Obama's sidelines gamble - Politico
Congress is eating its peas without Barack Obama.As world markets began reacting to the growing possibility of a previously unthinkable U.S. governmental default, Obama was barely visible for much of the weekend, a jarring shift from three weeks of press conferences, White House <a href="http://wk.putianb2b.com/"><strong>北京兼职 </strong></a> negotiating sessions and public warnings to “irresponsible” Republicans. Continue Reading But on Capitol Hill, House and Senate leaders groped for a way out of the debt ceiling crisis, struggling to make the tough choices that Obama famously compared to eating the vegetable his daughters disdain. The partisan estrangement wasn’t Obama’s choice - House Speaker John Boehner pulled out of talks on Friday over Obama’s insistence that he swallow 400 billion in revenue hikes — and Obama spoke to the speaker by phone Saturday night and on Sunday, aides say. But being on the sidelines isn’t exactly an unfamiliar – or undesirable — position for a president who views himself as a legislative closer with a penchant for asserting himself late in the game, at the moment of maximum leverage. This time, however, he’s forced to rely on mercurial Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as his proxy. It’s a real roll of the dice: Even by Obama standards it’s dangerously late for him to be out of direct negotiations with a GOP opposition that doesn’t trust, like or respect him – and no one in the White House is quite sure how it will turn out. “Speaker Boehner…walked away <a href="http://wk.putianb2b.com/"><strong>广州兼职 </strong></a> twice from a deal with the president which would have finally begun a serious attempt to cut spending,” a frustrated White House chief of staff Bill Daley told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, two days after Boehner cut off negotiations with Obama. “This is not the way we run a government that’s divided. <a href="http://wk.putianb2b.com/"><strong>威客任务 </strong></a> But we should prove to the American people it’s not dysfunctional,” he added. Yet even Daley didn’t sound entirely distraught that Boehner and Reid were the ones stuck with the heavy lifting eight days before fiscal Doomsday. “This is the responsibility of Congress,” Daley added. “In the end, the Congress must pass this. It is their responsibility to extend the debt ceiling. So my sense is that in the end they will act.” From Obama’s perspective, Congress has always delivered for him, albeit chaotically and on its own terms. With robust House and Senate Democratic majorities in 2009 and 2010, Obama’s was able to close on comprehensive health care and stimulus bills by giving congressional leaders a lot of latitude, insisting only on broad goals. His first pass at bipartisan negotiations with the GOP, during tax and budget negotiations in the winter and spring, resulted in major compromises that angered many fellow Democrats <a href="http://www.casualphorum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1885039#1885039"><strong>Blog — timberland shoes — Schminktipps mit Videos | Community ...</strong></a> who felt he could have driven a hard bargain. They still feel that Obama has been too willing to cave. One senior Democratic aide responded “Hell, yes!” when asked if the president made a mistake by ceding the lead administration role on the debt talks to Vice President Joe Biden for most of the spring.
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