{"id":15565,"date":"2016-02-03T09:05:08","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T17:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/high-hopes-wide-gulf-as-obama-gop-look-for-common-ground\/"},"modified":"2016-02-03T09:05:08","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T17:05:08","slug":"high-hopes-wide-gulf-as-obama-gop-look-for-common-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/high-hopes-wide-gulf-as-obama-gop-look-for-common-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"High hopes, wide gulf as Obama, GOP look for common ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 Can President Barack Obama and Republicans put aside years of ill will to secure a few big breakthroughs in Obama\u2019s final year? Don\u2019t get your hopes up.<\/p>\n

There were scant signs of consensus Tuesday as Obama met at the White House with GOP leaders of the House and Senate, hoping to find common ground on trade, drug abuse and criminal justice reform. While both sides professed a general interest in working together, the deep ideological gulf between them seemed wider than ever.<\/p>\n

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared content to simply wait this president out, hoping a Republican successor will give the GOP the full deck it needs to press its priorities unimpeded. \u201cThe days of Barack Obama\u2019s presidency are numbered,\u201d Ryan said before the meeting.<\/p>\n

Ryan and Obama also had a private lunch, their first since the congressman became speaker in October with a mandate to unite an unruly cast of House Republicans whose prime point of agreement is that Obama\u2019s agenda must be stopped. Obama and McConnell have ridden this merry-go-round before, striking big deals occasionally, but more often not.<\/p>\n

Illustrating how hard Republicans were still fighting Obama\u2019s agenda seven years in, the House planned its umpteenth vote Tuesday evening to repeal Obama\u2019s health care law.<\/p>\n

Still, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama was pleased to host the leaders, calling it a sign that despite heated partisanship in an election year, Democrats and Republicans can have a good-faith conversation about the country\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not treasonous to do that,\u201d Earnest said. \u201cIn fact, it\u2019s part of the responsibility that goes along with leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan, speaking after the weekly GOP caucus, said he hoped he and Obama could \u201cput those disagreements in check and see where the common ground is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama has scaled back his legislative ambitions from the sweeping proposals he pushed earlier in his term. But he still needs Congress to help finish what he\u2019s started in certain areas \u2014 trade being chief among them.<\/p>\n

Prospects for approving the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the lynchpin of Obama\u2019s trade agenda, appeared even farther off as McConnell and Ryan emerged from the meeting. Although Republicans and business groups generally support the free-trade deal, McConnell hasn\u2019t yet backed it, and has suggested Congress shouldn\u2019t vote to ratify it until the lame-duck period after the November elections.<\/p>\n

But the Kentucky Republican seemed even more definitive Tuesday that he won\u2019t support a vote at all this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Speaker is a free trader. I\u2019m a free trader and obviously the president is as well,\u201d McConnell said. \u201cThere are a number of flaws here. We\u2019re going to keep on talking about it and seeing if there\u2019s a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Obama priority, a new war powers resolution, didn\u2019t even come up, McConnell said. Though Republicans are demanding Obama intensify the fight against the Islamic State group, they\u2019re opposed to the limited, no-ground-troops resolution Obama has proposed. The White House argues Republicans have failed to offer any viable alternative to Obama\u2019s IS strategy.<\/p>\n

Where Obama and the Republicans did seem to find fertile ground was on a set of lower-tier issues with less of a partisan tilt. Ryan\u2019s office and the White House said the leaders had conferred about Puerto Rico\u2019s fiscal crisis, the alarming heroin epidemic, Vice President Joe Biden\u2019s cancer initiative and a criminal justice overhaul. All are issues both parties have said they want to address.<\/p>\n

Heading into Obama\u2019s final year, perhaps no issue seemed riper for compromise than a criminal justice overhaul. In an early sign of progress, a Senate panel approved legislation easing strict sentencing requirements for some nonviolent offenders.<\/p>\n

But the bill\u2019s GOP backers downplay prospects for a breakthrough this year, and many Republicans are wary of looking weak on crime in an election year. McConnell hasn\u2019t committed to holding a vote on the overhaul, but suggested he wouldn\u2019t let politics get in the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe presidential candidates are not going to dictate the agenda in the Senate,\u201d he said, one day after conservative firebrand and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rode to victory in the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses.<\/p>\n

Earnest, responding to Ryan\u2019s comments about Obama\u2019s days being numbered, waxed optimistic that Obama\u2019s absence from this year\u2019s ballot could smooth the path for compromise this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that makes it easier for us to get some business done in Congress that\u2019s going to benefit the American people,\u201d Earnest said, \u201cthen maybe we should hold the Iowa caucus every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http:\/\/twitter.com\/joshledermanAP. His work can be found at http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/author\/josh-lederman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Can President Barack Obama and Republicans put aside years of ill will to secure a few big breakthroughs in Obama\u2019s final year? Don\u2019t get your hopes up. There were scant signs of consensus Tuesday as Obama met at the White House with GOP leaders of the House and Senate, hoping to find common […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15565"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}