Obama's first year in office - he traveled so far and yet all he did was come back to where he started

Posted by Shyam Moondra

President Barack Obama just finished one full year in office. He seems to have traveled so far and yet it feels like all he did was come back to where he started. I give him a C for his efforts and personal qualities, which is far less than a B+ he gave himself during an interview on CBS. If anything, he certainly gained valuable experience from which he could learn and grow, and hopefully accomplish big things in the next twelve months.

Obama's election as president of the United States was transformative and it raised hopes for change among the American people. Right after his election, Obama enjoyed tremendous popularity and many expected that he would capitalize on that popularity and accomplish big things on a short order. The people were almost euphoric about the possibilities. They thought Obama will bring more bi-partisanship in national political discourse, stop job losses and home foreclosures, sign a health care reform legislation, implement new regulations for the financial sector, reach agreements with North Korea and Iran on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, achieve an international consensus on climate change, and reach agreements with Russia on new arms treaty. He succeeded on none, making the voters angry and disillusioned that led to the unexpected victory of Scott Brown, a Republican, in the most liberal state of Massachusetts, filling the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Now that the Democrats have lost their super majority in the Senate, it would become even more harder to get things done.

What went wrong?
· Obama failed to provide leadership. Obama proposed things but then he uncharacteristically became aloof from the process, leaving the members of Congress with diverse opinions to sort things out. Ultimately, the process became so polarizing, thanks to intense lobbying by the various interest groups, that it became almost impossible to realize Obama's original vision.

· Obama, a man with excellent communications skills, couldn't persuade a single Republican to vote with him. His failure to work effectively with the opposition was one of the biggest disappointments, especially to the independents.

· Lackluster leaders in the Congress from both parties sealed the fate of many initiatives that Obama proposed. The Senate Majority Leader is utterly ineffective, the House Speaker is one of the most disliked politicians in the history, and Republican leaders in the Senate and House have zero leadership skills. The Democrats have a majority in both houses and yet the party is doomed because of lack of discipline among the rank-and-file and Obama has not paid sufficient attention to the inner workings of the party.

· Obama's tendency to throw money at problems has turned off many independents and conservative Democrats. He needs to offer more imaginative solutions that require less new spending.

· Obama also suffered from bad luck. If his $700 bi stimulus spending had created the promised two million jobs, the mood of the people would have been very different than it is today. This recession has proven to be very stubborn and more stimulus may be needed down the road.

So where does Obama go from here?
· Obama needs to make some staff changes. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Gates should be kept, but everyone else should be re-evaluated. Chief of Staff and Secretary of Department of Homeland Security should be replaced.

· Obama needs to move to the center and abandon his socialist tendencies, or else he will permanently lose the support of the independents. When all Republicans in the Congress vote against him, that is a big political problem. Obama needs to change his governing style and peel away pragmatic Republican lawmakers to achieve his agenda. He needs to forge and maintain special relationships with the centrist Democrats, non-ideologue Republicans, and independents to get big things done.

· Bring about changes in the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate. We need new leaders in the mode of the late Speaker Tip O'Neil or the late Senate Majority Leader L. B. Johnson who can bring discipline among the rank-and-file Democrats and also work effectively with the opposition.

· Provide more leadership. Obama tends to give broad outlines of his proposal but then he just walks away and let the members of Congress fight it out with disastrous results. Obama needs to roll up his sleeves and hammer out detailed compromises with the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Congress. Obama's recent meeting with the Republicans in Baltimore was a good start. He needs to follow-up with regular meetings with the Congressional leaders from both parties at the White House, as he said he would.

· Stop throwing money at problems at a time when our national debt and budget deficit are running so high. The case in point, health care reforms. Obama said all the right things during the election campaign, but once in office, the Democrats turned the main objective of cutting health care costs into developing new subsidies and entitlement programs. After the experience of escalating costs of Medicare and Social Security, the American people have almost no appetite for starting any new entitlement programs. Obama needs to go back and prune the health care bill to focus on insurance reforms and cost cutting. If costs are brought down, many of the uninsureds would be able to afford to buy health insurance, and thus the number of uninsureds would go down over time. The Democrats need to cut-down on the proposed subsidies and new entitlement programs.

