President Obama heads to Martha’s Vineyard on Saturday for his family’s
almost-annual August vacation, toting the usual baggage of unrelenting
global crises but stealing a week’s break before dealing with looming
deadlines for the budget, his health care law and the appointment of a
new Federal Reserve chairman.
The getaway will be Mr. Obama’s fourth in five years; he skipped last
year during the presidential campaign. Like his predecessors, he is
leaving as pundits and partisan opponents question whether it is a good
time for him to be away — once again showing that for presidents, there
never seems to be a good time.
When the White House disclosed that Mr. Obama would limit his stay to
one week instead of two, there was speculation that the Obama team was
worried that a longer vacation would be politically unseemly when
across-the-board budget reductions, known as sequestration, are forcing
furloughs and other cutbacks in military and domestic programs. But in
the days before his departure, the administration’s global alert of
potential terrorism attacks raised new questions about the vacation’s
timing, and among the aides with Mr. Obama will be his national security
adviser, Susan E. Rice.
Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, will first fly on Saturday to Orlando,
Fla., where each will speak at a convention of disabled veterans. It
will be the president’s second trip this week to speak to members of the
military, after Wednesday’s pep talk to about 3,000 Marines and sailors
at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
In a news conference on Friday, Mr. Obama addressed some of the issues that he will confront after he returns.
He held to his earlier timetable in saying he would decide “in the fall”
on his choice to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as chairman of the Fed —
ending any speculation that he might announce his choice while he is on
Martha’s Vineyard, as he did in 2009 when he went before cameras with
Mr. Bernanke to say that he wanted the Fed chairman, a Bush appointee,
to serve another term.
Mr. Obama called the much-anticipated nomination to replace Mr. Bernanke
“definitely one of the most important economic decisions that I’ll make
in the remainder of my presidency.”
“The Federal Reserve chairman is not just one of the most important
economic policy makers in America, he or she is one of the most
important policy makers in the world,” Mr. Obama added. “And that person
presumably will stay on after I’m president. So this, along with
Supreme Court appointments, is probably as important a decision as I
make as president.”
The president’s use of “he or she” was no accident, given that the two
main candidates are Lawrence H. Summers — who was Mr. Obama’s White
House economic adviser during his first term and a Treasury secretary in
the Clinton administration — and Janet Yellen, another former Clinton
economic adviser and now vice chairman of the Fed.
Mr. Obama reiterated that “there are a couple of other candidates who
are highly qualified as well,” but the contest has been between Mr.
Summers and Ms. Yellen. Liberal Democrats, especially women, have called
for Ms. Yellen — she would be the first woman to lead the Fed — but
people familiar with Mr. Obama’s deliberations give the edge to Mr.
Summers.
The president, however, said his recent public comments supportive of
Mr. Summers should not be taken as a signal of his intent, but only as a
defense of his former adviser against what Mr. Obama sees as unfair
criticism.
“When somebody has worked hard for me and worked hard on behalf of the
American people, and I know the quality of those people, and I see them
getting slapped around in the press for no reason — before they’ve even
been nominated for anything — then I want to make sure that somebody is
standing up for them,” Mr. Obama said.
Anticipating one of the biggest fights ahead, the president all but
dared Congressional Republicans to follow through on their threats to
shut down the government unless the annual spending bills due Oct. 1,
the start of the fiscal year, defund the health care law, his signature
domestic achievement.
Oct. 1 also is the starting date for a crucial piece of the law — when
people among the 15 percent of uninsured Americans can begin signing up
for coverage in state-based marketplaces, known as exchanges, where
insurance companies will compete to offer policies.
“The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30
million people from getting health care is a bad idea,” Mr. Obama said.
He emphasized, too, the law’s benefits already in effect for the 85
percent of Americans who have coverage, and provisions barring companies
from refusing insurance to those with pre-existing medical conditions.
Republicans “used to say they had a replacement,” Mr. Obama said,
adding, “Now I just don’t hear about it, because basically they don’t
have an agenda to provide health insurance to people at affordable
rates.”
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