hurricanemaxi
Joined: 04 Nov 2011
Posts: 120
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 Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 7:23 pm Post subject: Obama Pushing Populist Message on Consumer Chief, Tax Cuts |
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President Barack Obama is setting up to campaign as a populist defender of the middle class, using the fight over his nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the extension of a payroll tax cut.
The president will be “aggressively” campaigning for Richard Cordray’s confirmation ahead of a likely Dec. 8 Senate vote, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday.
That follows Obama’s travel in recent weeks to battleground states such as Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he accused Republicans of hypocrisy for refusing to let Bush-era tax cuts expire while blocking extension and expansion of a payroll tax cut that the president has said would save the typical family more than $1,000 a year next year.
“From nominations to economic proposals, the point right now is for the administration to show that they’re looking for economic solutions and that Republicans are looking to obstruct them,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey.
In July, Obama nominated Cordray, who was Ohio’s Attorney General from 2009 to 2011. He rose to national prominence when he sued GMAC Mortgage LLC and its corporate parent, Ally Financial Inc., accusing them of using fraudulent affidavits in court cases over foreclosures in the state. He also managed litigation against financial firms including American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America Corp.
Nomination Blocked
Forty-five Senate Republicans have signed a letter sent to Obama in May saying they will oppose any nominee for the consumer agency in part, they said, because the bureau should be run by a board instead of a single director.
The position was created under the Dodd-Frank Act regulating the financial industry. The Republican opposition to Cordray, if it holds, would be enough to block his nomination, because it takes 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to end debate and advance a nomination.
Less than a year before Election Day 2012, with his approval rating at 44 percent in a Dec. 1-3 Gallup Poll, Obama is making a “very important and fundamental strategic shift from 2010,” when Republicans won by framing the election in terms of spending and deficit reduction, said Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who is advising an independent campaign group raising money for the president’s re-election bid.
“He is advancing the Democratic message that we’re for the middle class and Republicans are for the rich,” said Begala, who was a political aide to former president Bill Clinton.
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