Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, President Obama's former top budget adviser thinks his old boss has lost leverage for the budget battles to come in the wake of this week's deal avoiding an immediate fall over the "fiscal cliff."
Urging Republicans to gear up for a season of pitched fiscal battles, anti-tax guru Grover Norquist is diminishing the potential fallout of waging another drawn-out fight over raising the debt-ceiling.
In the fiscal feud between President Obama and Republican lawmakers, economists agree that Washington could raise several hundred billion dollars by limiting tax deductions and closing loopholes for the wealthy, but charities likely would take a big hit in donations.
Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in President Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago.
Supposedly, this White House has just made a furious attempt to sink a book, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" by Ron Suskind, which came out Sept. 20. Jay Carney, the White House spinmeister, spoke ill of it. Numerous former White House staffers spoke ill of it. Mr. Carney said "one passage seems to be lifted almost entirely from Wikipedia." Why would a respected writer want to do that? I suspect that the White House is going to be as effective in sinking Mr. Suskind as it has been in keeping President Obama's poll numbers lofty.
Liberals have isolated the problem in American politics today: There is just too much democracy. The incessant demands of the unwashed masses are far too distracting for the philosopher kings in the government to get any work done.
Former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag is sounding a pretty serious alarm about American health care expenses lately. In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, he writes:
When Congress was debating the Obamacare law last year, I raised many concerns about the size and scope of the law and the outrageous amount of new federal taxes and spending it created. Like many people, I also have grown concerned about the law's impact on Americans' personal freedoms. My concern stems not only from its controversial mandate that every American buy health insurance, but also from other federal mandates that could follow.
President Obama's chief economist is departing as the administration's nearly trillion-dollar recovery is losing steam and Mr. Obama concedes that lackluster job growth could become a trend.
The White House has seen a stunning pre-election exodus of high-level staffers, culminating in the departure over the last two weeks of President Obama's chief of staff and national security adviser.
In yet another pre-election departure for the White House, President Obama announced Friday that his national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, is stepping down and will be replaced by deputy Tom Donilon.
With the recent departures of Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, economic policy adviser Lawrence H. Summers and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the next senior Obama administration official expected to quit is the national security adviser to the president, James L. Jones. All other things being equal, his successor seems likely to be the president's homeland security adviser, John Brennan (who also serves as Gen. Jones' deputy).
President Obama is set to lose another key member of his inner circle as signs point to a Friday departure for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who's expected to announce a run for Chicago mayor after serving as Mr. Obama's top aide for nearly two years.
Woodward book: Aides doubt Obama Afghan strategy
Top White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers will step down at the end of this year, the administration said Tuesday, marking the departure of yet another key player on President Obama's financial team, which has struggled to right the U.S. economy.
"My own perspective at least is I think the White House — in this second-best world — won that round, but they, by not insisting that the debt limit be tied to the package, it's entirely possible they're going to win the week and lose the quarter," he said.
"Well, I don't know that [Mr. Obama's] statement actually frankly matters that much," Peter Orszag, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget, told CNBC late Wednesday. "You know, the sequester was only delayed by two months, so you're going to have to negotiate over that. You're going to have to negotiate over the appropriations bill for funding the daily operations of government."
