OPINION:
While liberals increasingly bemoan “income inequality,” they assign President Obama no responsibility for it. Mr. Obama fully embraced his exoneration in his State of the Union address, showcasing the issue as though he had never been president — despite having been in office six years, being America’s most liberal president, having greatly expanded his presidential powers, and unsparingly expended the nation’s resources attempting to accomplish his agenda. Exploring the connection between Mr. Obama and income inequality reveals a good deal, and even more about the liberals who are not exploring it.
The Census Bureau’s report on U.S. income released last September stated: “Median household income was $51,939 in 2013, not statistically different in real terms from the 2012 median of $51,759. This is the second consecutive year that the annual change was not statistically significant, following two consecutive years of annual declines in median household income.”
To put this into clearer context, 2013 marked the first year that real median family income increased during Mr. Obama’s presidency. However, it is still 4.6 percent lower than it was in 2008 and at its lowest real level since 1995. This would seem to raise an obvious question: Why has the man in a position to do the most about it not been held accountable for it by liberals?
The first answer liberals are likely to offer — that Mr. Obama has confronted a Republican House of Representatives for the last four years — is really no answer at all. The president has been in office six years, and during his first two, he enjoyed large Democratic majorities in both bodies of Congress — far larger than Republicans hold in the current Congress.
Further, the country could be said to have been primed for an income inequality argument during Mr. Obama’s first two years. The economy was reeling from a recession that had started during his Republican predecessor’s term. Mr. Obama had won election on a platform of “change.” He had both justification and mandate at his disposal.
Nor were his fiscal resources constrained. “Pump priming” led him to spend more than $800 billion right off the bat on a “stimulus bill,” which was mostly written by Congress. Already, the federal debt has more than doubled during Mr. Obama’s administration.
Yet none of this was explicitly connected to income inequality, which was not a White House theme then. Instead, following on the heels of his party’s midterm election wipeout, Mr. Obama concluded his first two years in office by extending the Bush tax cuts for an additional two years.
Income inequality would not become a liberal issue for another three years when Thomas Piketty’s book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” was published in August 2013. That December, the president called income inequality a “defining challenge of our time” and urged Congress to address it — after five years in office.
Laying aside the criticisms of Mr. Piketty’s book and whether growing income inequality is a legitimate subject for government intervention, let’s look at the issue from liberals’ perspective. Several interesting questions arise.
If income inequality is so serious a problem now, why was it not one then? Even more to the point: Did Mr. Obama’s presidency exacerbate it?
It is unquestionable that Mr. Obama’s presidency has neither addressed nor solved liberals’ problem with income inequality or it would not still be an issue now. What then has been Mr. Obama’s role in income inequality? This is not a question liberals should be allowed to avoid — any more than they would have allowed George W. Bush to avoid it during his presidency.
Two basic questions fall to the president and his administration.
First, why did Mr. Obama fail to address income inequality? He had the rationale and the political means to do so. This failure is especially important when this problem is now so vital to liberals, who are the president’s strongest supporters.
Second, if Mr. Obama believes he did address it, were his policies a failure in formulation, implementation, or both?
There is a lesson in these unasked questions and it centers on responsibility. For liberals, society’s ills can never be pinned on government’s actions. For them, only state inaction can cause problems.
This is the reason liberals never challenged Mr. Obama on his role in income inequality. He and his view of the activist state must be insulated from culpability, in their view, despite both having been intertwined with the issue — either by commission or omission.
Mr. Obama’s role, or his “non-role,” in income inequality showcases the liberal worldview. When they have the power to act on their ideological pillars and fail to do so, they bear no responsibility for it.
The president has possessed the bully pulpit for addressing income inequality, the political and fiscal means to do so, and even claimed additional powers for his use. Yet, income inequality does not just still exist, but for liberals it persists as a major problem.
All this gives great insight into liberals’ concerns and their solutions for them. It should also give us pause about accepting either at face value.
• J.T. Young served in the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and as a congressional staff member from 1987 to 2000.
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