Obama Foreign Policy 'Fantasy'

From Jeremy P. Jacobs at The Hill:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Sunday that President Obama's foreign policy on nuclear weapons is a "fantasy."
Gingrich's remarks came following news that North Korea had defied international sanctions in launching a long-range rocket capable of carrying a nuclear warhead on Sunday. The former House speaker said North Korea's nuclear program has been the focus of the U.S. government for years, but no one has done anything substantive to stop it.
"We have been talking about this since the Clinton administration," Gingrich said. "One morning there is going to be a disaster...the time to think about it is before the disaster."
Gingrich said he would have taken pre-emptive measures to prevent North Korea form the test launch on Sunday. Gingrich said Obama's response to the launch falls short.
"He has some wonderful fantasy idea that we're going to have a great meeting next year," he said, referring to Obama's desire to resume diplomatic negotiations with nations such as North Korea that are pursuing nuclear weapons.
"I just think it's very dangerous to have a fantasy foreign policy," Gingrich added.

Obama Honeymoon Over?

From Alexander Bolton at The Hill:
President Obama’s honeymoon is beginning to fade.
Members of Congress and old political hands say he needs to show substantial progress reviving the economy soon.
Some Democrats have started to worry that voters don’t and won’t understand the link between economic revival and Obama’s huge agenda, which includes saving the banking industry, ending home foreclosures, reforming healthcare and developing a national energy policy, among much else.
While lawmakers debate controversial proposals contained in the new president’s debut budget — cutting farm subsidies, raising taxes on charitable contributions, etc. — there is a growing sense that time is running out faster than expected.
Democrats from states racked by recession say Obama needs to produce an uptick by August or face unpleasant consequences. Others say that there is more time, but that voters need to see improvement by the middle of next year.
The most optimistic say Obama and Democrats in Congress will face a political backlash unless the economy improves by Election Day 2010.
“We’ve got to see an uptick by August or the Democratic majority is in jeopardy,” said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose state had an 11.6 percent unemployment rate in January.
Stupak doesn’t fault Obama for pursuing healthcare reform, because high medical costs are intertwined with the economic difficulties, he said.
But Obama must move quickly, he added, saying, “By summer there is no more honeymoon. Period.”
Other Democrats and some Republicans question whether Obama’s attention is too thinly spread — whether his economic message may be diminished by forays into healthcare, education and energy reform.
“I think any political honeymoon has a short life, and in this economic climate it’s dictated by the public’s perception of hope for the economy,” said former Democratic Sen. Richard Bryan, who represented Nevada for 12 years. . . .
Obama’s push along a wide policy front has begun to alienate admirers on the other side of the political spectrum.
“I fear that in trying to do everything at once, they will do nothing well,” wrote conservative columnist David Brooks, a self-described Obama fan, in a recent column in The New York Times. “I fear that we have a group of people who haven’t even learned to use their new phone system trying to redesign half the U.S. economy.”
Obama’s wide-ranging vision has soured commentators who had earlier praised his job performance. “Obama’s proposals for many hundreds of billions in additional spending on universal healthcare, universal postsecondary education, a massive overhaul of the energy economy, and other liberal programs seem grandiose and unaffordable,” wrote Stuart Taylor in the National Journal.
Don Fowler, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said he supported Obama’s approach but acknowledged that the debate over healthcare reform could drag down his administration.
“Healthcare is an incredible political morass,” said Fowler, noting that Obama will have to take on powerful interests such as hospitals, insurance companies and the American Medical Association.

