Stakes High for Obama on Deficit Plan

The president will unveil his thinking on Wednesday.

By George E. Condon Jr.
National Journal
Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The president's forthcoming plan for long-term deficit reduction poses opportunities and perils for the White House.

With polls showing the public doubting the president’s leadership on budget issues, his much-anticipated address on fiscal issues on Wednesday represents his best chance to get back into the debate and be seen as more than a mere observer of the policy battle that is likely to dominate Washington for the next two years.

If he falls short in the address to be delivered at George Washington University, it may turn out to have been his last real chance, with serious implications for his reelection campaign.

The president has been sharply criticized for submitting a fiscal year 2012 budget that ignored most of the recommendations of his own deficit-reduction commission and that forecast mounting debt for decades to come. Republicans pounced, seeing a vacuum that they hoped to fill with the recent unveiling of a GOP budget from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

But as painful as the short-term barbs were to take, waiting may turn out to be a long-term political boon to the president. “You could say that the president successfully outwaited the Republicans,” said William Galston, who was President Clinton’s chief domestic policy adviser.

(More here.)