Kyle Bell

President Obama went full steam into the lion’s den on Friday as he joined Republicans at their annual retreat in Baltimore, Maryland. While he gave a speech that sounded similar themes to his State of the Union, such as a shared burden on solving America’s problems, he also took questions from House Republicans. It was televised on C-Span and many of the cable networks picked it up as well.

This event was a first. While President Obama last year met with Republicans on several occasions, no television cameras were allowed into the meeting. Certainly this is a big departure from the days of President Bush, who would never meet with Congressional Democrats other than in the White House. President Obama showed a great deal of confidence going into a room with 178 members that are openly hostile towards him. Many of them were publicly pushing ideas that he would set up “death panels” on grandma and even raised questions over whether he was an American citizen.

Most of the questions were framed in a way that you would expect on Fox News: loaded with a bunch of commentary, followed by a “why do you hate America so much?” Congressman Mike Pence asked the president whether he would embrace tax cuts. Of course the stimulus package last year, which Republicans opposed unanimously in the House, was nearly 1/3 tax cuts to the middle class. The Republican idea of “across the board tax cuts” are tax cuts to millionaires and corporations, similar to what we saw during the Bush years. President Obama rightly questioned why the Republican Party opposed a bill that included such large amounts of tax relief, as well as funding to cities and states that were laying off teachers, police officers, firefighters and health care professionals to ensure that they kept their jobs.

Another major point of contention was the idea that President Obama and the Democrats have set the country on a path to fiscal disaster. That simply is untrue. As President Obama pointed out, he inherited a $1.2 trillion annual deficit from President Bush. Yes, the size of the deficit increased last year, but only marginally. Passing the stimulus package was the main reason for that. When Obama took office a year ago, in the first quarter of 2009, the GDP fell 6.4%. If we had not passed the stimulus act, most economists agree that we would not have seen the kind of business growth that led to a nearly 6% increase in GDP for the 4th quarter of 2009. That is a hugely positive sign that you won’t hear Republicans touting. We are on the road to economic recovery. Jobs will not appear overnight, but they will come. Returning to the failed policies of the Bush years, however, will only ensure another economic disaster.