Weeks before US President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, White House aides were locking down a plan for the sales pitch that would follow during three days of travel focused on his main themes.
The effort to promote Obama’s proposals on jobs, wages and education involved visits to Asheville, North Carolina, Decatur, Georgia, and Chicago, Illinois, participating in a Google+ chat and mobilizing the president’s formidable former campaign apparatus.
One thing it did not include? The US Congress.
For the White House, this is a campaign for public opinion, not one to write specific legislation.
When it comes to broadening early education or raising the minimum wage, Obama is not ready to make lawmakers a part of the process yet.
Instead, Obama is trying to change an economic debate that has been focused on deficits and on managing the national debt, to one about middle-class opportunities and economic growth.
Just into his second term, Obama and his aides want to move away from the type of budget confrontations that have defined the past two years and take advantage of his re-election to pressure Republicans.
“If the Republicans reflexively oppose everything the president does, we have to go directly to the American people to marshal their support to get things done,” Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said.
“The metric we’re looking at is whether you start to see fissures in the Republican coalition,” he said.
This president, like recent ones before him, has gone to the public before in hopes of persuading lawmakers. It has not always worked.
Former US president Bill Clinton failed to use the public to win support for his health care overhaul. Former US president George W. Bush was unable to make changes to the Social Security program providing benefits to retirees in his second term.
Obama tried to muster public support to fight climate change but the legislative effort came up short. Even his all-out effort on behalf of sweeping healthcare changes only succeeded in keeping Democrats unified, not in winning over Republicans.
However, Obama and White House aides are heartened by what they believe were successful public appeals for extending a payroll tax cut in 2010 and for preventing a doubling of interest rates on federal student loans last summer.
What made those different was that they addressed pressing issues: The payroll tax cut was expiring at year’s end and interest rates on student loans were set to double on July 1 last year.
Expanding preschool education programs and raising the minimum wage from US$7.25 to US$9 an hour by the end of 2015, on the other hand, are policy ideas sprung on Congress in last Tuesday’s speech.
The White House strategy now in part recognizes that the economy remains the No. 1 public concern even as the president engages Congress on issues such as immigration and gun violence.
It was finally on Friday, his last road trip of the week, when Obama brought his message back to guns. However, even then, as in his State of the Union speech, he connected it to his main economic themes. Speaking not far from his Hyde Park home on Chicago’s South Side, Obama linked the near-daily violence to communities where there is little economic hope.
At the White House, Pfeiffer said that it would be pointless to present Congress with legislation on preschools and minimum wage increases now, when the president is just raising the profile of the two issues and when he is already working with Congress on other matters.
“There’s a lot of traffic in the legislative process right now,” he said. “If we were to send a bill up on some of these things tomorrow, you guys would all write that the president has overloaded the system.”
In pushing his agenda, Obama is wielding extra muscle that he didn’t employ before, relying on his reconfigured re-election campaign operation.
The organization has reappeared as a nonprofit group ready to engage in legislative fights and grassroots mobilization to supplement the White House.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number