Bipartisanship for Its Own Sake: "Deal" "Reached" on Economic Stimulus Bill Following Free-Style Spending Cuts (News & Blogger Round-Up)

by Damozel } Doubtless Republicans who still are managing to hold on to their homes and their jobs are assiduously cheering on the GOP representatives who would very much rather do nothing at all than vote for Obama's stimulus package without doing their all to undermine it. 

When it looks as if the human cost of doing nothing for those who are hardest hit might be laid at their door, even Senate Republicans might be induced to take action other than just cutting the taxes of people who still have income and hoping that "voodoo economics" will trickle down.  Or at least a few of them can.   Well, okay: um, two or three so far. 

Mind you, I am not convinced that's a good thing.  No, I have to admit it:  bipartisanship for its own sake doesn't strike me as a good thing.  Because as John Cole observed:  "I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane."

Senate leaders now think they've "hammered out" an acceptable compromise. (abc news)   The Politico reports on what has been lost:

Lost in the process—or scaled back significantly— are some important Democratic initiatives and at least $47 billion in promised aid to the states. New Pell Grant funding is largely preserved, but $16 billion in school construction funds would be cut, and increases for popular programs like Head Start cut in half. Obama’s own agenda is not immune. The deal would trim back new funds committed for expanding broadband access and improving the electrical grid as well as investments in health information technology.

Comparatively sane -- everything is relative -- Republicans Arlen Specter (PA) and Susan Collins (ME) seem to think they can live with the revised package.  These two votes will pull in enough votes to avoid a Republican filibuster.(abc news) As The Washington Post says, this will "virtually guarantee" that the bill passes the Senate, but likewise ensures "arduous final negotiations" with the GOP morons in the House who still don't understand the phrase "last resort" (though the WaPo piece doesn't put it quite that way).

So, anyway, the Senate Dems are feeling pleased with themselves.

"We recognize that our plan isn't perfect," Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a key negotiator on the deal, told his fellow senators. "But I believe it's both responsible and realistic. It's stimulative and timely. It can help deliver economic recovery to the American people soon."

Nelson said negotiators went through the once-approximately-$900 billion package line by line to make tens of billions in cuts.

"We trimmed the fat, fried the bacon and milked the sacred cows," Nelson told the Senate, as it debated the revised bill into the evening....

"We have reduced the expenditures by $145 billion -- that's a lot of money," added Specter, pointing out that much of the money that will be cut was meant for popular programs, including tens of billions for education spending.(abc news)  

Oh, hurray!  They saved us some money!  Or, er, um...uh, but Publius says:

It’s all incredibly frustrating – it would be one thing if the Nelson...crew cut measures that actually had no (or very limited) stimulus benefits.  But that’s not at all what they did – in fact, there seems to be little coherence to what they cut.  From what I can gather, they wanted to cut some stuff just to say that they had cut some stuff.

For instance, consider the state stabilization fund.  Details are still sketchy, but it seems like the Senate’s bold centrist compromise took a big axe to this program.  However, this program – derided as a “slush” fund – provides many critical stimulus benefits.  Let me say that again – the state stabilization fund will help stimulate the economy immediately by keeping people in jobs.

David Rogers comments on Specter's sacrifice of one of his own priorities to "bipartisan" action for the good of the public. 

Specter’s role is striking since he is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which helped write the bill. On the floor this week, Democrats like Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin helped him secure increased funding for the National Institutes of Health—a Specter priority. Yet in the talks, it appears that $5.8 billion in public health funds for the treatment of preventable diseases—a Harkin priority— would be severely cut or even wiped out. (Politico)

Democrats previously critical of the bill ---e.g., Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (ND) ---  seem to feel they can live with what they've got.  "“My sense from the caucus,” [Conrad] said, “was that the caucus was united, that the package had been improved, and people would support it.”" (Politico)

Publius temperately comments:

It honestly boggles my mind to see so much money taken out of this particular category.  Again, these cuts would be palatable if there were some semblance of a policy rationale for doing so.  But there’s none.  Instead, the fate of state budgets everywhere must take a backseat to the desires of Senators Nelson and Collins to be perceived as very serious centrists.

Inflammable DDay becomes very sarcastic, though not nearly as sarcastic as I --- speaking as a state employee whose best friends are all state employees --- am feeling:

Making the recovery bill safe for tax cuts and free of wasteful spending like $40 billion in aid to states which will now have to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers was "a very liberating process," ...Nelson and Collins said.... "It feels good to have that sense of accomplishment that comes with kicking firefighters and teachers out onto the street and seeing others slip into poverty," Nelson and Collins said in unison. "They said it couldn't be done!

