Filed under: Barack Obama , Economy , Taxes , Obama Administration , Unemployment , Jobs , White House Given the strong GOP resistance to any new government spending, whether the legislation stands a chance of passage is very much in the air.
Filed under: House , Republicans , Barack Obama , Economy , Joe Biden , Taxes , Obama Administration , Congress , Wall Street , Unemployment , Jobs President Barack Obama says middle class Americans took some “hard shots” way before the recession. Improving their lot is just as essential as a “healthy stock market,” he says.
Filed under: Bush Administration , House , Democrats , Republicans , Economy , Taxes , Obama Administration , 2010 Elections , Congress Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranked Republican in the House, says the GOP will pass across-the-board tax relief if it reclaims a majority this November.
In his previous Oval Office address, the one on BP, Obama chopped the air with his hands, a style of gesticulation most presidents reserve for ropeline hackery in a campaign season. One of Obama’s advisers evidently told him to knock it off, and so in this week’s Oval Office address on Iraq, he carefully clasped his hands together. This is what passes for presidential growth. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” ended not with a bang but with a whimper. One would think a seven-and-a-half-year war deserves more than a seventeen-and-a-half-minute speech, and Obama couldn’t even feign interest or stay on topic for that brief period of time on Tuesday. He was clearly phoning it in, itching to “turn the page” back to himself. His plans, his agenda for America, the blah, blah, blah of “jumpstarted” industries, “innovation” unleashed, a “growing” middle class, all of which was code in the speech for more of his statism — these are the subjects he regards as urgent. The only pages he turns with any real interest are the ones he rereads in his two memoirs and his dog-eared copy of Rules for Radicals . Bored and annoyed by having to talk about the success of a surge in Iraq that he opposed, Obama lamely tried to change topics. Basic decency would have told almost any other president to refrain from slipping a stump speech into an address about the sacrifice of America’s troops. But Obama, prodded by panicky Democrats and his own restless egotism, couldn’t restrict himself to just that and attempted the crassest of connections: that military heroism abroad should inspire a redoubling of Obamaism at home: “And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.
BOSTON — Visiting the United States this month after several years as an expatriate in France, I am fascinated to see this giant American bubble inside which live 310 million people, about half of them contented and half of them permanently angry at something. Of course one must be cautious in comparing civilizations but the peculiarities of the United States leap out at you — ils sautent aux yeux , as the French say, they jump at your eyes. I say “bubble” because in three weeks of schmoozing with relatives and friends, most of them accomplished professionals, I sense a drift toward willful isolationism. Iraq and Afghanistan have never come up in conversation without my prodding. Only a cab driver volunteered an opinion and that was on corruption among military contractors. “These thieves make my skin crawl,” he said, taking three fives from me for a short ride across town. The suburbs of Boston are probably typical of the educated U.S. population so I have taken them as representative. One Sudbury matron explained to me her apathy about American wars by the fact that she and her friends know no one personally involved. “It all seems to abstract,” she said. She seemed equally
