No. of Recommendations: 6
What tough votes? Obama won an overwhelming mandate in 2008. Would have been easy peasy to ram through.
Nope. You may recall that his climate bill died, the financial reform bill struggled and had to be trimmed back significantly, and the health care bill very nearly died - and it was a massive struggle to get that through. There was a ton of arm-twisting that had to happen just to get what they were able to pass through, and very little of it was "easy peasy."
Congresscritters don't like taking too many tough votes in a single election cycle. You can't go to that well too often. The Obama Administration barely squeaked the health care law through - they never could have also gotten an immigration bill through as well.
