Senator Bill Nelson's Advice to Obama

On a recent visit to the University of Florida, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson urged President Obama to stand firm on health care reform, reconsider his dead-end decision regarding NASA and manned space missions, push through a jobs bill, and temper his plan to end subsidies for private companies giving out student loans.

The Florida senator believes that the health care reform bill (which I'm still not so hot about) can still be salvaged through the complex reconciliation process, which only requires 51 Senate votes for approval. He wants to first have Nebraska's special Medicaid subsidy taken out of it, though. Nelson, himself having gone into space on the Space Shuttle in 1986, decries that Obama has chosen to leave our national manned space efforts with no discernible goals, a complaint that I have echoed recently. And, no doubt reacting to Treasury Department projections of only a slight decrease in the national employment rate for the next few years, Nelson is completely on board with an ambitious jobs bill currently being worked on for legislative action. As for that opposition to the President wanting to end subsidies to private companies for student loans, the Senator stated that Sallie Mae, one of those companies, employs several hundred people in Panama City, Florida and he wants to protect those jobs.

But the main tenor of Nelson's speech regarding Obama was to urge the President to become more directly involved with the legislators and the legislative process. I remember listening recently on C-Span to archived phone calls between President Lyndon Johnson, his aides, and congressmen concerning the then-proposed Medicare bill. And Johnson was very, very involved with individuals whose votes he needed for passage (or just to move the bill along). Obama has been in the Senate long enough to know a little bit how things have to work in Congress for a president to get his agenda passed there. As was the case with Johnson in the 1960s, archives showing how Obama dealt with Congress probably won't be fully revealed for several years after he leaves office. But my impression of him so far, which seems to be corroborated by Senator Nelson's recent remarks, is that he has been more "hands-off" in the promotion of his agenda in the House and Senate. Sure, the President makes a lot of speeches, holds press conferences, and meets from time to time with senators and representatives. But I perceive, with my albeit limited direct knowledge, that he hasn't come close to the intricately involved approach of Lyndon Johnson. And Johnson, for all of his flaws, was a great model of an effective president who knew exactly how to get his agenda passed through Congress. I like to use the imagery "carrot and stick": Nelson termed it a bit differently when he said the President should "put on a pair of brass knuckles and get out a bull whip". I can only add, "Don't forget to throw in a carrot or two!"