Daily World Buzz: The new U.S. Congress launches its challenge to Obama

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

The new U.S. Congress launches its challenge to Obama

NEW YORK - Forty thousand teachers laid off, fewer medical research, fewer police on the streets: it is an Armageddon scenario according to the White House that opens today in the inauguration day of the new Republican majority in the Chamber of Deputies. A right which has declared "total war" to public spending.

The new Speaker of the House John Boehner, today will confirm the target of 100 billion public spending cuts, down 20% from current levels. And the first vote high political value is already defined in class January 12: the agenda for the repeal of the entire health reform Barack Obama.

The president boasts security in the face of new Republican troops. "At first, play for their base - said returning to Washington from vacation to Hawaii - but then have to recognize that our job is to govern, create jobs, make America competitive. There will be time for the election campaign in 2012, this 'year we have to consolidate the economic recovery.

" But it is the 2012 Olympics to dominate the attention from today, opens a two-year battle between the president and the right, with the White House as the final goal. The 242 deputies Republicans have a good margin of majority and the House became the scene of a clash of values between two visions of America.

"The state is the problem not the solution", the slogan made famous by Ronald Reagan in the eighties, is raised by the anti-tax Tea Party, the current rise in the ranks of Republicans. For right-wing think tank the spending cuts should be even more brutal: the Heritage Foundation lists 343 billion of costs to be abolished.

But already cut 100 billion - on a budget of 477 - requires enormous sacrifices. Since the right considered untouchable military spending, the burden of austerity would focus on school, research, public transport, justice. "Cuts of that size would damage economic growth, would be a blow to the prospects of the unemployed", accuses the Obama administration budget director, Jacob Lew.

Sacrifices such extensive open contradictions even within the right: many Republican governors are unprepared to deal with the decimation of federal funds. The local finance is already on its last legs, many countries want to reduce the salaries and pensions of civil servants, but the cuts to transfers from Washington would open new loopholes with the risk of pushing into bankruptcy large states including those in Republican leadership.

It is said that one can succeed in such extreme scenarios. The plan to reduce 20% of the federal budget on paper only has the votes to pass the House, not the Senate where the Democrats retained a majority, however, Obama could still use the presidential veto to block it. The same goes for the abolition of the healthcare reform: in this case, the House vote will have the sense of a witness, an act of the right consistency with the themes on which he won the November election.

In other areas, the Congress, which meets today 112esimo meeting will be combative, intent on bombing the headquarters of Obama. A point man for this task is California Congressman Darrell Issa, a pasdaran the anti-state. Issa will chair the committee, which affect the parliamentary inquiries, and now intends to launch at least six.

In the target, different themes ranging from corruption to excess of interventionism in Afghanistan Obama's environmental and consumer protection. Vade retro, state, Issa is the leitmotif of the Democratic Administration, which defines as "one of the most corrupt governments in history."