Obama’s offer to the Republicans
The following is excerpted from an editorial in the New York Times this week: U.S. President Barack Obama refused on Wednesday to submit to the Republican narrative that his presidency effectively ended with the midterm elections. He said he will not agree to the repeal of health care reform, as many Republicans demand. He will not sit around doing nothing while they look for the courage to enact immigration reform. He will continue to demand a higher minimum wage and new spending on public works, and expansion of early education programs. “Obviously, Republicans had a good night,” he said, a quiet admission that his party got drubbed, losing control of the Senate, as well as at least 14 House seats. But he said he hopes to meet regularly with Republican leaders and work on areas where there is mutual agreement. The tone of the questions at his postmortem news conference suggested that that wasn’t enough. There were demands that he take personal responsibility for the Democratic losses, or exhibit public contrition, or describe exactly where he plans to give in to Republican demands. But Republicans ran on no message except that Obama was always wrong, and voters on Tuesday said they were angry with the country’s direction and political gridlock, taking their fury out on the president’s party because he is in charge.
Under those circumstances, Obama was justified in sticking with what he called “the principles that we’re fighting for,” which got him elected twice: creating job opportunity by expanding the economy, the top issue on the minds of most U.S. voters. There is no need to backtrack on goals like a higher minimum wage or expanded health insurance when most voters say they want those things.
Though Obama said there were several areas where he thinks agreement could be reached, immigration is a different story. Obama said that, if Republicans continued to block a reform bill, he would take executive action to improve the immigration system before the end of the year. Republicans warned that any such action would “poison the well” for legislation.
They also vowed to take action against big pieces of the health care reform law, including the individual mandate.
Obama said he would never agree to end the mandate, which would gut the health law, and there is no reason he should. Voters said they wanted the two parties to stop bickering and work harder, not erase the progress made in the last six years.