On Tuesday, January 28, President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. In this rendition of his annual speech, the President outlined his agenda for 2014, some of which recalled past priorities. He called upon Congress to "make this a year of action." He also made clear that he was prepared to test the boundaries of his Executive authority if Congress was not prepared to increase its level of activity going forward.
The President proudly pointed out that the nation has reached its lowest unemployment rate in five years, the housing market has largely recovered, and the manufacturing sector is adding jobs for the first time in two decades.
Addressing what many consider the largest political liability facing many Democrats as mid-term elections approach, the President dedicated time to defending the Affordable Care Act, noting that it has helped millions of Americans receive health insurance, and millions more avoid being dropped from their coverage for various conditions. He chided House Republicans for taking 40 votes to repeal the law, but invited them to come to him with specific suggestions for how to improve it.
Early on in his speech, President Obama reiterated last year's request to Congress to help states make high-quality pre-K available to every four year-old. He pointed to the research showing the high return on investment that comes from early education, appealing to the economic arguments for this initiative. Notably, the President did not address the Strong Start for America's Children Act, introduced in both the House and the Senate, ostensibly as the legislative embodiment of last year's request. President Obama's discussion of pulling together a coalition of elected officials, business leaders, and philanthropists to find ways to get more kids into pre-K while Congress got its act together may have ignored one direct target of exhortation - to stir up support for an existing bicameral (and bipartisan) piece of legislation - and certainly lifted the curtain on a main theme of the evening: telling Congress what he was prepared to do without them if they would not act with him.
One of the priorities that the President announced was raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 per hour. Under this initiative, starting in 2015, the federal government will begin giving preference to companies that pay workers higher wages going forward, which could raise the pay for as many as 200,000 workers. However, this measure will only apply prospectively and only to federal contracts. Raising the federal minimum wage will still require an act of Congress.
President Obama also urged business executives to end discrimination against the long-term unemployed and admonished lawmakers for canceling jobless benefits for those who have been out of work for longer than 26 weeks. This chapter of the President's address did not contain the same level of with-or-without you plans for the year that marked much of the rest of the speech, but marked a clear priority, and brought to the spotlight what has been a topic of significant debate on Capitol Hill.
Also on the topic of getting the American people back to work, the President called for new investments in job-training programs to make sure that the skills of the employees coming out of the programs are meeting the needs of the employers that are hiring, which will in turn lead to better paying jobs.
On the environmental front, the President announced plans to raise fuel efficiency standards on heavy duty trucks, having already done so for cars and light trucks, and to set limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants.
These topics, among the many others President Obama covered during his more-than-hour-long speech, showed a clear ambition and clear resolve to get something, anything, done during 2014. However, many agree, the President's goals are not exactly setting the world on fire. Time will tell how much cooperation the President will get from Congress as he attempts to work his way through his announced agenda, but if he meant what he said Tuesday night, for at least some of the goals, Congress' help would be more of an added bonus.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Better Late Than Never
After years of turmoil, the great machine that is the federal government looks as though it is beginning to run relatively smoothly again. For years, unable to agree on a budget, Congress funded the government largely formulaically, passing a series of Continuing Resolutions to maintain the status quo. Finally, on the heels of an October shutdown followed closely by flirtation with a debt default, Congress rolled up its collective sleeves and agreed to a bipartisan budget resolution and then fleshed it out earlier this year with a comprehensive Omnibus Appropriations measure including line-by-line funding for all 12 Appropriations Subcommittee titles.
With President Obama's State of the Union Address before a Joint Session of Congress on January 28, the administration has begun to put together its Fiscal Year 2015 Budget. By law, the President is required to submit a budget to Congress each year on the first Monday in February -- a deadline President Obama successfully met in 2009 but has failed to meet in the years since. Last year, the President delivered his budget on April 8, more than two months late and after the House and Senate had each passed their own respective budget resolutions. On January 23, OMB spokesman Steve Posner announced that the President's 2015 Budget will be released on March 4.
"Now that Congress has finished its work on this year's appropriations, the administration is able to finalize next year's budget," Posner said. "We are moving to complete the budget as quickly as possible to help Congress return to regular order in the annual budget process."
Complicating all of the apparent smooth sailing is the impending debt ceiling debate. As part of the agreement that reopened the government in October, the statutory limit on the public debt and the Treasury Department's authority to borrow in order to finance deficit spending was extended until February 7. While Treasury has in the past resorted to "extraordinary measures" to keep the lights on past a lapse in the limit, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has urged prompt action in February to avoid another government shutdown or possibly even a default on the government's debts. Notwithstanding the recent run of bipartisan goodwill that has accompanied the December budget agreement and the recent Omnibus Appropriations measure, it remains to be seen whether raising the debt limit will come with any added demands by congressional Republicans -- or concessions by anyone.
