Despite Democratic fears, predictions of the demise of President Barack Obama’s agenda appear exaggerated after a week of cascading controversies.
Even as Republicans sought evidence in a hearing Friday that the White House had been involved in targeting conservative groups for Internal Revenue Service scrutiny — an idea that former acting IRS chief Steven Miller denied in his testimony — sweeping immigration legislation the White House supports was advancing toward bipartisan approval in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Across the Capitol, a bipartisan House group reported agreement in principle on a compromise on the issue, which looms as Obama’s best chance for a signature second-term domestic achievement.
“I continue to believe that the House needs to deal with this,” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of immigration reform.
Republican were castigating Obama not only over the IRS issue, but his administration’s handling of the terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomat facility in Benghazi, Libya, and secretly obtaining Associated Press records.
Yet the president’s nominee to become energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, won Senate confirmation, 97-0. And there were signs that Republicans might allow confirmation of Obama nominee Sri Srinivasan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, sometimes a stepping stone to the Supreme Court.
Separately, a House committee approved legislation to prevent a spike in interest rates on student loans on July 1. It moves in the direction of a White House-backed proposal for future rate changes to be based on private markets.
Even so, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said, “It’s been a bad week for the administration.”
Several Democratic lawmakers and aides agreed, expressing concern about the impact of the controversies on Obama’s agenda — even though much of it had been stymied by Republicans for months already.
At the same time, Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., voiced optimism that the IRS scandal would boost the push for an overhaul of the tax code — another White House goal — rather than derail it. “It may make a case for a simpler tax code, where the IRS has less discretion,” he said.
And long-term budget issues, the main flash point of divided government since 2011, have receded as projected deficits fall in the wake of an improving economy and recently enacted spending cuts and tax increases.
Even before Obama began grappling with the IRS, the fallout from last year’s Benghazi attack and from the Justice Department’s secret seizure of AP phone records, the two parties were at odds over steps to replace $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts. In particular, Obama’s call for higher taxes is a nonstarter with Republicans.
Other high-profile legislation and presidential appointees face difficulties that predate the current controversies.
Months ago, Obama scaled back requested gun safety legislation to center on expanded background checks for firearms purchasers. That was derailed in the Senate, has even less chance in the House and is unlikely to reach the president’s desk.
Republicans oppose other recommendations from the president’s State of the Union address, including automatic increases in the minimum wage, a pre-kindergarten program funded by higher cigarette taxes and more federal money for highways and bridge repair.
In a clash that long predates the IRS controversy, Senate Republicans seem intent on blocking Obama’s nomination of Tom Perez as labor secretary. Gina McCarthy’s nomination to head the Environmental Protection Agency is also on hold, at least temporarily, and Democrats expect Republican opposition awaits Penny Pritzker, Obama’s choice for commerce secretary.
Rhetorically, the two parties fall into two camps when it came to the White House troubles. Democrats tended to describe them as controversies, Republicans often use less flattering terms.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., accused the administration of fostering a “culture of intimidation.” He referred to the IRS, the handling of the Benghazi attack and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ “fundraising among the industry people she regulates on behalf of the president’s health care law.”
Two days later, Camp, a 23-year veteran lawmaker, opened the IRS hearing by calling the agency’s actions part of a “culture of cover-ups and intimidation in this administration.”
Rep. Trey Radel, a first-term Florida Republican, said in an interview, “What we’re looking at now is a breach of trust” from the White House.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California offered a scathing response when asked if the controversies would hamper Obama’s ability to win legislation from the Republican-controlled House. “Well, the last two years there was nothing that went through this Congress, and it was no AP, IRS or any other (thing) that we were dealing with.”
“They just want to do nothing. And their timetable is never,” she said of GOP lawmakers.
Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave no ground on Benghazi, a dispute that increasingly centered on talking points written for administration officials to use on television after the attack last September in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
“It’s obvious it’s an attempt to embarrass President Obama and embarrass Hillary Clinton,” he said of Republican criticism that first flared during last year’s election campaign.
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