Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

here we go again..grrrr..;(__Weighing Pick for Fed Chief, Obama Defends Summers


Senator Harry Reid, center left, and President Obama after a meeting on Wednesday with the
House Democratic Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington.

By JONATHAN WEISMAN and MARK LANDLER
Published: July 31, 2013

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday offered a strong defense of his potential choice of Lawrence H. Summers to head the Federal Reserve, though he said no final choice had been made.

Speaking to members of the House Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama said in answer to a “barbed question” from a lawmaker that he believed Mr. Summers, a former senior economic adviser to the president, had been maligned in the liberal news media, according to Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, who took part in the meeting.

According to Mr. Connolly’s account, the president described Mr. Summers as a rock of stability who deserved credit for helping steer the American economy back from the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing recession. Mr. Obama, Mr. Connolly said, singled out the negative coverage of Mr. Summers in The Huffington Post.

The president, Mr. Connolly said, emphasized that he had not made a decision on the next Fed chairman, adding, “I’m not even close to making that choice.” He did not address the criticism of Mr. Summers over his record on women’s issues, which have dogged him throughout his career.

Mr. Obama did mention another prime candidate for the Fed job, Janet L. Yellen, and noted that he did not know whether there were major policy differences between the candidates. Mr. Summers and Ms. Yellen have become the subjects of an unusually open campaign by lawmakers and others to try to influence the president’s selection.

The president also reassured Congressional Democrats on Wednesday that he would not “sell out” his party’s principles as his White House tries to negotiate a budget deal with Senate Republicans this fall. He traveled to Capitol Hill to hold separate meetings with House and Senate Democrats amid a rising sense of frustration with the White House, which has spent more time reaching out to Republicans than to Democrats and has angered some liberals with a dogged defense of National Security Agency telephone and Internet surveillance programs.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Washington could break through the budget impasse and could make progress on an overhaul of the tax code if the parties worked together.

“If we have both sides off doing their own thing, no,” progress will not happen, he said on Monday. “That’s why I’ve been disappointed at the meetings Republicans have had with the president.”

Emerging from their meeting with the president, House Democrats said Mr. Obama emphasized his own shift back to a focus on economics after spending months on immigration, national security and gun control issues. The president said all of those issues would become easier if middle-class Americans felt more positive about their economic prospects.

“If we remain focused and clear on middle-class bread-and-butter issues, we win the broader public argument because the other side has no solutions on this,” one senior House Democrat quoted the president as saying.

Perhaps more than anything else, Democrats wanted Mr. Obama to remain resolute against further Republican budget cuts and threats to shut down the government unless the president’s health care law is starved of financing.

Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, pressed the president for his strategy in the face of signals by Republicans that they would demand serious concessions before they voted to raise the government’s statutory borrowing limit.

“It’s a simple strategy, Peter. We’re not negotiating,” Mr. Welch said the president responded. “I’ve got nothing in my pocket. The cupboard is bare.”

Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, circulated polling showing that 64 percent of voters say House Republicans are doing too little to cooperate with Mr. Obama, and that more than a third of Republican voters feel that way.

Mr. Israel said Mr. Obama made another overture to Republicans on Tuesday when he proposed an overhaul of the business tax code that would lower the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent in exchange for new financing for infrastructure, education and other Democratic priorities.

“Now we have a compromise with President Obama’s proposal to lower corporate tax rates in exchange for a badly needed investment in our infrastructure. Republicans get their priority: tax cuts for corporations. We get our priority: more jobs for the middle class,” Mr. Israel said before the meeting with the president.

The president did say he would entertain “reasonable proposals” to shift some budget cuts from discretionary programs aimed at helping the poor to long-term changes to “entitlement programs” more broadly targeted at the elderly. But House Democrats emerged to say they were confident that the White House would not go too far.

“He was very emphatic on that,” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California.

Lawmakers said mounting Democratic concern over sweeping government surveillance through the National Security Agency was not mentioned.

“Everybody’s in agreement that this overcollection of citizen information has to be curbed. That’s why it didn’t come up,” said Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and the co-author of an amendment that nearly passed last week to stop funding N.S.A. telephone data dragnets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/politics/obama-goes-to-capitol-to-soothe-anxious-democrats.html?pagewanted=all


Whatever all that means .. I do know one thing though ... he never thinks twice about screwing his base .. well, maybe he does .. BUT . .he still does what he wants ... and to hell with the base ... that's his record ... for better or worse ...We all know this. .. ;)