OBAMA’S PRIORITIES
— A long-range budget: Compromise has long eluded the administration and Congress on a budget deal. Democrats and Republicans disagree on spending levels for discretionary items, or items Congress can largely control. The last time the two parties tried long-range budget talks, in 2011, they went nowhere.
— Immigration: The Democratic-led Senate passed legislation that would put the nation's 11 million undocumented residents on a path to citizenship. But many Republican House members prefer narrower bills that do not include a path to citizenship, which many liken to "amnesty" for people illegally in the country.
— Farm legislation: There are huge differences between the two chambers over the farm bill. The House bill contains nearly $40 billion in cuts over 10 years in the food stamps program. The Senate bill, by contrast, seeks to cut only $4.5 billion in spending from food stamps.
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Regrouping after a feud with Congress stalled his agenda, President Barack Obama is laying down a three-item to-do list for Congress that seems meager when compared with the bold, progressive agenda he envisioned at the start of his second term.
But given the capital’s partisanship, the complexities of the issues and the limited time left, even those items — immigration, farm legislation and a budget — amount to ambitious goals that will take political muscle, skill and ever-elusive compromise to execute.
“Those are three specific things that would make a huge difference in our economy right now,” Obama said. “And we could get them done by the end of the year if our focus is on what’s good for the American people.”
A breakthrough on any of the three issues would be a welcome development for a political system whose dysfunction was put on full display when the government was partially shut down for 16 days and the nation came close to default. Both parties are looking for signs of whether that squabble and its eleventh-hour resolution will make it easier or harder for the two parties to find common ground in the future.
Still, the scaled-back vision for what might be feasible in the short term could be disappointing for Obama’s liberal supporters, who have been looking expectantly to the president to enact as much of his agenda as possible before Washington is consumed next year by midterm elections and the end of Obama’s presidency draws nearer.
Obama began the year calling for gun control legislation, expanded preschool education, an immigration overhaul, a higher minimum wage and initiatives to address climate change.
But like other moments in Obama’s presidency, fierce interparty divisions and fiscal showdowns have at times overwhelmed the capital and sapped it of any energy to move on other legislation.
Obama’s gun control push, spurred by a shocking elementary school shooting in Connecticut, collapsed in the Senate. And immigration legislation attracted bipartisan support in the Senate but has stalled in the Republican-led House, a blow to Obama’s hopes that Republicans would be motivated to support it after losing the Hispanic vote by wide margins in 2012.
Meanwhile, legislative efforts to increase wages, expand access to pre-K schools and reduce pollution have been nonstarters in the divided Congress.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama will continue to press other priorities such as college affordability, gun control and climate change, where the president has resorted to executive action after determining Congress was unlikely to act. But he said achieving a bipartisan budget deal or an immigration overhaul would represent no small accomplishments for the country.
“There’s no question they’re all difficult, given the current environment,” Carney said, adding that “the president is not at all convinced by the skeptics who say that we can’t get things done.”
By focusing on the budget, immigration and the farm bill, which combines agriculture policy with anti-hunger measures, Obama chose three heavy lifts that are already in the congressional pipeline. Yet each is fraught with difficulties, and chances of success for each one are limited.
“This White House hasn’t really demonstrated that it can walk and chew gum any more than Congress has,” said William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton administration official.
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