President Obama goes on the attack, to Democrats’ delight

By David Nakamura and Paul Kane, Wednesday, October 5, 5:00 PM

There is a noticeably more aggressive, confrontational President Obama roaming the country these days, selling his jobs plan and attacking Republicans for standing in the way of progress by standing up only for the rich.

In Texas on Tuesday, the president went after a leading Republican by name: “Yesterday the Republican majority leader in Congress, Eric Cantor, said that right now he won’t even let this jobs bill have a vote in the House of Representatives,” Obama said. “I would like Mr. Cantor to come here to Dallas and explain what exactly in this jobs bill does he not believe in, what exactly he is opposed to. Does he not believe in rebuilding America’s roads and bridges? Does he not believe in tax breaks for small businesses or efforts to help our veterans?”

The emergence of this more pugnacious Obama has heartened Democrats, especially the most liberal ones, who spent the past few months dejected by what they saw as the president’s unwillingness to engage his opponents in political combat.

“We don’t see it as confrontation; we see it as leadership,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union. “We see the president exerting strong leadership to make the case to the country that everything we had to listen to during the debt debate was wrong.”

The president’s problems, even within his own party, remain formidable; only 58 percent of Democrats in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll believe that he will be reelected. Many supporters remain skeptical of his tendency to seek compromise with Republicans, and recently he angered some black supporters by urging them to stop complaining.

Still, in recent weeks, Obama has begun to blunt some of the criticism among Democrats that he is not up for the fight.

“The guy is mad,” said Peter Fenn, a longtime Democratic strategist. “I’d be mad, too. We went four months on the debt-ceiling nonsense. What positive result came of that? Zip.”

The new attack strategy is rooted in the political reality that Obama is 13 months from Election Day and faces a tough road. The poll shows that 61 percent of Americans disapprove of the way he is handling the economy.

Indeed, the only good news for Obama relates to his jobs plan and his Republican opposition. An even higher percentage of poll respondents, about 76 percent, say they disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are handling the economy. Given that dubious advantage, the president may have few options other than to attack.

Obama used a Labor Day speech in Detroit to launch his new offensive against the GOP opposition. With him on Air Force One that day was Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who gave Obama the text of a rousing speech delivered by Harry S. Truman on Labor Day 1948, also in Detroit. Truman was another deeply unpopular Democratic president in the midst of an economic recession; he won another term in 1948 by attacking the Republicans, earning the nickname “Give ’Em Hell Harry.”

A month later, other parallels are emerging. Facing sharp criticism from Democrats who say he capitulated to Republicans during the summer’s acrimonious debt-ceiling negotiations, Obama has embarked on a nationwide barnstorming tour to promote his plan to create jobs and try to reverse his ebbing political fortunes.

Senior administration officials said the president will continue his jobs tour through year’s end in a calculated effort to force Republicans to negotiate or be painted as a party unwilling to address the economic crisis.

The president’s jobs plan is one remaining bright spot for him. A narrow majority in the poll supports the package. Nearly six in 10 say Obama’s plan would help improve the unemployment situation.

Obama has begun to frame the 2012 contest as a referendum on values. At a fundraiser in California late last month, he mocked Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a leading contender for the GOP nomination, whose state has been ravaged by drought and wildfires, for not believing in the science of climate change. And in a speech on Saturday, Obama blasted the Republican presidential candidates for failing to defend a gay American solider in Iraq who was booed while asking a question via video during a GOP debate.

“We don’t believe in a small America,” Obama told a crowd of 3,300 at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in Washington. “We don’t believe . . . it’s okay for a stage full of political leaders — one of whom could end up being the president of the United States — being silent when an American soldier is booed. . . . You want to be commander in chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform.”

Obama drew a standing ovation that lasted longer than a minute, a remarkable turnaround for a president who himself was booed during a fundraiser in New York last spring when he said his views on same-sex marriage were still evolving.

“President Obama did an amazing job of thoroughly weaving together the narrative of his accomplishments and the pivotal implications of having another person in that Oval Office,” said Fred Sainz, a Human Rights Campaign spokesman.

The president also has drawn a values contrast with Republicans over how to pay for his jobs plan, which features a “Buffett rule” that would eliminate some tax loopholes for people earning more than $200,000 a year. Republicans have labeled Obama’s approach “class warfare,” a term the president has embraced— with a twist.

“You’re already hearing the Republicans in Congress dusting off the old talking points,” Obama told New York donors two weeks ago. “You know what? If asking a billionaire to pay the same rate as a plumber or a teacher makes me a warrior for the middle class, I wear that charge as a badge of honor.”

