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  1. #1
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Podesta’s Push for Executive Power Raises Stakes on Obama Agenda

    Whose Executive Order is it really?

    Podesta’s Push for Executive Power Raises Stakes on Obama Agenda


    By Mike Dorning
    Dec 19, 2013

    Photographer: Andrew Harrer/BloombergJohn Podesta, chair of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to... Read More

    When the Republican victory in the 2010 midterm election raised the prospect of political gridlock,John Podesta was ready with an answer: The president should bypass Congress and wield the executive powers of his office.
    Less than two weeks after the returns came in, Podesta had compiled 47 pages of proposals for unilateral action on issues from
    immigration to solar energy. President Barack Obama’s ability to “accomplish important change through these powers should not be underestimated,” he wrote.

    Now, Podesta’s appointment as counselor to Obama adds a strong promoter of that strategy to the president’s inner circle as Republicans stand in the way of the White House agenda.

    The activist vision of the 64-year-old former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton could play out across the economy, encompassing matters such as greenhouse gas emission standards for power plants, food safety and border enforcement.

    “John will be an advocate for forceful executive action, either for its own sake or to force congressional action,” said Jake Siewert, a former Clinton White House press secretary who is now a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

    Among the proposals Podesta forwarded to Obama three years ago as head of the Center for American Progress, a research group with close ties to the administration, were a $2-per-barrel fee on imported oil to finance clean-energy projects, solar panels for Air Force hangars and curbs on detention of undocumented immigrants without criminal records.

    Forcing Confrontation

    Greater use of executive power would raise the stakes in Washington, provoking a clash with Republicans that could lead to a wave of congressional hearings, lawsuits from aggrieved parties and more tense negotiations over spending and taxes. It would also add to Republican bitterness already fueled by Senate Democrats’ move to limit filibusters of Obama appointees.
    Podesta may find a receptive audience in the White House.

    “He’ll be preaching to the choir in this administration,” said Bruce Reed, who worked with Podesta as Clinton’s chief domestic policy adviser and until recently was Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff.

    Under the theme “We Can’t Wait,” the White House started a series of executive actions before the 2012 election, including an order to stop deporting undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, if they have no criminal record. Unable to win passage of a gun-control bill, Obama announced moves on firearms using his presidential authority earlier this year.

    Sinking Polls

    Podesta joins a White House at a low ebb in public standing after Obama’s inability to win passage of a revamp of immigration policy, a 16-day government shutdown and the botched rollout of the federal online insurance exchanges at the core of his signature health-care law.

    After starting his second term with an inaugural address calling for a more activist government -- he vowed to come up with executive moves to fight climate change “if Congress won’t act soon” -- Obama has little to show for it.

    His 42 percent job approval in the Gallup Poll for the week ended Dec. 15 is down 10 percentage points from the same week a year earlier and comparable to the 41 percent approval at this point in the administration of George W. Bush, who left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in recent history.

    At the end of the fifth year of an administration, when attention shifts to the next election, a president has “a sense that the sand is running out of the hourglass,” said Stephen Hess, a scholar at theBrookings Institution in Washington.
    “Your time is short and you want to do as much as you can,” said Hess, who has studied the presidency since serving in Dwight Eisenhower’s administration. “You then want to do things by executive orders and executive regulations.”
    Crucial Year

    Because government regulations take so much time to complete if they are to withstand legal challenges, the coming year will be crucial in setting the administration’s final initiatives, said Carol Browner, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under Clinton.

    “It takes you a minimum two years to get a rule done, start to finish,” said Browner, who’s also a former Obama White House aide. “They’ve got to have a clear agenda now. What are the 10 or 20 things that are most important that they want to get done before he leaves office using existing authority?”

    While Podesta recused himself from involvement in the administration’s consideration of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline because of his public opposition to the project, his portfolio will include environmental and energy issues.
    Reassuring Presence

    His presence in the White House will reassure environmentalists that administration regulations on cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants will be as “effective as possible,” said David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where Podesta has been on the board of the group’s political arm.

    “Beyond that, he’ll be looking at all the tools that he can use to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change,” Goldston said.

    Podesta didn’t respond to a request to be interviewed for this story.

    As chief of staff during the final years of Clinton’s presidency, he oversaw a frenzy of rule-making, executive orders and land-preservation edicts. He was so closely identified with the burst of activity that some aides dubbed it “Project Podesta,”
    according to a National Journal report at the time.

    The regulations in the administration’s final months included protection of 59 million acres of forest from roads and logging; work-safety rules on repetitive stress injuries that required millions of offices and factories to be redesigned; and more stringent standards for arsenic in drinking water.

