Both parties don’t like the President’s budget for 2013

Both parties don’t like the President’s budget for 2013

By Roger Caldwell

      President Obama is trying to accommodate everyone with his new budget, and it is not working. Politics in Washington is a game of negotiation and compromise, and the president understands that whatever decision he makes someone will be upset. If the president’s goal in his second term is to get more accomplished and a budget signed, he must collaborate and work with the Republicans.

     “It’s a compromise I’m willing to accept in order to move beyond a cycle of short-term, crisis-driven decision-making, and focus on growing our economy and our middle class for the long run,” says President Obama.

     In the last two years there has been massive gridlock in the House, and many in the media felt the lawmakers were acting like children. It appeared if the Republicans could not get their position accepted; they would pack up their things and not play. Instead of working toward a compromise, it was all or nothing.

     As a result of this political stagnation and paralysis, the Obama Administration, and the Congress has been labeled the “Do-Nothing Congress.” For the first two years, the Obama Administration and the Congress were able to get passed the Health Care for all Americans, Wall Street Reform, avoid another Great Depression, Save a Million jobs in the American auto-industry, Expand Medicare, Expand Children’s Health, Expand Labor Reforms, Expand Civil Rights, End the War in Iraq, and the list goes on and on. The first two years of the Obama Administration was the most productive in the history of the country, in getting bills passed.

But in 2010, the Republicans took back the House, and they developed a plan to block all of the president’s proposals and initiatives. Their goal was to make sure that President Obama was a one term president, but their plan backfired on them. President Obama won the election by over 3 million votes, and now he is reaching across the aisle to move the country forward.

     President Obama’s plan has many features which the Republicans don’t like and the Democrats don’t like either. His plan starts with $580 billion in new taxes, and a new inflation formula that would reduce the annual cost of living adjustment, and would impact government programs, Social Security, and benefits for veterans.

     In some of the president’s first comments about the budget is that he intends to reduce deficits while at the same time providing new spending for public works projects, early education, and job training. “We don’t have to choose between these goals, we can do both,” said President Obama.

     There will always be a debate in political circles if President Obama is an extreme liberal or is he really in the middle masquerading as a liberal. In order to have four productive years in his second term the president must reach over the aisle and compromise. It is time for both parties to end artificial crisis, and get the budget signed so they can work on job creation and tax reform.

     There are fewer Americans working than any time since 1979. The unemployment rate keeps dropping, but more Americans keep leaving the workforce and they are not being counted. Around 496,000 people left the workforce in March 2013, and this is an indicator that there is a general lack of employment opportunity in the economy.

     If our federal lawmakers can negotiate, talk to each other, and behave like adults, maybe the budget can get through the system. No lawmaker is supposed to get everything he wants, but if the two parties can compromise, this would be the first time in four years a federal budget is passed and signed by the president.