Opinion: How Obama can end the agony – Elizabeth Drew – POLITICO.com
An obvious way out of the current impasse over the debt limit exists, if only President Barack Obama would see fit to take it.
This exit path would get the House Republican members, out of the corner they’ve painted themselves into by attaching a demand for large cuts in the budget without any revenue; would extract the Democrats out of the tangled web they have woven as they try to come up with a proposal that protects themselves and the entitlement programs; and would give the Obama a larger hand than even he seems to want in managing economic policy for the remainder of his presidency – however long that would be.
With the leaders of both chambers still noodling around in a search for what to add to the bill to raise the debt ceiling, with Obama having a long series of high-level meetings at the White House, with the public growing tired of the spectacle and worried about jobs, and the bond market getting antsy, the stock market poised to take a deep dive, foreign investors who prop up our debt having second thoughts and the president looking increasingly like a wuss there’s a simple step that Obama could – no, should – take.
Tonight, (though last night would have been good), he could stand at a podium in the East room — the Osama bin Laden podium would be good -– or speak from the Oval Office, (the press room wouldn’t provide enough gravamen to the business at hand); and he should demand that the Congress get a clean bill raising the debt limit to his desk by Thursday.
Moreover, he should state that he will veto any bill encumbered by amendments, and emphasize that if the Congress does not comply he will take the issue to the American people.
This would be no small threat. If I were a betting person I would hazard a very large sum that if the president stands up and says, “ENOUGH” — that he has tried and tried and tried to work out a compromise acceptable to the two major parties, but he hasn’t been able to and neither have they, that he is now demanding what he should have received in the first place, a bill unencumbered with Republican economic policy — he will be cheered throughout the land.
