Dems want Obama’s job speech to contrast with GOP

JIM KUHNHENN

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The tiff over the tim­ing of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s jobs speech to Con­gress offers lit­tle hope that Repub­li­cans and the White House will now find com­mon ground on how to reduce the nation’s painfully high unem­ploy­ment. In fact, some Democ­rats say it’s time Obama stopped try­ing so hard to negotiate.

On mat­ters large and small, Obama has yielded to House Speaker John Boehner in a string of con­ces­sions that have unnerved Democ­rats and embold­ened Repub­li­cans. A cho­rus of Demo­c­ra­tic voices is now demand­ing that the pres­i­dent aban­don his attempts at being a com­pro­miser and instead lay out an ide­o­log­i­cal vision that dis­tin­guishes him from Repub­li­cans and becomes a tem­plate for his re-election.

Obama had asked Con­gress to con­vene a joint ses­sion next Wednes­day so he could announce his jobs agenda. Boehner objected, telling the pres­i­dent it would be bet­ter if he came the next night. Repub­li­cans were irri­tated that Obama wanted to speak at the same time Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates would be debat­ing in Cal­i­for­nia — and shar­ing TV time with him.

In the end, Obama accepted Boehner’s invi­ta­tion to speak at 7 p.m. EDT next Thurs­day, early enough to avoid yet another con­flict — with the open­ing game of the National Foot­ball League season.

Obama must cre­ate a clear con­trast between what he wants and what the Repub­li­cans want, Simon Rosen­berg, pres­i­dent of the liberal-leaning think tank NDN, wrote this week. “If the pres­i­dent is to win the elec­tion next year, he will have to first win the eco­nomic debate with the Repub­li­cans, some­thing, to date, he has not done.”

Demo­c­ra­tic strate­gist James Carville was even sharper, decry­ing the spec­ta­cle of the pres­i­dent being forced to change the day of his address to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress after Boehner took issue with Obama’s ini­tial request.

“The last thing that the White House needed was to appear to cave in to the speaker, and that’s what hap­pened,” he said Thurs­day on ABC.

The pointed advice comes as Democ­rats are becom­ing increas­ingly anx­ious that job­less­ness and a weak econ­omy are defin­ing Obama’s pres­i­dency and imper­il­ing his re-election. His attempts to com­pro­mise with Repub­li­cans, they argue, have resulted in poli­cies that have hurt him and the economy.

The cri­tique goes to the heart of what Obama advis­ers say is the president’s incli­na­tion to pro­pose poli­cies that have a chance of being accom­plished. It also chal­lenges the White House strat­egy of por­tray­ing the pres­i­dent as a sen­si­ble and prag­matic leader who is as frus­trated with the ways of Wash­ing­ton as the public.

White House spokesman Jay Car­ney reit­er­ated on Thurs­day that the pres­i­dent intends to offer pro­pos­als that “are rea­son­able and … should receive bipar­ti­san support.”

That strat­egy, these Democ­rats say, has not helped the pres­i­dent set a course for the economy.

Last Decem­ber, Obama won a tem­po­rary pay­roll tax cut for work­ers, but he had to give up, at least until the end of 2012, on his insis­tence that Bush-era tax cuts should no longer apply to the wealthy. Ear­lier this year he avoided a gov­ern­ment shut­down by agree­ing to Repub­li­can demands for bud­get cuts. And this sum­mer he won an increase in the nation’s debt ceil­ing but had to accede to more than a $1 tril­lion in spend­ing reduc­tions, with more to come.

“As the econ­omy slows, fos­ter­ing growth and reject­ing aus­ter­ity becomes an even greater imper­a­tive now,” Rosen­berg said in an inter­view. “His speech must reflect that. “

The con­tretemps over the date of Obama’s speech added to the Democ­rats’ dismay.

Some, like Carville, argued that the White House erred by seek­ing to sched­ule the address next Wednes­day, at the same time as a Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial debate. “I do think this is a really big debate, and I think the White House was out of bounds,” Carville said.

After Obama yielded to Boehner’s tim­ing request, the blog­ger Markos Moulit­sas, founder of the lib­eral Web site Dai­lyKos, posted rue­fully on his Twit­ter account: “I hope Boehner doesn’t ask Obama for his lunch money. The pres­i­dent would go hun­gry that day.”

Car­ney char­ac­ter­ized the flap over the tim­ing of the president’s address to Con­gress next week as a “side show” and not what peo­ple care about. He said the Amer­i­can peo­ple “don’t give a lick” about when Obama speaks but do care about what he says.

In a bleak assess­ment that added urgency to the president’s speech, the White House bud­get office on Thurs­day pre­dicted that with­out new polices unem­ploy­ment will remain at 9 per­cent next year. It also pro­jected over­all growth this year at just 1.7 per­cent, a full per­cent­age point less than the admin­is­tra­tion pre­dicted at the begin­ning of the year. On the other hand, the bud­get office review said that the pro­jected deficit for the year end­ing Sept. 30 will be $1.3 tril­lion, $300 bil­lion less than it pro­jected in February.

White House offi­cials say not all details of the president’s address have been decided, though he is expected to seek an exten­sion of the pay­roll tax cut and lay out pro­pos­als to increase hir­ing with a blend of tax incen­tives for busi­ness and gov­ern­ment spend­ing for pub­lic works projects. At the same time, White House offi­cials say, he will offer long-term deficit reduc­tions to make up for any upfront spend­ing. Repub­li­cans reject any short-term spend­ing, how­ever, and argue that eco­nomic growth can be achieved through less reg­u­la­tion and with per­ma­nent cor­po­rate tax cuts.

Yet even as Obama presses for a leg­isla­tive pack­age of job cre­at­ing mea­sures, he is also lay­ing the ground­work to use Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion as a cam­paign issue in 2012. Illus­trat­ing the fine line between gov­ern­ing and polit­i­cal cam­paign­ing, Obama issued a plea through his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign late Wednes­day call­ing for pub­lic sup­port in hold­ing Con­gress accountable.

In an email enti­tled “Frus­trated,” Obama said he would deliver details of his jobs plan to Con­gress next week. “Whether they will do the job they were elected to do is ulti­mately up to them,” he wrote. “But both you and I can pres­sure them to do the right thing.”

The email asked sup­port­ers to pro­vide their name and email addresses, a mobi­liz­ing tac­tic use­ful both to push for leg­isla­tive action and to build a foun­da­tion for his re-election.

“Every­body under­stands that this is both polit­i­cal and sub­stan­tive at the same time,” said Matt Ben­nett, a for­mer White House aide under Bill Clin­ton and vice pres­i­dent of Third Way, a Democratic-leaning group that advo­cates cen­trist poli­cies. “It’s good for Obama if he can get some deals cut.”

Ben­nett and White House offi­cials point out that Repub­li­cans have walked away from deficit cut­ting deals with the pres­i­dent. They argue that Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion has con­tributed to law­mak­ers’ poor stand­ing in pub­lic opin­ion polls.

Indeed, while a slight major­ity dis­ap­prove of the pres­i­dent, he has higher approval rat­ings than con­gres­sional Democ­rats and Republicans,

But Repub­li­cans argue that indi­vid­ual law­mak­ers will fare bet­ter than the over­all view of Con­gress would suggest.

“Some of the con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans are not going to be forced to endure the same polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment that the pres­i­dent is,” said Kevin Mad­den, a GOP strate­gist and for­mer House lead­er­ship aide. “The pres­i­dent is try­ing to run a national cam­paign; each of these con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans will be run­ning local campaigns.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 1 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.