Obama’s agenda

· : Congress now has some difficult times ahead – and some difficult decisions to make for the American people. After reading Unit 3, answer the following question(s): Given what you now know about how Congress works and how a bill is passed, what do you think the likelihood of success will be for President Obama to implement his agenda? In retrospect, you can identify past presidents and how well they were in implementing their agenda? Please stay out of the politics and use the PROCESS of implementation as the foundation of your answer. Include citations or URLs for your work to receive full credit, and provide substantive responses to the posts of at least two of your classmates. One of the clearest intentions of our founding fathers, found throughout the Constitution is the separation of power between the Senate and the House of Representatives. This prevents the power abuse that was so prevalent with the European monarchies. Change was, is and will always be very hard in this country because it is next to impossible to turn any bill into legislation (pass both houses of Congress). President Obama’s agenda consists of a Wall Street reform, health care, education, new energy and a comprehensive immigration reform. The success of these reforms depends on his relationship with the Congress, as it is the “ central link “ in America’s politics. The president has no power over Congress because of its separation of the Executive and Legislative branches so he has to rely on bargaining and persuasion, good tactics and good timing. The way the president’s relationship with the Congress is conducted is through agenda setting, lobbying and the power of recommendation. He does have the power of veto over a bill but any president has rarely used that. Political disagreements between the president and the Congress are common as seen in many past administrations: Lyndon Johnson’s reform bills were passed only after a lot of dealing in back rooms with the Congressional chairman. Nixon, who had a pretty negative relationship with Congress, had to seek their support for SALT 1 and for expanding the money spent on the Vietnam War. Clinton had to deal with a mostly republican Congress for the majority of both his terms. With the republicans “ sweeping victories in the 2010 midterms” President Obama will have a very hard time in passing any law without great amends from the democratic side. I think that both the President and the Congress need to compromise and to keep in mind the well being of the American people above the political games in these hard times we are facing. http://www. barackobama. com/issues/immigrationreform/index. php http://www. historylearningsite. co. uk/pres2. htm http://uspolitics. about. com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2. htm