No doubt about it. This is a president we could support.
Seventy-five years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday: ''We have an obligation to keep that promise, to safeguard Social Security for our seniors, people with disabilities and all Americans -- today, tomorrow and forever.'' Some Republican leaders in Congress are ''pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall,'' Obama said.He contended that such privatization was ''an ill-conceived idea that would add trillions of dollars to our budget deficit while tying your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders and the ups and downs of the stock market.''
And this:
President Obama delivered a strong defense on Friday night of a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, using a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan to proclaim that “as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.”After weeks of avoiding the high-profile battle over the center — his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said last week that the president did not want to “get involved in local decision-making” — Mr. Obama stepped squarely into the thorny debate.
Looks like, as a follow-up to the misbegotten statements from Robert Gibbs, the boss has decided to set things straight -- followed by watching the numbers to see if they give a little post-Gibbs jump, I bet.
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Of course, all this palaver about Social Security may be Obama's way of distancing himself from his bi-partisan deficit commission's apparent threat to Social Security benefits.
GOP leaders are not pressing for privatization. The idea proved so unpopular when President George W. Bush proposed it in 2004 that Congress, then led by Republicans, never took it up. The concept lives on in a budget proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, but only a handful of GOP lawmakers have signed on to that measure. And, in the aftermath of the worst shock to the financial system since the Great Depression, many Republican lawmakers would just as soon see the idea forgotten.
Meanwhile, a coalition of 60 liberal groups and advocates for the elderly, including the AFL-CIO and MoveOn.org, are predicting a different threat to Social Security: the possibility that a bipartisan deficit commission created by Obama will propose slashing benefits to help dig the nation out of debt.
Coalition members plan to buttonhole lawmakers as they campaign for reelection this fall, demanding that they sign a pledge to oppose any cuts to program entitlements, such as raising the retirement age. ...WaPo