Responses to the Treasury Secretary's warning -- with Democrats calling for an immediate clean increase of the debt ceiling and Republicans warning that increasing the debt ceiling without significant concessions would be a clear sign of fiscal irresponsibility -- show that even with the recent bipartisan efforts, when it comes to the core fiscal debates such as this, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Next up: POTUS and SOTU.
With President Obama's State of the Union Address before a Joint Session of Congress on January 28, the administration has begun to put together its Fiscal Year 2015 Budget. By law, the President is required to submit a budget to Congress each year on the first Monday in February -- a deadline President Obama successfully met in 2009 but has failed to meet in the years since. Last year, the President delivered his budget on April 8, more than two months late and after the House and Senate had each passed their own respective budget resolutions. On January 23, OMB spokesman Steve Posner announced that the President's 2015 Budget will be released on March 4.
"Now that Congress has finished its work on this year's appropriations, the administration is able to finalize next year's budget," Posner said. "We are moving to complete the budget as quickly as possible to help Congress return to regular order in the annual budget process."
Complicating all of the apparent smooth sailing is the impending debt ceiling debate. As part of the agreement that reopened the government in October, the statutory limit on the public debt and the Treasury Department's authority to borrow in order to finance deficit spending was extended until February 7. While Treasury has in the past resorted to "extraordinary measures" to keep the lights on past a lapse in the limit, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has urged prompt action in February to avoid another government shutdown or possibly even a default on the government's debts. Notwithstanding the recent run of bipartisan goodwill that has accompanied the December budget agreement and the recent Omnibus Appropriations measure, it remains to be seen whether raising the debt limit will come with any added demands by congressional Republicans -- or concessions by anyone.
Responses to the Treasury Secretary's warning -- with Democrats calling for an immediate clean increase of the debt ceiling and Republicans warning that increasing the debt ceiling without significant concessions would be a clear sign of fiscal irresponsibility -- show that even with the recent bipartisan efforts, when it comes to the core fiscal debates such as this, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Next up: POTUS and SOTU.
Monday, January 20, 2014
Congress Funds the Government
Before MLK Day, Congress agreed to, and President Obama signed, a compromise $1.012 trillion appropriations bill to fund government agency activities for the balance of Fiscal Year 2014. The bill, the detailed follow-up to the Murray-Ryan Budget agreement passed in December, spells out discretionary spending for every line item in the 12 annual appropriations bills, but does so under a single Omnibus Appropriations measure.
Traditionally, the goal of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees is to each pass 12 individual appropriations bills, meet in conference to reconcile differences, and then each house of Congress pass the final bills one-by-one. This time around, rather than moving each measure separately, lawmakers completed their work on all 12 bills in a single action - an Omnibus Appropriations Act.
Despite early speculation that the budget agreement would lead to sweeping changes by closing tax loopholes and placing entitlement reforms on the table, the December budget agreement did not include any tax reforms and the Omnibus Appropriations Bill only addresses discretionary spending. Major entitlement programs remain largely unchanged.
Although a short (three-day) continuing resolution was needed to buy lawmakers the time to pass the 2014 appropriations law and avoid a shutdown like the one we saw in October 2013, this round of deal-making had very little of the political brinksmanship that has impacted much of the last several years. This fact alone is cause for some optimism as lawmakers turn their attention to the February Debt Ceiling debate and Fiscal Year 2015 funding. However, in this high-pressure environment with mid-term elections on the horizon, for most, this optimism remains cautious.
Traditionally, the goal of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees is to each pass 12 individual appropriations bills, meet in conference to reconcile differences, and then each house of Congress pass the final bills one-by-one. This time around, rather than moving each measure separately, lawmakers completed their work on all 12 bills in a single action - an Omnibus Appropriations Act.
Despite early speculation that the budget agreement would lead to sweeping changes by closing tax loopholes and placing entitlement reforms on the table, the December budget agreement did not include any tax reforms and the Omnibus Appropriations Bill only addresses discretionary spending. Major entitlement programs remain largely unchanged.
Although a short (three-day) continuing resolution was needed to buy lawmakers the time to pass the 2014 appropriations law and avoid a shutdown like the one we saw in October 2013, this round of deal-making had very little of the political brinksmanship that has impacted much of the last several years. This fact alone is cause for some optimism as lawmakers turn their attention to the February Debt Ceiling debate and Fiscal Year 2015 funding. However, in this high-pressure environment with mid-term elections on the horizon, for most, this optimism remains cautious.
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