Sunday, February 21, 2010

Obama is pushing a lot of stuff going into the mid-term elections. Obviously (in contrast to what he said in the state of the union address) these bills are political and are all there to strengthen his party. Before the state of the union, Obama was fairly concentrating on healthcare. However, after the CBO’s December job statistics came his focus turned to more centralized on the issue of the economy. However, concentration on a policy really isn’t concentrating (at least in Obama’s terms). Other than economic regulations, Obama has a few more stuff that he wants to pass “before November”. Here are some agenda items.
First is obviously the economic recovery act. This act is instigated in response to the shocking job ratings that were exposed on December (which is almost 10% unemployment). Now this act covers a lot of grounds. Some of the policies in this package include the job reform, the bank reform, budget freeze, etc. Obama has been trying to make it clear that this recovery act is on top of his agenda. Now obviously that is a political move to get support from the public seeing that the public obviously wants some policy that would help the economy.
Second is education. Obama also announced that he wants to reform the ESEA (which stands for elementary and secondary education act). This reform has been done in the past but is largely neglected in the years. Obama calls for this reform mainly to reform the funding for schools and the payment for teachers. This could also be a pretty political move to get the public’s support.
Third is START. This is a treaty with Russia that is suppose to reinvigorate our relations while at the same time disarm our nations so the world would be a better place. Though these foreign policy matter lie heavily on the president, they still need congressional consent before any action could be taken.
Fourth is Afghanistan. Obama wants another troop surge in Afghanistan as of January (now I am beginning to question if we will actually get any troops out at 2011). Anyway, this is another war-related bill that needs congressional approval. It seems to me that Obama is doing this to garner some support from the Republican Party (which would not happen).
Fifth is don’t ask don’t tell. Now I don’t want to get into detail with this one (fearing that I might sound offensive). Basically this effectively allows homosexuals into the military without having to hide that they are homosexuals. All we need to know is that Obama thinks this is a messed up policy and there is a bill in congress that repeals it.
Those are just 5 things in Obama’s huge agenda. The fact that Obama is pushing for all these stuff should be a worry for him. The mid-term elections are coming up and already there are a lot of empty democrat seats that are ready to be filled by republican. The only reason that Obama was able to get anything passed so far was because of the democratic supermajority in the senate. After November, that supermajority will be gone and Obama’s agenda would effectively be dead (unless something weird happens). The goal now for Obama is to actually concentrate on something and get it passed (and function under the idea that something is better than nothing) or campaign like mad and try to retain the democratic majority (which probably won’t happen anyway).

No comments:

Post a Comment