Neera Tanden, a former Obama administration official, said the president tried to position himself as the “adult in the room” during the debt fight, remaining above the partisan fray in hopes of striking a “grand bargain.” The strategy collapsed after House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) balked under pressure from the tea party and the White House agreed to cut spending by $900 billion without raising taxes.
“If you are the adult in the room as they move farther and farther right, you are not pulling back against them,” said Tanden, now the chief operating officer at the liberal Center for American Progress. “You have to come up with a strategy to meet the times. . . . The most important thing for the president now is to demonstrate leadership and vision. The stronger, feistier tone helps him do that.”

Darlene Ewing, chairman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, said that she was “royally [upset] when Obama caved” on the Bush tax cuts.

“I was really excited when he finally said, ‘Okay, that’s not the way it’s going to be,’ ” Ewing said this week. “I understand if you don’t want to add to the divisiveness. But it’s like mud-wrestling with a snake — you’re not going to win.”

Perry says Obama Mideast policy is 'naive, arrogant'

Original article: http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=238743

Both US Republican presidential front-runners slammed US President Barack Obama’s  policy on Israel Tuesday morning, days before the expected United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood. Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney blamed Obama for the upcoming UN vote, even though the US delegation was expected to veto the Palestinian initiative in the Security Council. Speaking at a Likud supporters’ rally in New York City, Perry said that he was “indignant  of the Obama administration and their Middle East policy of appeasement that has encouraged such an ominous act of bad faith. Simply put, we would not be here today at this very precipice of such a dangerous move if the Obama policy in the Middle East was not naive and arrogant, misguided and dangerous.” RELATED: US Republicans take aim at Jewish vote in 2012  Perry to hold pro-Israel press conference this week

Perry blasted what he described as “the Obama policy of moral equal which gives equal standing to the grievances of Israelis and Palestinians including the orchestrators of terrorism,” describing it as “a very dangerous insult.”

“There is no middle ground between our allies and those who seek their destruction,” Perry told the Likud supporters. “America should not be ambivalent between the terrorist tactics of Hamas and the security tactics of the legitimate and free state of Israel.”

In advance of the speech, Perry’s closest rival, Romney, called on the US to cut aid to the Palestinians, and also blamed Obama for causing the current "diplomatic crisis" at the UN.

Romney said that he believes the US should "cut foreign assistance to the Palestinians, as well as re-evaluate its funding of UN programs and its relationship with any nation voting in favor of recognition" for Palestinians at the UN. He added that the Palestinian petition at the UN is the "culmination" of the president's policies, which have shown disregard for the Israeli position.

Obama, said Romney, has made "repeated efforts over three years to throw Israel under the bus and undermine its negotiating position," and that Obama must "reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the security of Israel and its continued existence as a Jewish state" during his speech at the UN this week.

Romney insisted that Obama should declare the US will cut funding to the Palestinian Authority - $500 million annually in aid - and reevaluate its relations with any nation that votes in favor of Palestinian state recognition.

The National Jewish Democratic Council quickly responded to Perry’s remarks.

NJDC President and CEO David A. Harris issued a statement claiming that "Perry's comments today demonstrate that he clearly has little command of the U.S.-Israel relationship and even less interest in preserving the historic bipartisan support for Israel. His baseless attacks on President Barack Obama's strong record of support for Israel and the actions that the President and his Administration are taking to beat back the Palestinian's unilateral initiative are nothing more than a deeply disturbing ploy to inject domestic politics into the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Harris’s complained that “it is long past time for Perry and other Republicans to heed the advice of those genuinely working towards bipartisan support for Israel, and to quit playing political games with support for Israel."

“It appears that Perry and others like him are not thinking beyond their immediate political concerns,” he said.

Two weeks ago, Perry entered the foreign policy debate surrounding America’s support for Israel in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, in which he said that he supported the US utilizing its Security Council veto, but that he believed cutting aid to the Palestinians should be conditional to their willingness to return to negotiations with the Israelis.

Also on Tuesday, a group of fourteen US senators called on Obama to "issue a strongly worded defense of Israel during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday," and said that "political and physical" attacks on Israel threaten Middle East peace and stability.

The senators wrote a letter to the US president, in which they highlighted the recent "troubling" developments in the Middle East, including the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, the anti-Israel rhetoric of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the unilateral Palestinian decision to head to the UN for state recognition.

