History is Happening Now

The Democratic Party has a problem: Barack Obama wants bipartisanship, and Nancy Pelosi doesn’t.

Here is Nancy Pelosi suggesting the media and the public are making too big of a deal out of the Democrats’ failure to win substantial votes from both parties in support of a $800-billion-or-so economic stimulus bill:

“Washington seems consumed in the process argument of bipartisanship, when the rest of the country says they need this bill,” the California Democrat said, seeming to sweep aside the Obama administration initial desire to have broad GOP support for the plan. …

Pelosi’s increasingly partisan tone comes a day after Obama stepped up his pressure on Republicans, who have sought to downsize spending and increase tax cuts. They have been joined in their efforts by a coalition of centrist Democrats in the upper chamber, led by Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, who has criticized the House stimulus as wasteful and ill-targeted.

Unfortunately, Pelosi apparently isn’t up on the latest news. The “rest of the country” is NOT saying we need this bill. Here’s this from a recent CBS news report:

Slightly more than half the country approves of President Obama’s $800 billion-plus stimulus package, a new CBS News poll finds. But support for the bill has fallen 12 points since January, and nearly half of those surveyed do not believe it will shorten the recession.

Fifty-one percent of those surveyed support the stimulus package, while 39 percent do not. An additional 10 percent don’t know. Last month, 63 percent supported the package and just 24 percent opposed it.

I think it’s safe to assume that the 39 percent of Americans who oppose this bill aren’t all from Washington, and they aren’t opposed because they are all “consumed in the process argument of bipartisanship.” Many of these folks just don’t trust Nancy Pelosi, who set the stage for this entire debate over the stimulus bill when she and other top House Democrats drafted the first version that passed the House. Consider this from the CBS News Report:

President Obama’s approval rating stands at 62 percent, while the overall approval rating of Congress is 26 percent. …

The approval rating for Congressional Democrats is 48 percent, while the approval rating for Congressional Republicans is 32 percent. Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is unknown to most Americans, but she gets a 3-to-1 negative rating from those familiar with her.

Obama’s approval rating is a full 14 points higher than his fellow Democrats in Congress. We can blame the right-wing spin machine all day long for the unpopularity of Pelosi and her colleagues, but let’s not make the mistake of seeing value in their unpopularity. It’s not an asset, it’s a liability.

Republicans made it clear at the outset that the first draft of this bill was a product of Pelosi’s 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” Democrats.

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.”

Why does Obama remain so popular? It has a lot to do with the fact that people believe Obama is sincere when he talks about bipartisanship.

Americans believe the president is following through on his promise to establish greater bipartisanship in Washington: The public overwhelmingly thinks Obama is reaching out to Congressional Republicans, with 81 percent saying he is doing so.

Americans do not believe that Congressional Democrats and Republicans are following suit, however: Only 49 percent believe that Congressional Democrats are striving for bipartisanship, and just 41 percent say Congressional Republicans are seeking bipartisanship.

It is simply astonishing that 81 percent of respondants to this poll give Obama credit for reaching out to Congressional Republicans — this means that a majority or near-majority of Republicans believe Obama is reaching out. In contrast, it’s likely that the overwhelming majority of people who believe Congressional Democrats are reaching out are themselves Democrats.

It isn’t just Washington that’s “consumed” by the idea of bipartisanship. It’s also Barack Obama and the American people. Consider the following from a recent CBS news report:

Eighty-one percent of Americans say the stimulus bill should be a bipartisan effort. Just 13 percent think it is okay for a bill to be passed with only the backing of the Democratic majority.

Eighty-one percent is a huge number. It obviously represents a large number of Republicans AND Democrats, and this polling data may explain how Barack Obama managed to win. That’s what Charlie Cook — probably the smartest non-partisan pollster in the country – points to in a recent column:

In a recent article for The Democratic Strategist, a Web-based publication that provides a forum for some of the smartest Democratic pollsters, theorists, and thinkers, Andrew Levison argues that the strength of Obama’s appeal last year was in his determination to build a large and durable coalition, not to merely win with a very narrow majority. This strategy was crafted to bring about significant social reforms and change; it is not an abandonment of progressive values but instead a more effective way of achieving those objectives. To make real change, you have to try to do big things with broad-based support. History shows that the biggest and most meaningful public policy changes of the last century were achieved through bipartisan efforts, not by one party muscling its agenda through.

