Obama's press conference

Obama held a press conference this morning about the debt negotiations. Here are some of his main points:

1. We cannot keep putting off the hard decisions. Nobody likes to have to make the hard decisions, and part of the reason we are in this crisis is because we have kept doing that. Now is the time we must step up and do what has to be done. He says he will not sign a bill that makes just a temporary, 30 day or 3 month stop-gap measure. It is time now to tackle the long-range problem.

2. If either side continues to insist on getting 100% of what they want, we won't be able to do anything. Each side is going to have to give up something that they want -- Republicans on taxes, Democrats on entitlements. And both sides will have a tough job selling it to their parties.

3. He acknowledged that Boehner has a hard job to sell any compromise to his caucus, just as he himself has a hard job to sell compromise to Democrats. He said that his experience with Boehner has been good, that he is a decent man who wants to do right by the country; but that the politics that swept him into the Speaker's position were good for winning the mid-term elections but make it hard to govern (ie the division between Tea Partiers and other Republicans).

4. Obama pretty forcefully (but not angrily) said that he has offered a package that is far from what he wants. But he feels that it is balanced and fair. He has already offered that as a compromise, and now the Republicans will have to do the same. He gave the strong impression that he has offered a compromise that is contingent on them giving up some things too, not that he is just caving in.

5. On tax cuts, he really tried to soften it, saying that none of the things being talked about will raise taxes immediately but rather beginning in 2013. Which left me wondering . . . but don't the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2011 unless they are renewed? He later made reference to wealthy people like him and Warren Buffett being willing to pay more, so it sounded like that was part of the package, but he didn't address that directly. Rather, he talked about closing loopholes like the tax breaks for corporate jets.

[Later thought: Actually, he's right. If tax cuts expire at the end of 2011, it will not affect the 2012 budget, which has already been set; it will affect the 2013 budget.]

6. When asked about the 60+% of public who oppose raising the debt ceiling, he said the public isn't really paying attention to the details of our fiscal crisis. If you phrase the question like: "Do you think it's a good idea for the United States to fail to pay its bills and to risk loss of confidence in our nation?" -- he thought he could get a majority to support him on that. Good point. But then why haven't Democrats taken to the airwaves to push that way of looking at it? In fact, the question was posed something like: do you think you've done enough to convince the American people of the need to raise the ceiling? He really avoided that. And that is part of the problem.

7. He says that Social Security is included in this package because, if you're going to have to take hard votes, you might as well do them all at once, rather than coming back later and trying to get hard decisions made about Social Security. But he was clear and definitive that Social Security did not cause the deficit, and it will not be cut in order to solve the deficit.

My impression: if this was my first observation of Obama as a leader in position to negotiate, I would be very impressed. Unfortunately, my impressions are also colored by repeated instances of being impressed by what he says and then disappointed in the results.

But then . . . there's the fact that he did get a health care reform enacted -- not what we would like but better than what we had. So . . . let's see what happens between now and August 2nd, the deadline for the raising the debt ceiling.

Ralph