Tag Archives: super committee

Referendum on Obama: One-Term President

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The political geniuses around President Barack Obama have a problem: they do not – DO NOT – want this election to be a referendum on the President.

And, for good reason. According to the three-day Gallup tracking poll, Obama’s job approval is back down to 41 percent. Two months ago his approval bottomed at 38 percent, but he has not been at 50 percent job approval since May.

Gallup goes on to compare Obama’s dismal performance rating with his predecessors. In December of their third year in office here’s where they were:

— Eisenhower (1955) 75%
— Nixon (1971) 50%
— Carter (1979) 53%
— Reagan (1983) 54%
— HW Bush (1991) 51%
— Clinton (1995) 51%
— W Bush (2003) 58%

No elected President in the past half-century has entered his re-election year underwater in approval. Let’s look at how the Obama campaign has chosen to shore up these numbers. Continue reading →

Super Committee Failure & Public Judgement

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The death of the super committee on deficit reduction was so painful to watch.

It didn’t even get a decent funeral. But then it didn’t deserve one. Its life was ill begotten and misspent.

The eulogies were a mix of ‘I told you so’s’ by people and press who told us nothing, and politicians and interest groups pointing the finger of blame at each other—back and forth between conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, Senators and House members, Congress and the President (how does the Supreme Court always escape blame?), tea partiers and occupiers and on and on.

Nobody apologized for the failure.

The combatants remain defiant. They were still harping at each other the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Some seem to be under the influence of an elixir that has them hallucinating about the next election. They believe if they put off governing for another year, the American people will reward them by electing more politicians of their ilk. They could then, beginning in 2013, impose their political will on the country without any of this nettlesome bickering standing in their way today. Continue reading →

Super Committee = FAIL

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The conventional wisdom out of Washington is that the Super Committee will not reach an agreement to cut between $1.2 and $1.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

That same narrative holds that the six Representatives (3 Rs – 3 Ds) and six Senators (3 Rs – 3 Ds) who were picked to serve on the Super Committee by their leaders have failed in their mission to effect real change in the tax code, in entitlement, and in the trajectory of federal spending.

I disagree.

I believe that the need to appoint a Super Committee in the first place was a failure of governance on the part of both parties, in both Chambers and, just to complete the rogues’ gallery, on the part of the President of the United States.

We pay rank-and-file Representatives and Senators $174,000 per year. Members of the Leadership get about $20,000 more. The Speaker’s salary is $223,500.

Continue reading →