Most left-wing activists hate bipartisanship because they hate conceding anything to Republicans. I know how they feel — it’s frustrating to share a country with people who don’t share your beliefs about what should be done — but overall, the American people love bipartisanship. Left-wing activists may be deluding themselves that if they can just grab the reins of power for a brief period, they can implement policy changes that the rest of America will have to accept — even if a majority of Americans don’t actually support these changes. But this is called overreaching — it is precisely the political mistake the Republicans made during the Bush years, and Democrats who follow in Bush’s footsteps will face the same fate.

As Cook writes:

Congressional Democrats are understandably anxious to put into place those programs and priorities that got nowhere while Democrats chafed under Republican rule. Expecting them to take naturally to this very different approach by Obama is unrealistic. For that very reason, the Obama White House must begin sending in the plays, or it risks having Hill quarterbacks call their own in ways that run counter to the president’s game plan and have much less likelihood of success.

The “Hill quarterbacks” to be wary of are Pelosi and other House Dems who originally drafted this stimulus bill. The first draft of this bill ran counter to the president’s game plan because it was too full of random items that couldn’t be sold in a coherent way to a right-wing public. As Cook put it,

But the House-passed package suggested an effort exclusively of, by, and for Democrats, and it played to some of the worst stereotypes of the Democratic Party and of politics as usual on Capitol Hill. It implied that Obama had become a captive of, rather than the victor over, old-style politics.

Those who think it’s weak-minded and ignorant for me to repeat the “talking points” of conservatives who say this bill could have been drafted differently, consider the following discussion during Slate’s Political Gabfest, which features Slate writers Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson and David Plotz:

Dickerson: … A lot of people think that Daschle, plus the fact that the stimulus bill is now having some trouble, there are Democrats who are saying they won’t vote for it until it’s fixed, and as it starts to get fixed, that’s causing House Democrats to get angry about the things that are being taken out. I was talking to somebody who was, to an aide to a House leader yesterday, who said that the Senate Democrats were merely “mouthing GOP talking points.” That’s kind of a rough thing to say about your fellow Democrat already in this era of hope and wonder. I mean, we’re only in our second week of the Obama Administration and you already have intra-party sniping. So there is, some, kind of, the sky is falling. My own view, basically is, if you were one of the people who panicked during the election, and said, “oh my God, the sky is falling, Barack Obama is not going to win because he’s not tough enough, he’s too cerebral, he doesn’t act quickly enough, too much the law professor, blah blah blah, that you then can’t now panic about Republicans having the upper hand in the stimulus conversation …

Plotz: … Frankly, as we discussed a bit last week, there is stuff in that bill which is kind of hard to justify as a short-term economic measure. You don’t have to use this bill to do every single thing that the Democrats want to do over the next four years, or in the next two years. The bill can be more limited, and I think that it’s perfectly fair to have this kind of deliberation. …

Bazelon: … I have to say that now that I actually understand what is in that bill and all the different moving parts to it and how creaky it is, I don’t think that the version that Obama proposed should just pass.

Dickerson: Well, to be fair to him. It wasn’t the bill he proposed. It was the roughly 700-page bill that the House put together.

Are Bazelon and Plotz “mouthing GOP talking points” when they say the bill is “creaky” and contains elements that are “hard to justify”? I don’t have time to provide their credentials — but I’ve listened to them long enough to know that they have absolutely no inclination to echo Republican spin.

Pelosi and House Dems who thought Barack Obama’s talk of bipartisanship was “just words” need to realize that Obama was being serious — and furthermore, his approach to governance will do more for this country in the long-term than theirs will.

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.

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.”

Let me be clear: Democrats are the second worst party in American politics. The first worst is the Republicans.

What makes me say on this particular day that the Democrats the second worst, and not the first best?

First of all, Democrats have dominated Washington for only about two weeks, and they are already losing their first major battle over the House Democrats’ $800-billion-plus stimulus package. As E. J. Dionne writes in his column “Obama Losing Stimulus Fight to Defeated GOP,” Republican attacks may rely on making mountains out of molehills, but the attacks are sticking:

But such volleys have gone largely unreturned, and the biggest danger for Obama will come if Republican attacks erode support for the stimulus among Democrats. That’s why the president will be spending more time with congressional Democrats in the coming days. The administration’s visionary emphasis on winning expansive Republican support has been replaced by a down-to-earth struggle to get a bill through the Senate.

