Obama Speech Will Seek Reset With Spending, Tax Plans (Update3)
By Edwin Chen and Nicholas Johnston
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama won the White House in part because he controlled the narrative of the campaign, a story line of change and possibility. As president, even supporters say he hasn’t projected a well-defined message, to his political cost.
His first State of the Union address today is a chance for a rewrite.
“He has to send a clear signal to the country, and to his own party, about what his top priorities are and what he is really prepared to fight for,” said Bill Galston, a scholar at the Washington-based Brookings Institution who was President Bill Clinton’s domestic-policy adviser. “The signals coming out of the White House have not been clear and to some extent they have been contradictory.”
The president will try to add clarity in his speech, White House aides said. He will call for a freeze on federal discretionary spending, tax relief targeting middle-income Americans, $38 billion worth of tax incentives for businesses to buy equipment, regulating the financial-services industry and remaking the nation’s immigration laws.
He may also help provide a way to move forward with the signature issue of his first year, an overhaul of the health- care system, which represents about 17 percent of the economy.
White House aides said the administration hasn’t been successful in selling the U.S. public on the health-care plan, which is stalled in Congress.
‘Take Responsibility’
The effort “became a caricature of its component parts,” Robert Gibbs, the president’s spokesman, said yesterday. “To the degree that that’s a communications failing, I think people here at the White House and others would certainly take responsibility for that.”
When Obama returns to the subject tonight, he is likely to push for enactment of a broad package rather than passing small measures in a piecemeal fashion, said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland.
“It’s difficult to take small pieces and attain the objectives you want to accomplish,” Hoyer said yesterday.
The State of the Union will give Obama an opportunity to “reset, recalibrate and demonstrate that he is as good at governing and leading America as he is at campaigning,” said Ken Duberstein, who served as chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan.
“You don’t need to talk about 10 priorities, you can talk about a couple of priorities,” he said.
Tampa Visit
To amplify his message, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are scheduled to appear together a town-hall meeting in Tampa, Florida, tomorrow to talk about the economy and ways to bring down the unemployment rate, which is at 10 percent. They will be announcing the award of $8 billion in stimulus funds to begin building high-speed rail lines. And on Jan. 29, the president is scheduled to address a gathering of House Republicans in Baltimore.
In anticipation of tonight’s speech, Obama has already proposed a tax package aimed at appealing to middle-income Americans, including an increased tax credit for child care and an expansion of credits to match retirement savings.
He also intends to call for a three-year freeze on some spending for domestic programs not related to national security, White House aides said.
Education Funding
One major exception will be a 6.2 percent increase in funding for elementary and secondary education, according to a senior administration official. This will include an additional $1.35 billion request to expand Obama’s “race to the top” initiative designed to spur innovative practices.
In addition, he will discuss his Jan. 21 proposal to reduce risk-taking by financial firms. Gibbs said yesterday the president would also call on Congress to move forward with an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws.
Obama will announce tonight an executive order to create a commission to find ways to reduce the federal budget deficit, an administration official said on condition of anonymity. The Senate rejected such a panel yesterday.
In recent days, the president and his top advisers have signaled his intention to stay the course and keep taking on big issues such as health care, while rejecting “small-bore” measures that may more easily win congressional approval.
Pressing Ahead
“I am not backing off the need for us to tackle these big problems in a serious way,” Obama said in a Jan. 25 interview on ABC News. “I am going to keep on pushing.”
Continuing a ritual started by Reagan, Obama has invited 26 guests to sit in the first lady’s box during tonight’s address. Among them are Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd, police officers who helped end the Fort Hood massacre; Haiti’s ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph; and Jeffrey Brown, chief executive officer of Brown’s Super Stores Inc., a Philadelphia-area supermarket chain.
As the president addresses the nation in prime time, his job-approval ratings have fallen below 50 percent and a majority of the public now wants a halt to the health-care overhaul.
The percentage of people who disapprove of the job Obama is doing is at 50 percent, compared with 22 percent in February 2009, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll conducted Jan. 22-24.
Focus of Attention
And 60 percent of the 1,009 adults surveyed said Obama has focused more on the problems of banks and other financial institutions than on middle-class Americans. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
While the Obama administration can claim it averted an economic meltdown, the unemployment rate and the aftershocks from the rescue efforts continue to stir public anger at Washington.
The highest-stake issue tonight may be the outcome of the health-care initiative, which is threatened by the Jan. 19 election of Republican Scott Brown to the Massachusetts Senate seat held for 47 years by the late Edward Kennedy. Brown gives Senate Republicans their 41st vote, the threshold for blocking legislation.
Obama has often used speeches to overcome political obstacles, said Fred Greenstein, a presidential historian at Princeton University in New Jersey. The president, he said, “is capable of being a rhetorical superstar and typically comes through in the clutch.”
Turning to Media
Obama received national attention with an address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He delivered a number of big speeches subsequently that propelled him on the road to the White House, including an address in 2007 to party activists in Iowa and a speech on race in 2008 after inflammatory remarks made by his former pastor came to light.
During his first year in office, Obama turned to the media to get his message out far more often than his predecessors, giving 161 interviews, compared with about 50 each for Clinton and President George W. Bush during their first year in office, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University in Towson, Maryland.
“Communications problems are most often policy problems,” she said. “The problem is not so much how much you’re communicating but what it is you’re communicating.”
Since Brown’s election in Massachusetts, Obama has injected a populist tone into his speeches. During a Jan. 22 town-hall meeting in Elyria, Ohio, he used the word “fight” or “fighting” more than 20 times.
Afterward, the president was still in a feisty mood as he toured a sporting-goods factory and was given a shiny football helmet.
“I’ll need this during the State of the Union,” Obama said. “I can knock some heads with this.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at EChen32@bloomberg.net; Nicholas Johnston in Washington at Njohnston3@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: January 27, 2010 12:54 EST |
