Some Dems want brake in Obama plans
Ben Smith and Manu Raju March 18, 2009 04:13 AM EST
Barack Obama’s Big Bang Theory of Governance is starting to face its first big test among the new president’s fellow Democrats. At the White House Tuesday morning, Obama began the day with a sharp push-back against the idea that his uncommonly ambitious agenda on health care, energy and other initiatives is too much, too soon. As Obama’s remarks echoed on Capitol Hill, it soon became clear that the skeptics are not just Republicans. There is rising doubt among Democrats — particularly moderates already concerned about the big costs and deficits called for in Obama’s budget — that either Obama or Washington have enough bandwidth this year to stimulate the economy, overhaul the failed financial sector and move on to a far-reaching domestic agenda. “From the standpoint of the Congress, there’s only so much that we can absorb and do at one time,” Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, told POLITICO Tuesday. “To maintain a schedule like the one we’ve got at this moment, throughout the year, I don’t know if it will be healthy.”
Democrats’ comments were muted, with few directly criticizing Obama for being too ambitious. But several lawmakers made clear that they have trouble with Obama’s logic that deep economic troubles make it more urgent, not less, to take on expensive projects such as health care and education reform. “Everybody has to bring something to the table,” said Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a leader of a 15-member caucus of conservative and centrist Democrats. “That doesn’t mean that you have to postpone your aspirations forever. But until we’re through this crisis and growth has resumed, there’s going to be some belt-tightening that’s necessary.” These doubts reflect conflicting currents in Obama’s political circumstances just 60 days into his administration. A majority of the public supports his hit-the-gas approach to his first year, according to polls. But it is clear that even in a period of one-party dominance in Washington, many ostensible allies are calculating how they can hit the brakes. “You are going to see some of that happen naturally,” said Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), explaining that some of Obama’s agenda — such as climate change — may fall by the wayside because there’s not enough support for it, not because it’s too much to tackle.“This isn’t going to be an automatic ‘yes’ vote for a lot of people,” Webb added. Beneath Tuesday’s dueling perspectives at the White House and on Capitol Hill lay a basic strategic debate about how new presidents should maximize their influence. Historically, one approach has been that presidents do best by concentrating their force behind one or two big issues. The other approach is to try to do as much as possible, as fast as possible — the so-called Big Bang — on the theory that there will never be a better chance.
Obama, acknowledging that the sick economy has made his task more difficult, said he won’t trim his sails. “The American people don’t have the luxury of just focusing on Wall Street. They don’t have the luxury of choosing to pay either their mortgage or their medical bills. They don’t get to pick between paying for their kid’s college tuition and saving enough money for retirement. They have to do all these things. They have to confront all these problems, and as a consequence, so do we.” So far, poll numbers show people on his side. A Pew Poll released Monday http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/498.pdf found that 56 percent of Americans rejected the criticism that Obama is “trying to do too much” — that number was just slightly below his still-high overall job approval in the survey. Most of the criticism on that front, the survey found, came from Republicans, as 77 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents said he is either “doing about right” or doing “too little.” “Obama [is] not seen as overextended,” the pollsters wrote. But many lawmakers made clear Tuesday their view that voters’ willingness to trust Obama on some subjects will be determined by their view of how well he handles the economic crisis. That judgment, in turn, will be shaped by whether the White House effectively responds to public outrage over large bonuses to executives at bailed-out American International Group.
“Unless we can instill some trust back with the American people that these people who brought on this problem, who risked our 401K funds and hard-working people’s money, aren’t going to be able to profit from their folly, I think we are at risk of losing their trust,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
This week’s AIG uproar showed how the financial crisis confounded early hopes that Obama could check his crisis boxes — a banking bailout and economic stimulus bill — and then turn swiftly to the policy proposals he’d promised on the campaign trial. Instead, the crisis continues to buffet the White House in unpredictable ways. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has struggled to present a steady public persona, produce detailed plans and even appoint senior staff. Press secretary Robert Gibbs’ daily briefing was consumed by AIG questions. And Republicans have begun to cast those crises in terms of an effort to do too much. “Job One has got to be the economy,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.). “I know that you have to use the first part of your administration to accomplish a lot of things, but it just seems to me that there’s been a very big lack of focus. I think that getting the right team in place at Treasury would have seemed to me to have been Job One in November. Here we are in March and we still don’t have a team in place to have there with Secretary Geithner. We’re talking about big lofty things, but we’re leaving behind some of the basics. It’s troubling.”
