Thread: Obama Scrambling to Recover From Stumbles

Obama Pursues Agenda Despite Bonus Brouhaha

Saturday, March 21, 2009 7:48 PM

WASHINGTON — Knocked off balance by the bonuses brouhaha, President Barack Obama is relying on direct appeals to the public to refocus attention on his ambitious agenda and drive the debate.

The president has shouldered responsibility for the mess and, in his radio and Web address Saturday, sought to put the financial finger-pointing behind in favor of his policy pillars: deficit cutting, overhauling health care and energy, improving education.

He will use a flurry of events to make his case, including a network television interview airing Sunday and a prime-time news conference Tuesday. The administration also is expected, as early as Monday, to roll out its plan to rid banks of their toxic assets and speed the flow of loans.

Being heard above the din may prove difficult. Lawmakers are wrangling over taxing people who got big bonuses and worrying the president's budget could generate $9.3 trillion in red ink over the next decade.

"I realize there are those who say these plans are too ambitious to enact," Obama said in his weekend address. "To that I say that the challenges we face are too large to ignore. I didn't come here to pass on our problems to the next president or the next generation — I came here to solve them."

Over the past week, Obama sought to spread his message unfiltered to people, tapping his massive e-mail list to promote his agenda one on one and speaking to enthusiastic supporters at town hall meetings in California. But dominating all else was the disclosure that American International Group Inc. had paid out $165 million in bonuses to employees, including to traders in the financial unit that nearly collapsed the insurer.

Later, the president scrambled to say he was sorry for an offhand remark on NBC's "Tonight Show" in which he compared his inept bowling with "the Special Olympics or something." By Friday evening, the White House was fending off the new dismal deficit estimates from congressional auditors.

Republicans seized on the missteps and used their Saturday address to condemn Obama's budget as a breathtaking spending spree. As states and families are struggling to cut spending, the president's budget "spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much," said Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.

"Absolutely it was a bad week for the president," said Thomas Mann, a Brookings Institution congressional scholar. "But, he's not someone to shy away from an ambitious agenda. He's aiming very high and he's not going to trim his ambitions in response to this."

It's also not the first time a president has been knocked off course soon after taking office.

President Bill Clinton won the White House with this campaign mantra: It's the economy, stupid. But he stumbled early on as he tried to fulfill a pledge to lift the ban on gays serving openly in the military. His compromise, "don't ask, don't tell" policy still draws criticism from all sides.

It's important for Obama to understand the public's anger over the bonuses and channel it, using his leadership skills and high approval ratings to regain people's confidence, Mann said.

Obama said Saturday that people are more concerned about having a paycheck and being able to pay college or medical bills than they are about "the news of the day in Washington."

Those are the concerns, he said, that he addresses in his budget, which he calls an economic blueprint for the future. It is "a vision of America where growth is not based on real estate bubbles or over-leveraged banks, but on a firm foundation of investments in energy, education and health care that will lead to a real and lasting prosperity," Obama said.

He also took the opportunity in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" to affirm his support for beleaguered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, roundly criticized over the bonus flap and steps to revive the economy.

In an interview set to air Sunday, Obama said that if Geithner offered his resignation, the answer would be, "Sorry buddy, you've still got the job." CBS released excerpts Saturday.

With a nod to Capitol Hill, he said the specific dollar amounts in his budget plan probably will change, but in the end his four priorities must be met.

Those are plans to boost investments in clean energy technologies, including wind and solar power; more money for childhood education programs, affordable college costs and higher standards for schools; a health care overhaul that will lower costs, including Medicare and Medicaid; and a scrutiny on domestic spending that will lead to cuts in the deficit.

"The American people sent us here to get things done, and at this moment of great challenge, they are watching and waiting for us to lead," Obama said. "Let's show them that we are equal to the task before us."

http://www.newsmax.com/politics/obama_b ... 94609.html

I realize there are those who say these plans are too ambitious to enact," Obama said in his weekend address. "To that I say that the challenges we face are too large to ignore. I didn't come here to pass on our problems to the next president or the next generation — I came here to solve them."

The plans are not ambitious, they are stupid. Not one of them has a prayer of achieving stated goals because not one of them addresses the core causes. All Obama is doing is creating a debt that we have no hope of overcoming. Here is why:

The president has shouldered responsibility for the mess and, in his radio and Web address Saturday, sought to put the financial finger-pointing behind in favor of his policy pillars: deficit cutting, overhauling health care and energy, improving education.

1. Pillar #1: Deficit cutting. How in blazes can he claim deficit "cutting" when the Congressional Budget Office says bluntly his 3Trillion plus budget for 2010 will result in over 9 trillion dollars worth of debt by 2019? I have not heard one economist claim that this is anything but absolute disaster;
2. Pillar #2: Overhauling Health Care. How in blazes does overhauling health care restore the economy? History has proven every time the government sticks its nose into health care, the costs go sky high. And who will pay for this? Why the taxpayers. And this adds to the lie about Pillar #1. Instead of cutting deficits, Obama's Health Care plans will add to them. Enormously. There is already nearly a trillion dollars ( 674 Billion I think) in his 2010 budget for this. Do the math.
3. Pillar #3: Energy. Does Obama have a comprehensive energy plan? Does he have short term, mid=term and long term goals that are achievable? I don't think so. In fact this country has never had anything resembling a comprehensive energy plan under any president. Obama's big plan is pouring tons of tax dollars into alternative energy, implementing cap and trade (which is nothing more than a scam to make the cap and trade middlemen rich), and fixing the power grid so the government can monitor and probably regulate your thermostat. Again, not only will this plan waste billions of tax dollars on alternative energy pursuits that are not tied to a cohesive PLAN, what is worse, Cap and Trade will stunt economic expansion. This will contribute to increasing deficits because if business does not expand, the government will not collect as many taxes. If the government increase taxes to compensate, the same negative results are achieved. And Cap and Trade is at best an energy tax. Lastly, regulating your thermostat is your business, not the government's. And I for one refuse to have ANY government monitoring systems tied to my home. And conservation will not solve the problem. At best it mitigates some symptoms. Do you know the biggest electrical energy waste is caused by the distribution system, yet no one ever addresses that. A comprehensive plan would.


Pillar #4 Improving Education: Throwing more money at education does not work. If it did we wouldn't have any serious problems. If we plotted the increases in education funding over the past 50 years against the quality of the education over the past 50 years (as measured by dropouts; achievement test scores [SAT, GRE, College Boards, US Military standardized tests for recruits; reading proficiency scores; etc] by students/graduates of PUBLIC SCHOOLS ONLY ....don't count scores from private schools or home schooling..just the schools getting tax dollars_} I would bet that as the dollars went up the performance of the students went down. So how is Obama going to fix this? Well if he was going to ban the NEA, that might be a step in the right direction, but that won't happen. All I see is more money thrown away. It astounds me that there have been few if any objective, comprehensive analyses of public education problems that would pinpoint the causes of failure in our system. Tryin to fix symptoms is not problem solving. If we do not know and have consensus on the cause(s} of the problem{s}, how can we properly address them?


I don't know if these 4 pillars are more like the ones in the temple that Samson brought down, or if they are merely the 'pillars' Obama dreams on.