· The first stimulus has not worked as expected, in terms of job creation. It seems inevitable that a second stimulus would be required, or else we could see the recurrence of recession in the second-half of 2010. This time, Obama needs to focus more on tax incentives rather than new spending. The government spending is never efficient and it involves a lot of waste. On the other hand, tax incentives put more money in the hands of non-government bureaucrats that tends to have immediate positive effect on economy. Besides, taxes can be raised again in the future when we have our prosperity back, but the government spending is never recovered.

· While we are still providing stimulus to the economy, simultaneously, Obama needs to aggressively propose a credible plan to reduce budget deficit and national debt. Unless the budget deficit is brought down to a more reasonable level, we are headed to a tough interest rate environment which will choke-off economic growth. Obama should eliminate wasteful spending in all different parts of the government, including the Defense Department. The federal budget gap, however, cannot be eliminated just by reducing wasteful spending; at some point, we will have to increase income taxes for those earning more than $250,00 a year ($500,000 for a couple) and close-down the corporate tax loop-holes (it's unfair when companies like Goldman Sachs pays only 10% in taxes because of creative off-shore trading schemes).

President Obama has many fine personal qualities, he is a very likable and honest man, he is very intelligent and well versed with public policy issues, and, most importantly, he has extraordinary communications skills. There is no reason why he can't use all of that and lead friends and foes into forging partnerships that would deliver for the American people. Obama just needs to show more leadership and get more involved in crafting legislation, collaborating with both Democrats and Republicans in the Congress. Even though, he didn't do as well as expected (true, he suffered from very high expectations), but he has the necessary skill set to achieve big things in the remaining three years of his presidency. Yes, he can!

Congress is the weakest link in the government - we badly need reforms‏

Posted by Shyam Moondra

The Congress hit the lowest approval rating on record of 14% not long ago. The people view the Senate and House as the weakest links in the government. The Congress has become a burden on the tax payers with very little positive to show for.

The Congress was created to reflect the views of the American people, to make it a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Today, the Congress is a mess; it has largely become a non-productive institution that exists only because it's in the constitution and not because people really want it. If the Congress were run as a corporation, it would have been dismantled already.

A majority of senators and congressmen are corrupt; they are there not because they truly want to serve their country but they are there to make a comfortable living. Very few members are hard-working people in the mode of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy; most of them are either deadwood or they are just getting a free ride. They spend most of their time scheming how to raise campaign money through lobbyists to get reelected. Most of the work is done by a handful of hardworking members, who do care about the country and the people.

In the last eight years, the influence of the businesses in the Congress has increased tremendously via their intense lobbying efforts and campaign contributions, but mostly at the expense of the ordinary Americans.

We need drastic changes in the role of the Congress and how it operates. We badly need constitutional amendments to reform the Congress and make it more productive and responsive to the people's needs and not their own re-election needs. There are a number of things that could be done such as:
. Imposing term limits. Public service should not be used as a way to make a living.
. Banning corporate and industry lobbying.
. Banning corporate and industry campaign contributions.
. Requiring the members to spend more time in Washington, DC working the public policy issues rather than taking frequent recesses and time off in the name of campaigning.
. Holding the members accountable for non-performance immediately and not by voting them out only after their term has expired.

Now the million dollar question is if the reformers would agree to be reformed.

Democrats: Either exercise power and govern or get lost

Posted by Shyam Moondra

The White House, Senate, and House of Representatives are all controlled by the Democrats and yet they are unable to move forward on a number of defining issues such as health care and regulatory reforms. The Democratic Party lacks discipline and unity. They have wasted so much of their time bickering on health care that other important issues including regulatory reforms, executive compensation, Afghanistan, energy independence, climate change, and education still remain to be tackled.

Most of the blame for non-performance of Democrats, of course, lies with their leaders:
· President Obama has not done much to unify his party. He lacks strong leadership skills. He is way too conciliatory (President Lincoln once said, "Be sure you put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm"). Being the president means you listen well, but it also means you lead based on your convictions and twist some arms if you have to. So far, on health care, Obama has been more of a follower of a chaotic process characterized by Democrats going in thousand different directions and there is no one with a strong personality to bring them together. Obama shouldn't hesitate to withhold money for states (or threaten to close military bases in those states) whose senators and congressmen have been creating obstacles in the passage of his agenda in the Congress.
· The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is a total disaster. He is very weak and he has almost no control of his senate caucus. Reid should immediately step aside. The Senate Democrats need to elect a new leader, someone with the hardedge political skills of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson, who became the Senate Majority Leader in 1955 when Democrats had a majority by just one vote.
· The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is one of the most polarizing political figures in the country. She is extremely disliked not only by the House members but also by the population at large, as is evident by her very low approval rating. On most issues, Pelosi tends to be far left of the center where most of Americans are. It's no coincidence that many Democrats and almost all of Republicans in the House mostly vote against her. If Democrats elect a new Speaker, it will help them immensely to unify the Democrats and also win over at least some of the Republicans in the House.
· DNC Chairman, Tim Kaine, is the most invisible Chairman in the history of the Democratic Party. No one really knows where he is and what he is doing. Kaine needs to be more proactive in playing a leading role in bringing in the strayed senators and congressmen to the fold by using campaign money and other prerogatives as bargaining chips.

