Obama adviser says tax cuts will happen
WASHINGTON (AP) – A top adviser to President-elect Barack Obama on Sunday defended plans for a conservative, anti-gay rights preacher to deliver the inaugural invocation while promising that campaign pledges for middle-class tax cuts will be kept. David Axelrod also assured that Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy will be revoked or allowed to expire.
Axelrod declined to comment on Israel’s offensive against the Islamic militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, saying Obama was in contact with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush about the crisis. More than 290 Palestinians have died in the first two days of the air campaign against Gaza rocket squads and Hamas members.
But, he said, “President Bush speaks for the United States until Jan. 20 and we’re going to honor that.”
Axelrod acknowledged that the United States has had a “special relationship” with Israel, calling it an “important bond, an important relationship.”
Obama’s “going to work closely with the Israelis. They’re a great ally of ours, the most important ally in the region,” Axelrod said. “And that is a fundamental principle from which he’ll work. But he will do so in a way that will promote the cause of peace, and work closely with the Israelis and the Palestinians on that.”
Obama is receiving regular security briefings during his Hawaii holiday with his wife and two daughters. On Sunday morning he again traveled to a Marine Corps base near his vacation home for an hourlong workout.
Obama and his friends from Chicago – Eric Whitaker and Martin Nesbitt – went to the Semper Fit gym on Marine Corps Base Hawaii’s compound Sunday morning. The president-elect did not speak to reporters but made small talk with members of the public, as he has done every day since arriving on Dec. 20.
The Obamas are spending 12 days in Obama’s native state. The next president has no public schedule through the New Year.
With 23 days remaining until Obama takes office in the midst of the deepest economic downturn in decades as the country is still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama senior adviser Axelrod said the incoming president’s invitation to the Rev. Rick Warren was important because it underlined the inclusiveness he wants to institute in his administration.
“The important point here is you have a conservative evangelical pastor coming to take part in the inauguration of a progressive president,” Axelrod said of Warren, a prominent preacher who backed a recent ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in his home state of California.
Warren has compared gay marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse, and polygamy. That stance has sparked outrage among gays and the president-elect’s liberal backers.
At the same time, Warren has battled complaints from fellow evangelicals that he isn’t nearly conservative enough. He has spoken out against the use of torture to combat terrorism and has joined the fight against global warming. Encouraged by his wife, he has also put his prestige and money behind helping people with AIDS.
More importantly for the much wider scope of Americans, however, is the terrible economic situation in the United States and globally.
Obama won the presidential election, in part, through voters’ belief that he was better able than Republican John McCain to deal with the economic meltdown.