Obama, Incoming Congress Meet for First Time Tomorrow
The incoming congressional leadership and President Obama will finally meet tomorrow. Given the great challenges facing our nation, there is an intense focus on both the personalities and the substance of the meeting.
Most of the attention is focused on the relationship between the House Republicans and the president. This is not surprising, since the sweeping 63-seat pickup in the House put in place an entirely new leadership team headed by Speaker-to-be John Boehner. Frankly, the White House did not pay much attention to the Republicans when they were in the minority. There will be a great deal of getting to know one another over the next several months, a process that should have started in 2009.
But in the end, it may be that relations with the Senate are more important. First, Democrats will still be setting the agenda. The president is always the most important driver of policy, and Democrats still control both the White House and the Senate. If the president wishes to abandon the failed strategy of policy driven by his left-wing base, he will not only have to be able to work with House Republicans, he will have to get buy-in from Harry Reid and Senate Democrats. That would mean a real change for the White House practice of handing over legislative operations to the congressional leadership.
Even more interesting, the Senate Republicans may emerge as the pivotal leadership. As Senate Democrats look forward to the further threat of large losses in 2012, the rank-and-file may find themselves aligning as closely as possible with Republicans. Mitch McConnell may hold the title of “minority” leader, but have a majority of the votes. How will President Obama retool his relations with Senate Republicans?
Personalities are important to the process, but policy substance matters too. The American people vividly rejected the government-centric leftward lurch of the first two years of the Obama administration. When the congressional leadership leaves the meeting, what will they know about the president’s priorities for the next two years? Will he continue to press for more spending while promising to control deficits later, or will he pledge to begin immediately unwinding the growth of government? How much time will he spend on his domestic agenda — as he did for 15 months on health care — while leaving the economy on the back burner? Or will there be a laser focus on the economy and a new pro-growth playbook?
The lame-duck session of Congress will provide an excellent preview of the future. For the American people, avoiding a tax increase and improving economic growth are the top priorities. At the moment, however, the Democratic leadership offers only class warfare rhetoric on this front, and its action is devoted to its social agenda playbook: the DREAM Act, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” and so forth. Will President Obama steer them to a more bipartisan process, a willingness to extend all the tax cuts, and rapid movement to settle the issue?
The stakes are high and the American public is eager to see the answer.
Too much information.
At this meeting, the tone will be set and we will find out whether or not Obama will continue to follow his Community Organiser modus operandi. One indication will be his continued divisive tactics of getting the Dems and republicans to quarrel over everything.
I seriously doubt that Obama is interested in anything but his redistributive agenda; therefore he will BS his way through tommorrow and to hell with the Republic.
The one thing that may change all this, is the world stage. We may be forced to work together in order to protect our country. Obama has to decide either to support Israel or to continue to support her enemies. THAT is the most pivotal decision that he has to make, because it will seriously affect his future standing.
First, Obama is a pathological liar; what he says tomorrow, he’ll deny in his actions and in any speech to a different audience.
Second, Obama will do his ‘community organizer’ bitwhere he exhorts everyone to ‘get along with each other’, which in actual fact, means, that everyone is supposed to do What Obama Wants. To Obama, ‘getting along with each other’ effectively means that you do not criticize him, do not dissent from him, and simply – obey him. You disappear as an individual. That’s what Obama wants.
What else does Obama want? Well, he himself is the upfront puppet for the backroom radical socialists – Soros with his agenda of world financial domination; Pelosi and Reid with their agenda of funneling all kinds of money to their states; others, with their own power agendas (Black Caucus, Unions etc)…Obama himself is simply focused on personal power. He wants universal adulation and obeisance.
You will notice that America and its peoples and its identity as a robust nation, are missing from this agenda.
Obama does not support the US. Or the West. Or individual entrepreneurship and enterprise. He supports a homegeneous population, passive and stripped of their will-to-act, and focused only on adulation of: Him.
Wow, its like you picked out every fifth word from a full day of Fox News broadcasting and put in into one post! If only it were plausible . . . and comprehensible.
If the question divides between the good of the national economy and power politics, then, as usual, special interests and personal agendas will rule. There is not enough leverage or fear to bring the light of reason into this canard.
If trends are the issues then let us look to Obama’s self pronounced “bubble”. There was a dot com bubble in the 90′s, a housing bubble in the 2000′s, and now a government deficit bubble in 2010. The insular Obama and his circle of advisors bubble will not just downsize, it will have to be popped. The splatter is not in evidence, the lessons of following the European style socialist agenda have not been learned.
Well, to those who think it is in 0′s heart or brain to admit he lost something, dream on. The Community Organizer in Chief will continue down his current path, regardless of and heedless of the Republicans in the House. He will count on his own abilities to convince the American people that the evil Republicans are/will be responsible for every little contretemps that happens over the next two years. I hope he won’t be successful, but don’t count him out.
you people have no clue on what a president has to do in the white house…i know that when you see the pesident looking relaxed…he is running a business…an american business….he was handed from g.w.b. a global…thats right global meltdown in all of the world economies…so we have to get up brush off the dirth and get back on the horse….it will be a while before we see the u.s.a. come out on top….so shut up and let the man do his job!
the president’s job is to be the commander-in-chief, occasionally draft treaties, nominate public “ministers”, and give state of the union addresses
obama has no clue how to run a business because businesses must make profits
so i will not “shut-up” and let obama transform our republic into a statist behemoth but you are more than welcome to keep you head in the sand as long as you do us the favor of never voting again
With all due respect to Douglas Holz-Eakin, who always renews my confidence, President Obama has no power over the Democrats in Congress, not even the ones who will still have jobs on January 1, 2011.
The DNC discovered that OFA, the vaunted Obama campaign website, was not an enduring organization, not even for fundraising.
There is no leader of the Democratic Party, so Pelosi and Reid will imperil any chance of working with the GOP. The Senate vote today on earmarks should be a good first clue.
Dems wants to paint the GOP as solely focussed on extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires at the expense of the unemployed. If the Dems really cared about the unemployed, they would find the money to re-allocate from unspent Stimulus funds. Instead, they play hardball politics.
I give Obama credit for trying to say the right words today. But no one follows his lead.
We should offer an exchange program for Queen Elizabeth. I bet she could get them all to work together at least for a few weeks.