In one of the longer press conferences that he or any other Presidents has held in the last couple of decades, Barack Obama today discussed a wide range of subjects with the media at the White House.
The first third of the presser dealt exclusively with the economy, as Obama again discussed his package of tax breaks and other incentives that includes a new loan fund that would encourage community banks to provide up to $30 billion to small businesses, improving access to credit, legislation that he said in the past would engender 90% to 100% support from Congressional Republicans in the past, but said that partisan gamesmanship precluded their support now.
To boost his theory, he cited the endorsement on Thursday by outgoing GOP Ohio Senator George Voinovich, who explained to The Washington Post today why he now supports the President's plan:
In an interview, Voinovich said he could no longer support Republican efforts to delay the measure in hopes of winning the right to offer additional amendments. Most of the proposed GOP amendments "didn't have anything to do with the bill" anyway, Voinovich said, and amounted merely to partisan "messaging."
"We don't have time for messaging," Voinovich said. "We don't have time anymore. This country is really hurting."
The President was asked at the very beginning of his press conference if he expected Democrats to take a drubbing in the fall if the Congressional midterms are looked at as a referendum on how he has handled the economy, where unemployment remains at a stubborn high, now at 9.5%.
Obama said that "people are frustrated and people are angry," and acknowledged that since the Democrats have controlled all three branches of the federal government for the past year and a half, "people ask, 'what have you done?'"
Obama's $30 billion plan for small businesses is part of a$ $180 billion in fresh infrastructure spending and business tax breaks that he has called, which include permanently extending research and development tax credits for businesses, rewarding companies that develop technologies domestically and preserve American jobs.
But to many Americans, that smells like a "stimulus" plan redux, which fairly or not, has been perceived as a bust. When CBS News' Chip Reid asked Obama if his plan was a stimulus in everything but name because of the negative taint that word now has, Obama rebuked him, saying that it's his job to stimulate job growth, and he'll continue to do everything he can to "stimulate" the economy until his last day in office.
This article appears in Sep 9-15, 2010.