President Barack Obama took a victory lap before his scheduled Christmas vacation Wednesday, lauding the passage of legislation he had pushed the lame-duck Congress to approve.
“A lot of folks in this town predicted that after the midterm elections, Washington would be headed for more gridlock,” Obama said. Instead, he said the lame-duck session was a “season of progress for the American people.”
“I think it’s fair to say this has been the most productive post-election period we’ve had in decades,” Obama said at a news conference in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Building at the White House.
“And it comes on the heels of the most productive two years we’ve had in generations,” he added.
Obama dedicated most of his opening statement to the Senate’s passage of the New START treaty with Russia, calling it the “most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades.”
Wednesday’s ratification of the treaty, “sends a powerful sign to the world that Republicans and Democrats stand together on behalf of our security,” Obama said, thanking Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and ranking member Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), with whom the president said he traveled to a Russian nuclear facility when he was a senator.
Obama praised the bipartisan compromise that led to the passage of a package that extended Bush-era tax cuts and unemployment benefits. He called the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that prevented homosexuals from serving openly in the military “the right thing to do, period.” The president also lauded the passage of what he called “the biggest upgrade of food safety laws since the Great Depression” and urged the House to pass a $4.23 billion aid bill for sick Ground Zero workers. That bill later passed the House in a 206-60 vote.
But Obama also acknowledged the unfinished business of the 111th Congress. He called the Senate’s failure to advance the DREAM Act his “biggest disappointment” and called on Congress to “come together around a budget to fund our government over the long term.”
“It is heartbreaking,” Obama said of the failure of the DREAM Act, which would have given young people brought into the US illegally by their parents a path to citizenship if they attended college or served in the military. “My hope and my expectation is that, first of all, everyone understands I am determined and this administration is determined to get immigration reform done, because it is the right thing to do … and at a minimum, we should be able to get the DREAM Act done, so I’m going to go back at it.”
Asked why gays and lesbians should be allowed to fight and die for their country but not legally marry in all 50 states, Obama appeared to leave himself room on the issue of gay marriage.
“I’ve said my feelings about this are constantly evolving. I struggle with this,” Obama said. “At this point what I’ve said is that my baseline is a strong civil union that provides them the protection and legal rights that married couples have.”
“I am personally going to continue to wrestle with it going forward,” he added.