Obama eyes busy fall after return from summer vacation
ASSOCIATED PRESS
First lady Michelle Obama, left, daughters Sasha Obama, Malia Obama and President Barack Obama return from a 16-day vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., arrive at the White House in Washington today.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Barack Obama, followed by daughter Sasha Obama, returns from a 16-day vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., arriving at the White House in Washington, late today.
WASHINGTON » President Barack Obama returned from vacation today, ready for a busy fall season and more battles with Congress over Zika funding, the federal budget and $400 million the administration paid Iran this year for the never-completed sale of military equipment.
Obama is also expected to campaign doggedly throughout October to help elect Democrat Hillary Clinton as president.
A theoretically rested president returned to the White House after a 16-day getaway to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, with his wife, Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, and their dogs. He played 10 rounds of golf and went out to dinner eight times.
Throughout Sunday, scores of residents lined roads to watch and wave as the motorcade crisscrossed the island on the last day of Obama’s final vacation there as president. Signs posted around the island’s various towns thanked the family for coming.
Obama will be at the White House for about a day before hitting the road again Tuesday to survey damage from heavy flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that killed at least 13 people and displaced thousands more.
The president had resisted pressure from Louisianans and others to interrupt his vacation to go meet with officials and flood victims, and the White House stressed that he was receiving regular briefings on the flooding during the vacation. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump filled the void created by Obama’s absence, touring the ravaged area Friday with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
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With Congress still on a seven-week break, Obama and aides probably will focus on what the White House can get from lawmakers before they leave town to campaign for re-election. Congress returns after Labor Day, and the House and Senate will have just a month to pass a catch-all spending bill by the end of the federal budget year on Sept. 30 to keep the government operating.
Lawmakers plan to leave Washington again in October and not return until after the Nov. 8 elections.
The White House will continue to push for money to help keep the mosquito-borne Zika virus from spreading and develop a vaccine. Florida last week identified the popular Miami tourist haven of South Beach as the second site of Zika transmission on the U.S. mainland. A section of Miami’s Wynwood arts district was the first.
Obama asked Congress for $1.9 billion this year for Zika prevention. Republicans offered $1.1 billion and added provisions Democrats objected to, including language on Planned Parenthood, leaving the matter in limbo before Congress adjourned in mid-July. Lawmakers could end up adding Zika money to the broader spending bill.
In turn, incensed lawmakers have promised to keep the heat on the administration over $400 million it delivered to Iran in January. Republicans say the money was ransom to win freedom for four Americans held in Iran. Questioned about the payment earlier this month, Obama said: “We do not pay ransom. We didn’t here. And we … won’t in the future.”
The president and other officials denied any linkage. But administration officials also said it made little sense not to “retain maximum leverage,” as State Department spokesman John Kirby put it last week, for the money long owed to Iran, to ensure the U.S. citizens’ release, given uncertainty about whether Iran would keep its promise to free them the day the money was to be delivered.
Iran had paid $400 million in the 1970s for U.S. military equipment, but the Iranian government was overthrown and the equipment wasn’t delivered.
The explanations have not satisfied critics in and out of Congress. Trump has begun telling supporters at his campaign rallies that Obama “openly and blatantly” lied about the prisoners. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Obama has set a “dangerous precedent” and owes the public a “full accounting of his actions.”
Obama heads into the fall, and what’s expected to be a dogged effort on his part to boost Clinton to the White House, in improved public standing, according to the Pew Research Center.
His job approval rating stands at 53 percent, about the same as just before July’s political conventions. But Obama’s standing among independent voters has reached positive territory for the first time since December 2012. Fifty-three percent of independents approve of Obama’s job performance, the center found, while 40 percent disapprove. Independents had split 46 percent to 46 percent on the question in June.
Obama won’t spend much time at the White House in the coming weeks.
After visiting Louisiana, the president heads to Nevada on Aug. 31 to discuss environmental protection at the Lake Tahoe Summit. He follows with a trip to China and Laos from Sept. 2-9.
34 responses to “Obama eyes busy fall after return from summer vacation”
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four and a half months to squeeze in as much international travel as possible. maybe even a visit to any of the 57 states he hasn’t seen yet.
