Word: agenda
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Looming in the background of last November’s presidential election was the possibility that the Democrats in the Senate could reach the magic number: By holding 60 seats in the Senate, they could overcome Republican filibusters and push through a liberal agenda without significant interference from their more conservative colleagues. But the Democrats fell just short, and, for Obama’s first 100 days, the president was forced to settle for a considerable but not filibuster-proof majority. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania changed that, though, when he announced on Tuesday morning that he would defect...
...decision to defect couldn't come at a worse time for the Grand Old Party. Should Al Franken win Minnesota's long-contested Senate seat in Minnesota, Democrats could have the 60-vote majority needed to overcome any Republican filibusters meant to stall President Barack Obama's legislative agenda. But while Specter was just one of three Republicans to support Obama's $789 billion economic-recovery legislation, he cautioned his newfound Democratic colleagues: "I will not be an automatic 60th vote." They don't call him a contrarian for nothing. (Read "GOP Senator Specter's Party Switch Gives Obama...
...Senate seat but backed off on Tuesday, echoed Sestak's point that Specter would need to demonstrate that he is representing the interests of Pennsylvanians, who strongly supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election. The test for Specter, he said, will be to "make sure the Obama agenda is acted upon and not stifled...
...danger is that he will be forced to use his political capital on this rather than the economy, health care, cap and trade, education, immigration, etc," says James Thurber, director of American University's Center for Presidential and Congressional Studies. "It sets yet another agenda item for him in a very crowded list of priorities...
...speech - "Our long national nightmare is over" - and his pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon. "Ford had some of the same problems," says Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "Many people were so focused on getting Nixon or re-fighting Vietnam that the pressing agenda of the '70s was lost in the mists of the past...