    Clearing Way


    Clinton designated more land protected in the lower 48 U.S. states than any president sinceTheodore Roosevelt. He made five of the national monument designations on Jan. 17, 2001, with only three days left in his term.

    Podesta “cleared the way” for conservation regulations, particularly a rule prohibiting virtually all road-building, logging, or coal, gas, oil and other mineral leasing in designated roadless areas of national forests, said Bruce Babbitt, who served as Clinton’s Interior secretary.

    That rule, issued eight days before Clinton left office, survived legal challenges that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012.

    “The roadless rule was a huge achievement and a bureaucratic nightmare,” said Babbitt.

    Thwarting Rule

    During Clinton’s last year in office, Republican lawmakers tried to thwart an EPA regulation in the final stages of review. They tacked a rider onto a bill funding military construction and disaster assistance that would have barred the use of government money to complete the rule which set stricter pollution standards for watersheds.

    The president couldn’t afford to veto the legislation, and after a series of meetings led by Podesta, his aides came up with their own gambit: stall on signing the legislation while they rushed the rule through the review, said Chuck Fox, then the EPA’s assistant administrator for water.

    That culminated in a 90-minute meeting in Podesta’s office in which Browner and then budget director Jack Lew personally negotiated the rule’s final wording line by line, Fox said.

    Once Browner signed the regulation, Fox jumped in a taxi to get the document to the printers to beat an end-of-day deadline to publish the regulation in the Federal Register, as required.

    Though Republicans were furious over the end run, the rule survived, said Fox, now program director at Oceans 5, a conservation group.

    Podesta “was very bold on it,” Fox said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-1...ma-agenda.html

  2. #2
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    So Obama is being run by the Center for American Progress funded by George Soros. Obama sounds like a parrott of John Podesta. How has this all been working out for the people of this country? JMO
    Issues » Open Government
    The Power of the President

    Recommendations to Advance Progressive Change


    SOURCE: AP/J. Scott Applewhite
    A podium bears the seal of the President of the United States.

    By Sarah Rosen Wartell and John Podesta | November 16, 2010
    Read the full report (pdf)
    Download the executive summary (pdf)
    Download the report to e-readers and mobile devices from Scribd
    Statement from John Podesta

    Introduction and summary

    The opportunity

    Concentrating on executive powers presents a real opportunity for the Obama administration to turn its focus away from a divided Congress and the unappetizing process of making legislative sausage. Instead, the administration can focus on the president’s ability to deliver results for the American people on the things that matter most to them:


    • Job creation and economic competitiveness
    • Educational excellence
    • A clean energy future and energy independence
    • Quality affordable health care
    • Consumer protection
    • The home foreclosure crisis
    • Accountable government delivering results at lower cost
    • Sustainable security for the nation

    In addition, the key legislative accomplishments of President Obama’s first two years in office, most notably health care and financial reform, now need to be implemented effectively. Both the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act require hundreds of separate rule- makings and other agency actions to implement the legislative framework.

    The public has made clear its disgust with Washington’s ways—the same sentiment that helped to bring President Obama to office. It would be a welcome relief from watching legislative maneuvering to see the work of a strong executive who is managing the business of the country through troubled times, doing more with less, each day working to create a stronger economy and a more effective government.

    The Obama administration, of course, is already using the capacity of the presidency to drive change in the public and private sector. For example, it promoted the forma1tion of Skills for America’s Future, a new public-private initiative in support of the president’s goal of 5 million more community college graduates and certificates by 2020. At the recent White House Community College Summit, convened by Dr. Jill Biden, industry, labor unions, community colleges, and other training providers made commitments to help put this initiative into action.

    Similarly, President Obama’s recent trip to India provided an opportunity for him to win agreements that will bring significant economic benefits to U.S. firms and American workers. Trade transactions were announced or showcased, exceeding $14.9 billion in total value with $9.5 billion in U.S. export content, supporting an estimated 53,670 U.S. jobs in the production of aircraft, energy generation equipment, advanced machinery, and telecommunications services, among others.

    There is much more the president can do. The list below of ideas from the Center for American Progress’s policy experts offers just some of the many possible actions the administration can take using existing authority to move the country forward.

    Specifically, in the energy and environmental arena, the president can:


    • Reduce oil imports and make progress toward energy independence.
    • Progress toward reducing greenhouse gas pollution by 17 percent by 2020.
    • Conserve federal lands for future generations.
    • Manage public lands to support a balanced energy strategy.
    • Convene and engage hunters and anglers in the development of a fish and wildlife climate adaptation plan.
    • Generate solar energy on U.S. Air Force hangar roofs.


