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Obama Preps Last Prime Time Address To Congress

Obama Preps Last Prime Time Address To Congress

By David Hawkings, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Perhaps the surest prediction about the next State of the Union Address is that it’s going to be the last speech afforded that lofty title for fully two years.

The second reliable forecast is that on the night of Jan. 12, President Barack Obama will take a nontraditional approach to his final annual appearance before a joint session of Congress.

The first of those expectations is borne of modern precedent; the second comes from the White House itself.

Gerald R. Ford was the last lame duck who came to the Capitol to deliver a State of the Union in the waning days of his presidency. (“There is room for improvement, as always, but today we have a more perfect union than when my stewardship began,” he declared on Jan. 12, 1977, the last time the speech was as early on the calendar as it is this year.)

Four years later, Jimmy Carter sent an exhaustive written report to Capitol Hill a week before leaving office. But the four subsequent presidents all allowed their final election-year addresses to stand as the last word.

And so, while this will be the first State of the Union with Paul D. Ryan looking over the president’s shoulder from the speaker’s chair, it will very likely be the final time Obama stands on that rostrum.

And there will be speculation about the identity of the most notable person missing — the so-called designated survivor, an official in the presidential line of succession who’s taken safely far from the Capitol and guarded by the Secret Service for the night, so there’s some continuity in the American government if the unthinkable happens. (If no Cabinet secretary gets tapped, the assignment could fall to 81-year-old Republican Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, who as the longest-serving current member of the majority is Senate president pro tempore, No. 3 in the pecking order after the men seated behind the president.)

Like so much else in Washington, the whole thing used to be on a fundamentally smaller and simpler scale.

For more than a century, the president fulfilled his responsibility by delivering a thick and bureaucratic report that also amounted to his budget request. Woodrow Wilson decided it was a smart idea to use the State of the Union to sell his agenda in person — and a joint session once a year to hear him out has been the default setting since 1913.

The bully pulpit has expanded as technology has changed. Since Calvin Coolidge in 1923 the speech has been on the radio. It’s been on national television since Harry Truman’s address in 1947. Lyndon B. Johnson moved the proceedings to the evening in 1965, while webcasts began early in the tenure of George W. Bush.

Now the audience may have maxed out. The Nielsen ratings don’t include those digital live streams, but they nonetheless show steady and steeps drop in viewership for Barack Obama’s speeches. He got 20 million fewer sets of eyeballs last year than in his first speech to Congress — a drop of 40 percent, to 31.7 million people in 2015, the smallest audience in 15 years.

Next week’s speech is Obama’s final chance to reverse the trend, which seems like a decided long shot.

©2016 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama announces steps the administration is taking to reduce gun violence while delivering a statement in the East Room of the White House in Washington January 5, 2016.  REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque 

 

Ryan Faces His First Big Test As House Speaker: Avoid A Government Shutdown

Ryan Faces His First Big Test As House Speaker: Avoid A Government Shutdown

By Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan faces his first big test as Congress stares down a deadline to do something that has become increasingly difficult: pass a bill to fund the government.

With just seven workdays remaining before the Dec. 11 deadline, the new speaker will aim to leverage his political honeymoon into a strategy that will avoid another federal shutdown.

But already Ryan is under pressure to tack on a host of GOP policy provisions to the $1.1 trillion spending bill — among them efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, halt the entry of Syrian refugees into the U.S. and repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Forcing any of those extras into the bill might bolster support from Republican conservatives, but it would also unleash a backlash from Democrats, setting up a showdown in Congress and with the White House.

“We obviously have difference of opinions on all of these big issues,” Ryan said Tuesday, declining to explain how they might be resolved. “Those negotiations are ongoing right now.”

The Wisconsin Republican received an assist from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 2 Republican, who suggested Monday that the Dec. 11 deadline to pass a spending bill might slip to Dec. 18, allowing more time to get rank-and-file Republicans on board.

Leaders need to tamp down GOP dissent over what will likely be a compromise with Democrats.

“Our first principle starting out is to get the most conservative bill we can,” McCarthy told reporters Monday in the Capitol, saying he was “hopeful” the voting could be wrapped up by the 11th, but noting that Dec. 18 is the final workday before lawmakers break for the Christmas holidays.

“I wish it would go a little faster,” he said. “If not, we’re here until the 18th, and it won’t make any difference. We’ll get it done.”

He added: “I do not see a shutdown happening.”

President Barack Obama previously said he would not sign another temporary funding bill beyond the one that runs out Dec. 11, but the White House softened that Monday, opening the door for a stopgap measure for just a few days.

Both sides had hoped that the two-year budget accord reached this fall would create a smoother landing for the year-end spending bill. But staff negotiators have struggled over working nights and weekends to try to reach a compromise.

The days ahead will be pivotal for Ryan, who has enjoyed mostly positive reviews since he took over for beleaguered House Speaker John A. Boehner this fall.

But Ryan’s leadership has not yet been seriously tested.

“I say with some confidence that the newly elected speaker of the House doesn’t want to preside over a government shutdown six weeks into his tenure,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

Just two months ago, the funding fight over GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, led in part by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the GOP presidential candidate, helped push Boehner out of office. Conservatives rallied opposition to Planned Parenthood after secretly recorded videos showed officials for the family planning organization discussing the use of fetal tissue for research.

Boehner decided to resign after conservatives threatened to oust him for refusing to engage in a protracted fight that could have resulted in a shutdown.

Hoping to avoid a similar outcome and unite the fractious GOP majority, Ryan vowed to change the culture of House leadership, mainly by meeting the Republican lawmakers’ demands to be more involved in the decision-making process.

Ryan has tapped the chairmen of the Appropriation Committee subcommittees — the leaders responsible for the spending bill — to sit down with rank-and-file lawmakers to craft priorities in the pending legislation.

And the new speaker launched a second weekly conference meeting — the private GOP sessions in the Capitol basement — as a forum to discuss the thorny details of various policies.

“Our challenge that Paul has set out for himself — doing a little more regular order, doing bigger issues — you see us working toward that,” McCarthy said. “They feel they’re being listened to.”

©2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan via wikimedia commons