Now is the time for Democrats to abandon any effort to pass their $800-billion-plus economic stimulus bill in a “bipartisan” manner. The Republicans have officially decided they can be obstructionist without paying a political price — and now the Democrats must make sure they do pay a price.
I’ve written blog posts celebrating Obama’s attempts at bipartisanship, and I’ve written blogs criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for drafting the bill’s first draft in a way that gave Republicans easy excuses to oppose it. But there is no excuse for the attitude the conservative elites are taking toward this process.
To be specific, Republicans have apparently abandoned any hopes of using their power in Congress to do what is best for this country, and have decided instead to do what is best for their party.
Consider this latest advice from Bill Kristol:
“This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending — it’s a strategy for America’s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education.”
With this key sentence from his op-ed in the Washington Post today, President Obama has given Republicans a golden opportunity: Insist on splitting the legislation being debated on the Senate floor into a true short-term stimulus, which can pass quickly, and long-term policy proposals, which require serious debate.
Republicans should stop trying to improve the unimproveable with small-bore amendments to the current legislative package. Instead, they can point out that Obama is supporting under the guise of emergency legislation a bloated catch-all of stimulus, pork and (often bad) policy. They can make clear that Republicans will support a real short-term stimulus (pro-growth tax cuts, housing measures and a few targeted spending provisions unemployment and COBRA extensions) that meets Larry Summers’s criteria of being targeted, timely and temporary. They should introduce such a measure as a substitute — “The Emergency Economic Growth Bill of 2009” — and trumpet their vigorous support of it. And they should insist that all the “energy, health care and education” proposals be debated in an orderly and serious way in the regular legislative process — not jammed through as part of an emergency “stimulus.”
This strategy depends on GOP willingness to slow the process down and to challenge Obama’s arbitrary Presidents’ Day deadline. The Republican position should be: We’ll pass on this emergency timetable a real stripped-down emergency stimulus. But if Obama insists on legislation incorporating an alleged “strategy for America’s long-term growth,” then the country deserves hearings and debate that obviously will take some time. And Republicans should make clear they cannot agree to limiting debate to a couple of days on such momentous long-term legislation.
In other words: If Obama wants a stimulus, Republicans will give it to him tomorrow. It’s the president’s and the Democrats’ insistence on incorporating a huge and problematic policy agenda in this one bill that’s delaying action. Why then, Republicans can ask, is President Obama delaying a necessary, short-term, emergency growth package?
Kristol may be a top-tier spokesperson for stupid ideas, but Kristol isn’t stupid. He knows the Democrats have heavy majorities in Congress, and no “Emergency Economic Growth Bill of 2009″ is every going to pass in a million years. To abandon “small-bore amendments” and instead “insist” and “make clear they cannot agree to limiting debate” — which means filabustering — and trumpet their support for proposals that will never pass — this is a strategy to exploit our national economic crisis to score political points for the Republican Party.
If Republicans decide they cannot, in good conscience, vote for the current bill, I can respect their decision.
But Kristol’s proposed filabustering will prevent any bill from being passed — which will lead the American people to believe that Congress is incapable of taking action to rescue our economy. Confidence in our government will drop, and so will stock prices and consumer confidence. Kristol’s proposal to launch alternative legislation will merely provide an excuse for Republicans in Congress to abandon any effort to work with Democrats. Kristol named the column above “The Republicans Opportunity,” because he sees an opportunity to redefine the Republican Party around its opposition to the Democratic bill. What his ideas will mean for the country is beside the point, as far as Kristol is concerned.
Here’s another example of the new conservative proposal, this one put forward by Daniel Henninger, to lift up the Republican Party on the back of the American economy:
Contrary to conventional Beltway wisdom, the House Republicans’ zero votes for the Obama presidency’s stimulus “package” is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the GOP’s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties. If the GOP line holds, the party could win back much of the goodwill it dissipated with its big-government adventures the past eight years.
For starters, notwithstanding the new president’s high approval rating, his stimulus bill (ghost-written by Nancy Pelosi) has been losing altitude with public opinion by the day. People are nervous. …
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says, “Everybody agrees that there ought to be a stimulus package. The question is: How big and what do we spend it on?”
