ROLLED HIM AGAIN

When President Obama came to office, he thought that he could get together with the opposition and work out deals.  He slowly found out that to get 20% of what he wanted, the Republicans had to get 80% of what they wanted.  Worse, then they would beat him over the head with his compromises, i.e. delaying the end of the tax cut for the wealthy.  Finally the President realized he was being rolled.

So he then adopted a confrontational approach with the result that little got done.  Perhaps the biggest thing was when he stood up to the House about their threat to shut down the government, which they did.  Something I found to be odd was how important people felt about the National Parks, Monuments, etc. being closed.  At any rate, the government reopened at a considerable cost to the government.  Nearly as important was the "sequester" that he thought were so draconian that surely congress would act to avoid them, but they didn't and the automatic cuts began.  Well, at least the DOD budget was cut a bit.

Now to fund the Federal government through next September, the President has agreed to incredible compromises.  One awful one lessens regulation of financial derivatives.**  Another allows political parties to  get an order of magnitude more money from individuals.**  Rolled him again.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_budget
** http://news.yahoo.com/sound-smart-2015-appropriations-bill-161002683.html;_ylt=A0LEVvztpJFUSnYAODEPxQt;
http://crfb.org/blogs/budget-gimmicks-cromnibus-bill