A Rocky Start

President Barak Obama has been in office for less than three weeks, and he is off to a rocky start.    Very few things have gone his way since his inauguration.    So far, most of Obama’s problems have been self-inflicted or have been caused by his friends—his fellow Democrats—rather than by the minority party—the Republicans.  

Obama is facing problems on a number of fronts, including his failure to instill confidence rather than fear, his unwillingness to govern in a bipartisan manner as he promised to do, the nature of the stimulus package he is promoting, the numerous tax and other problems involving his nominees for high-level positions, his repeated waivers of his own highly publicized ethics policy, and his public retreat from Bush Administration policies designed to protect the country from terrorist attacks.     For a new President who has been in office for less than three weeks, Obama has managed through his own actions or through bad luck to turn what should have been his honeymoon period into a rocky road full of potholes. 

The biggest problem facing our country today is a lack of confidence.   The public has lost confidence in both government and business.   We will not be able to solve our economic crisis until confidence is restored.    So far, President Obama has not made the transition from being a candidate seeking office to being President of the United States.   In order to attract votes, political candidates frequently paint a “gloom and doom” scenario for the country.    The President of the United States, on the other hand, has a different role.   The President needs to project confidence and optimism and to be reassuring.    In an effort to support an ill-conceived and pork-laden stimulus package, President Obama said last week the country faces a “catastrophe” if the package is not adopted immediately and without further debate.  Obama’s comment fails to recognize the importance of psychology to the country’s economic recovery.  If people expect conditions to get worse, they will take action that causes them to get worse.   If people expect conditions to improve, they will take action that causes them to improve.    We don’t need the President of the United States predicting a “catastrophe.”  

Obama won the Presidential election in large part because he promised to end the bitter partisanship that has poisoned the political atmosphere in Washington.    His first major goal as President was to pass a stimulus package in an effort to boost the economy.   He completely failed, however, to approach the preparation of the stimulus package in a bipartisan manner.    Instead, based on every news report I have read, Obama delegated the preparation of the stimulus package to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and one of the most liberal and partisan politicians in Washington, and to some of her equally liberal colleagues in the House.   The product produced by Speaker Pelosi included billions of dollars of old-fashioned pork-barrel spending and special interest tax breaks as well as a Christmas list of new programs long favored by liberals.   The initial stimulus package was so bad that every single Republican in the House voted against it, and they were joined by a number of moderate Democrats who could not support the package.     I provided a link to the House version of the stimulus package in my last post on this blog.    Many of the absurd provisions contained in the package have been well publicized, and there is no need for me to repeat them here.   For more information about the stimulus package, click on the following link to find an article from National Review Online entitled “50 De-Stimulating Facts”: 

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjcyODIyZGM2MGU1ZDdkNDgxZDc3OTNjYjM4ZDY1ODI= 

After its passage in the House, the stimulus package moved to the U.S. Senate where at least some efforts were made to gain more Republican support.    It now appears that enough changes have been made in the package that a few liberal Republicans have agreed to support it.    The final package, however, will in all likelihood closely resemble the original House version in size and scope.    The final package will represent the largest single expansion of government in my lifetime—and perhaps in the history of the United States—and it will have been adopted during a period of approximately one month with little or no debate about many individual components involving billions of dollars in cost to the country’s shrinking number of taxpayers.   Senator Lindsay Graham, a moderate Republican who has a history of working with Democrats in a bipartisan manner, said this week the stimulus bill “stinks” and the process by which it was developed “stinks.” 

Instead of approaching the stimulus legislation in a bipartisan manner, Obama has reminded the Republicans on several occasions that he won the election, that the Democrats control Congress, and that they can do whatever they please.   What he has said is true.   It’s reality.    Elections have consequences.    But Obama’s comments and conduct represent “business as usual” in Washington rather than the bipartisanship he promised to bring to the political arena.   Despite the way the stimulus package was developed and the many questionable expenditures contained in it, Obama has further said it would be “inexcusable” for anyone to vote against it or to delay its passage.   In my view, Obama has squandered a great opportunity to pass a very important and necessary piece of legislation with broad bipartisan support.   

The stimulus package has not been Obama’s only problem during his short time in office.   He also has had problems with no less than five of his nominations for a Cabinet or other high-level position.   Almost every new President runs into problems with at least one of his nominations, but Obama has had a string of problems, at least four of which have involved nominees who failed to pay their taxes.   To make matters worse, Obama continued his public support for at least two of the nominees after their tax delinquencies were disclosed. 