Why are Democrats losing? There are clues in this piece of reporting by Slate’s John Dickerson, entitled “Bipartisalesmanship.”

Many Senate Democrats claim that the bill has too many provisions that don’t meet the definition of “timely, targeted, and temporary.” This irritates their House colleagues, in part because it echoes a line House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once used against Republicans in a previous stimulus debate and in part because it echoes the spin Republicans are using against this stimulus bill. Republicans hope to define the bill by its smallest and most absurd provisions even if they are a tiny fraction of its cost. When Democrats also single out those provisions, they are merely “repeating GOP talking points,” as one Democratic House leadership aide put it. …

The tension for Obama is how far to go in accommodating the Senate without causing too much heartburn among Democrats in the House. House Speaker Pelosi met with OMB Director Peter Orszag and White House economic adviser Larry Summers Tuesday night in her House office and let them know her caucus could go only so far. It would be able to accept some of the tax-cut provisions being added to the Senate bill, like the adjustment that keeps the Alternative Minimum Tax from hitting middle-class families. But House Democrats were not going to see the bill they put together thoroughly undone.

The worry is not so much that Obama will lose the vote on the stimulus bill because of Democratic defections. It’s that his allies in the House and Senate will have to swallow hard to support it, or that the process of getting to yes will be bruising. This will create resistance for the next tough vote Obama asks them to take. If he creates too much trouble for himself, by the end of the year the president’s office hours will have to extend all day long.

I used to call this stimulus bill “Obama’s” stimulus bill — because that’s how I heard Nancy Pelosi describe it in an interview a few weeks ago. But I see now that the bill was “put together” by House Republicans who are “not going to see the bill they put together thoroughly undone.”

Unfortunately, the bill they “put together” was put together in a way that invites mockery. Here’s more from Dickerson’s report:

Barack Obama held office hours Wednesday. In 15-minute increments in the early afternoon, he met in the Oval Office with senators who want to modify his stimulus bill. Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska talked about removing spending provisions from the bill. He has a tentative list of cuts totaling more than $50 billion that include everything from $122.5 million for new and renovated polar icebreakers to $198 million in military benefits for Filipino veterans of World War II.

Why does the “stimulus” bill include $198 million in military benefits for Filipino veterans of World War II? Are we meant to believe that John Maynard Keynes himself would recommend extending military benefits to Filipinos as a way to stimulate the economy?

E.J. Dionne writes in his column:

Obama’s network appearances were planned as a response to a wholly unanticipated development: Republicans — short on new ideas, low on votes, and deeply unpopular in the polls — have been winning the media wars over the president’s central initiative.

They have done so largely by focusing on minor bits of the stimulus that amount, as Obama said in at least two of his network interviews, to “less than 1 percent of the overall package.” But Republicans have succeeded in defining the proposal by its least significant parts.

Gosh! Who would have expected that? Republicans opposing a spending bill by pointing out the most absurd and laughable items in the bill? In case my sarcasm isn’t coming across, let me be clear: Whichever Congressman or Congresswoman decided to put $198 million in military benefits for Filipino veterans into this bill should have to wear a scarlet “I” on their lapels for the entirety of this Congress. (“I” stands for IDIOT!) $198 million may not seem like a lot of money when stacked up against an $800-billion-plus bill, but the damage this silly provision is doing to the larger bill’s prospects in Congress is vast — and the same can be said for dozens of other ridiculous provisions.

Consider this from a recent column by George Will:

During World War II, Oscar Levant, the pianist and wit, was asked by his draft board, “Do you think you can kill?” He replied, “I don’t know about strangers, but friends, yes.” Barack Obama might have felt that way when his Democratic friends in Congress proposed expanding contraception services as an economic “stimulus.” Defending that (which was eventually dropped as indefensible), Nancy Pelosi said, “States are in terrible fiscal budget crises,” partly because of all they do for children’s health and education. Therefore, contraception, by reducing the number of wee parasites, “will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.” So: Children are a net cost to government and therefore (non sequitur alert) counterstimulative. Pelosi argues that a trillion dollars of other government outlays will be stimulative. In any case, the stimulus effect of more contraception would have been at least nine months in arriving.

