If Democrats want to pass a $800-billion-plus emergency fiscal stimulus bill to rescue our ailing economy, the Dems in the House should have put together a bill that their own caucus could support unanimously and with enthusiasm.
Instead, they put together a bill that can be easily opposed by not just Republicans, but by more than a few Democrats as well. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska has objected to the House version of the bill — and so do a lot of House Democrats, above and beyond the 11 House Dems who didn’t vote for the bill when it passed the House.
The end result of this legislative failure is that as House Republicans win the media war over what this stimulus bill is and whether it will work, House and Senate Democrats are finding it ever-more difficult to stand behind it. This will ultimately force Obama and the Congressional Democratic leadership to make concessions far above and beyond what they would have had to accept if Nancy Pelosi had been thoughtful in designing this bill in the first place.
Consider this excerpt from a Politico article:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has never enjoyed a firmer hold on the leash of her 255-member caucus — but the Blue Dogs are starting to strain against the chain.
Many of the 49 members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition are going public with deep misgivings about the goodie-packed $819 billion stimulus package the House passed last week.
That’s hardly surprising, considering it’s a deficit-spending behemoth that inherently offends their balanced-budget sensibilities. But the Dogs are really growling about the way in which the bill passed the House — how Pelosi shepherded it through, and how she suspended “regular order” during the passage of the $700 billion financial markets bailout late last year.
“A lot of the Blue Dogs were unhappy with the [stimulus] bill and even angrier because they felt they had zero input — like their caucus doesn’t matter anymore because of the padded majority,” said a staffer for a prominent caucus member.
“I got in terrible trouble with our leadership because they don’t care what’s in the bill; they just want it to pass and they want it to be unanimous,” Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper, the member deepest in Pelosi’s doghouse, told a Nashville radio program over the weekend.
“We’re just told how to vote. We’re treated like mushrooms most of the time.”
None of this is lost on Pelosi, a microscopic observer of intra-caucus politics — although it’s not clear if she’ll do anything to appease the group.
Pelosi confidant George Miller (D-Calif.) said Democratic leaders are “definitely paying attention” to the Blue Dogs’ concerns. But at her weekly press conference Wednesday, Pelosi made light of a reporter who tried to ask her about the topic.
“Speaking of the Blue Dogs,” the reporter began.
“Were we speaking about them?” Pelosi asked, before asserting that “a bill … will pass the House” no matter who opposed it.
In the past, the Dogs have barked more than bitten. But they could gain major leverage if Republicans continue to unanimously oppose the stimulus — and Pelosi needs every Democratic vote to pass the House-Senate compromise bill.
The bill will probably end up passing, but it is deeply troubling to see a situation where Pelosi cannot forge consensus on an issue of this magnitude within her own caucus. If Pelosi didn’t clear this bill with moderate House Democrats, what is the likelihood that she cleared it with any Republicans? It seems far more likely that she and a few other top Dems drafted this bill on their own, utterly abandoning not only Obama’s calls for bipartisanship, but any semblance of common sense about how to build the Democrats’ poltical capital.
From another article:
Democrats expressed frustration that the media and the Republicans are focusing on “minor” items, some of which are no longer in the bill, such as measures dealing with smoking cessation and STD prevention.
“The sum total of their grievances amount to one page,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, ripping a page from the 735-page bill.
How did smoking cessation and STD prevention get into the bill in the first place? They got there because Nancy Pelosi put them there. These provisions won’t end up in the bill — they won’t prevent a single disease or unwanted pregnancy — but they will provide Republicans with embaressing talking points that will offend swing voters in the very districts where more moderate Democrats face serious G.O.P. challengers.
This could have been avoided — and then, later on, the Dems could have passed spending items dealing with smoking cessation and STD prevention separately. Their presence in this stimulus bill gives Republicans an opportunity to oppose these worthwhile measures in terms of process — they may be good ideas, Republicans say, but they don’t belong in emergency legislation designed to rescue the economy.
