Obama says too soon to declare demise of his domestic agenda

By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With his fight for tighter gun control measures defeated and prospects for a deficit reduction pact dim, President Barack Obama sought on Tuesday to project an image of a leader still in control of a faltering domestic policy agenda.

At a surprise news conference, Obama made the case that recent defeats did not mean he was a lame-duck leader, and said he was hopeful immigration reform would become law.

"As Mark Twain said, you know, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated," the president told reporters at the White House when asked whether he had "the juice" to push his policy priorities through Congress.

Obama started off his second term this year with energetic promises to tackle climate change, reduce gun violence, push immigration reform, and fix the budget.

But so far, many of his initiatives have fallen flat. Modest changes to background checks for gun buyers failed in the U.S. Senate, and across-the board spending cuts known as "sequester" went into effect despite efforts by the Obama administration to stop them.

The president noted on Tuesday that the United States had a divided government with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and the Democratic-controlled Senate requiring 60 out of 100 votes to pass legislation.

"Despite that, I'm actually confident that there are a range of things that we're going to be able to get done," he said.

"I feel confident that the bipartisan work that's been done on immigration reform will result in a bill that passes the Senate, passes the House, and gets on my desk. And that's going to be a historic achievement."

Both political parties have an incentive to pass immigration reform after Hispanic voters supported Obama overwhelmingly in the 2012 election.

Obama praised a Senate version of the bill and said he would keep an open mind to a similar, perhaps more conservative, version in the House as long as it met the criteria of strengthening border security and creating a pathway for undocumented workers to become citizens.

"If they meet those criteria, but they're slightly different than the Senate bill, then I think that we should be able to come up with an appropriate compromise," he said."

"If it doesn't meet those criteria, then I will not support such a bill."

LEGACY, BUDGET WOES

Political observers generally say the president has roughly a year before focus in Washington turns to the 2014 mid-term elections, rendering him less able to dominate the agenda.

Broad immigration reform this year would give Obama a policy victory that would help define his legacy.

A major deal on the deficit is less likely.

Obama said he would continue to reach out to lawmakers in the opposing party to work on an elusive deficit deal, but he did not indicate a great deal of optimism that a broad agreement was possible.

"I've had some good conversations with Republican senators so far. Those conversations are continuing," he said, referring to recent dinners he has had that some have dubbed a charm offensive.

"I think there's a genuine desire on many of their parts to move past not only sequester but Washington dysfunction. Whether we can get it done or not, we'll see."

The president seemed to show some vindication over the recent uproar over the economic effects of the sequester cuts after taking criticism earlier this year for overselling how damaging they would be.

"The notion was somehow that we had exaggerated the effects of the sequester - remember?" Obama said.

"What we now know is what I warned earlier ... is happening. It's slowed our growth. It's resulting in people being thrown out of work. And it's hurting folks all across the country."

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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Obama's domestic agenda on the line this week

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's second-term agenda will be robustly tested this week, with gun control and immigration in the spotlight on Capitol Hill and the White House releasing his long-delayed budget blueprint. In a taste of what lies ahead, Democratic gun legislation arrived on the Senate floor Monday — facing an aggressive Republican effort to block it.

In an era of deep partisanship and divided government, Obama knows he won't get everything he wants on the three big issues as he seeks to capitalize on the national support that brought him re-election. But the scope of his victories or defeats on these issues will at least in part define his legacy and determine how much political capital he retains for his final four years in office.

"This is his best chance to set up the next 3½ years where he's the pace car," said Sara Taylor Fagen, who served as political director for President George W. Bush.

But much of what happens during this pivotal period is out of the president's direct control. Members of Congress will largely determine whether his proposals to deal with gun ownership, revamp broken immigration laws and reduce the federal budget deficit gain traction.

Lawmakers, back in Washington after a two-week recess, are expected to take significant steps on some of the issues this week. A bipartisan group of senators could unveil highly anticipated immigration legislation by the end of the week. And Democrats brought a gun-control bill to the Senate floor Monday afternoon amid a threat from conservative Republicans to use delaying tactics to prevent formal debate from even beginning.

Obama himself flew to Connecticut for a new gun-control speech, and he was bringing relatives of Newtown shooting victims back to Washington on Air Force One to lobby members of Congress.

In the midst of all that, Obama will release his 2014 budget, which already is drawing opposition from both parties ahead of its Wednesday publication. Republicans oppose Obama's calls for new tax hikes, and many of the president's fellow Democrats balk at his proposals for smaller annual increases in Social Security and other federal benefit programs.

The White House tried to play down the significance of the week's overlapping events to the president's broader objectives, with Obama spokesman Jay Carney saying the administration is always trying to move forward on "the business of the American people."

Said Carney: "Every one of these weeks is full of the possibility for progress on a range of fronts."

But Obama's advisers know the window for broad legislative victories is narrower for a second-term president. Political posturing is already underway for the 2014 midterm elections, which will consume Congress next year. And once those votes for a new Congress are cast, Washington's attention turns to the race to succeed Obama.

Patrick Griffin, who served as White House legislative director under President Bill Clinton, said Obama's legislative efforts this year are likely to be the "sum and substance" of his second-term agenda.

"I think it would be very tough to put another item on the agenda on his own terms," said Griffin, adding that unexpected events could force other issues to the fore.

On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the outcome of the debate over gun measures is perhaps the most uncertain. The White House and Congress had little appetite for tackling the emotional issue during Obama's first term, but December's horrific elementary school massacre in Connecticut thrust gun control to the forefront of the president's second-term agenda.

If a bill does reach Obama's desk this year, it will be far weaker than what he first proposed. An assault weapons ban appears all but dead, and a prohibition on ammunition magazines carrying over 10 rounds, also supported by the president, seems unlikely to survive.

