Director of film about Obama’s war on whistleblowers weighs in on AP phone records

President Obama addresses the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, April 27, 2013. (Getty Images)

Robert Greenwald was not terribly surprised to hear that the Department of Justice had secretly obtained two months of telephone records from Associated Press reporters and editors.

"It is consistent with a national security state," Greenwald, a documentary filmmaker whose recently-released "War on Whistleblowers" focuses on the White House's ongoing assault on press freedom, told Yahoo News. "This is a result of a series of policies put in place by this administration. It is systemic. It is not a one-off. It is not an accident. It is an effort to keep whistleblowers silent. And it's unfortunate."

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP CEO Gary Pruitt described the seizure as "a massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather news. Greenwald agreed.

"In terms of the size and scope, it may be unprecedented," he said. "It's a classic fishing expedition."

Greenwald, whose next film (tentatively titled "Drones Exposed") is focused on the White House's controversial drone program, declined to compare Obama to Richard Nixon. But, Greenwald said, "it's very clear this administration is exerting extraordinary pressure [on the press], and it certainly dispels the notion that this is the 'most transparent administration' on national security issues."

[Related: White House: Obama is no Nixon]

The director, perhaps best known for his 2004 film "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," called press freedom a non-partisan issue.

"You don't try to intimidate the press for doing its job," he said. "You don't encourage suppression and, frankly, scare journalists."

Greenwald said there are similarities between the secrecy of the drone program and the DOJ's apparent explanation for the seizure of phone records.

"It's this strange 'Alice in Wonderland,' Kafkaesque state," Greenwald said. "[The White House] will say, 'we can't talk about the drone program because it's classified, but we can tell you we killed 20 al-Qaeda members in a drone strike.' Well, how do you know they were all bad guys? 'We can't give you that information.'"

View the original article here

From Benghazi to Syria: Obama’s Bush-league mistakes in foreign policy

By Walter Shapiro

Most second-term presidents become fixated on global affairs because the world beyond our shores, with all its strife and misery, often seems more malleable than life in Washington, with its fractious Congress and waning electoral mandate. The trick, though, for a foreign policy president, is to be good at it—and these days those skills appear to be eluding Barack Obama.

This week’s biggest rebuke to Obama foreign policy was not Wednesday’s House hearing on Benghazi with its wrenching narrative of the September night that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in Libya. Nor was it Friday morning’s revelation  of new Benghazi-related documents. More embarrassing was a front-page article in last Sunday’s New York Times detailing how Obama erred last August when he impetuously declared that Syria’s use of chemical weapons in its civil war would be a “red line.”

It’s a simple rule: Presidents should never make threats until they have worked out how they would enforce them. But Obama violated it with his stern, but ill-considered warning to Syrian strongman Bashir Assad. The Times article quotes one anonymous top government official claiming, “What Obama said in August was unscripted” and “nuance got completely dropped.” Barry Pavel, a former national security adviser to Obama, said flatly, “I’m not convinced it was thought through.”

Current and former foreign policy advisers usually fall on their swords to protect a president’s reputation for sagacity. Only long afterwards, when the “if only he had listened to me” memoirs are published, do we finally get a glimpse of what really happened in the White House. That’s why it’s telling that Obama insiders are already willing to trash the president for his all-bluster “red line” rhetoric.

The reason for the finger-pointing at Obama is that America is now caught in a loose-lips-create-slips dilemma. Without any good policy options available and a growing isolationist mood among voters, Obama must decide what to do in response to highly probable evidence that forces loyal to Assad used banned chemical weapons. Arming the rebels, many of whom are Islamic militants, carries its own risk, yet doing nothing makes American appear feckless and irresolute.

Playing for time, Obama has been reduced to linguistic hair-splitting. Asked at a Tuesday press conference about perceptions that Syria has crossed his supposed red line, Obama said lamely, “I don't make decisions based on ‘perceived.’ And I can't organize international coalitions around ‘perceived.’ We've tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn't work out well.”

That, of course, was a reference to George W. Bush and his fallacious weapons-of-mass-destruction pretext for the Iraq War. As a presidential candidate, Obama presented himself as the antithesis of this kind of shoot-first foreign policy impetuousness. But, as president, it’s startling how much Obama resembles Bush in many aspects of national security policy.

Take Guantanamo, where currently about 100 of the remaining detainees are waging a hunger strike. Asked at a recent press conference about the Bush-era Cuban detention camp that he has repeatedly vowed to close, Obama sounded more like an outside critic than a president: “It hurts us in terms of international standing. … It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

Despite intermittant efforts by Obama since taking office, Congress has refused to allow the president to close Guantanamo. But that does not make Obama a helpless bystander with no control over this symbolic blot on America’s international reputation.
 
The president has refused to use his existing legal authority (using waivers from the Defense Department) to repatriate 86 low-risk detainees, mostly from Yemen, whose cases have been reviewed by American authorities. Some of these prisoners were rank-and-file al-Qaida soldiers back in 2001 and others were probably picked up by mistake. But today these detainees would be less of a threat sent back in their home countries then they are as enduring symbols of an American Gulag on Guantanamo.

Then there are the drones. Bush may have initiated the airborne assassination program in  2004, but Obama has made it a hallmark of his response to terrorism. With his drone policy, Obama has embraced three of the worst aspects of Bush-era national security policy: an obsession with secrecy; a contorted view of legal norms, especially the definition of “imminent threat”; and a refusal to consider that American tactics may create more terrorists than they kill. In Pakistan alone, based on the best independent statistics, Obama has ordered six times as many drone strikes as ever Bush did.
 
The silence from most Democrats on these troubling aspects of Obama foreign policy has been dispiriting. Had Bush made toothless threats to Syria, force fed prisoners in Guantanamo or rained death from the air in Pakistan on a weekly basis, liberals in Congress would be sputtering with outrage. Instead, with a few conspicuous exceptions—like Oregon Senator Ron Wyden on drones—the dominant feeling appears to be that if Obama does it, it has to be right.

Ever since George McGovern lost 49 states to Richard Nixon in 1972, Democrats have cowered in terror at the thought of being branded as soft on national security. This may partly explain Obama’s timorousness on Guantanamo and the president’s embrace of drone strikes as a way of being tough against terrorists without risking American casualties.

The Republican obsession with Benghazi is rooted in the belief that the Obama administration was reluctant to label the 2012 Libyan attacks as “terrorism” because that would undermine the president’s narrative in an election year. Wednesday’s hearing—built around the testimony of three mid-level State Department officials—failed to prove anything close to causation. On Friday morning, however, ABC News reported that the State Department had insisted references to prior warnings on terrorism should be airbrushed out of the initial CIA talking points on the Banghazi attack.

