Mr. Warren Buffett believes he understands the biggest challenge that President Obama will face during his second term, and that challenge is Congress.
Even though the Oracle of Omaha believes that Congress will present Obama with his biggest problem during his second term, he also believes that the United States will overcome the poor decision-making of lawmakers.
“What is right about America just totally dwarfs what’s wrong with Washington,” said Buffett in a recent interview on CBS News.
The billionaire investor has regularly criticized lawmakers during his career. Throughout the entire fiscal cliff debate, Buffett strongly recommended that Republicans “put country before party” in an effort to come to an agreement that would prevent $1.2 trillion in automatic spending hikes and tax cuts. They managed to avert the fiscal cliff, but President Obama and Congress didn’t come to an agreement until the 11th hour.
During 2011, Warren Buffett made an effort to influence Washington with a proposal where the ultra rich Americans would be required to pay a much higher tax rate than the American middle class. The plan was dubbed “the Buffett Rule” and the Senate ultimately didn’t agree with this plan.
Buffett recently spoke about another major issue that Washington is facing during his interview with CBS. The issue was the national debt. The leaders of the Republican Party believe that we should only raise the debt ceiling if an effort is made to reduce the debt through major cuts in spending. If Congress doesn’t do anything, the US can potentially lose its ability to meet its financial obligations during the middle of February, which we learned from our report by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“It is not a good thing to have it going up in relation to GDP,” mentions Buffett in an interview. “The debt itself is not a problem.”