Obama surrenders his agenda

I agree with what Byron York of the DC Examiner wrote in his piece, "Obama surrenders his agenda". "At his news conference Tuesday night, President Obama stressed the four most important goals he hopes to accomplish this year: health care reform, energy legislation, education reform, and deficit reduction.  But by the end of the hour-long session with the White House press corps, Obama had retreated on three of the four."

The biggest retreat was on energy. York commented, "The president's biggest surrender was on energy.  Powerful Senate Democrats, led by Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad, have essentially vetoed Obama's cap-and-trade proposal as unrealistic in this year of economic crisis.  At the White House Tuesday night, Obama in effect conceded that his plan, if enacted, could cause 'huge spikes in electricity prices.'  Tacitly admitting that his proposal has little or no chance on Capitol Hill, he said, 'When it comes to cap-and-trade, the broader principle is that we've got to move to a new energy era.  And that means moving away from polluting energy sources towards cleaner energy sources.'  Obama made no demands about how that might be done, signaling that his cap-and-trade proposal is very likely dead."

York also noted a move on health care, "On health care, Obama's budget included a $634 billion place holder for a to-be-announced reform proposal.  In the Senate, top Democrats have not only not signed on to that number, they haven't signed on to any number at all.  And some party leaders also oppose the idea of using the 'reconciliation' process to push through a health care proposal with fewer than the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster. If those views prevail, Obama's health care proposal could end up being smaller than first proposed, and not guaranteed to pass even in reduced form.  On Tuesday night, Obama would only say that 'I expect...serious efforts at health care reform.' "

York also cited a weak presentation of his budget proposal saying, On the deficit, Obama declared that 'we've got to start driving our deficit numbers down,' but he is going up against new projections from the Congressional Budget Office that show him adding $9.3 trillion to the national debt in coming years -- $2.3 trillion more than the White House had originally predicted. While Obama argued that 'we drive down the deficit over the first five years of our budget,' the fact is that, even when one excludes 2009, deficits projected for later years in the Obama budget are proportionately larger than any since World War II.  Rattled by that $2.3 trillion figure from the CBO, lawmakers of both parties are searching for ways to scale back Obama's plans.  So Obama can argue that his budget reduces the deficit, but it does not appear that anyone believes him."

Finally, York noted the President's remark that, "On Tuesday night, Obama said he 'never expected, when we printed out our budget that [Congress] would simply Xerox it and vote on it.'  That's undoubtedly true.  But he might also not have expected that Congress, especially lawmakers from his own party, would have done so much damage to his agenda so early in the game."

Must the President resolve the problems with the economy before Congress backs his ambitious agenda? Or, is the ambitious Obama agenda dead?