Obama Budget In Trouble

President Obama’s $410 billion omnibus spending bill has been approved. But his overall proposed budget could still be in trouble.
Here's the report from Walter Alarkon at The Hill:
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he has spoken to enough colleagues about several different provisions in the budget to make him think Congress won’t pass it.
Conrad urged White House budget director Peter Orszag not to “draw lines in the sand” with lawmakers, most notably on Obama’s plan for a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions.
“Anybody who thinks it will be easy to get the votes on the budget in the conditions that we face is smoking something,” Conrad said. . . .
Conrad joined Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the top Republican on the Budget Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in criticizing the administration’s cap-and-trade proposal for not doing enough to counterbalance increases in energy costs that will be felt by consumers and companies, especially those in energy states such as North Dakota.
Conrad said that it would be a “distant hope” to expect the climate change plan to pass unless it includes help for industries that would be hit hard by limits on carbon emission production.
The North Dakota Democrat also knocked the Obama administration’s plan to cut subsidies for farmers with incomes of more than $500,000. He noted that Congress just rewrote its agricultural policies last year in a bill that received 81 votes in the Senate. The administration has said that it could save taxpayers nearly $10 billion over the next decade from stopping direct federal payments to wealthy farmers, but Conrad denied that the farm policies were not fiscally responsible.
“The Farm Bill was paid for. We made a lot of tough choices. We raised money. We made spending reductions,” Conrad said. “Those who suggest that not fiscally responsible — I don’t think they’re very aware of the history of how we got a Farm Bill passed.”
Conrad said that he hopes the administration understands that “accomplish[ing] big things takes compromise around here.”

Obama Inducing Catastrophe?

From Dick Morris at The Hill:
Obama has been instrumental in purveying fear and spreading doubt. It is his pronouncements, reinforced by the developments they kindle and catalyze, that are destroying good businesses, bankrupting responsible people and wiping out even conservative financial institutions. Every time he speaks, he sends the markets down and stocks crashing. He doesn’t seem to realize that the rest of the world takes its cue from him.
He forgets that he stands at the epicenter of power, not on the fringes campaigning for office. This ain’t Iowa.
Why does Obama preach gloom and doom? Because he is so anxious to cram through every last spending bill, tax increase on the so-called rich, new government regulation, and expansion of healthcare entitlement that he must preserve the atmosphere of crisis as a political necessity.
Only by keeping us in a state of panic can he induce us to vote for trillion-dollar deficits and spending packages that send our national debt soaring. . . .
So, having inherited a recession, his words are creating a depression. He entered office amid a disaster and he is transforming it into a catastrophe, all to pass every last bit of government spending and move us a bit further to the left before his political capital dwindles.
But the jig will be up soon. The crash of the stock market in the days since he took power (indeed, from the moment he won the election) can increasingly be attributed to his own failure to lead us in the right direction, his failed policies in addressing the recession and his own spreading of panic and fear.
The market collapse makes it evident that it is Obama who is the problem, where he should, instead, be the solution.

Promises, Promises!

From Mike Soraghan at The Hill:
If President Obama signs the $787 billion economic stimulus legislation Monday, he’ll again be dodging a campaign pledge he made on transparency.During the campaign, Obama pledged to post legislation online for five days before signing it. But administration officials have said they don’t have to do that for the stimulus because the pledge applied only to non-emergency legislation.
“This would certainly meet the President's test of emergency legislation,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a press conference this week before the bill passed.
A copy of the conference report was posted on the White House website at 2:05 p.m. Friday. Under the campaign pledge, it couldn’t be signed until 2:05 p.m. Wednesday. In his radio address today, Obama said that he will sign the legislation “shortly.” The Associated Press has reported that it could be signed as soon as Monday.
The first bill Obama signed into law, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, wasn't posted online until after he signed it Jan. 29.He signed legislation expanding children’s health insurance on Feb. 4 after posting it online Feb. 1.
Democrats have already violated another transparency pledge on the stimulus. The House had voted unanimously earlier this week to have the bill posted online for 48 hours before a vote. But the House voted Friday after waiting less than 15 hours. That brought bitter complaints from Republicans, but also some Democrats.“The honorable thing to do is to give us the time to see the bill,” said Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.), a leader of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition. "When you make commitments you follow through on them."