi importantes l’une que l’autre : d’une part, la bataille du d\u00e9ficit, dont les enjeux, selon certains, sont capitaux, avec le plan r\u00e9publicain violemment d\u00e9nonc\u00e9 par les \u00e9conomistes les moins orthodoxes par rapport au carcan financier du capitalisme US, qui y voient une nouvelle version des erreurs de Roosevelt de 1937, lorsque les contraintes des d\u00e9penses publiques pr\u00e9cipit\u00e8rent une rechute dans la d\u00e9pression avec une relance dramatique du ch\u00f4mage. Bien entendu, une telle perspective toucherait de plein fouet, non seulement l’\u00e9conomie US mais l’\u00e9conomie mondiale, toujourts englu\u00e9es dans une crise profonde. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tL’autre bataille, c’est peut-\u00eatre celle de la r\u00e9\u00e9lection d’Obama. Si le pr\u00e9sident ne tient pas ses positions face aux r\u00e9publicains, s’il c\u00e8de une fois de plus, les ravages dans les rangs de ses partisans seront terribles. Dans ce cas, sa r\u00e9\u00e9lection serait sans aucun doute en jeu.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \tMis en ligne le 14 avril 2011 \u00e0 15H24<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On se pr\u00e9pare, \u00e0 Washington, \u00e0 une majestueuse bataille, \u00e0 coups de milliers de $milliards, soit $billions pour nous et $trillion pour les Anglo-Saxons. Parlons donc en $trillion, comme font les commentateurs de la bataille entre le pr\u00e9sident Obama et les r\u00e9publicains. Dans cette perspective, il s’av\u00e8re donc que la bataille autour de la fermeture… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11038,9129,6536,6812,3083,7777,6208,3080,8980,11039],"class_list":["post-72926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-11038","tag-austerite","tag-caractere","tag-deficit","tag-depression","tag-gouvernance","tag-obama","tag-roosevelt","tag-tomasky","tag-tripes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}