Thers says bleakly:

Thank GOD the Sensible Senate Centrists are going to slash child nutrition funds from the stimulus package.

Write your own obvious Swiftian satirical observations to do with the consumption of human babies: re our stupid politics. Even the wide-open field for cannibalism and infanticide jokes this news so amply provides isn't cheering me up.

Meanwhile, Obama applauds the free-style hatchet job of the so-called moderates. 

And in the midst of all this "bipartisan" self-congratulation, Senator John McCain --- remember him? --- points out that you can't rightly call a bill that drew the support of only two of 40 Republicans "bipartisan."  (abc news)  He's so right.  And that tells you something right there.

Moments after Reid announced the deal on the Senate floor, GOP lawmakers said that they will seek to delay a final vote through procedural objections, which could push debate to as late as Monday. (Washington Post)

That's a shrewd move.  When the bill finally passes, as it eventually will, the GOP won't have to shoulder any of the blame if it does work and can point fingers and jeer if it doesn't because they delayed it too long.  In other words: it's a win-win for the GOP, if not for their constituents.

Steve Benen remarks:

[I]t's amusing to see Republican leaders redefine words. Democratic leaders and the White House negotiated for days with several Republican senators, and made painful and unnecessary cuts just to earn their support. This, however, isn't "true" bipartisanship, presumably because the far-right is still unhappy....

President Obama spent a considerable amount of time and energy engaging congressional Republicans directly, soliciting ideas, making changes, and hearing them out. To hear GOP leaders tell it now, Democrats deserve blame for not incorporating more failed right-wing ideas into the package.

Ambinder has a thought about how the Republican meme has taken hold among members of the public who --- one would think --- might have learned to know better.

One reason why Republicans have taken control of the debate about the stimulus bill is that they're managed to muscle their way onto political television, which influences how other reporters cover the debate.....Republican lawmakers outnumber Democratic lawmakers by a ratio of 2 to 1 on the cable news chat shows....(The Atlantic)

But never fear:  Obama is travelling to Florida and Indiana for "economic events."  Yeah, take that "bipartisan" dog and pony show on the road and sell it like it it was snake oil!

At HuffPost Paul Jenkins has some canny thoughts on Obama's insistence on bipartisanship (paragraph breaks inserted for emphasis), arguing that "Obama's big tent is bursting at the seams":

Perhaps the current national crisis is at the root of Obama's persistence in reaching out to Republicans, a sort of multi-party War Cabinet focused on the economy.

But that misses the point: the country is not under attack from outside forces, at least as far as the economy goes; it is under attack from within, and more specifically from the Republicans themselves, who are intent on sabotaging any effort at stanching the bleeding.

There is room to disagree on the nature of and even the need for a stimulus package, or a banking bailout, but the alternatives need to be both realistic and not destined to repeat the country's most recent failures. On that count, Republicans have made themselves irrelevant, and there should simply be no room at the table for them....

The Republican Party needs to find its way back to some kind of even vaguely mainstream place, at which point it may be a more useful partner for Obama, but now is not the time (nor will it be soon judging by the rhetoric from the party's new leader.)  [PJ.com]

Further to that point, Big Tent Democrat, never exactly Obama's biggest fan, breaks out in invective:

F--- me. Obama betrayed Congressional Democrats fighting for the best bill for the economy and the country. Obama fought for spending cuts and GOP tax cuts! Obama the triangulator!...The Beltway "Bipartisan" BSers got their man - and his name appears to be Barack Obama.

For myself, I'm counting on all Obama's reaching out and bipartisan posturing turning out to be part of a master strategy to convert the Republicans' win-win into its opposite.  But I admit, it's getting harder every day to hold onto that view (I mean:  Judd Gregg for commerce secretary?  Really?)

So what I want to know is:  Why can't we all just solve the problem without them? Why do we have to divide the baby in half so Republicans can pretend to be fiscal conservatives again?  Why must we insist on sharing responsibility with politicians who demonstrated for the preceding eight years that they don't know the meaning of the word? 

As Steve Benen says, there ain't no point in negotiating with --- let alone trying to placate --- the crazy.  "Between sanity and craziness, there is no common ground."

Memeorandum has more here.

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Comments

[Richard]

For a lighter take on the financial crisis, readers might enjoy this video satire on the bailout at http://www.bondwooley.com

[Deb]

GREAT round up.