With the Democratic control of the White House and both houses of the Congress, they should be able to move on most issues simultaneously with a lightening speed, especially when Republicans are bogged down with their ideological tendencies (that most Americans don't agree with) and they have nothing new to offer. Unfortunately, every Democrat is playing his or her own tune - that's not the way to get things done. The so-called "Blue Dog Democrats" may get self-gratification by showing off their power but they should remember that they can't govern if they are not united. And if they can't govern then the American people are less likely to put them in power the next time around. The Democrats have a golden opportunity to get big things done but only if they could unify and work together for the good of their party and country.

Obama's poor execution may sink his approval rating

Posted by Shyam Moondra

Since Barrack Obama became the president, he has been saying all the right things. However, Obama's mode of operation has become an obstacle in achieving the desired end-results of his policies. Consequently, Obama's popularity has declined somewhat and is about to crash down unless he improves his execution.

Bill Clinton's presidential campaign strategy was based on "it's the economy, stupid" that led to his astounding victory over George H. W. Bush. After the election, Clinton exclusively focused on economy and he especially avoided making foreign trips. He even resisted getting involved in Kosovo as long as he could. His hands-on approach in formulating and executing economic policies paid off handsomely - he turned the budget deficit into a surplus and the American people enjoyed the longest period of prosperity in the modern history. Now we have a much more serious economic crisis but Obama has been spending way too much time traveling around the globe. When people are losing their jobs and homes at the fastest rate since the depression of the 1930's, it's hard to justify Obama's extensive travel plans. Surely, Obama has improved the image of the U.S. that was battered during the Bush years, but, at the moment, that's not what the American people want him to focus on - they want him to stop the bleeding of our economy.

One of the other operational problems Obama has is his desire to be in front of the cameras at all times. He suffers from overexposure because of his constant interviews, press conferences, speeches, video blogs, etc. The American people would rather see him working at his desk in the oval office and be focused on execution of his economic policies. Obama likes to tell Congress that he wants this or that by so and so date, and then becomes somewhat aloof from the process. The Congress then writes the legislation with the help of lobbyists, who are likely to insert all kinds of loopholes, diluting the reforms that were expected from the legislation. The case in point, the health care legislation - we keep hearing that Obama's original vision has been riddled with all kinds of concessions sought by the lobbyists that raise the question if the proposed legislation will achieve its originally stated goal of significantly reducing costs (in fact, the Congress is talking about imposing new taxes worth $1 trillion to pay for this proposed plan!). During the campaign, Obama promised he would reduce the role of lobbyists in the government, but right now just the opposite is happening. Why not Obama roll up his sleeves and sit down with the Congressional leaders and hammer out legislation rather than let the lobbyists write the laws? The American people want a more hands-on approach from Obama in lieu of his non-stop TV appearances and pronouncements.

Obama has been busy proposing a million different things but in the absence of focus and hands-on approach, nothing much is being accomplished – his emphasis is on quantity of things he proposes as opposed to getting things done right in a timely manner. Congress is not used to working on multiple things that fast, so what will come out would be half-baked goods that will not achieve the reforms that were originally envisioned. May be Obama could get done more by focusing on a fewer things at a time so that he can devote more time in executing things as opposed to proposing things.

Here are some examples of how Obama's poor execution is becoming an obstacle in achieving the desired results:

· In spite of huge stimulus spending, the economy continues to lose jobs and the unemployment rate continues to rise. The loss of jobs means more and more homeowners are joining the ranks of who can't keep up with their mortgage payments. That leads to more foreclosures and lower home prices. The American people would like to know why economy is not getting a lift from increased government expenditures – is it because the stimulus money is not being spent fast enough or the stimulus package was flawed? The proposed budget will sharply increase the national debt, so it is important to properly analyze why increased expenditures are not generating more jobs. Shouldn't Obama be focusing on analyzing the stimulus package and deciding what to do next?