This was the briefing document that UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who drew the short straw as the administration’s TV talker, relied on when she made the rounds of Sunday-morning interviews the week of the attacks. Now, based on the ABC News story,  it seems clear that Victoria Nuland, a career foreign service officer who was Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson at State, had insisted to the White House that these talking points be watered down.

Even now, so much about Benghazi remains murky, including how big a scandal it will actually prove to be. Were Nuland’s editing suggestions primarily designed to politically protect Obama and Clinton? Or was this, at its core, a Washington bureaucratic battle over which agency should be blamed for the deaths in Libya—State or the CIA?

Security was obviously lax in Benghazi. But was that because Stevens was a fearless diplomat who hated hunkering down behind concrete walls? Or was this related to the CIA’s still-mysterious role on the ground in Benghazi? And did the administration’s self-congratulatory belief in the Libyan revolution play a role in the relaxation of vigilence? Remember, Libya was Obama’s success story from the Arab Spring—the nation where a dictator was toppled by America boldly leading from behind.

Despite the documents discovered by ABC News, my guess is that the tragedy in Benghazi and its muddled aftermath had far more to do with human error than major-league conspiracy. In fact, given the way that Obama has handled his “red line” in Syria, the case for human error seems quite compelling.

View the original article here

Biden: Susan Rice has Obama's absolute confidence

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden is praising U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and her authoritative role in the Obama administration.

Biden says Rice has, in his words, "the absolute, total, complete confidence of the president." He says that when Rice speaks about foreign policy, nobody doubts that she's speaking for President Barack Obama.

Biden spoke Tuesday night at a gala for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The think tank focuses on African-American issues and is honoring Rice with an award.

Biden's comments come a day before a House hearing on the deadly assault on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Rice was vilified for making widely debunked claims after the attack that protests, not terrorism, precipitated the raid. The incident cost Rice an opportunity to become secretary of state.

View the original article here

PROMISES, PROMISES: When Obama's promises conflict

WASHINGTON (AP) — Absent a magic potion or explosive economic growth, it was all but inevitable President Barack Obama would have to break some of his campaign promises to keep others. If there's one thing that distinguished them besides their ambition, it was their incompatibility.

Cut a staggering $4 trillion from deficits while protecting big benefit programs, subsidizing more health care, plowing extra money into education and avoiding tax increases on everyone except the rich? Not on this Earth.

The postelection reality is starting to shake out now, though how it will all settle can't yet be known.

To reach for his promised deficit reduction, Obama has proposed breaking his tax promise. Toward the same end, his pledge from four years earlier that he wouldn't trim cost-of-living benefits in Social Security has given way to a proposal to do just that.

None of that might happen.

Republicans, who oppose tax increases, and Democrats, who object to curbs on entitlements, could block his path and in doing so save Obama from breaking his own promises.

If they do, though, that big pledge to bring down deficits by $4 trillion would surely have no hope at all.

That's the overarching dilemma in a catalog of campaign promises facing varying prospects over the next few years.

Obama is driving toward success on his energy goals. He's got a decent chance of achieving an immigration overhaul. Activists who once ridiculed his promise to be a "fierce advocate" of gay rights say he's come around and become just that.

Much else is bogged in the budget swamp or is a nonstarter for one reason or another. Anything costing big money comes with big obstacles, and one promise that cost relatively little, gun control, is dust. Yet Obama, in powering through with his health care overhaul, financial regulation and stimulus spending in his first term, has shown that tough causes aren't always lost ones.

A look at Obama's leading promises and what's happening with them:

Debt:

The promise: Cut deficits by $4 trillion over a decade.

Prospects: Deals with Congress to cap spending and raise taxes on wealthier people, along with the resulting savings on interest payments on the debt, have already achieved a projected $2.6 trillion in deficit reduction for the years ahead. But the rest of the $4 trillion will be tough. To get there, he proposes a 10-year $583 billion tax increase, an additional layer of tax increases from slower indexing of tax brackets for inflation and modest curbs to federal health care programs, all helping to produce further interest savings.

Republicans are so far standing firm against further tax increases and liberal Democrats are a tough sell on trimming entitlement programs and other spending. This, as the Congressional Budget Office warns that "such high and rising debt would have serious consequences" if unchecked. Among those consequences are reduced national savings and investment, a potential fiscal crisis and higher interest costs for the government.

___

Economy:

The promise: An approach to deficit reduction that doesn't undermine the recovery or unduly burden the middle class. Also, cut some corporate tax rates, penalize those who shift work overseas and create 1 million manufacturing jobs by 2016.

Prospects: Obama has had mixed success cutting the deficit without slowing growth. He struck a deal with Congress to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a set of tax increases and spending cuts in January. Businesses responded by stepping up hiring and spending.

But he and Republican leaders allowed Social Security taxes to rise, cutting take-home pay for nearly all working Americans. He wasn't able to avoid $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that started March 1.

Manufacturing has been creating more jobs but adding 1 million more by 2016 is unlikely. That would require 250,000 new factory jobs per year, nearly double the current pace. Overall, the unemployment rate dropped to 7.5 percent in April, the lowest in four years of recession and ragged recovery. The economy is growing modestly but steadily. It expanded at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter.

___

Education:

The promise: Raise the high school graduation rate from 78 percent to 90 percent by 2020 and make the country No. 1 in college graduates by that year. Cut federal money to colleges that don't control tuition costs.

Prospects: A rocky path at best. There's little momentum in Congress for the spending required, his pledge to make the U.S. first in college graduates is a long shot and tuitions are climbing without the promised federal penalty.

Obama has proposed $36 billion for Pell Grants in 2013. Yet those grants now cover less than one-third of the cost of a four-year public college. In 1980, they covered 69 percent of the costs.

___

Energy:

The promise: Cut oil imports by half by 2020.

Prospects: He could well deliver on this promise. New drilling technologies have unlocked enormous domestic reserves of crude oil and natural gas. Policies that mandate increasing use of renewable fuels and better vehicle fuel economy have helped slash demand. That has translated into a dramatic reduction in oil imports and increase in diesel and gasoline exports.

But oil and gasoline are global commodities. If Mideast turmoil disrupts oil production there, prices worldwide will rise, even if the U.S. gets little or no oil from that region. The U.S. economy won't ever be free from the effect of high oil prices. It just may be able to get much less oil from abroad.

___

Entitlements:

The promise: No cuts in Social Security cost-of-living increases. Protect Medicare from Republican proposals to turn it into a voucher-like program.