He has to go tp so expensive restaurants fly around the country, entertain his family and himself, golf, and of course, get ready for his next expensive vacation. This guy ;oves abusing taxpayers’ money.
Ready to spend more taxpayer money flying around the world. And what for? Every other world leader correctly sees him as a useless lame duck that doesn’t back up anything he says.
You’re wrong, actually. I do travel overseas, and the sense of relief when Obama was elected was palpable. Europeans disliked the younger Bush, and Obama was seen as a word for sanity. They feel sorry for us now, facing the specter of Trump, and other traveling yanks I know have gone back to saying they’re Canadian when the subject of Trump comes up. How does he not back up anything he says? I think you really mean you don’t agree with what he says. That’s quite a different thing.
ok let’s get back to the worst potus in American history who has only 6 mo left to get something…anything…to put on his blank postive Legacy List.
O’s worst achivement list are filled to da max!
Someday you will get the picture. I guess you were absent when they taught U.S. Government.
Is it me or what? If Congress has the “Power of the Purse”,how is it possible for the President to get 400 Million dollars,without Congresses interactions? By this same authority,doesn’t he wield the same power to just take the 1.9 Billion dollars for the fight against ZIKA? OR Anything?…….still scratching my head?
As previously stated: That 400 Million dollars Ransom would have made better sense, for it,to be used to compensate the Original Iran Hostages…..is it me or just me?IMUA
It is not just you. My head is bald from all the scratching I have done. The $400 million plus the $1.3 billion the Obama administration claims was interest on the money should have been kept to compensate the U.S. Embassy staff held hostage for more than a year and to compensate the U.S. for the destruction of our Embassy in Iran. Trump is right – the Obama administration does not know how to negotiate anything.
I think the Presidents lack of serious accomplishments are a better reflection on just how busy he is, not the AP AND sa telling us he’s going to be so busy.
What do you mean lack of serious accomplishments? He accomplished quite a lot, esp when you consider on the day of his inauguration, top republicans met to block everything he was going to oppose; they sure weren’t thinking country first. My favorite accomplishment is getting Kagan and Sotomayor on the Supreme Court.
Executive Orders was O’s way of bypassing Congress. Community Organizers are not known for negotiating but rather trying to implement “His way is the only way” of “governing”.
2 liberal judges is an accomplishment? Um ok ….[cough]
He will do exactly what B Clinton did–have a “farewell tour” of the world AKA lining up his $500,000 speech agenda schedule. Then, HE will come back and finalize HIS pardon list–I can only speculate who will be on it–one wouldn’t expect it could be as bad as Clinton’s BUT????
Mumia Abu-Jamal
It is a shame the republican party has abandoned republican values and today are little more than Witch doctors who practice Voodoo. I wonder, and in fact I hope that republicans will someday find republican values so that we can have a two party system again. As it is now, why would anyone vote for a party that hasn’t balanced the federal budget in over 50 years and bears the majority of the blame for the country’s debt? Time to vote for the true conservative party, the democratic party.
Lock him up.
Here’s the answer to your repetitive inanity, a list of democrat accomplishment over the last 8 years:
Inflaming an ever increasing racial divide.
Impoverishing the largest progressive run state, California, with the highest percentage of those living under the poverty line.
Ignoring our soon to be insolvent entitlement programs.
Presiding over the slowest economic recovery, the lowest labor participation rate in 4 decades.
Squandering US influence in the world at the expense of vital national interests, particularly the Middle East.
Negotiating a nuclear agreement that will set of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and actually shelter the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
An immigration policy that amounts to the dissolution of our borders in order to import democrat party voters.
Use of the IRS like a sort of political gestapo to shut up conservative groups.
Supporting the sale of baby body parts.
These appear to be the guiding principles of the Democrat party, either by design or by ignorance, aimed at a slow destruction of the country.
Ah Winston, love your original post. Keep it up. lol Still I hope that the republican party can find its way back to being republicans instead of being witch doctors. You can complain about the accomplishments of democrats but at least they did not ever took over a country with a slight surplus and when they finally got removed, left the country with a trillion plus deficit. Way to go. Whose side are you on again? With friends like today’s republicans, who needs enemies. lol
Winston listed FACTS. Boots listed…his funny opinions which he laffs at.
