Reality Ate My Deadline

The cracks are starting to form. This week alone, the Administration announced it would miss the following self-imposed deadlines:

Report on Budget Cuts
Healthcare Reform Passage
Report on Gitmo Closing

Looming deadlines:
Sotomayor Supreme Court Confirmation
Cap & Trade Passage
Labor Reform (Card Check/Employee Free Choice Act) Passage
Policy on Gays in the Military
Stimulus II Passage
Immigration Reform Passage

I started writing this blog post and as I looked around online, I found that another old Hill flack had made just this point on cnn.com yesterday. So, I defer to John Feehery, who explains this idea much more eloquently than I could have.

John Feehery writes:

The Obama agenda is breathtaking in its scope and eye-popping in its cost.

He seeks to completely recast the health care, energy, financial services and automobile sectors of this country, as he seeks to make the tax code more progressive, retirement programs more sustainable, and the immigration system more welcoming to immigrants. And he also wants to stimulate the economy and get us out of what some people are calling the "Great Recession." But can it all get done, and in a form that makes his political base happy?

Read the rest of John’s piece to learn how money, time, political capital, focus and ego will make it increasingly difficult for this agenda to move. We can only hope the reality sets in and stops this train wreck.

I felt shivers down my spine when a Democratic political operative recently told me, “I just want to keep moving—not sleep or eat—not just get [Obama’s] agenda passed into law. The clock is ticking. The time is now.”

Thankfully, the clock is ticking. Tick, tick, tick...