Prospects: Obama is ready to break his Social Security pledge from the 2008 campaign. He favors a new measure of inflation that would gradually trim benefit increases in Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The change, if adopted, eventually would cut Social Security benefits $560 a year for an average 75-year-old, $136 for a 65-year-old.

His approach to Medicare savings is different from one proposed by House Republicans to transform the program. He'd cut Medicare payments to service providers and is proposing that a growing share of seniors pay higher premiums over time, based on their incomes. Such Medicare changes were foreseen before the 2012 election. Meantime, Washington is expanding Medicaid to bring in more of the low-income uninsured.

For years, budget hawks have insisted that huge entitlements must be on the table for true fiscal discipline to be achieved. They're on the table now.

___

Gay rights:

The promise: Be a "fierce advocate" for gay rights. Obama endorsed gay marriage in 2012.

?Prospects: The course for gay marriage will be shaped by the Supreme Court, expected to rule on the matter in June. It's allowed in 10 states and the District of Columbia; many other states seem unlikely to follow suit unless forced by Congress or the court. But cultural attitudes are changing, as did Obama's views. His administration argued in favor of gay marriage rights to the court.

It seems unlikely the court will order gay marriage to be legalized in all states but its ruling could help same-sex married couples on estate taxes, Social Security benefits and other tangible matters. In his first term Obama lifted the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces.

___

Global warming:

The promise: "Continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet."

Prospects: Obama probably will take more steps to reduce the pollution blamed for climate change, but they are unlikely to be of the scale needed to help much in slowing the heating of the planet. Any policy to reduce heat-trapping pollution will target coal burned by power plants and oil refined for automobiles; those industries have powerful protectors in both parties.

Obama has acted on his own, to increase mileage standards and impose pollution control on future power plants. More such executive action is likely; a law is not.

___

Gun control:

The promise: Ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, expand background checks, and more, a postelection pledge made after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Prospects: Obama said he would "put everything I've got into this." His everything wasn't enough. Entrenched support for gun rights and a powerful campaign by the National Rifle Association blocked efforts to pass a single aspect of Obama's package, the first attempt to significantly change the nation's gun laws in over two decades.

Polling found as many as 90 percent of those questioned supported expanded background checks, but even that fell short in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

___

Health care:

The promise: Ensure access to affordable insurance for all and no gutting of Medicare or Medicaid.

Prospects: Obama is likely to achieve his goal of extending coverage to the uninsured. Affordability is another question. Costs are expected to go up, not down, contrary to what Obama promised in his first term.

Some Medicare cuts Obama is willing to enact would hit beneficiaries. Well-to-do seniors and growing numbers of upper middle-class retirees could face higher monthly premiums.

___

Immigration:

The promise: Overhaul the immigration system to provide eventual citizenship to those who came here illegally, tighten borders and smooth legal immigration.

Prospects: Obama failed to deliver on his first-term promise to rework immigration law. His chances of pulling that off are much better now.

Even with a bipartisan Senate group having released legislation to accomplish those goals, however, success is not certain. Even so, the political climate is ripe for change thanks to a shift in Republican attitudes in 2012, when Latino and Asian voters backed Obama in record numbers.?

___

Iran:

The promise: "Do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

Prospects: Sanctions are destroying Iran's economy but not its will to enrich more uranium. By his own timeline, Obama has about a year left to see if diplomacy and sanctions can get Iran to slow its enrichment of uranium and assure the world its nuclear program is peaceful. If the U.S. and its partners cannot succeed, the stage may be set for an American or Israeli military intervention.

___

Taxes:

The promise: Raise taxes on individuals making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000. No tax increases for people making less. Ensure millionaires pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Prospects: Obama's 2014 budget, if passed, would break his promise to avoid any tax increases for middle and low-income people. He proposes a new inflation yardstick that would expose most people to higher income taxes, especially poorer workers.

He kept his promise to raise taxes on the rich, though at different income levels than he laid out in the campaign: $400,000 for individuals, $450,000 for couples. Republicans dismiss his proposed minimum rate for millionaires as a gimmick.

___

Associated Press writers Dina Cappiello, Philip Elliott, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Christopher S. Rugaber, Stephen Ohlemacher, Jonathan Fahey, Bradley Klapper, Erica Werner, David Crary, Nedra Pickler, and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

View the original article here

PROMISES, PROMISES: When Obama's promises conflict

WASHINGTON (AP) — Absent a magic potion or explosive economic growth, it was all but inevitable President Barack Obama would have to break some of his campaign promises to keep others. If there's one thing that distinguished them besides their ambition, it was their incompatibility.

Cut a staggering $4 trillion from deficits while protecting big benefit programs, subsidizing more health care, plowing extra money into education and avoiding tax increases on everyone except the rich? Not on this Earth.

The postelection reality is starting to shake out now, though how it will all settle can't yet be known.

To reach for his promised deficit reduction, Obama has proposed breaking his tax promise. Toward the same end, his pledge from four years earlier that he wouldn't trim cost-of-living benefits in Social Security has given way to a proposal to do just that.

None of that might happen.

Republicans, who oppose tax increases, and Democrats, who object to curbs on entitlements, could block his path and in doing so save Obama from breaking his own promises.

If they do, though, that big pledge to bring down deficits by $4 trillion would surely have no hope at all.

That's the overarching dilemma in a catalog of campaign promises facing varying prospects over the next few years.

Obama is driving toward success on his energy goals. He's got a decent chance of achieving an immigration overhaul. Activists who once ridiculed his promise to be a "fierce advocate" of gay rights say he's come around and become just that.

Much else is bogged in the budget swamp or is a nonstarter for one reason or another. Anything costing big money comes with big obstacles, and one promise that cost relatively little, gun control, is dust. Yet Obama, in powering through with his health care overhaul, financial regulation and stimulus spending in his first term, has shown that tough causes aren't always lost ones.

A look at Obama's leading promises and what's happening with them:

Debt:

The promise: Cut deficits by $4 trillion over a decade.

Prospects: Deals with Congress to cap spending and raise taxes on wealthier people, along with the resulting savings on interest payments on the debt, have already achieved a projected $2.6 trillion in deficit reduction for the years ahead. But the rest of the $4 trillion will be tough. To get there, he proposes a 10-year $583 billion tax increase, an additional layer of tax increases from slower indexing of tax brackets for inflation and modest curbs to federal health care programs, all helping to produce further interest savings.

Republicans are so far standing firm against further tax increases and liberal Democrats are a tough sell on trimming entitlement programs and other spending. This, as the Congressional Budget Office warns that "such high and rising debt would have serious consequences" if unchecked. Among those consequences are reduced national savings and investment, a potential fiscal crisis and higher interest costs for the government.

