Obama's State of the Union address: Executive order to create deficit commission

Addressing action taken by the Senate on Tuesday, President Obama said he would proceed with plans to create a commission to reduce the federal budget deficit.

“Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans,” Obama said.

The failed proposal would have required Congress to accept or reject the commission’s recommendations without making changes, a provision designed to prevent lawmakers from dodging the most politically risky proposals.

The vote came hours after the Congressional Budget Office issued a report predicting that the 2010 budget deficit would be $1.35 trillion. That’s better than last year’s deficit of $1.4 trillion, but still a sign of a struggling economy.

Obama noted that the commission was modeled on a proposal by Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire, and Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota.

-- Steve Padilla

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President Barack Obama gives his first State of the Union address to Congress on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, January 27, 2010 in Washington, D.C. (Robert Giroux/MCT)

Comments

[Michael Paschal]

You know what? He is right. If the Republicans do not like his policy proposals, then I'm more inclined to be for them. Republican policies are what got us into this fix. What exactly do the Republicans propose? The one thing which really irritates me about Republicans is that they spent us into debt for perpetuity and made themselves and their cronies wealthy, AND NOW SAY THAT WE CANNOT AFFORD ALL THESE THINGS WHICH AMERICANS SHOULD BE ABLE TO EXPECT TO HAVE ANYWAY while they and their families enjoy a life of prosperity regardless of the situation for the common American citizen.

[Fred Buse]

Congress? Congress? I don't need no stinking congress!

[KC]

Obama's idea:

1. Create another bloated bureaucracy to investigate the current bureaucracy and blame the previous bureaucracy.

2. Cover up the fact that we don't have transparency as promised.

3. Blame the previous bureaucracy again for good measure.

Is this what we want?

[Steve]

This is disastrous idea #700 or so in (almost) a row from Obama. This commission's recommendations will be to cut money from social programs while doing basically nothing about any of our financial problems. No politician on it will show any political courage, none of the real waste (military, corn subsidies, etc.) will be touched, and it will further bind the hands of the already frozen Senate to enact any legislation other than a slew of Republican-friendly budget slashes. The "Democrat" leading this panel is corporatist shill Kent Conrad? His total capitulation to the Republicans and the other Blue Dogs on this commission will _still_ be the closest thing we see in this panel to anything even vaguely Progressive or helpful to the country. And Obama will get blamed if they do enact these social program cuts, and Obama will be blamed if they don't.
And for him to have issued an executive order on this, when he had no interest in issuing an executive order on health care or any other Progressive agenda item? Not only a worthless commission in the first place, from which will rise disastrous policy recommendations, but horrible politics also. Who is going to vote for the Democrats in the near future, when the only time Obama puts his foot down is to force the Senate to adopt another Conservative commission? He has lost the Left. He is seen as tremendously weak by the moderates (because of stunts like this), and the Right just wants to see him killed.

[Andrew]

Everyone has it all wrong. It was the republicans and democrats that put us in this mess. We have increased government spending with a flatline in revenue. Every president promises to cut taxes but it never happens. The government keeps spending and taxing and us as Americans are letting them get away with it. This isn't about being on the left or right but standing for what this country was founded for. To get away from large government and high taxes. Our founding fathers created a capitalist rupublic which is now turning into a progressive socialist country. Anyone in their right mind can't disagree. Look up the definition and you will theory theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole
(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles."
this is exactly what president Obama is doing. Why tax the rich more for being successful? This will only create a larger government and a larger middle class. If we use communist china as an example, there is only a middle class beacause the government controls their economy. With the government bailouts, technically the governement has control of major corporations. And to take a step further, president Obama fired the CEO of GM. Does that make him the boss? Now all of you are saying he didn't fire him he can't he has nothing to do with GM. But really what Obama did was tell GM they are not getting a bailout if that same CEO did not quit or retire. The United States is based on the fundamentals of the constitution. We have drifted so far away from it that it is like it was erased right off our country's timeline. If we do not wake up soon, this great country can fall. They said the roman empire would never fall and it's remains has been a tourist attraction for hundreds of years. What do you want our country to be?