With the annual State of the Union message upon us, speculation is escalating as to what approach Barack Obama will decide to take in his speech and just how strongly he will seek to rally the American public against the economic saboteurs in the Republican Party, especially in the House of Representatives. As noted in previous posts on this blog, the Hampton Roads area is going to be hard hit by sequestration. But the economic pain will be much more wide spread and, I for one hope that Obama makes the case to the public the damage that the GOP seeks to wreak on the country. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at some of the speculation. Here are highlights:
President Obama heads into Tuesday’s State of the Union speech with a crippling sequester looming, and the tone he takes toward his adversaries could determine whether automatic cuts in spending will follow less than three weeks later. Will he follow the fighting tone of his second inaugural? How combative will he get in urging Congress to come up with a plan to avert the sequester, and how directly will he blame the Republicans for the current impasse?
Finding some accommodation with Republicans is imperative in the short term. If the sequester goes into effect, the recovery would be derailed, a million jobs lost in the defense industry, children tossed off the Head Start rolls, medical research into cancer and Alzheimer’s imperiled, a litany of ills that Obama will cite Tuesday evening. Republicans won’t respond well if he demonizes them as heartless and uncaring about anybody but the rich, and they’ll be listening to see if he talks seriously about slowing the growth of entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid, and putting Social Security on a sounder footing.
Speaking with a small group of reporters at the Brookings Institution on Friday, Rivlin said, “If the Democrats with presidential leadership are willing to do what Republicans say they’ve wanted for a long time ... then Republicans might buy into additional revenue” by adopting the plan Mitt Romney advanced during the campaign of capping deductions for wealthier taxpayers. “I think there’s a deal there.”
Offering a counterpoint to Rivlin’s measured optimism was Brookings senior fellow Ron Haskins, a veteran of both the Bush White House and congressional staff work on the Republican side. “Don’t hold your breath,” he warned anyone expecting Obama to seriously tackle entitlement reform. “He has every reason to sit tight and play to his base. The American public is very much on his side,” said Haskins, who cited polls that show voters by a ratio of 2 to 1 see Obama as the one who’s trying to solve problems.
The SOTU is the biggest captive audience Obama will have before the ax is due to fall March 1. It’s his chance to educate and influence the American people and potentially move the Congress. A senior White House official says the president will use the speech “to reinforce his commitment to expanding economic opportunity for middle-class families and those Americans striving to get there. It will be focused on the pocketbook issues that dominated the debate in his first term and proved decisive in the outcome of last year’s election.”
Obama prides himself on playing the long game, and if he wants to preserve his ability to govern, he has to clear away the successive choke points that lie ahead, beginning with sequestration on March 1, then a potential government shutdown March 27, and then another debt-ceiling deadline May 19.
Now is not the time for timidity and Obama needs to rise to the occasion and take on the GOP by taking the case directly to the public.
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