"We believe it is imperative for you to speak strongly, forthrightly and publicly about US concerns over these developments," the senators wrote, adding "we need to make it clear that we will not tolerate continued threats to Israel by governments or individuals in the region or attempts to delegitimize Israel at the UN or other international forums."

Gil Hoffman contributed to this report.

Obama: Plan 'not class warfare. It's math'

Original article: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/09/19/Obama-Plan-not-class-warfare-Its-math/UPI-67501316417400/?dailybrief

Published: Sept. 19, 2011 at 12:42 PM

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- President Obama's plan to reduce the U.S. deficit by about $3 trillion through the next decade would strip tax loopholes for the wealthy and big corporations.

Failure to act to reduce the budget through spending cuts and revenue increases means the "burden will ultimately fall on our children's shoulders … [and] the growing debt will crowd out everything else," Obama said in remarks Monday in the Rose Garden. "Washington has to live within its means. We have to cut what we can't afford and pay for what really matters."

Obama's proposals to the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction called for an expiration of the lower tax rates enacted during President George W. Bush's administration. He also called for an extension of the Bush-era rate cuts for the middle class.

"We can't cut our way out of our hole," Obama said. "It's only right we ask everyone to pay their fair share."

The so-called "Buffett Rule" was named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who repeatedly complained the richest Americans typically pay a smaller portion of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Obama said his plan would eliminate tax loopholes "that primarily go to wealthiest taxpayers and corporations. … We can't afford the special lower rates for the wealth [that were originally] meant to be temporary."

Obama said he looked forward to working with Republicans and Democrats to "eliminate loopholes that stack the deck against small business and families" who can't afford lobbyists.

He also encouraged Americans to challenge their representatives if they signed a pledge against tax increases to explain themselves.

"They should be called out. They should have to defend that unfairness," Obama said. "Our tax code shouldn't give advantage to best connected lobbyists. … We can lower (the) corporate rate if we get rid of special deals."

To those who said he was promoting class warfare, Obama said, "I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher is class warfare. I think it's just the right thing to do. … This is not class warfare. It's math."

If the wealthiest Americans and big corporations aren't asked to help reduce the deficit and grow the economy, "we've got to settle for second-rate roads and second-rate bridges and second-rate airports, and schools that are crumbling," Obama said. "That's unacceptable to me. ... And it will not happen on my watch."

He said he would not support "any plan that puts all of the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans"

Obama pledged to veto any bill that would change Medicare recipients' benefits "but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share. We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable."

In April, he said, he discussed a balanced approach that included a line-by-line budget examination looking for waste while not endangering education, research or infrastructure construction. It also was predicated on "everybody, including the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, has to pay their fair share."

His proposals to the so-called supercommittee are part of "a plan that reduces our debt by more than $4 trillion and achieves these savings in a way that is fair, by asking everybody to do their part so that no one has to bear too much of the burden on their own," he said.

He said his plan cuts $2 in spending for every dollar in revenue.

Besides the $1 trillion in cuts already outlined, Obama said his proposal will make additional spending cuts through reforming agricultural subsidies, modifying federal retirement programs, adjusting payments to Fannie Mae and Feddie Mac federal home loan programs, recapturing dollars from recipients of the bank bailout program, the drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and structural reforms to Medicare and Medicaid.

Concerning Medicare, Obama said he wouldn't allow reforms to the entitlement program "be an excuse for turning Medicare into a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry."

Obama challenged naysayers -- particularly Republicans who have said any tax increase was dead on arrival -- saying it was "our responsibility to put country before party. It's our responsibility to do what's right for the future."

The issue wasn't "about numbers on a ledger," but about whether the United States "will do what it takes to create jobs and growth in opportunity while facing up to the legacy of debt that threatens everything we've built over generations."

© 2011 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/09/19/Obama-Plan-not-class-warfare-Its-math/UPI-67501316417400/print/#ixzz1YSflBkPa

A Reminder: The American Jobs Act Needs Your Support

I'll say it again, folks.  Pass this bill.

The opposition says the government can't spend its way out of a recession.  So if the government can't, can the private sector?  One thing's for sure: SOMEBODY has to write the paychecks that create new jobs.

Opposition also says they're unsure whether or not this will actually create jobs.  Well, I guarantee you that doing nothing certainly won't.

History remembers us for what we actually do, not what we talk about doing.

Pass this bill.

Read all about it here: http://www.americanjobsact.com/

The frontrunner has no clothes

Original article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-frontrunner-has-no-clothes/2011/09/13/gIQAUFOcOK_print.html

By Dana Milbank, Tuesday, September 13, 5:01 PM

The applause identified Rick Perry as the crowd favorite when he took the stage in Tampa for Monday night’s Tea Party debate, greeting his lesser rivals as “fellas.”