It’s time for Democrats to start acknowledging that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have two very different ideas about governance — and Pelosi’s ideas aren’t working.
Thankfully, it appears Obama is finding ways to introduce some common sense:
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — As whispers of tension between the White House and congressional Democrats cloud negotiations over the stimulus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reassured her rank and file Thursday that they remain President Barack Obama’s “most enthusiastic supporters.”
“We have his back,” Pelosi told a roomful of Democrats at the party’s annual retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa, according to people in the room.
The speaker also pledged “to work in a bipartisan way” before complaining that Republican ideas “take us in the wrong direction.”
Her remarks won loud applause from the assembled lawmakers, according to one participant.
As negotiations on the nearly $900 billion stimulus intensify in the Senate, Pelosi has had to fight back reports that Obama administration officials had tacitly encouraged dissent from moderate Blue Dog Democrats. Many of these fiscally conservative Democrats have pushed back on the size and scope of the stimulus, and Obama has been open about trimming back Pelosi’s version of the bill.
In her remarks to the Democratic retreat, Pelosi also promised her caucus that she would restore regular order to the House by bringing legislation through committees — something Democrats often ignored during their first two years in power. She explained that party leaders decided to expedite consideration of the stimulus package because the economy is “losing jobs at a massive rate.”
Can Pelosi be blamed for the benefits to Filipino WW2 vets that you have repeatedly mentioned? From the LAT:
Whatever one thinks about benefits to Filipino WW2 vets, the addition was only in the Senate version of the bill, not the House version. This kind of stuff always ends up in such bills, as far as I can tell, partly as a result of the piecemeal and imperfect nature of the legislative process; people selectively become purity fiends whenever it suits them and their ideological interests, as Republicans and apparently moderate Democrats are in this case.
When all is done, the stimulus bill is going to pass about as cleanly as bills of this sort can pass, as far as I can tell. Can you point to a model of legislative efficiency and pork-less-ness in the past in comparison to this bill? I continue to believe that the main problem with the stimulus wasn’t so much the content of the bill but the lack of preparedness by Democrats in dealing with the hard work of defending it.
Comment by Lee — February 5, 2009 @ 11:39 pm
Thank you for that very important correction. My claims that Pelosi could be blamed for adding the WW2 benefits item were based on my own ignorance, and I should have done my research.
I would argue that Pelosi may have set the stage for this sort of thing by allowing other, similar small measures into her earlier version of the bill. To say this sort of stuff always ends up in “such bills” makes it sound as though this bill is like other bills — but it isn’t. The bill is too massive, the stakes are too large, and the potential benefits of bipartisanship are too great in this case for this bill to be treated just like other bills. Comparing this bill to other bills in the past misses the point, in my opinion. Spending $800 billion after about two months of debate is not acceptable under ordinary circumstances, and Democrats should reserve the right to complain if Republicans try something similar in the future.
As for Inouye’s statement that he’s looking for any vehicle to bring this forward, Inouye hasn’t impressed me. If I could send his primary challenger $10 bucks right now, I would. It just gives Richard Burr an opportunity to sell the idea that the bill isn’t really about stimulus — and these sorts of items grind away at support for the bill.
I agree, though, that Democrats have done a poor job defending this bill.
Comment by Ian — February 6, 2009 @ 12:08 am
Yeah, the Inouye add-on is far worse than I thought initially — it actually sends stimulus money to WW2 vets currently living in the Philippines (like $9000 each) which makes sense from the perspective of fairness (if you give money to vets in the US you must also give those who have left the country money, too) but it definitely damages the reputation of the bill as a “stimulus” bill, however miniscule the amount is.
Comment by Lee — February 6, 2009 @ 1:30 am
[...] leadership — and Democrats could never effectively refute this charge because (guess what) it’s true! – at least according to conservative Democrats, also known as “Blue Dog” [...]
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