What Democrat moron thought it would be a good idea to put contraceptives in this bill? Maybe this Democrat wasn’t a moron — maybe he was a saboteur sent into Congress undercover to plant provisions in the stimulus bill that would enable George Will to write columns like this one. Or maybe Nancy Pelosi decided to put an early stop to all Obama’s talk of bipartisanship by forcing our new president to support a bill too littered with nonsense to attract even 100% of Democrats, let along a Republican or two.

House Democrats won’t get their contraceptives now, nor will they score their benefits for Filipino veterans. But because of stupid items such as these, Democrats may end up having no choice except to accept changes that could actually weaken the bill. (Spending on contraceptives and benefits for Filipino veterans may be highly beneficial — but it doesn’t belong in this bill, as it contributes to the notion that the bill is just a hodge-podge of random spending items.)

Nancy Pelosi says House Democrats will “only go so far” in allowing their bill to be modified. She’s clearly threatening Obama, saying House Dems will actually vote down the bill if it is significantly altered so it can pass in the Senate.

Here’s my advice to Obama: Screw Pelosi. Do whatever it takes to get a bipartisan bill, even if it means alienating some Congressional Democrats. Otherwise, the age of Democratic dominance may be cut short by some MORON Congressman and his benefits for Filipino veterans. (No offense to Filipinos.)

What will Senate Democrats do now that President Obama’s $800-billion-plus fiscal stimulus bill is on the Senate floor? Will they make big changes to the bill in order to get Senate and House Republicans to support it? Or will they make only minor changes, more-or-less ensuring that the bill ends up winning with almost no Republican support whatsoever?

Most progressives would hate to see Democrats start making big changes to the bill in order to please Republicans. Their reasons are as follows:

1. Republicans have horrible ideas and a horrible record on the economy. So it’s likely that if Republicans have a say in the stimulus bill, they will weaken it, soften it, dilute it — screw it up, in other words. We need this bill to work, and Republicans are horrible at making things work — so we should keep them as far away from it as possible.

2. It’s not at all clear that Republicans are negotiating in good faith. If Democrats start accepting Republican-sponsored amendments or seriously considering Republican ideas about how to “improve” the bill, there’s still a good chance that most if not all Republicans in Congress will reject the bill anyway — and then Democrats will have weakened, softened, diluted the bill for no reason at all. If Democrats are going to be held responsible for this bill, then they might as well make sure it’s the best possible bill.

I want to make a different argument (albeit tentatively): I think it’s possible that this bill can be changed in ways that will convince a good number of Republican Senators and Congressmen to vote for it — and these changes don’t necessarily have to weaken the bill’s ability to stimulate the economy over the short term. And Democrats should consider making these changes – even if it means abandoning spending on projects that will be good for the country.

First of all, it’s important to recognize that a political battle is underway right now — not over whether the bill is too big — but over whether the bill spends the money in the right way.

And Democrats are losing this battle.

Consider the following recent poll results:

Most Americans are now looking for major revisions in the way the government is approaching the recession. 

A Gallup poll out Tuesday showed that a majority of Americans want Congress to either reject or make “major changes” to the economic stimulus package on Capitol Hill. 

The poll, conducted from Friday through Sunday, found that 75 percent of Americans want Congress to pass some version of the plan. But the survey reflected deepening doubts about the effectiveness of the programs and spending items currently being considered by federal lawmakers. Only 38 percent of those polled favored the existing stimulus proposal, down from a slight majority holding that view in the Jan. 28 Gallup survey. 

Thirty-seven percent want major changes and 17 percent reject the plan outright.

Why are the Republicans winning? It’s largely because the Democratic approach to this bill seems to be that any spending that involves hiring people to do work can rightly be called “stimulus.” And as long as most of this sort of spending is stimulus, Democrats figure they might as well spend the money on things they think will not only stimulate the economy, but also help the country in the long-term. This may be exactly right from a policy perspective.

But a lot of people aren’t buying it, and they are winning support from editorial writers and pundits all over America. Consider this recent editorial from the L.A. Times:

President Obama and congressional Democrats have emphasized that their proposal isn’t the typical exercise in pork-barrel politics. Lawmakers haven’t been allowed to pile on earmarks for pet local projects, and the largest sums are being divided among the states and cities through existing formulas. But too many of the items have little apparent connection with economic growth — witness the nearly $5 billion for prevention, wellness, “comparative effectiveness research” and training in the health field, the $2.1 billion for Head Start and the $300 million to improve teacher quality, just to name a few examples from the 647-page House bill. Other provisions, such as the $64 billion for preventing layoffs at schools, colleges and “high priority” state programs, are about saving jobs, not creating them. In the short term, there may be no difference between preventing job cuts and increasing payrolls — one prevents a bad situation from worsening, the other makes a good situation better. But an investment this large should pay long-term dividends by increasing productivity, and that’s hard to do when so much of the money is going toward maintaining the status quo.

