WASHINGTON — With a scrappy unveiling of his formula to rein in the nation’s mounting debt, President Obama confirmed Monday that he had entered a new, more combative phase of his presidency, one likely to last until next year’s election as he battles for a second term.
Faced with falling poll numbers for his leadership and an anxious party base, Mr. Obama did not just propose but insisted that any long-term debt-reduction plan must not shave future Medicare benefits without also raising taxes on the wealthiest taxpayers and corporations.
He uncharacteristically backed up that stand with a veto threat, setting up a politically charged choice for anti-tax Republicans — protect the most affluent or compromise to attack deficits. Confident in the answers most voters would make, Mr. Obama plans to hammer on that choice through 2012, reflecting the fact that the White House has all but given up hopes of a “grand bargain” with Republicans to restore fiscal balance for years to come.
“I will not support — I will not support — any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans. And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share,” Mr. Obama said. “We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.”
Mr. Obama also seems to have given up on his strategy of nearly a year, beginning when Republicans won control of the House last November, of being the eager-to-compromise “reasonable adult” — in the White House’s phrasing — in his relations with them. He had sought to build a personal relationship with Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, a man the White House saw as a possible partner across the aisle, in the hopes of making bipartisan progress and simultaneously winning points with independent voters who disdain partisanship. Even if the efforts produced few agreements with Republicans, the White House figured, independents would give Mr. Obama credit for trying.
Instead, the president was unable to close his deal with Mr. Boehner and has only lost independents’ support and left Democrats disillusioned, raising doubts about his re-election prospects.
So after his initial two years of dealing with an economic and financial crisis while pursuing an activist social agenda with Democrats in control of the House and Senate, and then a frustrating third year sharing power with Republicans, Mr. Obama now begins writing a third chapter for his final 15 months that is not the one he had in mind.
“It is fair to say we’ve entered a new phase,” said Dan Pfeiffer, Mr. Obama’s communications director. But he disputed what he called the conventional wisdom behind the president’s shift.
“The popular narrative is that we sought compromise in a quixotic quest for independent votes. We sought out compromise because a failure to get funding of the government last spring and then an extension of the debt ceiling in August would have been very bad for the economy and for the country,” Mr. Pfeiffer added. “We were in a position of legislative compromise by necessity. That phase is behind us.”
In this new phase, Mr. Obama must solidify support among Democrats by standing pat for progressive party principles, while trusting that a show of strong leadership for the policies he believes in will appeal to independents. Polls consistently suggest that perhaps the only thing that unites independents as much as their desire for compromise is their inclination toward leaders who signal strength by fighting for their beliefs.
“The president laid down a marker today that is true to his beliefs,” said Jacob J. Lew, director of Mr. Obama’s Office of Management and Budget. In response, Mr. Boehner said in a statement that Mr. Obama by his deficit-reduction plan “has not made a serious contribution” to the work of a bipartisan joint Congressional committee, which has two months to reach agreement on cutting deficits by at least $1.5 trillion in 10 years.
“The administration’s insistence on raising taxes on job creators and its reluctance to take the steps necessary to strengthen our entitlement programs are the reasons the president and I were not able to reach an agreement previously,” Mr. Boehner said. “And it is evident today that these barriers remain.”
Mr. Obama’s plan to reduce annual deficits up to $4 trillion over a decade does call for subtracting $320 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, building on savings required in his health care law.
But those proposals are far from the overhaul and reductions that Republicans are demanding in the two popular entitlement programs, whose growth because of the aging of the population and ever-rising medical costs is driving the long-term projections of unsustainable debt.
And Mr. Obama removed Social Security from the table, as well as a proposal to slowly raise the eligibility age for Medicare to 67 from 65. He put both forward in July, to the chagrin of many Democrats, in private negotiations with Mr. Boehner that fell apart when the speaker balked at agreeing to higher revenues. Administration officials say Mr. Obama is not ruling out either proposal if Republicans were to show significant give on taxes.
But the White House does not expect Republicans to do so. Indeed, Mr. Obama’s new tack in pressing the deficit-reduction framework and $447 billion jobs-creation plan that he wants — not trimmed to draw Republicans’ votes — reflects the conclusion he has drawn from the past 10 months: Republicans will oppose almost anything he proposes, even tax cuts. And Mr. Boehner is unable to deliver his uncompromisingly anti-tax Republicans for any compromise that includes tax revenues.
Mr. Obama believed he had built a good working relationship with Mr. Boehner based on a shared desire for a deal modeled on proposals of past bipartisan panels, which called for a mix of new revenues and changes in entitlement programs.
But their relationship was severely strained after Mr. Boehner abandoned their budget talks in July, came back and then walked out a second time. And after what the White House saw as a third strike this month — Mr. Boehner’s humiliating public rejection of Mr. Obama’s requested date for an address to a joint session of Congress — the Obama team called Mr. Boehner out.
Their breach was evident in Mr. Obama’s remarks. He singled out Mr. Boehner in his criticism of Republicans as unwilling to compromise, a break from the past when Mr. Obama typically criticized Republicans in general but mentioned Mr. Boehner only to praise him as a constructive partner. Not this time.
“Unfortunately, the speaker walked away from a balanced package,” Mr. Obama said, referring to their earlier talks. “What we agreed to instead wasn’t all that grand.”
Then he mocked Mr. Boehner for a speech last week in which the speaker said only spending cuts could be part of a budget deal.
“So the speaker says we can’t have it ‘my way or the highway’ and then basically says, ‘My way — or the highway,’ ” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not smart. It’s not right.”
The president kept up his offensive even on Monday night, at a fund-raiser in Manhattan with wealthy donors from Wall Street.
“And you’re already hearing the moans and groans from the other side about how we are engaging in class warfare and we’re being too populist,” Mr. Obama said. But, he added, “if we don’t succeed, then I think that this country is going to go down a very perilous path. And it’s not going to be good for those of us who have done incredibly well in this society, and it’s certainly not going to be good for the single mom who’s working two shifts right now trying to support her family.”
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