Last week I wrote a column accusing the president of having a vindictive streak — of deliberately trying to make the lives of average Americans worse just so he could score ideological and political points.
We already knew from how he handled the budget sequester that Obama liked this approach. He ordered Cabinet secretaries not to do their jobs — i.e., to manage as best they could under spending restraints — but instead to find ways to make the cuts needlessly painful for innocents caught in the Beltway crossfire.
They dusted off the same playbook for the shutdown. As one park ranger told the Washington Times, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can.”
Admittedly, the case was circumstantial. There was no smoking gun. What was really needed was a confession.
Obama delivered. On October 8, Obama was asked by Mark Knoller of CBS if he was “tempted” to sign the numerous funding bills passed by the GOP-controlled House that would greatly alleviate the pain of the shutdown. Republicans have voted to reopen parks, fund cancer trials for children at the NIH, and to keep FEMA and the FDA going through this partial shutdown. But Obama has threatened to veto any such efforts, effectively keeping the Senate from considering the legislation.
“Of course I’m tempted” to sign those bills, Obama explained. “But here’s the problem. What you’ve seen are bills that come up wherever Republicans are feeling political pressure, they put a bill forward. And if there’s no political heat, if there’s no television story on it, then nothing happens.”
