Obama's buying time: Wait and See after throwing out trillions

Obama has made at least two references to how Washington is busy looking at the next elections instead of acting on current issues. Meanwhile, the American people are buying the wait and see approach of the billions, near trillions Obama's throwing out as his plans for helping the economy.

The lukewarm legislation that actually scratches at the iceberg of disaster that is our economy in terms of the health services crisis by committing 19 billion to a five year plan of "technologizing" health records is being bought by the American people. Eager to convince themselves that Obama will keep his promises, eager to find a "fix" for the economy, Obama's gamble that any action would buy him time has worked.

It's interesting but Obama committed to nothing. He agreed that there were problems and he promised reform but he's pulling a Washington and nobody seems to care.

Give it time. Let's see what happens. Maybe this will be enough. Wow, we could've done that without the new billions committed to business.

Obama clearly has reservations about his promises regarding health services. Perhaps the problem seems too big for him as he caves into health insurance companies and pleases them with commitments of government funding for failed or terrible plans such as SCHIP (failed) and new technology (promises savings for insurance companies and physicians in addition to incentives for updating technology without any provision at all that ANY benefit, not a nickel, be passed onto consumers). Perhaps Obama has realized that those "ordinary" people who put him in office can't really do anything that will have a meaningful impact on his agenda but that banks, lobbyists and other legislators can. Or, perhaps Obama has been out of the real life experience of ordinary Americans long enough so that he doesn't think things are so bad.

Obama was elected because of his promises. Even during the election this blog noted that he started exchanging the hard choices that are required to fulfill promises of a health services industry reform for the lukewarm semi-commital of technology based busy work that would appear like he was doing something while he delayed any promise of performance for at least five years.

AAQT today: Understand that Obama's fear of confrontation has won out over his nicely spun promises of his campaign. This is not a lover of peace, but weak leadership.

In our society, we will watch which industry bully most effectively gathers strength by exploiting this weakness, abroad, who knows.