There’s no question in my mind that the spending proposals described above are good. The money should be spent. But the L.A. Times is writing that these proposals “have little apparent connection with economic growth” and this is a sentiment I’ve heard over and over and over again as I’ve listened to Republican and supposedly “objective” analysis of the stimulus bill.

Here’s a “news analysis” from the New York Times with another troubling depiction of the stimulus bill:

Taken together, the economic stimulus plan and the banking bailout have quickly melded into a bitter political and ideological clash, barely two weeks into the Obama presidency.

Some of what is going on might best be called a classic case of pent-up demand — demand by Democrats for the kinds of programs that they could never get passed during the Bush years.

After years of battling with a White House that questioned the science behind global warming, Democratic lawmakers see a chance to begin programs aimed at environmental protection, using economic justifications for efforts like developing low-emission cars. And with a Democrat in the White House, they also see an opening to push for increased spending on education.

The efforts are fueled by a liberal base that supported Mr. Obama’s promise that he would tackle the biggest issues. That same base is concerned that the long slog ahead will force a delay or an abandonment of those ambitions.

As a result, there is $54 billion in the House bill for new forms of “American energy,” a phrase with an air of nationalism, along with a series of “Buy America” requirements of dubious legality under trade treaties; $141 billion for education; $24 billion for lowering health care costs; and $6 billion for broadband service, the digital equivalent of Lyndon B. Johnson electrifying the Hill Country in Texas.

(Some critics of that effort say it is pitifully small, too small to fulfill Mr. Obama’s campaign promise that all Americans should enjoy “the highest form of broadband access.”)

To those who argue that many of the programs will take years to get rolling, their advocates have replied, “So what?”

“It’s not as if we can just fix what’s wrong and go back to normal,” said James K. Galbraith, an economist at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in Austin. “Can you overdo? Maybe, but it’s easier to pull back later than to make up for the fact that you did too little.”

But the result is that a piece of “emergency” legislation that would spend heavily to stanch the killing of jobs is now transforming into a series of long-term commitments that are sure to add enormously to the national debt, and keep adding to it long after the Panic of 2008 and the recession — or worse — that it set off are consigned to history.

Galbraith’s “so what?” may sound great to Democrats like me who think the proposed spending described above is a great investment in our country’s future — but his glib indifference only fuels the idea that this bill isn’t about rescuing the American economy so much as it’s about Democrats following through on their political agenda, as the “analysis” suggests. Articles like this one — from the New York Times, no less – erode public support for this bill.  

And then Republicans put out lists like this one, outlining what they call “wasteful” parts of the bill:

(CNN) — On Monday, Congressional Republican leaders put out a list of what they call wasteful provisions in the Senate version of the nearly $900 billion stimulus bill that is being debated:

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

• $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.”

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings.

• $500 million for state and local fire stations.

• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.

• $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs.

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.

• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.

• $160 million for “paid volunteers” at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• $5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

• $850 million for Amtrak.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.

• $75 million to construct a “security training” facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

Obviously, we could go through this list, line by line, and explain why most of these items ARE stimulus. The idea that it isn’t “stimulative” to spend money on construction projects (artic ships, federal department headquarters, museums, flood reduction infrastructure) or upgrade computer systems, doesn’t make even a shred of sense. It is especially confounding to see a $1.2 billion for “youth summer job program” on this list — At a time when so many otherwise-employable youths will be unemployed due to a horrible job market, isn’t it a good idea to keep these people working so they can pay rent, spend money, build their resumes, etc.? And most of the other items on this list will create jobs of one kind or another.

But why in God’s name would we give Hollywood a tax break for the purchase of film? It may be a good idea, but it will strike almost every Republican in America as an absurd idea that obviously has more to do with satisfying a special interest group than with stimulating the economy.

These “minor” items, and countless others we’ve heard mocked on television by Republican pundits, are what the less-than-awesome poll numbers are about — not about whether more of the money should go to business tax cuts. And for people who don’t really understand economics and don’t accept the Keynsian notion that any spending is stimulative spending, these items seem random and cute. They suggest that Nancy Pelosi simply went before the Democratic Caucus in the House and said, “We need to spend $819 billion dollars. What should we spend it on?”

