Obama meets with Senate Democrats, talks strategy

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama walks off of Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Wash­ing­ton Wednes­day after return­ing from a Demo­c­ra­tic retreat in Annapo­lis, Md. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Susan Walsh)

DARLENE SUPERVILLE

JOSH LEDERMAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — With a big to-do list at the start of his sec­ond term, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama is try­ing to sell Democ­rats on his strat­egy for tack­ling immi­gra­tion, gun con­trol and a host of fis­cal dilemmas.

Obama met behind closed doors for more than two hours Wednes­day with law­mak­ers from his own party at the Sen­ate Democ­rats’ annual retreat at a hotel in Annapo­lis, Md. House Democ­rats will hear from Obama at their annual retreat Thurs­day in Lans­downe, Va.

Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­tic unity will be crit­i­cal to Obama’s prospects for enact­ing the ambi­tious agenda he’s laid out for the start of his sec­ond term. Almost all the items he’s seek­ing face oppo­si­tion from Sen­ate Repub­li­cans — not to men­tion the even stronger oppo­si­tion Obama is likely to run up against if and when the GOP-controlled House takes up those items.

The White House said Obama spoke briefly, took ques­tions from 10 of the sen­a­tors assem­bled, then spent an hour chat­ting with them in smaller groups. Obama’s spokesman, Jay Car­ney said the ses­sion was focused on coor­di­nat­ing what Demo­c­ra­tic sen­a­tors are doing with the administration’s own efforts to pro­mote Obama’s priorities.

High on the agenda was immi­gra­tion, where Car­ney said Obama would note the “sig­nif­i­cant progress” made toward a bipar­ti­san deal. Obama is let­ting the Sen­ate take the lead on craft­ing com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion leg­is­la­tion, includ­ing a path to cit­i­zen­ship for 11 mil­lion ille­gal immi­grants. But he is using all the power that the pres­i­dency affords to implore law­mak­ers to act with­out delay.

A bipar­ti­san Sen­ate group has reached agree­ment on the broad out­lines of such an over­haul, but a few thorny issues remain, includ­ing a pos­si­ble guest-worker pro­gram and whether to delay steps toward cit­i­zen­ship until cer­tain border-security mea­sures are in place.

Gun con­trol is another of Obama’s pri­or­i­ties where the out­come may rest on whether Sen­ate Democ­rats stick together in sup­port­ing him. Obama says he sees an emerg­ing con­sen­sus behind his pro­pos­als in the wake of the New­town, Conn., school­house mas­sacre, but some pro­vi­sions he’s push­ing will make it tough for red-state Democ­rats and those up for re-election in 2014 to back him. Even the top Sen­ate Demo­c­rat, Harry Reid, has declined to say whether he’ll back the most con­tentious aspect of Obama’s pack­age: a ban on assault weapons.

Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden addressed those con­cerns head-on when he spoke to House Democ­rats at their retreat Wednes­day evening. Biden said pub­lic opin­ion has shifted on gun con­trol, insist­ing that Demo­c­ra­tic law­mak­ers can com­fort­ably back the mea­sures he and Obama are push­ing with­out fear they will lose their jobs.

“I’m not ask­ing you to vote for some­thing you don’t believe, but I don’t want to hear about, “Well, we can’t take it on because it’s too polit­i­cally dan­ger­ous,’” Biden said.

The Sen­ate retreat also offered Obama his first chance to pitch directly to sen­a­tors his pro­posal for a quick fix to avert the sweep­ing spend­ing cuts set to hit the mil­i­tary, domes­tic pro­grams and the econ­omy at large on March 1. Obama appealed to Con­gress on Tues­day to pass a short-term set of spend­ing cuts and tax changes to give law­mak­ers more time to hash out a broader deal.

Posted by AP News on Feb 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.