Obama's spending plans may pose political risks

Reich noted, "Very soon we'll be in the gravitational pull of the midterm elections, and it seems clear that Republicans want to challenge Obama on the economy and will run on tax cuts, deficit reduction, and a much more scaled-down and privatized health-care plan."

"If they can get their act together and come up with something that is halfway respectable, and if the public begins to lose patience by Election Day, Democrats could have some real problems," he said. "And those problems, of course, could possibly extend through 2012."

Those concerns about spending and deficits are not confined by U.S. borders. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner traveled to China this month to assure leaders there that "we will cut our deficit and we will eliminate our extraordinary government support that we have put in place to overcome the crisis." Traveling in Germany this month, Obama responded to Chancellor Angela Merkel's concerns that U.S. spending could lead to global inflation and undermine the stability of U.S. debt.

Analysts say Obama's spending plans reflect not only the depth of the economic crisis but also a fiscal philosophy that differs from the last Democratic administration.

Clinton, a former governor, took office during a far milder recession and was unable to pass a far smaller stimulus package than Obama's. Clinton ended his tenure with budget surpluses after reducing federal spending as a share of the gross domestic product - fiscal discipline that did not survive the Bush administration.

The administration is responding to public concerns over the nation's fiscal health and the political threat it may pose. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, said that a quick economic recovery would have the single biggest effect on the grim budget forecasts and that the administration's top priority will be "getting America's fiscal house in order" once Congress finishes work on health-care and energy reform legislation.

"There's two parts to fiscal reform: cutting and cost controls," Emanuel said. "At the end of the day, you're going to have to look at tax reform as part of the long-term fiscal health of the country. But if you change Medicare, Medicaid and other big drivers of costs, you're going to get enormous savings."

The cost of extending health insurance to the 47 million uncovered Americans is estimated to be as high as $1.2 trillion over the next decade, and administration officials say they are not sure how much the overhaul will save the federal budget over the long term.

In Obama's radio address Saturday, he outlined $313 billion in savings and spending cuts over the next 10 years to help pay for the initiative, including adjusting Medicare payments to reflect efficiencies in the health care system, reducing hospital subsidies for treating uninsured patients as coverage expands to more people, and lowering drug reimbursements for those eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. In total, Obama said, the administration has identified $948 billion of the projected costs, although those estimates will probably be challenged by congressional auditors.

Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters last week: "We've never changed our health-care system towards a best-practices one. So quantifying exactly what their impact is is very difficult. But what I want to be very clear about is - at worst, this will be deficit-neutral."

Obama and his advisers hope that by the 2010 elections, the stimulus spending, the bank rescues and other measures will have pushed the economy into recovery.

But some economists warn that any short-term economic improvement will probably resemble the "jobless recovery" of the early 1990s, given the loss of jobs in the manufacturing, construction, retail and other sectors. Democrats were trounced in midterm elections two years after Clinton took office, partly because the economic recovery then under way had not significantly reduced unemployment.

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