White House officials and their allies have a simple answer to this complaint: They had no real choice. Underneath the cheerful rhetoric that opportunity is to be found in crisis is the reality that Obama has only one first 100 days, they say, and he had no choice but to lay out the agenda on which his presidency will be judged. “One of the problems is that people are reading this as some sort of strategic tactic, but it really doesn’t work that way — it’s a substantive imperative,” said a White House official, who argued that some of the policy items — notably health care — would have proceeded on the Hill with or without the White House’s shaping. “We can either put our stamp on it and shape it or deal with it on the back end,” the official said. Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist close to the administration, said the administration’s choice to dive into health care and other policy issues was driven by a sense of real crisis. “The house is on fire. At the same time the house is on fire, the kids have gone missing and the cows have broken out of the pasture. It’s not like you can just address one of those,” he said, arguing — as did White House officials — that increasing health care costs could derail an economic recovery. Begala cited the examples of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson as presidents whose ambitious early agendas paid off. “He’s on the right side of history, and most people believe that this president does not have a choice.” But one member of the Senate’s centrist caucus said it is only realistic that Obama and other Democrats will need to yield on some of their hopes. “There will be sacrifices in the sense that the growth in the budget won’t be at the level that some people would like,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). While Obama is facing rising skepticism within his party, he clearly has the support of most Democrats for doing more, rather than less, in Year One. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said Obama is wise to think big and said that the ambitious agenda is critical for the number of crises the country is facing. “Education is the key to the long-term economic recovery, because health care is a drag on the current costs for businesses, so you have to do those as part of your economic recovery,” he said. “That agenda is a growth agenda. It is absolutely our economic future.”
Barack Obama’s Big Bang Theory of Governance is starting to face its first big test among the new president’s fellow Democrats. At the White House Tuesday morning, Obama began the day with a sharp push-back against the idea that his uncommonly ambitious agenda on health care, energy and other initiatives is too much, too soon. As Obama’s remarks echoed on Capitol Hill, it soon became clear that the skeptics are not just Republicans. There is rising doubt among Democrats — particularly moderates already concerned about the big costs and deficits called for in Obama’s budget — that either Obama or Washington have enough bandwidth this year to stimulate the economy, overhaul the failed financial sector and move on to a far-reaching domestic agenda. “From the standpoint of the Congress, there’s only so much that we can absorb and do at one time,” Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, told POLITICO Tuesday. “To maintain a schedule like the one we’ve got at this moment, throughout the year, I don’t know if it will be healthy.”
Democrats’ comments were muted, with few directly criticizing Obama for being too ambitious. But several lawmakers made clear that they have trouble with Obama’s logic that deep economic troubles make it more urgent, not less, to take on expensive projects such as health care and education reform. “Everybody has to bring something to the table,” said Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a leader of a 15-member caucus of conservative and centrist Democrats. “That doesn’t mean that you have to postpone your aspirations forever. But until we’re through this crisis and growth has resumed, there’s going to be some belt-tightening that’s necessary.” These doubts reflect conflicting currents in Obama’s political circumstances just 60 days into his administration. A majority of the public supports his hit-the-gas approach to his first year, according to polls. But it is clear that even in a period of one-party dominance in Washington, many ostensible allies are calculating how they can hit the brakes. “You are going to see some of that happen naturally,” said Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), explaining that some of Obama’s agenda — such as climate change — may fall by the wayside because there’s not enough support for it, not because it’s too much to tackle.“This isn’t going to be an automatic ‘yes’ vote for a lot of people,” Webb added. Beneath Tuesday’s dueling perspectives at the White House and on Capitol Hill lay a basic strategic debate about how new presidents should maximize their influence. Historically, one approach has been that presidents do best by concentrating their force behind one or two big issues. The other approach is to try to do as much as possible, as fast as possible — the so-called Big Bang — on the theory that there will never be a better chance.
