WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama devoted one word — "deficit" — to the issue that brought Washington to the brink of fiscal crises time and again during his first term.
But it was the paragraph that followed in his inaugural address that foreshadowed what's to come — more hard bargaining and more last-minute deals driven by Obama's own conviction that he now wields an upper hand.
"We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit," he said. "But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. The commitments we make to each other — through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security — these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great."
This was the language of his re-election campaign.
And while his speech contained no reference to either political party, his pointed rejection of "a nation of takers" was an implicit reminder of Mitt Romney's infelicitous declaration that Obama's support came from the 47 percent of American voters "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."
In keeping with the objective of inaugural addresses, Obama chose to draw attention to the aspirations he hopes will define him rather than the conflicts that have characterized his relations with a divided Congress. He conceded that "outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time," but forged ahead with a call for training more math and science teachers, for building roads and even for funding more research labs.
If there was a way to reconcile such spending with demands to stabilize the nation's debt, he didn't mention it.
"Inaugural addresses are intended for the ages, not for a particular moment," said Matt Bennett, a former aide to Al Gore and a vice president of the Democratic-leaning group Third Way. "We will have to wait for the State of the Union, which is addressed directly to Congress, for a clearer sense of what he wants to do in the near-term and how he wants to get it done."
Obama's State of the Union address is scheduled for Feb. 12.
Obama and his aides approached the inaugural speech with a belief that the president had replenished his political strength with his re-election and with his end-of-year deal with Republicans that raised upper-income tax rates on some of the wealthiest Americans.
What's more, Obama delivered the speech as House Republicans were backing off earlier threats to withhold an extension of the nation's borrowing limit if not accompanied by sharp reductions in government spending. Instead, House leaders plan a vote Wednesday to raise the government debt ceiling for three months to avert a first-ever default on U.S. obligations.
The White House welcomed the move, even though Obama as recently as last week had rejected the idea of a short term increase. "We shouldn't be doing this on a one- to three-month time frame," he said in a White House news conference. Yet, on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that while the bill still faces concerns in Congress, if it reaches Obama's desk the president "would not stand in the way of the bill becoming law."
