I've been grappling with this conflicting agenda for most of the last several months, but today it seems more obvious than most. How, specifically, does the White House plan to focus on creating jobs when it's also focusing on deficit reduction?
These two goals are in direct conflict.
Add to the mix the discouraging fact that the president explicitly endorsed Kent Conrad's bipartisan debt reduction commission bill. Granted, there could be some political motivation here, but it surely won't encourage the Senate to support additional job creation measures involving government spending -- literally one of the only ways to create a lot of jobs in a short period of time. Again, the Democrats have to make a serious dent in unemployment, like, yesterday. Or else.
So we have two very contradictory goals that could potentially cancel each other out -- reducing an already dysfunctional Senate into a seized-up mess. Not to mention the further elevation of Kent Conrad who I was really hoping would more or less disappear after he perpetually slowed the healthcare reform bill.