With Obama’s full support, the Senate confirmed his nomination of Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury despite Geithner’s failure to pay more than $34,000 in self-employment taxes on compensation he received from the International Monetary Fund.   The result is we now have a Treasury Secretary who is in charge of the Internal Revenue Service and who failed to pay all of the taxes he owed to the IRS until he was forced to do so.   Geithner described his failure as an inadvertent oversight, but he reportedly had been told he had to pay self-employment taxes on his salary, and he asked for an extra allowance to cover the tax liability.   Moreover, virtually everyone with a modest amount of knowledge about the tax code would realize the taxes were owed.   Geithner got a pass because of the Senate’s goodwill toward Obama and because he was confirmed before similar tax problems with other Obama nominees became public knowledge.  

Two other Obama nominees “voluntarily” withdrew their nominations after disclosures they also had failed to pay taxes that were due.   Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services after disclosures that he failed to pay more than $128,000 in taxes for consulting income and the use of a car and driver.    Daschle, who worked for a major law firm, claimed he didn’t know he owed taxes on the use of the car and driver.   Again, any amateur would know better.   Amazingly, Obama voiced his continued support for Daschle after the tax problem was disclosed and a mere two days before Daschle withdrew his nomination.  At about the same time, Nancy Killefer, a former U.S. Treasury official, withdrew her nomination as the government’s chief performance officer after disclosures she failed to pay unemployment taxes for a household employee.  It doesn’t end there.   U.S. Representative Hilda Solis, Obama’s nominee as Secretary of Labor, also has tax problems.   Apparently, her husband recently paid $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business.   Rep. Solis and her husband filed joint tax returns, which means she is equally responsible with her husband for any tax liabilities, but she insists the problem belongs to her husband and should not be attributed to her. 

The tax problems involving four Obama nominees arose after another nominee, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, withdrew from consideration as Secretary of Commerce because of a grand jury investigation over whether contributions to Richardson’s political action committee were related to state contracts awarded to the donor’s business. 

When Obama was not being distracted by the tax problems facing his nominees, he was busy granting waivers to his own ethics policy, which he adopted with great fanfare on his first full day in office.    Obama said he was imposing the “most sweeping ethics reform in history.”    Under the new policy, Obama said he would not allow government officials to work on issues on which they had worked as a lobbyist in recent years.   In less than three weeks since the policy was adopted, Obama has granted several waivers to individuals who had previously worked as lobbyists and who Obama wanted to place in various government positions.    It would appear, therefore, that the only purpose of the new policy was to make a good impression on the evening news shows.   In a further mockery of the new policy, if Tom Daschle had been confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he presumably would not have needed a waiver because he was not registered as a lobbyist.  The facts are, however, that Daschle has been employed and paid handsomely by a large law firm even though he does not have a law degree.   He was not a lawyer, and he was not a lobbyist.    He was simply a consultant.    Apparently, the ethics policy does not apply to consultants. 

Obama also has created a problem for himself by moving quickly to rescind some of the policies adopted by President Bush to keep the country safe from terrorists.    For example, he announced that he is closing the terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, but he has no idea what he is going to do with the terrorists who are located there.   After Obama’s announcement, there have been news reports that some of the prisoners who have already been released from the Guantanamo facility have rejoined their terrorist organizations.   Obama also proudly announced to the world, including the world of terrorists, that intelligence agencies would no longer torture terrorist suspects, as if this had been the policy in the past, which is not the case.   Moreover, Obama’s announcement contained a sufficient number of exceptions that his liberal friends were not happy.     

Despite his rough start, Obama still has a good chance to be a great President.   It’s still very early in the game.    He has a long way to go, and he still enjoys very high public approval ratings, as he should as our new President.   Obama, to his credit, has refreshingly admitted that he “screwed up” with some of his nominations to high-level positions.   If Obama is ultimately successful, these early stumbles will be forgotten.   I did not vote for Obama because he is too liberal and too inexperienced for my taste.   Nevertheless, he is now my President.  I want him to be successful, and I need him to be successful.  More importantly, the country desperately needs for him to be successful.   I can only hope he learns from these early mistakes and does not repeat them in the future.