___

Economy:

The promise: An approach to deficit reduction that doesn't undermine the recovery or unduly burden the middle class. Also, cut some corporate tax rates, penalize those who shift work overseas and create 1 million manufacturing jobs by 2016.

Prospects: Obama has had mixed success cutting the deficit without slowing growth. He struck a deal with Congress to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a set of tax increases and spending cuts in January. Businesses responded by stepping up hiring and spending.

But he and Republican leaders allowed Social Security taxes to rise, cutting take-home pay for nearly all working Americans. He wasn't able to avoid $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that started March 1.

Manufacturing has been creating more jobs but adding 1 million more by 2016 is unlikely. That would require 250,000 new factory jobs per year, nearly double the current pace. Overall, the unemployment rate dropped to 7.5 percent in April, the lowest in four years of recession and ragged recovery. The economy is growing modestly but steadily. It expanded at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter.

___

Education:

The promise: Raise the high school graduation rate from 78 percent to 90 percent by 2020 and make the country No. 1 in college graduates by that year. Cut federal money to colleges that don't control tuition costs.

Prospects: A rocky path at best. There's little momentum in Congress for the spending required, his pledge to make the U.S. first in college graduates is a long shot and tuitions are climbing without the promised federal penalty.

Obama has proposed $36 billion for Pell Grants in 2013. Yet those grants now cover less than one-third of the cost of a four-year public college. In 1980, they covered 69 percent of the costs.

___

Energy:

The promise: Cut oil imports by half by 2020.

Prospects: He could well deliver on this promise. New drilling technologies have unlocked enormous domestic reserves of crude oil and natural gas. Policies that mandate increasing use of renewable fuels and better vehicle fuel economy have helped slash demand. That has translated into a dramatic reduction in oil imports and increase in diesel and gasoline exports.

But oil and gasoline are global commodities. If Mideast turmoil disrupts oil production there, prices worldwide will rise, even if the U.S. gets little or no oil from that region. The U.S. economy won't ever be free from the effect of high oil prices. It just may be able to get much less oil from abroad.

___

Entitlements:

The promise: No cuts in Social Security cost-of-living increases. Protect Medicare from Republican proposals to turn it into a voucher-like program.

Prospects: Obama is ready to break his Social Security pledge from the 2008 campaign. He favors a new measure of inflation that would gradually trim benefit increases in Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The change, if adopted, eventually would cut Social Security benefits $560 a year for an average 75-year-old, $136 for a 65-year-old.

His approach to Medicare savings is different from one proposed by House Republicans to transform the program. He'd cut Medicare payments to service providers and is proposing that a growing share of seniors pay higher premiums over time, based on their incomes. Such Medicare changes were foreseen before the 2012 election. Meantime, Washington is expanding Medicaid to bring in more of the low-income uninsured.

For years, budget hawks have insisted that huge entitlements must be on the table for true fiscal discipline to be achieved. They're on the table now.

___

Gay rights:

The promise: Be a "fierce advocate" for gay rights. Obama endorsed gay marriage in 2012.

?Prospects: The course for gay marriage will be shaped by the Supreme Court, expected to rule on the matter in June. It's allowed in 10 states and the District of Columbia; many other states seem unlikely to follow suit unless forced by Congress or the court. But cultural attitudes are changing, as did Obama's views. His administration argued in favor of gay marriage rights to the court.

It seems unlikely the court will order gay marriage to be legalized in all states but its ruling could help same-sex married couples on estate taxes, Social Security benefits and other tangible matters. In his first term Obama lifted the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces.

___

Global warming:

The promise: "Continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet."

Prospects: Obama probably will take more steps to reduce the pollution blamed for climate change, but they are unlikely to be of the scale needed to help much in slowing the heating of the planet. Any policy to reduce heat-trapping pollution will target coal burned by power plants and oil refined for automobiles; those industries have powerful protectors in both parties.

Obama has acted on his own, to increase mileage standards and impose pollution control on future power plants. More such executive action is likely; a law is not.

___

Gun control:

The promise: Ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, expand background checks, and more, a postelection pledge made after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Prospects: Obama said he would "put everything I've got into this." His everything wasn't enough. Entrenched support for gun rights and a powerful campaign by the National Rifle Association blocked efforts to pass a single aspect of Obama's package, the first attempt to significantly change the nation's gun laws in over two decades.

Polling found as many as 90 percent of those questioned supported expanded background checks, but even that fell short in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

___

Health care:

The promise: Ensure access to affordable insurance for all and no gutting of Medicare or Medicaid.

Prospects: Obama is likely to achieve his goal of extending coverage to the uninsured. Affordability is another question. Costs are expected to go up, not down, contrary to what Obama promised in his first term.

Some Medicare cuts Obama is willing to enact would hit beneficiaries. Well-to-do seniors and growing numbers of upper middle-class retirees could face higher monthly premiums.

___

Immigration:

The promise: Overhaul the immigration system to provide eventual citizenship to those who came here illegally, tighten borders and smooth legal immigration.

Prospects: Obama failed to deliver on his first-term promise to rework immigration law. His chances of pulling that off are much better now.

Even with a bipartisan Senate group having released legislation to accomplish those goals, however, success is not certain. Even so, the political climate is ripe for change thanks to a shift in Republican attitudes in 2012, when Latino and Asian voters backed Obama in record numbers.?

___

Iran:

The promise: "Do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

Prospects: Sanctions are destroying Iran's economy but not its will to enrich more uranium. By his own timeline, Obama has about a year left to see if diplomacy and sanctions can get Iran to slow its enrichment of uranium and assure the world its nuclear program is peaceful. If the U.S. and its partners cannot succeed, the stage may be set for an American or Israeli military intervention.

___

Taxes:

The promise: Raise taxes on individuals making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000. No tax increases for people making less. Ensure millionaires pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Prospects: Obama's 2014 budget, if passed, would break his promise to avoid any tax increases for middle and low-income people. He proposes a new inflation yardstick that would expose most people to higher income taxes, especially poorer workers.

He kept his promise to raise taxes on the rich, though at different income levels than he laid out in the campaign: $400,000 for individuals, $450,000 for couples. Republicans dismiss his proposed minimum rate for millionaires as a gimmick.

___

Associated Press writers Dina Cappiello, Philip Elliott, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Christopher S. Rugaber, Stephen Ohlemacher, Jonathan Fahey, Bradley Klapper, Erica Werner, David Crary, Nedra Pickler, and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

View the original article here

PROMISES, PROMISES: When Obama's promises conflict

WASHINGTON (AP) — Absent a magic potion or explosive economic growth, it was all but inevitable President Barack Obama would have to break some of his campaign promises to keep others. If there's one thing that distinguished them besides their ambition, it was their incompatibility.