· Foreclosures continue to be at near record levels. Shouldn't Obama take another look at homeowner assistance programs and come up with changes in the approach? Mortgage rates went up in recent weeks shutting down the refinance market - shouldn't Obama do something to bring down the mortgage rates to stimulate the demand for the houses? Economic turn around is contingent upon stabilizing the housing industry first.

· Oil prices have doubled in the last few months. Congress had a lot of hoopla when oil hit $150-a-barrel and it talked about reforming CFTC, limiting investment by speculators in oil and other commodities, eliminating the "Enron loophole" etc but nothing has happened. Why is Obama not doing anything about this? When commodity prices on the futures market go up and down by 100% or more in short periods without any change in the underlying fundamentals, then clearly something is very wrong with the way the markets operate.

· The outlandish executive compensation was a major issue during the campaign, but Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley just announced that they would put aside tens of billions of dollars for 2009 bonuses that is 50% more than the amount set aside for 2008 bonuses. Why has Obama not done anything on this issue? We need a law to limit CEO compensation at all publicly held companies, not just TARP companies.

· Everybody knows that investment banks and hedge funds manipulate the stock markets. There have been a lot of talk about twenty-first century regulatory reforms but nothing concrete has yet come out and market volatility continues to be an obstacle in getting the economic house in order. We need to clamp down on computerized day trading by investment banks and hedge funds that are destroying our markets.

· With the huge increase in government spending, the budget deficit is ballooning rapidly that almost guarantees that interest rates will go up in the coming months. Why has Obama not announced concrete plans on how the budget deficit and national debt would be brought down?

If Obama doesn't change his mode of operation and exclusively focus on deteriorating economy, his approval rating will crash in coming weeks and months. Obama has a real opportunity to be a great president but he is blowing it away by not being on the top of things in seeing that the economy rebounds quickly.

Headed for a second round of economic slowdown?

Posted by Shyam Moondra

Economy seems to have stalled. Look at the following trends:

· While the number of new weekly unemployment claims is going down, it is still very high (in the 600,000-range) and the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits continues to rise, currently standing at little under 7 millions. It's now almost certain that the unemployment rate will exceed 10% and may even go over 11%.
· While the latest retail sales data for May shows an increase of 0.5%, that increase reflects a burst of auto demand generated by the tremendous bargains being offered by the auto dealers many of whom are going out of business and are in the process of liquidating their inventory (but these bargains can't be sustained indefinitely) and higher gasoline prices (consumers are buying the same amount of gasoline but paying more). Therefore, the consumer demand is not quite as robust as the retail sales data might suggest.
· In recent weeks, the prices of oil and other commodities have increased substantially, raising the specter of inflationary expectations. These price increases are being driven not by any demand-supply imbalances but because of speculative purchases by investors. Oil and gasoline prices are now double of what they were a few weeks ago, crimping consumer spending.
· Interest rates have started to increase with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate now almost 25% higher than what it was a few weeks ago. Higher interest rates have already stalled the mortgage refinance activity. The number of foreclosures continues to be at near record levels and as the interest rates rise even more, this number will only get worse. All of these trends will have a negative impact on the home sales and home prices in the coming weeks and months. Recent stress tests conducted by the Department of Treasury may require financial institutions to raise additional capital in the future, thereby slowing the financial market's recovery.
· Dollar is plummeting, diminishing its role as the world's reserve currency. The creditor countries such as China may be reluctant to invest in the U.S. securities at the same level as they used to, driving up the interest rates even more which will delay the economic recovery. While a weak dollar may stimulate exports, it will also lead to higher import prices which will aggravate the inflation problem.
· The trade and budget deficits are increasing which means weaker dollar, higher oil and commodity prices, and higher interest rates down the road.

The Obama administration has been too slow in spending the stimulus money. Congress has been too slow in finalizing the regulatory regime for the twenty-first century. Deteriorating economy combined with speculative trading by investment banks and hedge funds could trigger an economic crash. President Obama has been spending too much time on overseas trips and his absence has hurt the economy. In the beginning he was a hands-on president, but lately his execution on economic matters has been sub-par. Obama and Congress need to come up with a new plan, perhaps another stimulus package, or else we are likely to have a relapse of an economic slowdown.