But two hours later, those fellas – and a gal from Minnesota – had made some serious progress toward exposing the broad-shouldered Texas governor as an empty suit.

Sometimes they challenged Perry from the left (on Social Security and Medicare) and sometimes from the right (on immigration, taxes and mandatory vaccines), but it all came back to the same thing: The frontrunner was befuddled – seemingly stunned that his rivals would question his right to the Republican presidential nomination.

The lowest point for the man atop the polls came when Michele Bachmann accused Perry of cronyism, suggesting that he forced girls to receive the HPV anti-cancer vaccine because his former chief of staff was lobbying for the vaccine maker, Merck, which also “gave thousands of dollars in political donations to the governor.”

Perry answered with his trademark boastfulness: “It was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them. I raise about $30 million. And if you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended.”

“Well,” Bachmann retorted, “I’m offended for all the little girls and the parents that didn’t have a choice.”

The crowd applauded Bachmann, and Rick Santorum piled on. “This is big government run amok,” he informed Perry.

In lieu of a response, Perry served up a platter of platitudes, including, “I think we made decisions in Texas” and “there are a lot of different cancers out there.”

Bachmann, left for dead after the last Republican debate, returned to incendiary form. Santorum used his minor-candidate perch to peck at Perry. Mitt Romney, refusing to surrender to the man who replaced him as frontrunner, got Perry tangled in logic and fact. Even Jon Huntsman, when he wasn’t making baffling jokes about Kurt Cobain, told Perry his claim that he couldn’t secure the border was “pretty much a treasonous comment.”

On the defensive from beginning to end, Perry resorted to the time honored tradition of making up stuff. When Romney took issue with Perry’s previously-expressed views that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and unconstitutional, Perry had a comeback: “Governor, you’re calling it a criminal -- you said if people did it in the private sector if would be called criminal. That’s in your book.”

The crowd cheered this rejoinder, which would have been effective if Romney had indeed written such a thing. An electronic search of Romney’s book, “No Apology,” found no use of the word “criminal” in relation to Social Security. What he wrote was quite the opposite, saying that if bankers raided trusts the way politicians raid the Social Security trust, “they would go to jail.”

Perry tried to qualify his previous Ponzi-scheme talk, promising Social Security recipients “slam-dunk guaranteed, that program is going to be there in place” (even as he argued that Social Security as it was created in the 1930s is “not appropriate for America”). He also dropped his earlier opposition to Medicare prescription-drug coverage.

But mostly, the night was about Perry and the other candidates trying to outdo each other in conservatism. This created some eyebrow-raising results.

There were cheers from the audience of “yeah!” when the moderator, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, asked if an ill 30-year-old man who had refused to get health insurance should be left to die. There was Ron Paul’s explanation of the Sept. 11 attacks as a response to America “killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years.” There was Santorum’s accusation that Perry provided education assistance to illegal immigrants “as an attempt to attract the illegal vote – I mean, the Latino voters.” Perry, in turn, defended his suggestion that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke committed treason.

Refreshingly, though, Perry’s rivals did not leave his bluster unanswered. Of the increase in jobs in Texas, Romney joked: “If you’re dealt four aces that doesn’t make you necessarily a great poker player.” Paul, accusing Perry of tax and spending increases, quipped: “I don’t want to offend the governor, because he might raise my taxes.”

Perry licked his lips. He looked at the ceiling. He blinked so rapidly his eyes could have been sending a coded S.O.S. signal. For a guy who apparently thought he could bluff and bully his way to the nomination, this was much-needed comeuppance.

When Romney pressed Perry about whether he still thinks “Social Security should be ended as a federal program, as you did six months ago,” the Texan hedged.

“I think we ought to have a conversation,” he said.

“We’re having that right now, governor,” Romney reminded him. “We’re running for president.”

danamilbank@washpost.com

FACT CHECK: Social Security prompts debate miscues

Original article: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j6X889hD2GTE08H-2D8t2JLTKgAQ?docId=f87e3bd9a7d749be952007db71341165

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press – 51 minutes ago  

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rick Perry 1.0 thought Social Security was a "disease" inflicted on the population by the federal government.

Rick Perry 2.0 thinks Social Security deserves to be saved "for generations to come."

That metamorphosis by the Republican presidential hopeful over recent months contributed to some factual stretches Monday night in a GOP debate, both by the Texas governor and his opponents for the nomination.

