President Obama keeps claiming he’s willing to “make the hard choices.”
But so far his administration has been characterized by a lack of said hard choices—except perhaps for his choice in dog breeds.
Congress finally got around to passing the 2009 fiscal budget in February, which should have been passed in the fall of 2008. The Democratic-led Congress preferred to wait for a Democratic president who would sign the fiscally irresponsible budget. That budget contained some 10,000 earmarks, which Obama campaigned against.
Did President Hard Choices send it back demanding a bill clean of earmarks? No, Obama signed it. And his press secretary defended the decision saying it was “last year’s business.”
How about the $787 billion stimulus bill, which was this year’s business? Did the president make any hard choices? Maybe, but only because he would have liked one even bigger.
How about the budget agreement in April? Did Obama make any hard choices there? No, he signed the biggest budget agreement in history, with a smile.
On the health care reform front, no one seriously argues that the bills being considered would meet any of the president’s goals, which were:
- Universal coverage — But millions of people will NOT get coverage.
- Reduced premiums — The president claimed his legislation would reduce a family’s health insurance premium by $2,500 a year by the end of his first term. But all of the nonpartisan analyses predict that premiums will go up, significantly, under the president’s plan.
- The bill is paid for — But everyone knows spending will explode.
So does the fact that the Democrats’ bill violates nearly every one of the president’s health reform pledges mean he won’t sign it? No, he’s begging for a bill, any bill.
But maybe he made some hard choices by deciding to increase troops in Afghanistan. No, the president simply followed the recommendations of his generals in the field. Going against that recommendation would have been a “hard choice” (and in this case, probably a foolish one as well).
But here’s the bad news for the president, in less than a year an angry and fed-up public will register their assessment of Obama’s performance, and my guess is … it won’t be a hard choice.