President Obama Talks Bipartisanship to Illinois Lawmakers

A day after President Barack Obama called out state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, during his address to the Illinois Legislature, the lawmaker talked about his moment in the spotlight.

“But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change”, Obama, then a first-term senator from IL, said in the speech.

The president flew into Springfield, where he got his start in politics. The time and place were no coincidence: The speech came nine years to the day after he launched his campaign for president on the steps of the Old State Capitol Building just a few blocks away.

“Politically it was hazardous”, the president said.

“The central premise of the Obama presidency was to unite the country, and that’s been an unquestionable failure”, said a spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The remarks were aimed at an audience that included a Legislature dominated by Democrats and a Republican governor who, together, are more than eight months into a fiscal year without a state budget and therefore leaving areas including higher education and many social services unfunded. Obama admits it’s a goal he has not been able to achieve during his two terms in the White House.

Gabel said she was pleased to hear him mention legislation she and Sen.

President Obama returned to Springfield, IL today, nine years after he announced his presidency, for a speech about “fixing our broken politics”.

“Even as we change the way system works, we also have a responsibility to change the way that we, as elected officials and as citizens, work together”, Obama said. If anything, a lot of Obama’s criticisms in 2016 were similar to those in 2007, where he railed against the “smallness of American politics and the “ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial”.

“This four trillion dollar wish list is completely unrealistic, given our nation’s unsustainable fiscal path. Sadly, this is not surprising due to President Obama’s repeated budgets that add more debt, raise taxes and increase the deficit”.

Obama was in the minority party when he began serving in the state Senate in 1997. Kurt Walters, campaign manager at Rootstrikers and one of the petition’s organizers, called the response “offensive to the millions of Americans demanding an end to secret money influencing elections”.

“But it’s also an opportunity for us to remind ourselves that actions speak louder than words”, Barickman said.

McMillan says this time they’re armed with 5,000 volunteers, have collected more than the required amount of signatures and have the legal muster. “Illinois Democrats have turned our state into a fiscal basket case”, he said.