As if the Gulf weren’t enough, the White House now faces a spill of its own making in Congress this week, infuriating old Democratic allies and putting a hold on new war funding sought by President Barack Obama.
Talks were under way Tuesday to extricate the administration by coming up with offsets to pay for new education assistance to avert teacher layoffs this fall. At the same time, renewed efforts began to salvage a $24 billion package of state Medicaid assistance, even if it means paring back a proposed 18-month fix of Medicare reimbursements for physicians.
The backdrop in both cases is a Saturday night letter from Obama calling for action on education and Medicaid assistance but giving no direction on how to pay for them — or how to win support in a deficit-conscious Congress. Leaked in advance to the Sunday newspapers, the letter caught party leaders by surprise, and with Obama largely absent from both fights to date, it was widely seen by Democrats as more political showmanship at their expense by the administration.
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