Cut a staggering $4 trillion from deficits while protecting big benefit programs, subsidizing more health care, plowing extra money into education and avoiding tax increases on everyone except the rich? Not on this Earth.

The postelection reality is starting to shake out now, though how it will all settle can't yet be known.

To reach for his promised deficit reduction, Obama has proposed breaking his tax promise. Toward the same end, his pledge from four years earlier that he wouldn't trim cost-of-living benefits in Social Security has given way to a proposal to do just that.

None of that might happen.

Republicans, who oppose tax increases, and Democrats, who object to curbs on entitlements, could block his path and in doing so save Obama from breaking his own promises.

If they do, though, that big pledge to bring down deficits by $4 trillion would surely have no hope at all.

That's the overarching dilemma in a catalog of campaign promises facing varying prospects over the next few years.

Obama is driving toward success on his energy goals. He's got a decent chance of achieving an immigration overhaul. Activists who once ridiculed his promise to be a "fierce advocate" of gay rights say he's come around and become just that.

Much else is bogged in the budget swamp or is a nonstarter for one reason or another. Anything costing big money comes with big obstacles, and one promise that cost relatively little, gun control, is dust. Yet Obama, in powering through with his health care overhaul, financial regulation and stimulus spending in his first term, has shown that tough causes aren't always lost ones.

A look at Obama's leading promises and what's happening with them:

Debt:

The promise: Cut deficits by $4 trillion over a decade.

Prospects: Deals with Congress to cap spending and raise taxes on wealthier people, along with the resulting savings on interest payments on the debt, have already achieved a projected $2.6 trillion in deficit reduction for the years ahead. But the rest of the $4 trillion will be tough. To get there, he proposes a 10-year $583 billion tax increase, an additional layer of tax increases from slower indexing of tax brackets for inflation and modest curbs to federal health care programs, all helping to produce further interest savings.

Republicans are so far standing firm against further tax increases and liberal Democrats are a tough sell on trimming entitlement programs and other spending. This, as the Congressional Budget Office warns that "such high and rising debt would have serious consequences" if unchecked. Among those consequences are reduced national savings and investment, a potential fiscal crisis and higher interest costs for the government.

___

Economy:

The promise: An approach to deficit reduction that doesn't undermine the recovery or unduly burden the middle class. Also, cut some corporate tax rates, penalize those who shift work overseas and create 1 million manufacturing jobs by 2016.

Prospects: Obama has had mixed success cutting the deficit without slowing growth. He struck a deal with Congress to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a set of tax increases and spending cuts in January. Businesses responded by stepping up hiring and spending.

But he and Republican leaders allowed Social Security taxes to rise, cutting take-home pay for nearly all working Americans. He wasn't able to avoid $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that started March 1.

Manufacturing has been creating more jobs but adding 1 million more by 2016 is unlikely. That would require 250,000 new factory jobs per year, nearly double the current pace. Overall, the unemployment rate dropped to 7.5 percent in April, the lowest in four years of recession and ragged recovery. The economy is growing modestly but steadily. It expanded at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter.

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Education:

The promise: Raise the high school graduation rate from 78 percent to 90 percent by 2020 and make the country No. 1 in college graduates by that year. Cut federal money to colleges that don't control tuition costs.

Prospects: A rocky path at best. There's little momentum in Congress for the spending required, his pledge to make the U.S. first in college graduates is a long shot and tuitions are climbing without the promised federal penalty.

Obama has proposed $36 billion for Pell Grants in 2013. Yet those grants now cover less than one-third of the cost of a four-year public college. In 1980, they covered 69 percent of the costs.

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Energy:

The promise: Cut oil imports by half by 2020.

Prospects: He could well deliver on this promise. New drilling technologies have unlocked enormous domestic reserves of crude oil and natural gas. Policies that mandate increasing use of renewable fuels and better vehicle fuel economy have helped slash demand. That has translated into a dramatic reduction in oil imports and increase in diesel and gasoline exports.

But oil and gasoline are global commodities. If Mideast turmoil disrupts oil production there, prices worldwide will rise, even if the U.S. gets little or no oil from that region. The U.S. economy won't ever be free from the effect of high oil prices. It just may be able to get much less oil from abroad.

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Entitlements:

The promise: No cuts in Social Security cost-of-living increases. Protect Medicare from Republican proposals to turn it into a voucher-like program.

Prospects: Obama is ready to break his Social Security pledge from the 2008 campaign. He favors a new measure of inflation that would gradually trim benefit increases in Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The change, if adopted, eventually would cut Social Security benefits $560 a year for an average 75-year-old, $136 for a 65-year-old.

His approach to Medicare savings is different from one proposed by House Republicans to transform the program. He'd cut Medicare payments to service providers and is proposing that a growing share of seniors pay higher premiums over time, based on their incomes. Such Medicare changes were foreseen before the 2012 election. Meantime, Washington is expanding Medicaid to bring in more of the low-income uninsured.

For years, budget hawks have insisted that huge entitlements must be on the table for true fiscal discipline to be achieved. They're on the table now.

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Gay rights:

The promise: Be a "fierce advocate" for gay rights. Obama endorsed gay marriage in 2012.

?Prospects: The course for gay marriage will be shaped by the Supreme Court, expected to rule on the matter in June. It's allowed in 10 states and the District of Columbia; many other states seem unlikely to follow suit unless forced by Congress or the court. But cultural attitudes are changing, as did Obama's views. His administration argued in favor of gay marriage rights to the court.

It seems unlikely the court will order gay marriage to be legalized in all states but its ruling could help same-sex married couples on estate taxes, Social Security benefits and other tangible matters. In his first term Obama lifted the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces.

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Global warming:

The promise: "Continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet."

Prospects: Obama probably will take more steps to reduce the pollution blamed for climate change, but they are unlikely to be of the scale needed to help much in slowing the heating of the planet. Any policy to reduce heat-trapping pollution will target coal burned by power plants and oil refined for automobiles; those industries have powerful protectors in both parties.

Obama has acted on his own, to increase mileage standards and impose pollution control on future power plants. More such executive action is likely; a law is not.

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Gun control:

The promise: Ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, expand background checks, and more, a postelection pledge made after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Prospects: Obama said he would "put everything I've got into this." His everything wasn't enough. Entrenched support for gun rights and a powerful campaign by the National Rifle Association blocked efforts to pass a single aspect of Obama's package, the first attempt to significantly change the nation's gun laws in over two decades.

