PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama’s IOUs start coming due
By CALVIN WOODWARD
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidential campaigns are long in the making, quick to be forgotten. But one part of them lives on for years: the victor’s promises.
President Barack Obama paved his path to re-election with fewer promises than in 2008. The ones he did lay down, though, are meaty, legacy-shaping for him and consequential to ordinary lives today and for generations to come, for better or worse.
They also are extraordinarily difficult to achieve in a time of gridlock grief and budgets that are tight when they are not paralyzed.
He’s promised to set a course in law against global warming, stop Iran from gaining the ability to make nuclear weapons, slash America’s use of foreign oil, restrain college costs, take a big bite out of the national debt even while protecting the heart of the big entitlement programs and overhaul immigration law.
He’s promised to make health insurance not only universally accessible, but “affordable,” through a 2010 health care law that is finally entering prime time and will soon be tested