I think a stimulus bill may actually be more effective if it has significant Republican support. Consider the following excerpt from the L.A. Times editorial:

Stimulating the economy is more of an art than a science. A country relies partly on the strength of its resources — such as its workers’ productivity, the availability of cheap capital, the markets for its goods — and partly on consumers’ confidence. The latter is especially important in the United States, where consumer spending accounts for about 70% of the economy. Because any legislative effort to boost employment and end the recession will take months, if not years, to deliver its full benefits, it’s important that the psychic benefits are felt immediately. If people and businesses believe that the effort will improve job security and increase the demand for goods and services, they’ll be more likely to spend more and take more risks. But if they see the stimulus package as just another boondoggle for special interests, they’ll continue the miserliness that is exacerbating the downturn.

The Times’ point isn’t that the current version of the stimulus bill is a “boondoggle for special interests.” The Times’ point is that if the bill appears to be a boondoggle, this hurts the recovery.

There is no doubt that if the current version of the bill passes without any Republican support, Republicans will argue passionately until the end of time that the bill isn’t working, didn’t work – because it can’t possible work. The Republican Party has staked its entire identity on the idea that the current stimulus bill won’t stimulate the economy, and nothing will ever force them to abandon this view.

Unfortunately, I think Fox News journalist/pundit Brit Hume (who called it a “horrible bill”) was correct when he said this on Fox News Sunday:

When the economy recovers, the problem is we’re not going to know what did it. We’re not going to know whether it was just pent-up demand (where) people finally started buying because they had to, or whether it was because of the injections — massive injections, quite apart from the stimulus bill, of cash into the economy by the Fed. We’ll never really know, and the argument about whether this stuff works or not will go on forever.

It’s important to separate out the argument Hume is making about whether the bill will work and the argument he is making about “the argument” over whether the bill will work. Even if the current version of the bill is entirely successful, Republicans will never — NEVER — concede that it did, because such a concession would be the equivalent of saying “we were wrong about the most important issue this country has faced in a generation.”

If the bill passes (without Republican support) and then the economy recovers, Republicans will make the arguments Hume outlined above: that the real reason for the recovery was the release of pent-up demand or the injection of Fed money.

I absolutely believe that if this stimulus package is considered a success, Democrats in Congress will keep their majorities in Congress in 2010, and Obama will win reelection in 2012. If, on the other hand, the bill is considered a failure, the Republicans may win back the House and then the White House. Republicans know that this will be the battle, and they are gearing up to argue vehemently — for the survival of the party — that this bill is bad and won’t work, isn’t working, didn’t work, because that is their path back to power.

And if the current bill passes, the entire right-wing political establishment of this country — including politicians, pundits, radio talk show hosts, columnists, “journalists,” editorial writers, college professors, economists, etc. — will launch an aggressive, unyeilding campaign to malign the stimulus bill as a useless waste of taxpayer money. This means Republicans all over the country will hear that message all over again, and most of them will find the argument persuasive. The Gallup Poll above suggests the American people are already buying this argument. 

If more than a third of the country decides the stimulus was a waste, will that prevent the “psychic benefits” described in the L.A. Times editorial? Will that cause people and businesses to “continue the miserliness that is exacerbating the downturn”?

If, on the other hand, Democrats make major concessions — not by reducing spending in the bill, but by spending money on items that will be just as effective at stimulating the economy but won’t provide reasons for Republicans to vote against it — and if, as a result, Republicans support the bill, it will be highly problematic for Republicans to argue later that the bill was failure (just as it was problematic for Democrats to argue the Iraq War was a bad idea after voting to authorize it).

Here’s my proposal: Democrats should eliminate every single item of spending in the bill that Republicans have called “wasteful,” and spend that money instead on items that Republican Senators and Congressmen specifically request — items that Democrats believe would be roughly equal in their “stimulative” impact on the economy.

After the bill passes, Democrats should propose additional spending on these “wasteful” projects and force Republicans to block the spending with filabusters. Then, in 2010, the American people can decide whether to reward Republicans for their filabustering, or reward Democrats for leading this country through the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Please tell me why I’m wrong to contradict my hero, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, in arguing for big concessions to the Republicans. (I’m probably wrong, but I want to know why I’m wrong.)