Obama should rethink the stimulus package

Posted by Shyam Moondra

The government has terribly failed the American people. First, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and FED Chairman Ben Bernanke were saying that sub-prime mortgages were not a problem. Then they wanted the bailout money to buy these so called toxic mortgage-based securities from banks to strengthen their balance sheets. But once they got the bailout money, they changed their minds and ended up buying banks' preferred stocks instead. Now the new Treasury Secretary Geithner and Bernanke want more bailout money to buy those toxic securities they were supposed to buy in the first place. I bet even if they buy the current toxic securities, next quarter there will be more new toxic securities on the books of these banks and the FED/Treasury will ask for even more money to buy more of these securities. I don't think the government officials have really understood the problem or thought through what really needed to be done; they are just throwing money and trying different things thinking that something will work. Well, so far it's not working and tax-payers are out of $700 billion, adding to our already very high national debt.

Now comes this monster stimulus package (full of all kinds of pork barrel projects that candidate Obama said he will not allow) worth almost a trillion dollars that will guarantee that our federal debt will be so big that it will take at least ten years to bring it down to a more reasonable level and it will almost guarantee that we will have higher interest rates in the future. The mismanagement of our economy will ensure that American people will have to accept declining living standard for years to come.

Before we talk about the possible solutions, let us take a quick look at what brought us here:

1. Lack of leadership by President Bush and lack of oversight by Congress.
2. Incompetence of FED Chairman Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Paulson.
3. Greed. Excessive compensation of the CEOs and market manipulation by hedge funds and investment banks.
4. Lack of regulations that led to these toxic mortgage-based securities and credit-default swaps.
5. Lack of enforcement by the SEC under Chairman Cox.

Now this is what we need to do:

1. Have new leaders in Congress and replace Bernanke immediately.
2. Reform regulations. Regulate hedge funds (they must pay their fair share of taxes and report their trading activities), pass stronger laws to prevent stock/commodity market manipulation by big players (revisit short selling/option trading rules, reduce computerized trading by imposing a simple rule that hedge funds/investment banks must hold a stock they buy for at least five business days before they can sell that stock), and monitor risky financial products offered by financial institutions more closely.
3. Impose strict limits on executive compensations for all publicly held companies, small or big and whether or not they receive federal bailout money. The whole system has become corrupt where the Board of Directors (comprised mainly of other active/retired CEOs) grant outlandish compensation packages (cash, stock, perks). No one, even if she/he works 24 hours a day, deserves to make so much money; it's nothing short of looting of shareholders money by a handful of bandits who have become super rich. Why should these CEOs get to make so much more than President Obama, who has the toughest and the most stressful job in the whole world?
4. Change tax laws as they apply to businesses. When Goldman Sachs, using its web of foreign subsidiaries, pays only 10% in taxes, it's so unfair to the rest of the tax-payers. We need to close these tax loop holes and eliminate tax-exempt status of some of the territories.
5. Suspend TARP - it will never solve the bank solvency problem. The banks made so many mistakes (and they still continue to make mistakes, e,g., buying corporate jets and remodeling their offices) that the government will need several trillion dollars to clean-up their balance sheets. The best thing to do now is to let the bad apples fall from the tree. An overwhelming majority of the American people think that the TARP is a huge mistake and it is an unnecessary wasteful spending of taxpayers' money. Nationalization of banks is not a solution - it will create more failed enterprises such as Amtrak and United States Postal Service.
6. Aggressively and vigorously enforce the laws and protect the shareholders. Strengthen the SEC and mandate them to prosecute the wrongdoers mercilessly. Can you imagine what will be the crime rate on the Main Street if the police was not cruising the street? Believe or not, there are more crooks on the Wall Street than on the Main Street. We need to have an environment where these white-collar crooks think twice before they commit any fraud.
7. Solve the fundamental problem of housing which precipitated the economic meltdown in the first place. Find ways to freeze foreclosures and stabilize the housing market (may be the government should buy the houses overhanging the market, as was done during the 1930's depression). Force the lenders to lower the mortgage rates to 4.5% immediately. Come up with a plan which will reduce forced selling of houses and at the same time provide incentives to the people to buy houses, which will, in turn, help stabilize the housing prices. Once the housing prices start to increase again, everything else will fall in place (mortgage securities will become more attractive and it will become easier for banks to sell those securities).
8. We need a stimulus package but not the one passed by the House, which has a lot of wasteful pork barrel spending that Obama said he will stop. The package should include the following elements: Reduce taxes for the middle-class and increase taxes for the super-rich who make more than $500,000 a year; provide a safety net for those who need immediate help such as extended unemployment benefits, help with COBRA heath insurance premiums, and help to elderly people who live on fixed income; infrastructure spending (satisfies an urgent need to repair crumbling roads and bridges and also creates jobs), education spending targeted to improve our students' performance and make college education more affordable (that means better equipping labs etc. but not re-building our school structures; anything that has only a marginal value in improving students' scores is wasteful spending; also need new tax laws to force schools with huge endowments to roll back their tuition fees and increase student aid, or else the government should seize those endowment funds), set-up a program to help the housing industry, as explained above, and finally, spend on some long-term projects in the area of green technology, energy conservation/alternative energy sources, etc.

