经济学人：奥巴马和国会

始皇帝

【原文标题】Obama and Congress
【中文标题】奥巴马和国会
【登载媒体】Economist四
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【来源地址】http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13174088&source=features_box_main
【译    者】 ZHIRONG QIN-
【翻译方式】 人工翻译
【原文+译文】
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Obama and Congress 奥巴马和国会
A brighter future, but who pays? 一个美好的未来，不过谁买单呢？
Barack Obama, in his address to Congress, asks for sacrifice but skips the details
巴拉克.奥巴马在他的国会讲话中呼吁牺牲精神，但没有提细节

AP

AS A new president, Barack Obama’s first speech to Congress was not, officially, a state-of-the-union address. That was just as well: its current state is awfully precarious. On Tuesday February 24th, a few hours before he spoke to the Senate and House of Representatives, a survey reported that consumers’ confidence in the future was at its lowest in 40 years of polling.

作为新总统，巴拉克.奥巴马在国会的第一次官方演讲不是国情咨文讲话。幸好：目前的形式极其不稳定。二月二十四日，也就是周二，在他对参议院和众议院议员们发表讲话的数小时前，一份调查报告显示，消费者对未来的信心跌到了过去四十年以来的最低点。

Mr Obama did not sugar-coat matters. The economic crisis “is the source of sleepless nights,” he said. His budget, to be delivered on Thursday, “reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited—a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis and a costly recession.”

奥巴马并没有掩饰现实和问题。他说，经济危机是“睡不着觉的原因”。他的财政预算将在周四公布，“预算折射出我们所继承下来的不可否认的现实---也就是一万亿美元的财政赤字，金融危机和代价高昂的萧条。”

He promised that beyond this grim present lies a brighter future of plug-in hybrid-energy cars, wind- and solar-powered cities, digital health records, vanquished disease, and the world’s highest college-graduation rates. And, with the inspirational flourish for which he is famous, he insisted that Americans would triumph because there exist “amid the most difficult circumstances”—his voice descending to a throaty growl—“a generosity, a resilience, a decency”.

他承诺在一个灰暗的现状背后还有光明的未来，比如充电混合动力汽车，风能太阳能城市，数字健康记录，被击溃的疾病和世界最高的大学毕业率。带着正是这种让他出名的鼓舞人心的华丽辞藻，他坚称，美国会成功，因为“在最困难的情况下”---他沙哑地吼道---“也存在仁慈，厚积薄发，正派”。

Such speeches are typically meant to sketch a president’s broad agenda rather than deliver specifics. This one at times felt like an economics class with simple explanations of how credit markets work, and at others like a late-night cable TV commercial: “The average family who refinances today can save nearly $2,000 per year on their mortgage.”

这一演讲通常被认作是总统大量议事日程的一个草图，而不是详情。演讲有时让人感觉好像是一堂关于信贷市场如何运作的经济学课，有时像半夜有线电视经济节目。“平均下来，每个重新申请贷款的家庭的按揭大约每年能节省大约2,000美元。”

Still, he did give clues to his priorities. Congress, he said, had to act soon to overhaul America’s multiplicity of financial regulators, which struggled to anticipate and cope with the financial crisis. He called for a cap-and-trade system to reduce the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions. He gave warning that the Treasury would probably need more than the $700 billion that Congress has already authorised for propping up the banking system (while studiously avoiding the debate over whether banks should be nationalised in the process). He strongly indicated that there would be more aid for General Motors and Chrysler, which are now contemplating whether to file for bankruptcy to shrink themselves more rapidly. “The nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it,” he said.

他也给出了一些首要任务的细节。他说，国会必须马上行动去彻底检查美国多样的参与和处理金融危机的金融监管机构。他呼吁建立一个总量管制与交易制度，以此来减少温室气体排放的增加。他警告说财政部很可能需要超过7,000亿美元，国会也早已授权这7,000亿美元来支持银行系统（他同时谨慎地回避关于银行是否在这一过程中被国有化的争论）。他强调指出，对大众和克莱斯勒会有更多的援助，这两家汽车公司目前正在思考是否申请破产来更快地减小自身规模。他说，“发明汽车的国家不能抛弃汽车。”

A theme that permeated the speech was rapidly rising national debt, following the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus that Mr Obama just signed. “Everyone in this chamber—Democrats and Republicans—will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me,” Mr Obama said. But he has yet to say what he is prepared to sacrifice. He still plans to expand publicly financed health care, make permanent tax credits to the majority of workers, expand college assistance and invest in alternative energy.