Man Winston! If only I was on the Olympic Commitee handing out Gold Metals. You would definitely go home with one today….eh? try to go easy on “Good ole Puss and Boots”,he’s a good ole boy, I’m hopeful one day he’ll see the light.
President Barack Obama is returning from vacation rested and ready for a busy fall (and winter), including his two-week Christmas and New Year vacation in Hawaii. Thank God, it will be his last at taxpayer expense.
O…lame duck for the last 8 years.
Obama does not know how to work hard. He is a slacker with little accomplishments to show for this 8 years in office. He should go somewhere else for his last vacation and not return to Hawaii where the tax payer pays for his many vacations. I was not surprised to learn that the Federal Government does not reimburse the city for the extra police protection
while he and his family run around Oahu. The police overtime and other related costs for his security are in the hundred of thousands of dollars. The Hawaii taxpayer will
pay for all of this. He and his cronies will return again to Hawaii at Christmas time so that he can go exercise at the Kaneohe Marine Base,create traffic jams, eat snow cones, play golf
and have a party on the North shore with some of his ” friends.”
He needs to get busy securing and confirming his connections for the presidential afterlife. Perhaps we’ll see Obama “foundation”. Six figure speeches anyone?
Who cares what he does after leaving office. The scariest thing is SCOTUS. Too lazy for that. Speeches? On what? How to use a teleprompter? He’s made in the shade. Go try to hit a golf ball straight. But just go.
O cheats on his scorecard too.
Better he just stay on vacation
sam–NO!!! Cape Cod has the same security expense and inconvenience as we do. When he gets out of office HE and the family get the same SS protection–more taxpayer $$$$$$.
Sad that some have little respect for TPOTUS………yes, it’s earned…..not assumed…..aren’t we told to pray for our leaders for wisdom and to lead us wisely?
more better you vote wisely this Fall……….I will.
He has to go tp so expensive restaurants fly around the country, entertain his family and himself, golf, and of course, get ready for his next expensive vacation. This guy ;oves abusing taxpayers’ money.
For achieving very little to nothing during the last 4 years, our national debt went from $10.6 trillion to over $19 trillion. What’s really disturbing is that racial tension is so high during a time when we have our first African American president. You would have thought the opposite.
O made life for African Americans worse….not to mention everyone else as well.
Obama is going after the JV team. Trouble is he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. That’s how inane he is. Crooked Hilliary has got to separate from Obama and Soroful or they’re going to cost her the Election.
Now you know who was providing all those professionally made signs and inciting riots for a variety of his warped ideologies.
He’s tanned, rested, and ready for….Hawaii!
Hey all you rabid conservatives, take it easy on the boy wonder. After all he did lower health care costs and you didn’t have to change your doctor. Oops, not really. The once flawed but relatively well working health care system is now a total mess with insurers bailing as fast as Barry hits the golf course during a natural disaster. He brought racial harmony to a formerly divided and racist nation. Oops, not really. The US is as racially divided as it has ever been thanks to democrat identity politics and Barry’s private little war on law enforcement. He fixed the mess GW Bush made in the middle east. Oops, not really. The middle east was on a path to stability then Barry and his foreign policy geniuses decided to tell the bad guys when we were leaving, creating the power vacuum now occupied by ISIS. Well at least the economy is doing well and the middle class if flourishing. Oops, not really. Wages are stagnant, 93 million americans as unemployed or underemployed and the rich keep getting richer. The borders are open to low wage low skilled illegals further driving down wages for the underclass. The military is as strong as it has ever been. Oops, not really. Under Barry Hussein the military has been social engineered to death. Morale is down, combat positions have been opened up to the unqualified, traitors are given a pass and and celebrated in the Rose Garden, and the services are being starved of necessary funding. Yes, Barry – Oops not really – Obama should quickly get back to his fundamental transformation, he’s only got a few months to go until Mr. Trump shows up to clean little Barry’s (and Hillary’s) mess.