Post from Erica Sagrans's Blog: 'A Major Shift in How Washington Operates'

Post from Erica Sagrans's Blog:

'A Major Shift in How Washington Operates'

By Erica Sagrans - May 24, 2010 9:42:13 AM ET

In our day-to-day lives, we don't always step back and reflect on the larger significance of what the Obama Administration has accomplished in its first 16 months, and where those accomplishments stand in relation to our country's history.

In the New York Times, David Leonhardt attempts to place things in perspective, showing how the President's achievements so far—health reform, efforts to reform Wall Street and steps to build a new foundation for our economy—rival the progress made during other periods of dramatic change, from the New Deal following World War II to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiatives.

David Leonhardt writes:

With the Senate’s passage of financial regulation, Congress and the White House have completed 16 months of activity that rival any other since the New Deal in scope or ambition. Like the Reagan Revolution or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the new progressive period has the makings of a generational shift in how Washington operates.

First came a stimulus bill that, while aimed mainly at ending a deep recession, also set out to remake the nation’s educational system and vastly expand scientific research. Then President Obama signed a health care bill that was the biggest expansion of the safety net in 40 years. And now Congress is in the final stages of a bill that would tighten Wall Street’s rules and probably shrink its profit margins.

If there is a theme to all this, it has been to try to lift economic growth while also reducing income inequality. Growth in the decade that just ended was the slowest in the post-World War II era, while inequality has been rising for most of the last 35 years.

Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol explained that the Obama administration "could easily be one of the pivotal periods in domestic policy," though she added that it will depend in part on what happens in the next two elections.

The recent period surely will not match the impact of the New Deal. Nothing is likely to, notes David Kennedy,a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, because the New Deal created much of the modern American government. “These are not as dramatic as the foundational moments,” Mr. Kennedy said, “but they’re significant changes.”

Alan Brinkley, a historian of the Depression, added: “This is not the New Deal, but it’s a significant series of achievements. And given the difficulty of getting anything done under the gridlock of Congress, it’s pretty surprising.”

The last 16 months seem most similar in scope to three other periods in the last 80 years. After World War II, the federal government helped build the modern middle class with the G.I. Bill, housing subsidies, the highway system and incentives for employers to offer health insurance. The 1960s — mostly under Mr. Johnson, but also Richard Nixon — brought civil rights legislation, Medicare, Medicaid and environmental laws.