由于奥巴马刚签署批准的财政刺激超过预算7,870亿美元，一个弥漫在演讲中的主题是快速发行国债。奥巴马说：“每个在房间里的人---共和党人和民主党人---不得不因为国家缺乏资金而牺牲一些东西，而且包括我在内也如此”。但是他仍没说他将牺牲什么。他仍在计划扩大公共的财政支持的医疗保障体系，计划永久性的削减大多数工人的赋税，扩大对高校的支持以及投资可再生能源。

The budget on Thursday is expected to show that Mr Obama inherited a deficit of $1.3 trillion this fiscal year, and raised it to $1.5 trillion with the fiscal stimulus (a post-war high of some 10% of gross domestic product). Mr Obama will promise to get it down to $533 billion or 3% of GDP by fiscal year 2013. Most of that drop will come from the expiration of temporary stimulus measures, the cessation of capital injections and the hoped-for start of economic recovery. The rest will come from withdrawing troops from Iraq, trimming payments to privately-managed Medicare plans, letting George Bush’s tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2010 for the richest 2% of Americans, the taxation of foreign corporate income and the sale of permits for carbon-emissions trading. He promised, as every previous president has, to vet the budget “line by line” for waste; he will find it just as hard as his predecessors to kill programmes with powerful congressional backers.

周四的预算预计会告知外界由于财政刺激方案（二战后的高峰，也就是GDP的10%），奥巴马的财政赤字将从他所继承的1.3万亿上升到1.5万亿。奥巴马承诺将会把财政刺激下调至5,330亿，也就是2013年财政年度GDP的3%。这一下调来源于临时财政刺激措施的到期和截止，资金注入的中止以及盼望中的经济复苏的开始。剩余的削减来自美军撤离伊拉克，对私人管理的医疗保险方案的调整，让乔治.布什给美国最富有的2%的人的减税政策，对外国企业收入的税收政策以及二氧化碳排放交易权的买卖按计划在2010年到期截止。他承诺，正如过去美国总统所做的，一条一条地检查财政预算是否有浪费，他将和他的前任一样，同国会支持者们一起，仔细审查，删除不必要的开支。

At a Monday budget summit with congressional leaders and again on Tuesday Mr Obama rightly noted that the cost of old people’s health care and pensions are the country’s biggest long-term fiscal threats, but on neither occasion did he propose how to deal with them. In fairness it is early and stabilising the economy should be Mr Obama’s priority, not long-term fiscal discipline. Premature fiscal tightening could abort a recovery. The summit on Monday and the speech on Tuesday were part of the process of softening up the public for future pain.

在周一和周二的两次和国会领导人讨论财政预算的会议上，奥巴马清晰地指出，老年人医疗保障和养老金的花费是国家最大的远期财政威胁，不过在两次会议上，他都没有说如何处理这一问题。说实话，谈这个问题有点为时尚早，目前奥巴马的首要任务是稳定经济，而不是去处理长期的财政政策。仓促的财政紧缩会毁了经济复苏。周一的会议和周二的演讲都是奥巴马为减缓民众未来痛苦的一部分。

Both events also demonstrated that despite being jilted on his quest for some Republican support during the debate on the fiscal stimulus, he is not giving up on his pursuit of bipartisanship. On Tuesday night, at least, Republicans were co-operative, rising in applause almost as often as Democrats.

两件事都显示了，奥巴马仍然没有放弃他所追寻的跨党合作，尽管在关于财政刺激的辩论中，他呼吁共和党人的支持没有得到任何回应。在周二晚上，至少，共和党人是合作的，起立为奥巴马鼓掌的次数和民主当人一样地多。

始皇帝

看来美国人最近日子不是很好过

始皇帝

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始皇帝

没人帮我检查错误吗