A look at some of the claims in the debate and how they compare with the facts:

___

PERRY: On Social Security for younger workers, "No one's had the courage to stand up and say, here is how we're going to reform it."

THE FACTS: Many have done just that. Former President George W. Bush and a variety of Republicans since, including some running for president now, have stood for the position that Social Security should be partially privatized, enabling younger workers to divert some of their payroll taxes to individual investment accounts while the entitlement program is kept whole for those already using it or close to retirement.

___

MITT ROMNEY: "The real issue is, in writing his book, Gov. Perry pointed out that in his view that Social Security is unconstitutional, that this is not something the federal government ought to be involved in, that instead it should be given back to the states."

THE FACTS: Perry indeed roundly criticized Social Security in his book, but not quite to the point of calling it unconstitutional. In words he is trying to walk back now, Perry branded the program the "best example" of the "fraud" and "bad disease" spread by Washington in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Perry furthermore criticized the Supreme Court of that era for "abdicating its role as the protector of constitutional federalism."

That falls somewhere short of declaring Social Security unconstitutional.

Perry now has abandoned such rhetoric, adopting the conventional Republican view in a USA Today column Monday that its finances must be made whole to protect current and imminent retirees and make it viable for "generations to come."

___

MICHELE BACHMANN: Obama "stole over $500 billion out of Medicare to switch it over to Obamacare. ... These are programs that need to be saved to serve people, and in their current form, they can't."

ROMNEY: "He cut Medicare by $500 billion. This is a Democrat president. The liberal, so to speak, cut Medicare. Not Republicans, the Democrat."

THE FACTS: "Stole" is a hyperbolic way to describe the kinds of shifts in budget priorities that happen every day in Washington. To pay for expanded insurance coverage, Obama's health care law cuts $500 billion in payments to the Medicare Advantage program — which a congressional agency said was being overpaid — and to hospitals and nursing homes. Nearly all House Republicans, including Bachmann, later voted for a GOP budget plan that retained the same cuts Obama had made.

___

PERRY: The $814 billion economic stimulus program pushed by President Barack Obama "created zero jobs."

THE FACTS: There is no support for that assertion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last year that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million as of mid-2010. It cut the unemployment rate between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points, the CBO found.

Economists debate whether the stimulus lived up to its promise or was worth the cost, but no one seriously argues that it created no jobs. Many believe it helped to end the recession even while falling short of its employment goals.

___

BACHMANN: "I was one of the only people in Washington that said do not raise the debt ceiling. Don't give the president of the United States another $2.4 trillion blank check."

THE FACTS: Love or hate the debt deal, it was not a blank check for the president. Congress controls spending. The president can only suggest how the budget should be divvied up. Moreover, the "check" was not exactly blank. The deal that averted a national default requires automatic spending cuts to kick in if Congress does not accept cuts that will be proposed by a supercommittee.

___

RON PAUL: As a Texan, "my taxes have gone up. Our taxes have doubled since (Perry's) been in office. Our spending has gone up double. Our debt has gone up nearly tripled." Perry responded that he had cut taxes by $14 billion in 65 different pieces of legislation.

THE FACTS: Even though they seem to be contradicting each other, both have a point. Overall, the tax burden has grown, but shifted to some extent from state to local governments. Based on statewide tax collection figures, it is quite probable that Paul's total tax burden has doubled. But Perry did sign 65 pieces of legislation that reduced taxes. Taxes would be much higher in Texas if those laws had not gone into effect.

As for spending, it's reaching $86 billion in the next two years, up from $56 billion in Perry's first two years as governor. That's not quite double, as Paul claimed.

Texas' debt has tripled, primarily because of a Perry-backed move that allows the state to finance road construction with bonds instead of having to use cash.

The American Jobs Act

Ladies and Gents,

The time to act on American unemployment is now.  The American Jobs Act is about doing just that.

Nonetheless, John Boehner - who (because he cares about keeping his job more than he cares about the country) has shamelessly allowed the extreme ideologues of his party to take him by the balls and demand the impossible - has set the stage for continued blanket-opposition by republicans solely because they want to sabotage Obama and win the presidency in 2012.

He sugar-coated his response, but I don't believe his feigned pragmatism any more than I believe global warming is a farce:


"The record of the economic proposals enacted during the last Congress necessitates careful examination of the president's latest plan as well as consideration of alternative measures that may more effectively support private-sector job creation," Boehner said. "It is my hope that we will be able to work together to put in place the best ideas of both parties and help put Americans back to work."


Here's where you can go to make a difference: http://www.americanjobsact.com/