Obama Searching For a Key Victory
President Barack Obama gestures as
he speaks about his proposed fiscal 2014 federal budget on April 10, 2013, in
the Rose Garden of the White House.
Behind President Obama's strong
policy offensives on a variety of fronts is a matter of growing urgency: He
needs a major victory soon on at least one high-stakes issue or he risks
sliding toward lame-duck status in his second term, political strategists say.
"The clout starts diminishing
if he doesn't have some breakthrough on the big issues soon," says Ken
Duberstein, former White House chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan.
This explains why Obama has been
pushing so hard to win congressional passage of a deficit-reduction package,
gun control legislation and a comprehensive immigration bill – three of his top
priorities. Democratic advisers say he is probably at the high point of his
influence now, only a few months after his re-election triumph, and this is the
best time to win some Congressional victories.
Presidents tend to lose influence in
their second terms as the political establishment and the country begin to
focus on choosing their successors, but it usually doesn't happen until their
final two years in office.
Obama hopes to avoid this fate by
bending Congress to his will now and building on that success to keep fellow
Democrats in control of the Senate and give them control of the House in the
2014 mid-term elections.
Obama released a 2014 budget
blueprint Wednesday that showed his intense desire to find a "grand
bargain" that would put the government on a path to major deficit
reduction and put the economy on a path toward a strong recovery.
His proposals included provisions
designed to court at least a few Congressional Republicans, who have stymied
his agenda in the past. One such provision is to cut benefits for Social
Security recipients in an effort to save money. This is causing a backlash
among liberals who consider it a betrayal of the Democratic party's commitment
to the elderly.
But Obama strategists argue that his
top priority is to somehow bring balky GOP legislators to his side. Obama held
a private dinner at the White House with a dozen GOP senators Wednesday night,
his second such dinner with Republicans senators in recent weeks.
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