Ground Report

President Barack Obama said he was determined, Wednesday, November 5th, to cooperate for the next two years with his Republican opponents, he acknowledged the resounding victory the day before in the midterm elections.

“I look forward to working with the new Congress for the next two years are as constructively as possible,” he said at a press conference at the White House, after acknowledging that the Republicans had passed “good evening.”

The goal is that there are more jobs that pay well and have an effect in the lives of Americans. The President formally announced that he would ask Congress to discuss the authorization of use of force against the Islamic state group.  Obama stated that the world must know that the United States are united in this effort, and the men and women in the military deserve support, and that military action needs to be taken againt .

With a guarantee that there will be differences in opinions, Obama stated that there will be an effort to share ideas that there is foreseeable ground of agreement for both parties and Obama doesn’t want to inject uncertainty in the future but is optimistic. The country is not simply a conglomeration of red and blue states. The United States can and will make progress if their heads are in the right place.

When it came to orders on immigration that take precedent to the end of the year, we call once more upon Congress to pass a reform of the immigration system, modeled on the law passed by the Senate last year, but the House Republicans were buried. He reiterated his determination to the act by decree by the end of the year in this area; he doesn’t want to just sit back and do nothing while the time passes. An ad was displayed that may have caused ire for the Republicans and even though, at the same time, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate and winner of the midterm elections, Mitch McConnell, had to warn the president against any unilateral action on illegal immigration. Because it could be viewed as a red flag to say that if the President didn’t want to do what McConnell does, then that he’d do it alone. This was stated in a press conference in Louisville, Kentucky.

To support American exports, Obama said that the two parties could find common ground in the field of infrastructure and support for US exports while acknowledging that it would be quite unlikely that his priorities would be adopted by Congress.

“The most important thing I can do is to realize things and help Congress to act,” he said. Obama spoke in terms of agenda items, and how certain ideals can be compared to start making changes, such as a minimum wage increase (five states all voted 5-0 to have the minimum wage increased) where voters had a chance to vote on that agenda item, they voted for it. He stresses that it’s hard to suggest people aren’t supportive of something they voted for in this sample size, and that the key is to find areas where the agenda that Obama puts forward, one that he believes will strengthen the middle class will have overlap somewhere with the ideas that Republicans have.

For Obama, the goal is to focus on issues where this overlap is around 70% or higher, but what does that mean for key issues with lower percentages?