About Those Promises...

Megan gages what the economic situation will allow:

Democrats do not have the luxury of proposing unpassable legislation in order to look like they're doing something.  They can't make good on Obama's electoral promises about global warming by putting up a program the Republicans hate enough to take down, because there aren't enough Republicans to credibly blame for the bill's destruction.  So they either have to actually pass a carbon bill that will be massively unpopular when it raises energy prices, or explain why Obama didn't really mean it.

That almost certainly means, at least according to the crack political team on the panel with me, that we will not get any sort of cap and trade--an outcome that probably could have been predicted when gas hit $4.  But it makes even potentially popular things like Obama's health care plan and middle class tax cuts problematic.  The middle class tax cuts are, as far as I can tell, already stillborn; in today's revenue environment, even reversing the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy probably wouldn't pay for them.   But once the electorate finds out that the Democrats will not be handing out free money, not because the Republicans stopped them, but because they stopped themselves, they're going to find themselves mired in a very difficult discussion. Interest rates, sovereign debt problems, and the debt substitution effect do not make good sound bytes.