Sen. McConnell should reconsider. He knows that the Bush-GOP spending spree cost them control of Congress in 2006. Thus, “How big?” is not the question his party’s constituents (or horrified independents) want answered. This is a chance for the GOP to climb down from its big-government dunce chair. Until that reversal is achieved, there is no hope for this party.
I think that behind the bill’s sinking public support is the sense that it won’t work and its cost is dangerous. The bill’s design, an embarrassment to Rube Goldberg, is flawed. Even were one to grant the Keynesians their argument, this is a very mushy, weak-form stimulus.
Rather than try to “reform” it, which won’t happen, Sen. McConnell should ask President Obama to pull it and start over. One guesses that privately the president’s economic team would thank the senator. If he won’t pull it, the Senate Republicans should walk away from it. This bill is a bomb. It may wreck more than it saves.
Henninger isn’t stupid either. Pulling this bill and starting over is NOT an option. Henninger knows full well that he’s really advocating for Republicans to try to score political points by opposing this bill with all their heart and soul. Responsible legislators would concern themselves with how this approach is liable to play itself out for the American people, but the only endgame Henninger cares about is restoring the Republican Party’s popularity.
I had hoped that Obama and the Democrats could get bipartisan support for this bill — because I think that’s best for the economy, best for the country and best for the Democratic Party and Obama — but that time has certainly passed.
The only way to get bipartisan support for a bill championed by Democrats is to put Republicans in a position where it’s in their best interests politically to support it. My hope was the Democrats would draft a bill that would either force Republicans to defend their core ideology — which is simply indefensible — or support the bill. But Republicans have found a way out: Instead of justifying their opposition to the stimulus bill in terms of their blind support for tax cuts for the wealthy, they have relied instead on a series of lists. By picking out a few dozen miniscule items in the bill, rattling them off in a list, and adopting a snarky tone (see here for another excellent example), the right-wingers have managed to sow doubt in the public’s mind about whether the bill is a waste.
Now Obama and the Democrats have to switch gears, and fast. Republicans want an opportunity to filabuster, and Democrats need to give them that opportunity. Obama and the Dems need to bring this bill up for a vote — fast! If Republicans want to filabuster and obstruct, they should be given the opportunity. And Pelosi, Harry Reid and Obama need to say it plain: This is the bill, and we will either pass it now or pass it later, but there will be no other opportunity to pass a plan. The Democrats won, and this is the bill on the table, so take it or leave it.
Courtesy of MSNBC, here is the breakdown of the stimulus bill:
Comment by Lee — February 5, 2009 @ 11:53 pm
I don’t currently support the stimulus bill in its present form, and it’s not necessarily becuase of the size of the bill. It is a lot of money, but a lot of people say that it has to be this big, so fine, I have no problem with it being this large. My trepedation over this bill is that it seems like some of the stuff that has been put in it will not immediatley stimulate the economy. It may be worth while and a noble cause but I don’t see how it it helps create 3 million jobs. To me, it is up to the President and other Democrats who wrote the bill to sell it to public. If they can make a valid argument for everything in it, I will support this bill, but to this point I don’t think they have done a good job doing that. I have only been told that this needs to get done right away. That’s not a good reason to do anything; that’s what was said in the fall when we “had” to do the bailout right away. I am very skeptical of the government ever doing anything right and would like someone to make a strong case for this bill before I support it.
Comment by rbates — February 6, 2009 @ 6:58 pm
The CBO apparently agrees with the President’s assessment about the stimulating effect of the bill on the economy (see my recent posting). Who to believe? In a sense, as individuals, we’re constrained in what we can know. Our eyes and ears in these debates are the analysts and experts who aggregate data and present arguments. But experts often get things wrong.
Nonetheless, if the CBO report is correct, then the bill will work more or less as promised — assuming that the Senate doesn’t strip it of high multiplier-effect spending provisions, which seems highly likely, unfortunately.
I agree completely that the Democrats have done a terrible job of selling the plan to the public.
