Obama back on the road

After calling job creation the main focus for 2010, President Barack Obama proposed sending $30 billion of money paid back from Wall Street banks to community banks that can then be loaned out to help small businesses nationwide.

“We should start where most new jobs do – in small businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream,” Obama said Thursday.

Obama also proposed a small business tax credit that would go to businesses as incentive to expand their work force and increase wages.

“While we’re at it, let’s also eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment and provide a tax incentive for all businesses, large and small, to invest in new plants and equipment,” the President said.

“Without fuller employment and economic growth we will not be able to pay for more health care, national security, education improvements and other obligations of national, state and local governments,” Senior Senator Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said.

Obama stressed infrastructure expansion through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as a means for job growth and competition with other world powers in the clean energy race.

“There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products,” he said.

Obama wasted no time on infrastructure promises by spending yesterday in Tampa, Fla., to announce a $1.25 billion high-speed rail connecting Tampa and Orlando.

“Encouraging flexible-fuel plug-in hybrid vehicles, updating buildings to reduce energy consumption and developing homegrown sources of energy would be good places to start,” Lugar said.


Spending Freeze

Obama announced a three-year freeze on all discretionary spending, starting in 2011.
“If we don’t take meaningful steps to rein in our debt, it could damage our markets, increase the cost of borrowing and jeopardize our recovery,” Obama said.

Some Democrats still believe spending shouldn’t be cut during financially troubled times.

Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., said addressing the budget is a priority that will “force Washington to make the tough budgeting decisions that hard-working Hoosier families make every day.”

Obama said $20 billion in savings because of the spending freeze have already been identified for next year and that the freeze will affect national security or entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security.

“We must immediately begin to make the tough and common-sense decisions that will rein in runaway federal spending,” Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said.


Health Care

Obama urged Congress to not “walk away” from health care and to “finish the job for the American people.”

Experts see the recent special election victory of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and the loss of a 60-seat, filibuster-proof senate majority for the Democrats as a major roadblock for health care reform.

Obama warned senate Republicans to not make a 60-seat supermajority a requirement “to do any business at all in this town.”

“Just saying ‘no’ to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership,” Obama said.

Since the Massachusetts special election, Democrats have considered scaling back their health care reform efforts.

Political science Senior Lecturer Christine Barbour believes Senate health care reform efforts are already scaled down enough, saying it already does the minimum to insure low-income people.

Barbour said the people who say Obama is doing too much with health care are the same people who don’t want any health care reform at all.

“Our current health care system is economically unsustainable,” Barbour said. “We’re just going to run out of money.”


Supreme Court

Obama slammed the Supreme Court for a decision last week to lift a ban on campaign spending by corporations.

“I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities,” Obama said.

The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that the ban was a violation of First Amendment rights.
Barbour said the ruling essentially lets corporations spend unlimited funds to promote their candidates.

“It makes a mockery of campaign finance reform,” she said. “I am not sure how much difference it will make in practice, but in theory, it’s huge.”