Obama, acknowledging that the sick economy has made his task more difficult, said he won’t trim his sails. “The American people don’t have the luxury of just focusing on Wall Street. They don’t have the luxury of choosing to pay either their mortgage or their medical bills. They don’t get to pick between paying for their kid’s college tuition and saving enough money for retirement. They have to do all these things. They have to confront all these problems, and as a consequence, so do we.” So far, poll numbers show people on his side. A Pew Poll released Monday http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/498.pdf found that 56 percent of Americans rejected the criticism that Obama is “trying to do too much” — that number was just slightly below his still-high overall job approval in the survey. Most of the criticism on that front, the survey found, came from Republicans, as 77 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents said he is either “doing about right” or doing “too little.” “Obama [is] not seen as overextended,” the pollsters wrote. But many lawmakers made clear Tuesday their view that voters’ willingness to trust Obama on some subjects will be determined by their view of how well he handles the economic crisis. That judgment, in turn, will be shaped by whether the White House effectively responds to public outrage over large bonuses to executives at bailed-out American International Group.
“Unless we can instill some trust back with the American people that these people who brought on this problem, who risked our 401K funds and hard-working people’s money, aren’t going to be able to profit from their folly, I think we are at risk of losing their trust,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
This week’s AIG uproar showed how the financial crisis confounded early hopes that Obama could check his crisis boxes — a banking bailout and economic stimulus bill — and then turn swiftly to the policy proposals he’d promised on the campaign trial. Instead, the crisis continues to buffet the White House in unpredictable ways. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has struggled to present a steady public persona, produce detailed plans and even appoint senior staff. Press secretary Robert Gibbs’ daily briefing was consumed by AIG questions. And Republicans have begun to cast those crises in terms of an effort to do too much. “Job One has got to be the economy,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.). “I know that you have to use the first part of your administration to accomplish a lot of things, but it just seems to me that there’s been a very big lack of focus. I think that getting the right team in place at Treasury would have seemed to me to have been Job One in November. Here we are in March and we still don’t have a team in place to have there with Secretary Geithner. We’re talking about big lofty things, but we’re leaving behind some of the basics. It’s troubling.”
White House officials and their allies have a simple answer to this complaint: They had no real choice. Underneath the cheerful rhetoric that opportunity is to be found in crisis is the reality that Obama has only one first 100 days, they say, and he had no choice but to lay out the agenda on which his presidency will be judged. “One of the problems is that people are reading this as some sort of strategic tactic, but it really doesn’t work that way — it’s a substantive imperative,” said a White House official, who argued that some of the policy items — notably health care — would have proceeded on the Hill with or without the White House’s shaping. “We can either put our stamp on it and shape it or deal with it on the back end,” the official said. Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist close to the administration, said the administration’s choice to dive into health care and other policy issues was driven by a sense of real crisis. “The house is on fire. At the same time the house is on fire, the kids have gone missing and the cows have broken out of the pasture. It’s not like you can just address one of those,” he said, arguing — as did White House officials — that increasing health care costs could derail an economic recovery. Begala cited the examples of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson as presidents whose ambitious early agendas paid off. “He’s on the right side of history, and most people believe that this president does not have a choice.” But one member of the Senate’s centrist caucus said it is only realistic that Obama and other Democrats will need to yield on some of their hopes. “There will be sacrifices in the sense that the growth in the budget won’t be at the level that some people would like,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). While Obama is facing rising skepticism within his party, he clearly has the support of most Democrats for doing more, rather than less, in Year One. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said Obama is wise to think big and said that the ambitious agenda is critical for the number of crises the country is facing. “Education is the key to the long-term economic recovery, because health care is a drag on the current costs for businesses, so you have to do those as part of your economic recovery,” he said. “That agenda is a growth agenda. It is absolutely our economic future.”
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