One wonders if the media coverage of the stimulus debate might have something to do with the failure of the Democrats to rally the country behind the plan.
As ThinkProgress reports, “the debate over the House economic recovery bill on the five cable news networks, Republican members of Congress outnumbered their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of 2 to 1.”
Comment by Lee — February 6, 2009 @ 7:30 pm
I’m so glad you’re back, rbates! I also agree that it’s up to the Democrats to sell their bill, and they’ve done a poor job so far.
You write: “My trepedation over this bill is that it seems like some of the stuff that has been put in it will not immediatley stimulate the economy. It may be worth while and a noble cause but I don’t see how it it helps create 3 million jobs.”
First, the idea that some of the items in the bill will not immediately stimulate the economy is EVERYWHERE. Dems have got to do a better job of either selling the entire bill as immediate stimulus, or explaining why the bill includes stuff that isn’t immediate stimulus.
I would first suggest that immediate stimulus is necessary, but stimulus over the longer-term — over the next two to three years, in other words — may also be necessary. I also believe that a lot of Republicans say they’re concerned about spending that won’t immediately stimulate the economy — and then point to items like the resodding of the national mall in Washington, or food stamps, which WILL OBVIOUSLY stimulate the economy immediately. Food stamps are an extremely efficient way to bolster demand, and employing people the sod the mall is the most “shovel-ready” project in the world. So Republicans should be held accountable for making arguments that may sound good at first blush, but don’t bear up under any scrutiny whatsoever by people who understand what stimulus is. That said, there is stupid stuff in the bill — and I’m pissed that it’s there — but it’s a very tiny fraction of the bill, less than 1%, and I don’t believe we should avoid passing crucial legislation because of minor stuff. You may know of larger portions of the bill that you don’t think will work.
I do believe the bill will create 3 million jobs. The issue is, how many of those jobs will be temporary, and how many will be permanent. Sodding the mall and other similar projects are temporary, but the economic stimulus provided by employing those people — who will spend money, etc. — will hopefull cause other jobs to be created in the private sector, and THOSE jobs WILL be permanent. The unfortunate fact is that the government can’t force the private sector to hire people — all it can do is create the conditions that will cause the private sector to hire people.
As for your skepticism about the government doing anything right, the government has kept you safe from foreign enemies, most criminals, poisoned food, lethally polluted water. It provides benefits, such as social security, that enable our poor elderly to survive. To imagine a world without government is to imagine an unbelievable nightmare. If you compare life in this country to life in places where the government is truly dysfunctional — countries such as Afghanistan or Gaza — I think it’s obvious that our government does a lot of things right. A healthy skepticism about government is reasonable, but I think we shouldn’t take our American government for granted and delude ourselves into believing that life would be better in anarchy.
Comment by Ian — February 6, 2009 @ 11:21 pm
Ian, I don’t mean to sound like I think the government should be eliminated and we govern ourselves. That would lead to cahos. When I say that I am skepical about the government, it’s that they are not very efficient at what they do. They always take a lot longer, and anything they do costs more than they originally said. While they do keep us safe and provide us the with the benefits that you mentioned, it seems like they could do a better job at it.
I know that sodding the mall will create jobs, but how many and for how long? It seems like it is such a small job that it’s almost inconsequencial. When that job is done, then what? I know that it will have a ripple effect on the economy, but will that ripple be long, and big enough to be worth it?
The money for food stamps is a good idea, but it’s a one-time thing. The people get their food stamps and buy what they need, then its all over. I am sure this help the economy for a short period and everyone will feel good about themselves, but what happens when that is done? Will we be back in the same spot again, only that money has been spent?
There are people a lot smarter, and much more qualified than I am, working on this bill, I just hope that they get this right becuase if it doesn’t work I don’t know where we turn next.
Comment by rbates — February 7, 2009 @ 12:08 am
The hope is that the stimulus money will stimulate the economy — and the economy, having been stimulated, will then continue and grow on its own, without further stimulus.
I sure hope it works too!
Comment by Ian — February 7, 2009 @ 12:56 am