President Obama
PRESIDENT Barack Obama vowed in an interview published Wednesday that, if re-elected, he will forge a “grand bargain” with Republicans to reduce America’s debt and achieve comprehensive immigration—both in the first year of a second term.
Obama’s comments came in a telephone conversation with the editor and the publisher of the Des Moines Register. The newspaper published the exchange on its website. The conversation had initially been off-the-record, but the White House gave the daily permission to publish it after editor Rick Green penned an unusual public complaint.
“It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs,” Obama said.
“ And we can easily meet—’easily’ is the wrong word—we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years, and we can stabilize our deficit-to-GDP ratio in a way that is really going to be a good foundation for long-term growth. Now, once we get that done, that takes a huge piece of business off the table,” he went on to say.
“The second thing I’m confident we’ll get done next year is immigration reform,” Obama said. “And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. George Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to understand the changing nature of America. And so I am fairly confident that they’re going to have a deep interest in getting that done. And I want to get it done because it’s the right thing to do and I’ve cared about this ever since I ran back in 2008.”