Washington Post — GOP Focuses Effort To Kill Health Bills
The White House is using opposition from Republicans to try to solidify the president’s liberal base in advance of offering a compromise bill.
Facing the realities that huge tax increases for a generous plan won’t likely work as moderate Democrats balk and that the Congressional Budget Office won’t allow hypothetical future savings to offset current spending, the White House is preparing to do what it did on cap and trade: win ugly.
To that end, President Obama and his team, with the help of writers like Perry Bacon and Michael Fletcher, are playing up Republican opposition to the president’s government-run plan as if what Republicans thought was of any consequence.
Last week, Obama’s team at the DNC was hitting his own Senators with TV ads and the president was pretending to be an arm twister in the mold of ruthless Lyndon Johnson. This week, he’s trying to remind Democrats who the real enemies are – the Republicans – and doing conference calls with liberal bloggers.
It may soften the blow when the president retreats on his goals and accepts far less than promised.
“‘The last time the president made grand promises and demanded passage of a bill before it could be reviewed, we ended up with the colossal stimulus failure and unemployment near 10 percent,’ Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said. ‘Now the president wants Americans to trust him again, but he can’t back up the utopian promises he’s making.’”
Wall Street Journal — California Budget Deal Closes $26 Billion Gap
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger closed a $26 billion shortfall without raising taxes, a political feat few would have predicted three months ago.
And while it will help get the state – which had already issued $682 million in IOUs – out of hock, it’s going to hurt.
Writers Stu Woo and Ryan Knutson explain the deal, reached after weeks of desperate negotiations includes $15 billion in cuts: $9 billion from education, $1.3 billion from state-worker furloughs, $1.2 billion from the prison system and $4.3 billion from local governments by borrowing from them or redirecting funds that had been earmarked for them.
Economists predict that the cuts will leave the state economy parched and may retard the recovery of the rest of the country.
“Even if approved, the budget deal won’t end California’s financial problems. The state remains awash in home foreclosures and an unemployment rate of 11.6%—one of the highest in the nation.
Some positive signs are emerging, such as a resurgence in housing sales in most of the state’s markets. But most analysts predict California’s recovery will be slow, and that state coffers will remain under pressure because they are highly dependent on personal income taxes, which are now down.
New York Times — Lobbies Adopt Tone of Accord With President
Someone had better get Examiner Lobbying Editor Tim Carney a fainting couch, because the New York Times has discovered that big companies actually like regulation because it decreases competition.
Writers David Kirkpatrick and Ron Nixon get as close to that admission as almost anyone in the establishment media is likely to get in their piece about the collapse of direct lobbying in the Age of Obama.
The president, drawing on his community organizing roots, is a big fan of cutting deals with stakeholders who get “a seat at the table.” But in the business world, that means moving toward cartels in which smaller competitors get squeezed out by expensive regulations drafted with the help of the members of the cartel. Kirkpatrick and Nixon didn’t include the most egregious example of the era – letting Philip Morris write tobacco regulation.
“The conciliatory tone on K Street has combined with the recession to tamp down lobbying firms’ revenue. Total reported lobbying spending was about $789 million in the first quarter, roughly flat from the corresponding period last year.
Health industry spending rose about 10 percent, to some $126 million, but financial industry spending fell about 7 percent, to $110 million. And even in the face of a major overhaul of the Pentagon’s budget, spending by the defense industry dropped a bit, to roughly $30 million.”
Washington Post — Reports on U.S. Detention Policy Will Be Delayed
After sending a flurry of Uighurs to Bermuda and Palau and a few side deals to get a baddie or two placed in Italy or Germany, the White House has admitted that dealing with the remaining terrorists at Guantanamo Bay is going to be really hard.
The reports due to the president on where to send the 268 terrorists and how to try them have both been pushed back. They may still manage to close the facility by January, but expect another mad rush by the members of the administration at the end if they really do try.
Writer Peter Finn explains that the new administration talking point – “Being president is really hard” – extends beyond health care and the economy.
“‘These are hard, complicated, consequential decisions,’ one official said in a White House briefing in which four officials spoke to reporters on the condition that the officials not be named. ‘What we are trying to do is to make sure that we make the right decisions. And so they are looked at, they are reviewed and re-reviewed. By teeing them up to the president, we want to make sure that we have looked at every single angle, because he will challenge us on these issues.’
The officials said the administration remains committed to closing the prison in Cuba by January 2010, as Obama ordered, but the delays are an indication of the political and legal complexities of making good on the president’s timeline.”
USA Today — Polls can affect president’s hold on party
You’ve seen the poll numbers – President Obama is losing substantial ground on health care, the economy and overall approval.
But visit the site anyway just to look at the interactive charts that let you compare the trajectories of Obama and his predecessors. Obama’s hope for a Reagan-style rebound at the end of the first tem are well known, but how likely do they look to you?