Polling found as many as 90 percent of those questioned supported expanded background checks, but even that fell short in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

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Health care:

The promise: Ensure access to affordable insurance for all and no gutting of Medicare or Medicaid.

Prospects: Obama is likely to achieve his goal of extending coverage to the uninsured. Affordability is another question. Costs are expected to go up, not down, contrary to what Obama promised in his first term.

Some Medicare cuts Obama is willing to enact would hit beneficiaries. Well-to-do seniors and growing numbers of upper middle-class retirees could face higher monthly premiums.

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Immigration:

The promise: Overhaul the immigration system to provide eventual citizenship to those who came here illegally, tighten borders and smooth legal immigration.

Prospects: Obama failed to deliver on his first-term promise to rework immigration law. His chances of pulling that off are much better now.

Even with a bipartisan Senate group having released legislation to accomplish those goals, however, success is not certain. Even so, the political climate is ripe for change thanks to a shift in Republican attitudes in 2012, when Latino and Asian voters backed Obama in record numbers.?

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Iran:

The promise: "Do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

Prospects: Sanctions are destroying Iran's economy but not its will to enrich more uranium. By his own timeline, Obama has about a year left to see if diplomacy and sanctions can get Iran to slow its enrichment of uranium and assure the world its nuclear program is peaceful. If the U.S. and its partners cannot succeed, the stage may be set for an American or Israeli military intervention.

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Taxes:

The promise: Raise taxes on individuals making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000. No tax increases for people making less. Ensure millionaires pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Prospects: Obama's 2014 budget, if passed, would break his promise to avoid any tax increases for middle and low-income people. He proposes a new inflation yardstick that would expose most people to higher income taxes, especially poorer workers.

He kept his promise to raise taxes on the rich, though at different income levels than he laid out in the campaign: $400,000 for individuals, $450,000 for couples. Republicans dismiss his proposed minimum rate for millionaires as a gimmick.

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Associated Press writers Dina Cappiello, Philip Elliott, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Christopher S. Rugaber, Stephen Ohlemacher, Jonathan Fahey, Bradley Klapper, Erica Werner, David Crary, Nedra Pickler, and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

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Security casts shadow over Obama's Mexico trip

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is seeking to refocus economic relations between the U.S. and Mexico, even as fresh questions about security cooperation threaten to cast a shadow over the president's visit to the southern neighbor.

Obama also will use his three-day trip, which begins Thursday and includes a stop in Costa Rica, to highlight the immigration overhaul moving through Capitol Hill, both for an audience in Latin America and for those back home in the U.S.

The president is scheduled to arrive Thursday afternoon in Mexico City for meetings with President Enrique Pena Nieto and members of Mexico's business community.

Since taking office in December, Pena Nieto has moved to end the widespread access it gave U.S. security agencies helping fight drug trafficking and organized crime. The changes mark a dramatic shift from the policies of Pena Nieto's predecessor, Felipe Calderon, who was lauded by the U.S. for boosting cooperation between the two countries as he led an aggressive attack on Mexico's drug cartels.

The White House has tried to downplay a potential rift, with officials emphasizing Mexico has kept the U.S. informed about the changes. Obama on Tuesday said he would wait to hear directly from his Mexican counterpart before assessing the changes.

Despite the intense focus on security issues, Obama advisers say the president will try to show that the ties between the two countries are broader than the drug wars that defined the relationship in recent years.

"Security has been so front-and-center in the public discussion of the U.S.-Mexico relationship that lost in that is the enormous commercial relationship between the two countries," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser.

Obama is expected to call for the U.S. and Mexico to deepen trade ties to promote job creation on both sides of the border. However, he is not expected to announce any major new economic initiatives.

Mexico was the second-largest export market for U.S. goods in 2011, according to the office of the U.S. trade representative. U.S. trade with Mexico totaled $500 billion in 2011.

White House aides say they also see strengthening Mexico's economy as a way to address one of the root causes of much of the illegal immigration to the U.S.

Rhodes said the U.S. expects Pena Nieto and other regional leaders to be largely supportive of the immigration overhaul being debated on Capitol Hill, which includes provisions to strengthen security at the 2,000-mile long border with Mexico.

However, Carl Meacham, a former senior Latin America adviser on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. immigration effort is viewed with "skepticism and confusion" in the region.

"They've been brought to the altar so many times by different American administrations that there's a bit of a lack of trust," said Meacham, who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Getting Mexico's buy-in, particularly on border security, could help Obama sell the immigration overhaul in the U.S., particularly to wary Republicans. GOP lawmakers have long insisted the U.S. must focus its efforts on securing the border before addressing the legal status of the more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.

The immigration bill being debated in the Senate would strengthen border security, allow tens of thousands of new high- and low-skilled workers into the country, require all employers to check their workers' legal status and provide an eventual path to citizenship for most of the immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

More than half of the immigrants in the U.S. illegally are from Mexico, according to the Pew Research Center.

Following a speech Friday to Mexican entrepreneurs, Obama will travel to Costa Rica, his first visit as president to the Central American nation. In addition to meetings with Costa Rican President Laura Chincilla, Obama will attend a gathering of leaders from the Central American Integration system. The regional network also includes the leaders of Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

On Saturday, Obama will attend a business conference aimed at fostering economic cooperation between the U.S. and Central American nations. The president is due back in Washington Saturday night.

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

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Senate foe of Obama's gun-control bid may face voter backlash

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire faces a possible voter backlash along with critical ads from gun control advocates following her vote against President Barack Obama's bid to curb gun violence.

According to a survey by Public Policy Polling released Wednesday, Ayotte's approval rating stands at 44 percent, down 15 points since October when the organization last conducted a poll on her. The poll of 933 New Hampshire voters, from April 19 to April 21, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent.

Fifty percent of those polled said Ayotte's vote against background checks legislation would make them less likely to support her for re-election. Seventy-five percent said they supported background checks.

The survey did not make clear how much, if any, of the decline in her approval rating over six months was attributable to her April 17 vote that helped defeat the bill expanding background checks for gun purchasers.

Still, gun control proponents seized on the poll as a sign of the dangers awaiting members of Congress who vote with the gun lobby against popular legislation like the defeated bill.

"I think we are at a turning point," Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said on Thursday at a breakfast roundtable with reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

"Lots of senators who thought it was safe to vote against it (gun control) ... aren't so sure anymore," Schumer said.

A gun-control group founded by former Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona, who was wounded in a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona, began airing radio ads this week in New Hampshire criticizing Ayotte.