    On the domestic economic policy front, President Obama can:


    • Direct an assessment, strategy, and new policy development to promote U.S. competitiveness.
    • Launch the new consumer financial protection bureau with an aggressive agenda to protect and empower consumers.
    • Increase the capacity of small businesses to expand hiring and purchases by accelerating the implementation of the Small Business Jobs Act.
    • Promote automatic mediation to avoid foreclosure where possible and speed resolution.
    • Create a web portal to empower housing counselors, reduce burdens on lenders, and speed up home mortgage modifications.
    • Help stabilize home values and communities by turning “shadow REO” housing inventory into “scattered site” rental housing.
    • Promote practices that support working families.

    Elsewhere on the domestic policy front, the Obama administration can:

    • Partner with the private sector in health care payment reform.
    • Focus on health care prevention in implementing the Affordable Care Act.
    • Streamline and simplify access to federal antipoverty programs.
    • Replace costly, inhumane immigration detention policies with equally effective measures.


    In the education policy arena, the president can:


    • Launch an “educational productivity” initiative to help school districts spend every dollar wisely to best prepare our children for the 21st century.
    • Ensure students can compare financial aid offers from different postsecondary institutions.
    • Improve the quality, standards, and productivity of postsecondary education.


    In improving the performance of the federal government, the president can:


    • Scrutinize federal spending programs and tax expenditures to achieve greater returns on public investment.
    • Build the next-generation Recovery.gov web site to track all public expenditures and performance in real time.
    • Use new information technology for faster, more transparent freedom of information.
    • Create a virtual U.S. statistical agency.
    • Collect data on lesbian ,gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans in federal data surveys.


    And in the foreign policy and national security arena, the president and his administration can:


    • Rebalance our Afghanistan strategy with greater emphasis on political and diplomatic progress.
    • Promote domestic revenue generation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
    • Appoint a special envoy for the Horn of Africa and the southwest Arabian Peninsula region.
    • Appoint a special commission to assess contracting practices in national security and foreign affairs.
    • Use executive branch authority to mitigate the impact of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy if Congress does not repeal it.
    • Redouble support for Palestinian state- and institution-building efforts.
    • Pursue dual-track policy on Iran while sharpening focus on Iranian human rights issues.
    • Reinvigorate the U.S.-Turkey strategic alliance. Develop a comprehensive policy on the Russia-Georgia conflict.


    This is by no means an exhaustive list of the important policy objectives President Obama can pursue over the next two years, but it illustrates the range of important executive branch work beyond proposing and negotiating legislation.

    Statement from John D. Podesta

    November 15, 2010

    In the aftermath of this month’s midterm congressional elections, pundits and politicians across the ideological spectrum are focusing on how difficult it will be for President Barack Obama to advance his policy priorities through Congress. Predictions of stalemate abound. And some debate whether the administration should tack to the left or to the center and compromise with or confront the new House leadership.

    As a former White House chief of staff, I believe those to be the wrong preoccupations. President Obama’s ability to govern the country as chief executive presents an opportunity to demonstrate strength, resolve, and a capacity to get things done on a host of pressing challenges of importance to the public and our economy. Progress, not positioning, is what the public wants and deserves.

    The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy. These authorities can be used to ensure positive progress on many of the key issues facing the country through:


    • Executive orders
    • Rulemaking
    • Agency management
    • Convening and creating public-private partnerships
    • Commanding the armed forces
    • Diplomacy

    The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers should not be underestimated. President Bush, for example, faced a divided Congress throughout most of his term in office, yet few can doubt his ability to craft a unique and deeply conservative agenda using every aspect of the policymaking apparatus at his disposal. And, after his party lost control of Congress in 1994, President Clinton used executive authority and convening power to make significant progressive change. For instance, he protected more great spaces in the lower 48 states than any president since Theodore Roosevelt, established for the first time significant protections for Americans’ medical privacy, and urged the creation of the Welfare-to-Work Partnership that enlisted the help of 20,000 businesses in moving more than 1 million welfare recipients into the workforce.

    The upshot: Congressional gridlock does not mean the federal government stands still. This administration has a similar opportunity to use available executive authorities while also working with Congress where possible. At the Center for American Progress, we look forward to our nation continuing to make progress.

