In his first two budget proposals, President Obama referred to creating a “new foundation” for the country. He used an intriguing verb to describe the process.
“[Americans] want to … reconstruct an economy built on a solid new foundation,” Obama said in May 2009 — reconstruct, not rebuild. Merriam-Webster says that the medical definition of reconstruct is “to subject to surgery so as to reform the structure.”
How fitting that his biggest operation was to enact a healthcare bill called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It’s one of the most ambitious procedures performed by a team of doctorates.
There has been further restructuring of American policy since that law took shape: An economic agenda built on “fair shares” at home, and a self-imposed suppression of the country’s influence abroad. But Obama hasn’t witnessed all of his desired changes become law. There’s more to be accomplished on the issues of climate change, education, gun control and immigration. Guantanamo Bay is still open. The nation’s healthcare system is his ongoing project.
Freed of the burden of winning another election, he has advocated his positions on these matters unreservedly.
“I intend to get as much done in the next 22 months as possible,” he said last May. There are still about 11 left. And even when those months have passed, he said his presidency “is not a project that stops after a certain term in office, and it’s not a project that stops after an election.”
Rather, it “is something that we have to sustain over the long term.”
Marco Rubio has made a point of underlining this a few times. He scratched his rhetorical record during Saturday’s fateful New Hampshire debate, getting stuck on this line: “Barack Obama knows exactly what he is doing.” His repetition of the phrase in a damaging showdown with Chris Christie garnered ridicule in the press and doubt from voters, helping sink his finish in the primary to fifth place.
Dispelling with this fiction that he was happy to pay Democrats “to keep running that clip,” Rubio apologized to his supporters Tuesday for the flub. “I did not do well on Saturday night,” he said, adding that the disappointment of the election results was all on him.
There’s one other sentence in Rubio’s debate answer for which you’ll rarely hear him or another Republican express regret, though: “Barack Obama is undertaking a systematic effort to change this country.” In case the people he is trying to persuade needed a reminder, here comes one more budget from the president’s desk, this one the boldest of any he has released. The proposal, submitted Tuesday, spends more than $4.1 trillion next fiscal year. The revenue it claims to raise from taxes—$2.6 trillion over the next 10 years—is mostly old news. Here’s something fresh: a new tax on oil companies of $10 per barrel.
The president has often claimed that the tax code favors millionaires and billionaires over teachers and nurses. There’s never been any discussion of environmentalists versus families that lack access to public transportation.
These documents sometimes contain provisions on which the two political parties can agree. Former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp was on board with the repeal of a business accounting method for tax-reporting purposes. Some Republicans on that same panel are open to negotiating an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Both efforts remain hypothetical.
But the vision Obama put to paper Tuesday reiterates the fundamental differences he’s maintained with Republicans for seven years. As the election to replace him has begun, Rubio has taken to restating his opposition.