The group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, is also sponsoring ads aimed at Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for helping defeat the bipartisan measure to expand background checks, which failed to advance in the U.S. Senate by a six vote margin.

"As Gabby said last week, if we can't keep our communities safe with the Congress we have, we will work to change Congress," said Pia Carusone, executive director of Giffords' group.

Ayotte, elected to the Senate with 60 percent of the vote in 2010, is not up for re-election until 2016.

McConnell faces re-election next year, and a Republican aide brushed off the ads against him.

"It is tough to be too pro-gun in Kentucky," the aide said.

Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling, said, "New Hampshire is a good bellwether for fallout from the gun vote."

"There's serious backlash from voters toward Kelly Ayotte for how she handled this issue," he said.

EDITORIAL CRITICISM

Ayotte has also drawn editorial criticism in New Hampshire from the Portsmouth Herald, which ripped into the senator with an editorial on Sunday headlined, "If you want gun control, vote Ayotte out of office."

It is unclear what, if any, lasting political damage she has suffered.

Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said, "I suspect this will be old news by 2016."

Ayotte's office declined a request for an interview with the senator, but noted she offered alternative legislation last week, including measures designed to help keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

Ayotte, one of the few remaining Republican U.S. lawmakers from New England, was the only senator from the region to vote against the bipartisan measure.

Senior Senate Democratic aides said it had been assumed by many in the party that Ayotte might vote for the proposal, but that they had received no assurances from her.

One aide said they expected her to possibly vote yes because veteran Senator John McCain of Arizona has been seen as a mentor of Ayotte, who is in her first term. McCain was among a handful of Senate Republicans who voted for the measure.

(Reporting By Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Fred Barbash and Mohammad Zargham)

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How much crow can a president eat? Obama’s finding out

By Jeff Greenfield

So you wake up this morning and find you’re president of the United States.

Pretty cool, no? Helicopters and a 747 at your disposal; courtside seats at any NBA playoff game of your choice; everyone stands up and the band plays when you come into the room.

But the job comes with some baggage, and one of the heaviest of steamer trunks is what to do about a political ally—make that three or four of them—who hands you a stinging defeat on a key, emotionally laden issue.

After the Newtown massacre, you put gun control—sorry, you call it “gun safety” now to avoid ruffling red state sensibilities—back on the table. You give powerful speeches surrounded by the grieving families of the kids who were killed at Sandy Hook. You see a gun rights Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, and a gun rights Republican, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey draft a bill that provides a kind of, sort of, sprinkled-with-exceptions background check.

And then you see four Democratic senators vote “no.” Three of them—Mark Begich of Alaska, Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas—were up for re-election next year (Begich and Pryor still are, but since the vote Baucus has decided not to run) in states where gun rights sentiment runs strong, and where Obama lost last year by wide margins.

What do you do now? For some on your side of this fight the answer is easy. William Daley, your former chief of staff and a member of the Chicago political family that has always played politics as a contact sport, says he’ll tell the apostates to look elsewhere for campaign contributions.

Some of your own supporters make a different point. They say you’re too soft, unwilling to back a senator up against the wall, stick your face in his (or hers), and get the vote you want—the way Lyndon Johnson used to do.

But you’ve got other considerations to think about. Next years’ midterms are going to be dicey under any circumstances, at least if history is a guide. Presidents in their sixth year almost always find their party losing seats in the Congress. With the retirement of Democrats in tough states such as South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana (Obama performed dismally in all three last year), your party’s hold on the Senate is in jeopardy. Cutting two incumbent Democrats loose significantly raises the chances that your party will lose the Senate. And if that happens, you can say goodbye to your domestic agenda, not to mention your federal judgeship nominations.

What you’re facing, it turns out, is the same dilemma that any president, any major officeholder faces: How much are you willing to live with in order to pursue a broader agenda?

FDR had to deal with Southern segregationists—and outright racists—who held power in Congress, so he had to yield to that power in order to get his New Deal legislation passed. As the Digital History website tells it: "Most New Deal programs discriminated against blacks. The NRA, for example, not only offered whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) refused to guarantee mortgages for blacks who tried to buy in white neighborhoods, and the CCC maintained segregated camps. Furthermore, the Social Security Act excluded those job categories blacks traditionally filled.”

JFK faced the same ugly reality: In order to get a black candidate approved for a federal judgeship, he had to name an ally of Mississippi Sen. James Eastland to the federal bench. That judge delighted in calling black civil rights demonstrators “chimpanzees”—and worse—but Kennedy paid that price.

So what do you do, Mr. (or Madame) President? Do you offer an object lesson to other members of your party by telling the trio of defecting senators to take a hike as a way of saying, “If you desert me on a big issue, you will pay the price?”

Or do you decide to swallow your anger and cheerfully hit the campaign trail next year to save this trio, because the price of losing the Senate is just too high?

You make the call.

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From Boston to Newtown to Aurora and beyond: Obama’s sad role as national grief counselor

By Walter Shapiro

Just moments after he raised his right hand to take the oath of office at a time of economic despair in 2009, Barack Obama spoke of the resilience of the American people. In that first inaugural address, Obama paraphrased the lyrics from a 1930s Fred Astaire musical as he declared, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

Thursday afternoon, at a memorial service in Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Obama invoked the story of 78-year-old marathoner Bill Iffrig who was knocked off his feet by the bomb blast just 15 feet from the finish line. Talking of the resilience of Boston and America in the face of harrowing violence, Obama said, “We may be momentarily knocked off our feet, but we’ll pick ourselves up. We’ll keep going. We will finish the race.”

Obama was very careful with his language, describing “this heinous act” and the perpetrators as “small, stunted individuals.” The president never mentioned “terrorism” or referred to foreign threats, but he pointedly used the verb “terrorize.” The president’s words were a way of gliding over all the public uncertainty surrounding the bombings and their cause. It was probably wiser and definitely more uplifting for the president to celebrate Boston and its gritty, yet intellectual self-image than to dwell on the fear unleashed on Patriot’s Day.

This has been a harrowing week for Obama. All the emotion that flowed from his last memorial service for the victims in Newtown led to defeat and dejection with the expected—yet still brutal—Senate rejection of expanded background checks for gun buyers Wednesday afternoon. Even the memory of 20 dead small children was not enough to turn the legislative tide. As Obama put it Wednesday, not bothering to mask his anger over vote, “This was a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

Grief counseling is not mentioned in the Constitution, nor does it ever come up in presidential debates. But part of the job of any president in this already tear-stained century is to channel our collective sadness, to speak for all Americans at a time of national tragedy.

