January 01, 2006
My Top Ten Predictions for 2006
What does 2006 hold in store? Why do journalists and journalist-wannabes engage in this timless exercise in post-New Year frivolity?
Because they can. So here’s my top 10 predictions for what to expect in the year ahead:
1. The Justice Department will vigorously pursue the Bush administration’s investigation into who leaked information about its domestic wiretap program to New York Times reporter James Risen. Risen will go to jail to protect his sources, where he will have plenty of time to celebrate his book’s rise to number one status on the best-seller list.
2. The economy, already signaling a recession in the waning days of 2005 (housing slowdown; inverted yield curve), will slow dramatically by mid-year with at least one quarter where Gross Domestic Product declines from the previous quarter.
3. The mainstream press will relegate the economic story to the business section where free market apologists will engage in a largely meaningless debate about whether it is a recession or just the “pause that refreshes.” Meanwhile, millions of Americans will endure real economic hardship.
4. The Bush administration’s next tax cut for the rich will be dead on arrival as Republican fiscal conservatives finally bail on the president. Unfortunately, alternative minimum tax reform, which will hit millions of upper middle class families, also goes nowhere. Bad timing. Paul Krugman and E.J. Dionne will be lonely voices pointing out that tax cuts for the working poor and middle class are precisely what’s needed to counteract the downturn.
5. Health care affordability will emerge as the number two domestic issue (after the economy) in the 2006 Congressional elections, driven in large part by employers desperately seeking a way to cut costs as their profits evaporate in the face of a slowdown.
6. Democratic centrists led by Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois will seize control of the Democratic Party after a handful of liberal Congressional candidates who challenged war-hawk Democrats in primaries are easily defeated. The low-intensity war in Iraq grinds on with no end in sight.
7. Emanuel, touted as the next Speaker of the House, will banish talk of “Medicare for all” (a single-payer system) to solve the health care crisis. Instead, he champions a managed competition plan to prove once and for all that Hillary-care had it right and make Sen. Clinton the undisputed frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination.
8. The Democratic Party will win back the Senate by a narrow 50-49-1 margin by picking up Republican seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, and, in a shocker, Arizona. Sen. Lincoln Chafee will win in Rhode Island but switch parties.
9. Acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner and Bush family friend Andrew von Eschenbach, a cancer surgeon who also runs the National Cancer Institute, will resign after exhibiting a woeful ignorance about specific cancer chemotherapy agents during a Congressional hearing where he is asked to explain his belief that the pain and suffering of cancer will be ended by 2015.
10. In December, the House of Representatives will hold a special session to consider impeaching President Bush after a bloc of Republicans joins a united Democratic Party in calling for a halt to the administration’s illegal torture and domestic wiretap programs.
You see, in some things at least, I’m an optimist. Happy New Year!