    Read the full report (pdf)

    Download the executive summary (pdf)

    Download the report to e-readers and mobile devices from Scribd

    To speak with our experts on this topic, please contact:

    Print: Allison Preiss (economy, education, poverty)
    202.478.6331 or apreiss@americanprogress.org

    Print: Tom Caiazza (foreign policy, health care, energy and environment, LGBT issues, gun-violence prevention)
    202.481.7141 or tcaiazza@americanprogress.org

    Print: Chelsea Kiene (women's issues, Legal Progress, Half in Ten Education Fund)
    202.478.5328 or ckiene@americanprogress.org

    Spanish-language and ethnic media: Tanya Arditi (immigration, race and ethnicity)
    202.741.6258 or tarditi@americanprogress.org

    TV: Rachel Rosen
    202.483.2675 or rrosen@americanprogress.org

    Radio: Chelsea Kiene
    202.478.5328 or ckiene@americanprogress.org

    https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...the-president/

    Last edited by Newmexican; 11-20-2014 at 07:29 PM.

  3. #3
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Why President Obama brought John Podesta into the White House

    Why President Obama brought John Podesta into the White House

    By Chris Cillizza December 10, 2013 Follow @thefix

    The news that longtime D.C. Democratic hand John Podesta will be joining the White House senior staff early next year swept through political Washington on Monday night, waking up what had been a somewhat sleepy start to December so far.


    John Podesta, then president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress, attends the National Italian American Foundation Gala in Washington in this October 29, 2011 file photo. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

    The most obvious question that the addition of Podesta raises is why President Obama did it -- and why he did it now. But, before we get into that, it's important to make clear why he didn't do it: To change public opinion about his presidency. While Podesta is a well-known name within Washington (and in Democratic activist circles -- more on that below) average Americans have no idea who he is. And, with Christmas coming and snow/ice storms battering much of the country, the idea that adding a senior staffer to the White House mix will move the needle in Obama's favor is a fallacy. Regular people don't care about staff moves. At all.

    Obama and his inner circle know that fact. So, if adding Podesta wasn't done to try to perk up Obama's faltering poll numbers, why was it done? Here are four reasons:

    1. The Rouse hole.

    Pete Rouse, a counselor to the president, has been rumored to be leaving for some time. A Rouse departure would leave a major hole in the Obama inner circle, given that Rouse goes back all the way to the Senate with Obama. That is a hole that not many people in Washington could fill. Podesta, who ran Obama's presidential transition and served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is one of the few who could.

    2. Addition by addition.

    Obama loathes the D.C. chattering class -- especially when it craves a sacrifice for the failings of an administration. That's why it's hard to see him jettisoning Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a reaction to the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov. But, Obama didn't get where he is by ignoring the power that the chattering class has to influence political debate in this country. Adding Podesta, someone most of the D.C. political world knows, allows Obama to say, "See, I get it. I know things aren't perfect, and I am working to make them better." All without firing any senior-level people.

    3. Dealing with Congress is a dead end.

    This past year was, in theory, the one where Obama might have hoped to parlay his 2012 reelection into a series of policy wins in Congress. That, of course, didn't happen. And, Obama knows well that if he couldn't get anything done with Congress in 2013, any hope to move major legislation through the divided Capitol in a midterm election year is an absolute nonstarter. How then does he accomplish (or come close to accomplishing) his goals? By executive order and working through the various agencies within the administration to go around Congress. Enter Podesta. "Concentrating on executive powers presents a real opportunity for the Obama administration to turn its focus away from a divided Congress and the unappetizing process of making legislative sausage," he wrote in a Center for American Progress paper in 2010 entitled, "The Power of the President: Recommendations to Advance Progressive Change." Look for Podesta to assert the role of the executive, particularly on climate issues.

    4. The left matters for the legacy. A lot. President Obama's speech in Washington last week -- focused heavily on economic inequality and the power of government to address it -- was a clear signal that he recognizes the power and importance of the ideological left to his legacy-building. "The speech — coming at the end of a difficult and politically damaging year — was designed to help define a populist argument that he and other Democrats can carry into upcoming legislative battles and into next year’s midterm elections," wrote the Post's Zach Goldfarb about Obama's address. Adding Podesta is another piece to that puzzle. Remember that Podesta started the Center for Equitable Growth, a think tank dedicated to studying economic inequality, a few weeks back, and has been a prominent voice on how to bridge the gap between haves and have-nots for years. Putting Podesta in his senior staff is both a sign of how committed Obama is to trying to change the policy and political dynamics surrounding economic inequality, as well as a recognition that to do so he will need the liberal left strongly behind him.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/12/10/why-president-obama-brought-john-podesta-into-the-white-house/



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