The stimulus package passed by the House has a lot of wasteful spending pushed by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which will hurt them in the next election. I support the efforts of some of the moderate Republican senators who are now trying to clean-up the bill just passed by the House.

The Congress should scrap the seniority system and older congressmen should retire

Posted by Shyam Moondra

President George Bush's approval rating has been the lowest compared to that of all other presidents in the modern history. However, the Congress fairs even worse in the eyes of the American people. The Congress, as an institution, is lethargic; it's like an over sized, old, and tired elephant that can hardly move.

While many of our problems are a direct result of Bush's ideology driven governing style, the Congress has failed to provide checks-and-balances as envisioned by the nation's founders. Bush's belief that the government should get out of the way of the private sector led to lax regulations that, in turn, led to the devastation of our free-market economy. Just as crime goes up on the Main Street if the police is not cruising the streets, it was not unexpected that Wall Street will engage in deception and manipulation if the regulators just looked the other way. Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive strike led him to blunder in invading Iraq that led to enormous costs in terms of lives and money. Bush's mantra of "lower taxes," led to disproportionately higher benefits to the rich at the expense of everybody else who are now stuck with a huge national debt that next generations would have to repay. Bush's spiritual belief is that there is no global warming and if there is something going on with our environment it's God's doing and not man-made, and, therefore, we don't really need to do anything. His recent push for health provider's conscience based denial to provide health care is rooted in his firm belief that abortion is a sin and not a woman's right. Bush's ideology driven agenda has brought nothing but ruins that now President-elect Barack Obama has to undo by pursuing more pragmatic ways of governing.

The Congress' record is even bleaker. The senators and congressmen failed to question faulty intelligence on Iraq, they authorized Bush to go to war but failed to provide oversight, they did not properly watch over the regulators who were supposed to regulate the financial sector, and they kept authorizing Bush to spend money that we didn't have. The government of checks-and-balances, as envisioned in the constitution, did not materialize.

One of the reasons why the Congress has turned in such a poor performance is that too many senators and representatives are old and they have been at the Capitol way too long. The median age of senators is 63 years compared with 36.7 years for the entire U.S. population. Most of the committee chairmen are in 70's and 80's, who are not in tune with the needs and thinking of the much younger and more dynamic population.

While older people bring experience and wisdom to their jobs, they generally have less energy and passion to accomplish big things. They tend to be comfortable in their jobs and thus have no zeal for any change. Resistance to change also means that novel ideas and solutions are not easily accepted. The older people are always behind the curve and in reactive mode; they almost never anticipate problems and they are rarely ready with proactive actions to prevent problems from happening in the first place. It's like a slow-motion movie running in reverse, very painful to watch.

Our country faces many difficult and complex problems that would require vigorous schedules and innovative approaches to solve them. The present mix of senators and representatives is out of step with the young and vibrant President-elect Obama, whom the American people chose over the aging Sen. John McCain. Obama has already outlined his ambitious agenda that includes a huge stimulus package to generate 3 million jobs, achieve energy independence during his tenure as the president, stabilize the housing market, tackle the health care crisis, win the war on terror in Afghanistan, and improve our educational system. The real question is if Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and these tired committee chairmen are the right people to keep up with Obama in achieving grand things for our country. I look upon these old lawmakers as an obstacle in our path to progress.

I think the time has come to get rid of this unwritten rule of seniority in the Congress when deciding who should lead what committee (the House has already begun that process but the Senate has not). The selection of lawmakers for the major leadership positions should be based on who has the capacity, drive, and passion to partner with the young Obama in getting things done. And to those in the Congress who are over 68, it's time they consider retiring and letting the younger generation take over, as was made abundantly clear by the American people who elected the young Obama as the next president. Perhaps, the time has come to also consider term limits for the U.S. senators and representatives.