July 21 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama in his first six months got a $787 billion economic stimulus package and asked Congress for $750 billion for the financial crisis along with a down payment on a $1 trillion overhaul of U.S. health care. The next six months may be more difficult. “I know folks in Washington and folks on Wall Street are saying no, no, no, one problem at a time,” Obama said in March at a town-hall meeting in Costa Mesa, California. “But you know, I’ve said before, when you’re president, you’ve got to walk and chew gum at the same time.” So far, he has done precisely that. His stimulus plan included home-buyer tax breaks that could help homebuilders such as Dallas-based Centex Corp. and Fort Worth, Texas-based D.R. Horton Inc., and money to upgrade utilities that is being pursued by technology companies such as San Jose, California- based Cisco Systems Inc. and Armonk, New York-based IBM Corp. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen 11.88 percent, to 951.13 from 850.12, since Obama was inaugurated Jan. 20. Yields for 10-year Treasuries have risen 55.55 percent, to 3.6063 percent from 2.3184 percent. The increase shows that demand for U.S. Treasuries hasn’t kept pace with supply amid record U.S. debt sales needed to fund the administration’s spending. Tobacco Regulation Obama has also gotten though new government regulation of tobacco products, an expansion of children’s health insurance and legislation to make it easier for U.S. workers to win pay- discrimination lawsuits. At the same time, the government has helped Detroit-based General Motors Co. through bankruptcy by providing $65 billion in federal aid. It has also sent Congress a package of changes to financial regulations designed to protect the economy from the types of banking problems that contributed to the current recession, and a Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, will likely be approved by the Senate next month. “It’s been an exceedingly active first six months with an objective record of legislative achievement,” said Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Now the road becomes more difficult. Lawmakers are debating the specifics of the health-care overhaul, including how to pay for it without increasing record-high deficits, projected at about $1.84 trillion this year. The Senate is about to take up the nation’s first rules to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, and lawmakers are locked in disagreements over assistance for coal- fired utilities and agricultural interests. ‘Time of Testing’ “This is the time of testing,” said Bill Galston, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. “Obama has teed up and launched an enormous number of initiatives, and his challenge over the next six to nine months is to bring as many as possible to legislative fruition.” First on the agenda is health care, which Obama has designated as the signature achievement of his first term in office. Robert Dallek, a retired professor of presidential history at Boston University, said the White House is showing a “unity of purpose” in trying to remake a sector that accounts for 18 percent of the economy. The plan has encountered resistance from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress. Dallek was one of a handful of scholars invited to a White House dinner with Obama on June 30 to talk about the failures and successes of past presidents. Obama asked the historians if he was taking on too much, too early in his administration. All said no, an answer Obama, 47, relished. ‘Taking Pleasure’ “You get the feeling that he is taking pleasure in the job,” said Doris Kearns Goodwin, a historian who has written biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and attended the dinner. H.W. Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin who also attended, said Obama has learned that being a candidate for president is “entirely different” from the realities of the office. “The essence of being president is about saying ‘no you can’t,’ not ‘yes you can,’” he said. Obama’s approach is showing a positive impact in one area, at least. The Conference Board’s sentiment index was at 49.3 in June, up from a record low of 25.3 reached in February, after Obama’s inauguration. At the same time, Obama’s approval ratings have slipped about 10 percentage points since his inauguration, according to surveys. A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted July 15-18 found that 59 percent of Americans surveyed approved of him, compared with a record 69 percent in April. Approval Rating On health care, his approval rating has fallen below 50 percent for the first time, to 49 percent, the Post poll shows. And the percentage of Americans who disapprove of how he is handing the budget deficit has risen 6 points to 49 percent. “Right now, people just want to have an answer to their problems,” Goodwin said. “He has to portray confidence that this will get better, that’s what you’re president for.” The historians said in the next six to nine months the problems facing the country would become increasingly identified with Obama and less with his predecessor, George W. Bush. Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston who attended the White House dinner, said the country will become “Obama’s America” before the end of the year. ‘Turning Point’ “We’re at a turning point in respect to judgment on him,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. “He’s inherited the economy but it’s his economy now.” Obama agrees. In June, he talked about “the financial crisis this administration inherited.” In Warren, Michigan, on July 14, he took possession of the nation’s economic woes. “I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, ‘well, this is Obama’s economy,’” Obama said, in a departure from his prepared remarks. “That’s fine. Give it to me.” Ownership of the economy has led Obama to begin playing down talk of a quick rebound. On July 14, he said the unemployment rate would continue to “tick up” over the next several months. And in Michigan he told voters that many lost manufacturing jobs “won’t be coming back” and that the nation is going to see “continuing job losses” even as the economy begins to improve. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political adviser, said the shift is natural. More ‘Accountable’ “Obviously, the longer you’re here, the more fully you are accountable,” he said. “When you are president of the United States you are responsible no matter what the problem is or how it got there.” Lately, Obama has stepped up his efforts to push through his health-care plan to avoid Clinton’s fate. Democrats lost 54 House seats in 1994, giving Republicans control of the chamber, after the failure of Clinton’s attempt at overhauling health care. “People in the Obama White House who worked for Clinton, and remember health care, remember very well the political consequences of coming up empty-handed,” Galston said. To avoid that fate, Obama has been stepping up his actions on behalf of legislation, holding White House events, including two last week and an hour-long prime time town hall in June. On July 15, the president gave interviews to the medical correspondents of three broadcast television networks to continue to press his case. Obama talked about health care at a Washington event yesterday and will hit the road for a speech on the issue July 23 in Cleveland. “He’s using a massive amount of capital to push health- care reform,” Thurber said. To get the process moving, Obama has summoned congressional leaders to the White House, as well as skeptics from both parties for individual meetings. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said administration officials are “very intimately involved” in the deliberations on Capitol Hill. “We always knew that passing health care reform wouldn’t be easy,” Obama said yesterday at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. “There’s just a tendency towards inertia in this town. I understand that as well as anybody.” To contact the reporters on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Washington at njohnston3@bloomberg.net; Kate Andersen in Washington at Kandersen7@bloomberg.net

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