Obama was still in the first year of his presidency when he said during a memorial service at Fort Hood after the shootings there, “We pay tribute to 13 men and women who were not able to escape the horror of war, even in the comfort of home.” In 2011, at a memorial service for the victims of the shootings in a Tucson parking lot, Obama sadly admitted, “There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts.”

Last year, in response to the massacre in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, Obama said, “If there’s anything to take away from this tragedy, it’s the reminder that life is very fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious.” And at the memorial service for the victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Obama said, “Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and the prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts.”

Yes, there is a sameness to much of Obama’s funereal oratory. The fault lies not with the president or the White House speechwriters, but with the limits of human speech at a time of grief. These are the same limitations that Abraham Lincoln referred to in 1863 when he dedicated a national cemetery at Gettysburg near where nearly 8,000 soldiers died: “We cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

The difference, of course, is that Lincoln was speaking on a military battlefield, while Obama as president has been primarily mourning those killed at home following everyday pursuits—watching a famous race, attending a leafy elementary school, going to the movies or meeting with their congresswoman in a supermarket parking lot. Each innocent setting makes the carnage crueler and more macabre.

The three deaths and the scores of maimed bodies at the finish line in Boston also speak to the profound uncertainty of our age. Was this a new front in the war that toppled the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001? Or was this the latest reminder (as if we needed one after Newtown and Aurora) that Americans are a violent people—and that walking among us are individuals with crazed grievances and a warped desire to inflict pain, suffering and death.

The hair-trigger mood was symbolized Wednesday by the wildly wrong rumors about an impending arrest that were legitimized by major news organizations like the Associated Press and CNN. To be charitable, it was almost as if amid our fears, the news media abandoned traditional rules of reliable sourcing in a desperate effort to add a note of the-worst-is-over calm to our continuing anguish.

Politicians and the media often give way to an irresistible impulse to automatically brand any horrific act “terrorism.” In the immediate aftermath of Monday’s bloodbath, Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, flatly said, “My understanding is that it’s a terrorist incident.” Two Maine senators, Susan Collins and Angus King—both members of the Intelligence Committee—were even more unequivocal, saying that the bombings “bear the hallmarks of a terrorist attack.”

Using the word “terrorism” before there is any certainty that the attack had any remote connection with an organized group—let alone the remnants of al-Qaida—can only fan frightening memories of 9/11 and Oklahoma City. That is why Obama’s restraint today in Boston and in his prior remarks at the White House has been admirable. The images of dead bodies and maimed limbs on Boylston Street are wrenching enough without politicians in Washington resorting to rhetorical fear-mongering.

Obama ended his 20-minute reflections with a passionate affirmation of an open society where “we come together to celebrate life, to walk our cities and to cheer for our teams.” As the nation’s first truly urban president since John Kennedy, Obama instinctively understands the vibrancy of cities like Boston. That may be why he places such a high premium on living without fear amid the hubbub of the Hub. And in the resilience of Bostonians and all Americans.

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Interactive: What's in Obama's 2014 Budget Proposal

By Chris Wilson

The budget proposal that President Barack Obama unveiled Wednesday includes a highly controversial measure that would curtail increases in many Social Security and Medicare payments over time. While the document is merely a "symbolic, nonbinding spending blueprint," as Yahoo News’ Olivier Knox wrote yesterday, it quickly exposed fracture lines among Democrats over the future of the entitlement programs.

Ballooning entitlement payments are the most visible aspect of a pressing budgetary concern: Every year, the government has less immediate control over how much money it spends. Of the $3.77 trillion in Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget, $2.31 trillion of it is “mandatory” spending required by law. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid make up the bulk of that spending, but there are all sorts of other things in there, as well: disaster relief funds, highway aid, nutritional programs and so forth. Only $1.2 trillion goes to “discretionary” spending, which consists of most agency funding. Half of that is related to defense.

The following infographic arranges Obama’s budget in three rings. The innermost ring shows the entire budget divided by how much is mandatory versus discretionary, plus a third category for interest payments on the national debt. As you move outward, you see those categories subdivided by agency and then by program. Mouse over a slice to see the exact value.

Because this is highly granular data that the White House provides as supplementary material to its budget, the totals in the graphic will be a bit higher than in the summary figures in most news reports. This is often because some agencies produce small amounts of revenue to offset costs, such as leasing federal land. Those negative values are difficult to represent in physical space on the screen.

Source: Public Budget Database (FY 2014 Budget Authority)

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Obama's 'Crossed a Line' With Social Security Cuts, Critics Say

WASHINGTON - A crowd of about 100 progressive and liberal activists rallied outside the White House this afternoon to express outrage over the recently released Obama administration budget plan that would cut Medicare and Social Security benefits.

The rally, organized by left-wing organizations including MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and attended by lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders, was held in protest over the proposal to create a chained Consumer Price Index - or CPI - included in the White House budget, which could mean lower Social Security benefits for millions of senior citizens and veterans.

The chained CPI proposal could lead to slower growth of Social Security benefits in the next few years because it would determine benefits using a slower inflation rate. The proposal discussed in the past by House Republicans could lead to the average 65-year-old losing out on $130 a year in annual benefits starting in just three years.

RELATED: Social Security Cut of $130 Per Year Seen In Cliff Proposal

Organizers have formed a coalition to deliver petitions with more than 1 million signatures to the president to prevent the bill from making it to Capitol Hill.

"We want to make sure … this is dead on arrival," Democracy for American chairman Jim Dean told ABC News.

Dean's organization is one of the many progressive groups that are part of the coalition to deliver the petition to the White House. Dean said that although he and his organization appreciate the president's "forceful leadership" on issues like gun violence prevention, the CPI proposal is one that has caused them to be extremely disappointed in him.

"People understand that we are not getting everything out of this person," Dean said. "This was never our way or the highway - even when he was elected in 2008. He's crossed a line here."

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., urged President Obama to think twice about the budget plan and said it could only lead to devastating consequences in increasing the wealth disparity between the top 1 percent and the rest of America.

"People who have voted with the president … are extremely disappointed with the president," Sanders told ABC News. "(Americans) are saying do not balance the budget on people who have lost their arms and legs defending this country."

Rally organizers said Obama was doing a disservice to the senior citizens who rely on social security benefit checks to survive.

"We've got to get here now in order to be sure that the voices of people who are going to be impacted by the president's proposals will be heard by him," said Brad Wright, a spokesman for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, which is also part of the coalition. "I can't tell you how disappointed we are - he has said that he would not cut social security … and now they're doing it. That's a pretty serious disconnect."

The budget has yet to take center stage in Washington. Instead, the focus has been on the gun control debate, with some GOP lawmakers threatening a filibuster on gun control legislation.

Also Read

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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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