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| Home Front: Politix |
| Obama's Ambitious Program Challenges Congress |
| 2009-02-26 |
| In the budget he will submit to Congress today, President Obama will outline an agenda that confronts the era's most intractable problems, from a tattered financial system that has helped fuel a deepening recession to health-care, education and energy policies that have long defied meaningful reform. It amounts to a long work order for a legislature that has seen its productivity sag in recent years. Mired in partisan divisions, Congress has produced few bills of sweeping impact since the end of President George W. Bush's first term. Now Obama is asking lawmakers to deliver legislation on the scale of the No Child Left Behind education bill or the Medicare prescription drug benefit -- two of Bush's signature achievements -- roughly once a month. Bush had achievements? Who knew? "It's a large agenda, but the American people wanted large change, and it was really a large election," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), a member of the Senate Democratic leadership, said yesterday. A guiding principle of the Obama administration, articulated in the president's address to Congress on Tuesday night and implicit in the expansive policy goals set forth in his first budget, is that the economic crisis has heightened the desire for change that voters expressed in November, creating a once-in-a-generation opportunity for bold policy shifts. Many Democrats have expressed trepidation about the lofty expectations that Obama has set and are keenly aware that the party could pay a steep price in the 2010 midterm elections if the promises are not fulfilled. Already looking toward 2010, eh? At a White House meeting yesterday with House and Senate leaders, Obama noted that polls showed the Democratic Congress's popularity rising with the passage of the stimulus bill, despite Republicans' near-unanimous opposition because of the package's heavy spending programs. On Tuesday, Obama closed his speech with a plea for Congress to get behind his ambitious goals. "If we come together and Obviously, there's much more to this WaPo story, at the link. |
| Posted by:Bobby |