After a weekend of playing the punching bag, President Obama is hitting back with a three-day bus trip through the Midwest that includes five town halls and a lot of bruising shots at what he casts as a do-nothing GOP-led Congress.
Rolling out the artillery at his first stop this afternoon in Cannon Falls, Minn, Obama said, "I'm not here just to enjoy the nice weather. I'm here to enlist you in a fight. We are fighting for then future of our country and that is a fight that we are going to win."
Obama needs to make sure America's debt fatigue does not become Obama fatigue. His approval rating hit a new low over the weekend, dipping to 39%. The mainstream media and the GOP field of presidential wannabees quickly latched on to the Gallup number.
The GOP candidates, in high-profile speeches in Iowa and South Carolina, focused on questioning Obama's leadership in a stinging barrage that drew cheers, but failed to further sink the President's poll numbers. The Gallup daily tracking poll actually ticked upwards by two points today to 41%.
Obama hopes to counterattack by striking back at the most unpopular entity in Washington: The GOP-led House and filibuster-prone Senate Republicans, which have a dismal 28% approval rating, according to a Gallop survey last month.
The President and his advisors believe there is plenty of evidence that the Republicans are stalling at moving forward with a jobs agenda, instead focusing on protecting the rich from paying their fair share of taxes.
Driving home his point, Obama served up a menu today of pending and proposed legislation that Congress could pass immediately to help spur job-creation, including a payroll tax cut, tax credits for companies that hire war veterans, creation of an infrastructure bank to rebuild America and put builders and constructions workers back to work, international trade deals and patent reforms to make it easier to turn ideas into businesses.
"So there is no shortage of ideas to put people to work right now. What is needed is action on the part of Congress, a willingness to put the partisan games aside and say we're going to do what's right for the country, not what we think is going to score some political points for the next election," Obama said.
Obama picked up some support from the biggest name in Wall Street circles, when mega-investor Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed for The New York Times titled, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich."
"While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks," Buffett wrote.
Showing posts with label gridlock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gridlock. Show all posts
Monday, August 15, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Obama: GOP Playing 'Dangerous Game' With Americans' Livlihood
Updated throughout at 9:45 p.m. edt to add Boehner quotes, details, links, etc.
President Obama rejected tonight the House GOP plan that would force another politically charged debt ceiling battle in six months, calling it "a dangerous game" that reduces the American people to "collateral damage to Washington’s political warfare."
"The only reason this balanced approach isn’t on its way to becoming law right now is because a significant number of Republicans in Congress are insisting on a cuts-only approach – an approach that doesn’t ask the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to contribute anything at all," Obama said.
"Most Americans, regardless of political party, don’t understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don’t get," Obama added.
The President urged Americans to contact lawmakers to let them know they want the GOP to stop the debt shenanigans.
Obama's address on the day GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid issued dueling debt proposals. Obama wants the Reid legislation that would raise the debt limit by at least $2.4 trillion all at once, instead of the politically motivated incremental approach that GOP House Speaker John Boehner is pushing.
"That is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. It is a dangerous game we’ve never played before, and we can’t afford to play it now," Obama said of Boehner's plan. "Not when the jobs and livelihoods of so many families are at stake. We can’t allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington’s political warfare."
If a debt-ceiling compromise is not reached, Obama warned that Washington alone would be responsible for a likely economic crisis triggered by the federal government defaulting on its bills.
"We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis – one caused almost entirely by Washington," Obama said, adding that Americans are "fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word."
In a brief response to Obama's nationally televised address, Boehner insisted "there's no stalemate here in Congress."
"The House passed a bill to raise the debt limit with bipartisan support. And this week, while the Senate is struggling to pass a bill filled with phony accounting and Washington gimmicks, we're going to pass another bill, one that was developed with the support of the bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Senate," Boehner said.
(Editor's note: NBC "Hardball" anchor Chris Matthews accused Boehner of fibbing when he called the House bill a bipartisan effort).
"The solution to this crisis is not complicated. If you're spending more money than you're taking in, you need to spend less of it. There's no symptom of big government more menacing than our debt. Break its grip and we begin to liberate our economy and our future. We are up to the task. And I hope President Obama will join us in this work," Boehner added.
President Obama rejected tonight the House GOP plan that would force another politically charged debt ceiling battle in six months, calling it "a dangerous game" that reduces the American people to "collateral damage to Washington’s political warfare."
"The only reason this balanced approach isn’t on its way to becoming law right now is because a significant number of Republicans in Congress are insisting on a cuts-only approach – an approach that doesn’t ask the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to contribute anything at all," Obama said.
"Most Americans, regardless of political party, don’t understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don’t get," Obama added.
The President urged Americans to contact lawmakers to let them know they want the GOP to stop the debt shenanigans.
Obama's address on the day GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid issued dueling debt proposals. Obama wants the Reid legislation that would raise the debt limit by at least $2.4 trillion all at once, instead of the politically motivated incremental approach that GOP House Speaker John Boehner is pushing.
"That is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. It is a dangerous game we’ve never played before, and we can’t afford to play it now," Obama said of Boehner's plan. "Not when the jobs and livelihoods of so many families are at stake. We can’t allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington’s political warfare."
If a debt-ceiling compromise is not reached, Obama warned that Washington alone would be responsible for a likely economic crisis triggered by the federal government defaulting on its bills.
"We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis – one caused almost entirely by Washington," Obama said, adding that Americans are "fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word."
In a brief response to Obama's nationally televised address, Boehner insisted "there's no stalemate here in Congress."
"The House passed a bill to raise the debt limit with bipartisan support. And this week, while the Senate is struggling to pass a bill filled with phony accounting and Washington gimmicks, we're going to pass another bill, one that was developed with the support of the bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Senate," Boehner said.
(Editor's note: NBC "Hardball" anchor Chris Matthews accused Boehner of fibbing when he called the House bill a bipartisan effort).
"The solution to this crisis is not complicated. If you're spending more money than you're taking in, you need to spend less of it. There's no symptom of big government more menacing than our debt. Break its grip and we begin to liberate our economy and our future. We are up to the task. And I hope President Obama will join us in this work," Boehner added.
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