The White House is largely pinning its hopes on a significant expansion of background checks for gun buyers, but the prospects for such a measure are far from certain, despite widespread public support. The best chance at a deal appears to rest on eleventh-hour talks between Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Obama focused his efforts Monday on building public support for the legislation and tapping into the emotions of the Newtown shooting during an evening event in Hartford.

The White House is far more confident about the prospects for a sweeping immigration deal that could provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of people who now are in the country, tighten border security and crack down on businesses that employ people illegally. But the president is treading carefully on the sensitive issues, wary of disrupting a bipartisan Senate working group that has been laboriously crafting a bill.

The group of four Republicans and four Democrats could unveil that legislation as early as this week, a pivotal development that would open months of debate. While the growing political power of Hispanics may have softened the ground for passage, significant hurdles remain.

Looming over Obama's entire domestic agenda is the economy, including the deficit deal that has long eluded him. The budget Obama will release Wednesday proposes spending cuts and revenue increases that would project $1.8 trillion in deficit reductions over 10 years.

That would replace $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts that are poised to take effect over the next 10 years if Congress and the president don't come up with an alternative.

Seeking to soften bipartisan opposition to his budget proposals, Obama will dine Wednesday night with a dozen Republican senators, part of the broader charm offensive he launched in recent weeks.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

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The Man Who Could Put Climate Change on the Agenda

Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, is best known for two things: his national security chops—he had key roles on the White House National Security Council—and the high regard in which he’s held by President Obama. McDonough has been part of Obama’s inner circle for nearly a decade, and the president has called his new chief of staff one of his “closest and most trusted advisers.”

Here’s what a lot of people don’t know about McDonough: He has a background on climate change, and he takes the issue very seriously. “Denis McDonough understands the threat posed by climate change to national security more than any White House chief of staff in the 21st century,” said Daniel J. Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank where McDonough worked as senior fellow in 2006 and 2007; while there, he wrote and contributed to several papers on climate change.

Jason Bordoff, who served as the president’s special assistant for energy and climate change on the National Security Council, wrote in an e-mail to National Journal, “When Denis was deputy national security adviser … we worked together on several energy and climate-related issues. Denis recognizes that climate change is a serious problem, and that strong U.S. leadership and action is needed to address the challenge.”

Here’s why that’s important: If Obama wants to follow through on his 2013 Inaugural Address pledge to make climate change a cornerstone of his legacy, he’ll need to make a series of tough, highly controversial executive decisions. There is almost no chance Congress will pass climate-change legislation in his second term, which means that the White House will have to drive any meaningful policy action. That action will probably come in a series of aggressive Environmental Protection Agency regulations to slash pollution from coal-fired power plants, and in the president’s decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, the $7 billion project that would bring carbon-heavy tar-sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. Obama will also need to act ahead of a United Nations summit in 2015, at which the world’s nations are expected to sign a binding treaty to tackle climate change.

The pushback—from industries such as oil, coal, and manufacturing, and from powerful business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—will be strong, as will be the political and legal repercussions. Even some Democrats, particularly those from coal and Rust Belt states, aren’t enthusiastic about the White House moving forward with tough regulations that could hurt their economies. And some senior administration staffers think climate change is far from a top-tier issue and is a sure political loser.

People close to the White House say that’s where a chief of staff committed to the issue can have a big impact. Carol Browner, who was Obama’s top energy and climate-change adviser during his first term and headed EPA during the Clinton administration, said the chief of staff can help determine whether environmental policy gains traction. She cited John Podesta, President Clinton’s top staffer and a strong advocate for clean energy and environmental issues. “When I was in EPA, it made all the difference in the world when Podesta showed up and gave my issues a fair hearing,” she said.

During Obama’s first term, each of his three staff chiefs had areas of expertise, but none had much of a background in environmental issues. Former Rep. Rahm Emanuel brought congressional and political experience; William Daley a former chairman at JPMorgan Chase, was hired to win trust from the business community—and was slammed by the environmental community for advising the president to delay a key set of clean-air regulations until after the 2012 election; Jacob Lew, with his background on the federal budget, prioritized economic issues.

By comparison, Browner said, “Denis has spent a lot of time thinking about climate change in the context of national security and the military. He’s well informed and well versed on this.”

In a 2007 paper, “Balancing Our Climate Debt: The Group of Eight Have an Obligation,” McDonough and coauthor Rebecca Schultz called on the G-8 industrial nations to focus “on the devastating impact high energy costs and climate change have on the world’s most vulnerable populations.” They argued that the wealthiest economies should “offer the most vulnerable communities in the world the support they need to combat the impact of climate change and help them and the rest of the world transition to a low-carbon global economy.” The paper declared, “This is a climate debt the industrialized world owes to these poor nations.”

McDonough also contributed to a 2007 CAP report titled “Energy Security in the 21st Century,” which warned, “Climate change poses a significant and increasingly imminent security threat to the United States and the world, but the Bush administration continues to block domestic and international efforts to meet this challenge.”

In still another paper from the center, “Cleaning Up China: Opportunities Beckon for U.S. Businesses,” McDonough and coauthor Peter Ogden praised Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. for acknowledging climate change as a problem, and they urged him to push for promotion of U.S. clean-energy technology in China. “Now is the time to invest in the development of a domestic clean-energy industry that can outperform its international competitors and capture a large share of this rapidly growing market,” McDonough and Ogden wrote. “This is how America can work toward getting its trade deficit back into the black, and how we can help China to get into the green—for the good of both nations and everyone else around the globe.”

Ultimately, of course, the U.S. agenda on climate change will be set by the president himself. But Obama’s selection of a key adviser with such a deep record on the issue suggests he intends to take it seriously.

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