Just who is running this ship?
As recently as yesterday, we saw some positive news coming out of D.C. (A rare event of late and more than welcome.) It looked like there might be some bipartisan cooperation on jobs, an issue where the Obama administration is only about one year late coming to the party. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) had hammered out a bill which it seemed both sides might be able to live with. Hurray! But wait… not so fast.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid led colleagues and the White House to believe he supported a bipartisan jobs bill — only to scuttle the plan as soon as it was released Thursday over concerns it could be used to batter Democratic incumbents, according to Senate sources.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) worked for weeks with Reid’s blessing and frequent involvement to craft an $85 billion jobs bill, a measure that seemed destined to break the partisan logjam that has ground the Senate to a halt.
But as Baucus, Grassley and President Barack Obama were preparing to celebrate a rare moment of bipartisan Kumbaya on Thursday, Reid stunned a meeting of Senate Democrats by announcing he was scrapping Baucus-Grassley, replacing it with a much cheaper, more narrowly crafted, $15 billion version.
Who is in charge over there? Getting any sort of agreement between the sides should be cause for a party and looked like Obama was ready to hop on board. And now Reid scuttles it because of the political optics? And how bad were those optics, really? Most of the country has show in poll after poll that they are fed up with the partisan gridlock. This could be a win-win for everyone.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey sees the jobs bill as Porkulus Part Two, an argument with some merit, depending on how the spending is constructed.
Reid’s decision takes the second stimulus package cost down from $85 billion to $15 billion. That may please fiscal conservatives, but it sets up an embarrassing problem for Barack Obama. No one believes that his $787 billion Porkulus package, now repriced to $862 billion, worked to create jobs, but the Left wing of Democrats thinks it didn’t work because the Democrats didn’t spend enough money. Obama himself has promised a “hard pivot” to job creation and built expectations for a large-scale effort. A $15 billion program that only contains the silly payroll-tax exemption that gives businesses a maximum $6000 for every person they hire and keep all year, more highway project money, a business tax deduction that amounts to a whopping $35 million over 10 years, and a program allowing states to borrow money at a lower interest rate will not only not create jobs, but it will make a laughingstock of the notion that Congress or Obama is taking the problem seriously.
I don’t see every element of the proposal as a lost cause. It’s certainly a lot more targeted and a little more promising than the original porkulus project. But the real failure here, as I see it, is having the Senate Democratic leadership walk away from possible progress for what will likely prove an entirely futile political maneuver.
11 Responses to “Just who is running this ship?”
“And now Reid scuttles it because of the political optics? And how bad were those optics, really? Most of the country has show in poll after poll that they are fed up with the partisan gridlock. This could be a win-win for everyone”~
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Thanks for that. I haven't had a really good belly laugh in a long time. I can always tell when the GOP is getting desperate, when spins like this white elephant dons a tutu and comes strutting out into the living room to dance..
So Reid scrapped something at the last minute and refused to cooperate eh? Well now by my calculations the dems have about 9 more months of that behavior to balance the scales of poetic justice before they invite the Party Of No back to the table for serious talks.
Sorry. We don't want bipartisanship with barnacle-infested anchors stuck firmly in the bottom of the sea. When they become more flexible and prove it with a run of compromises [not just a token few to lull us back into complacency again] then we'll talk bipartisanship…maybe..
Jazz
The mistake you make is thinking that policy is actually decided by our elected politicians – it's not. No matter what party is in charge policy is decided not in the halls of Congress or the White House but in the boardrooms of a few large multinational corporations and banks. The political games that are reported by the media are about as relevant as the Super Bowl and political pundits are little more than sportscasters.
So much for passing the things Democrats and Republicans agree on. Obama's own party pulled the rug out from under him, it'll be interesting to see how he handles it.
Just wait, though, for us to be told how Reid's decision was the Republican's fault, and was in fact truly a bi-partisan move on his part.
I'd laugh at Schadenfreude_lives' comment, except I expect that to be the lead in wapo tomorrow.
Jazz, you should really tell Ed to stop by sometime. Why just yesterday, a post started off with this (emphasis added):
Perhaps just a minor quibble is all. Now, on with the game!!
I think Harry Reid caught an earful from the Bluedogs and balked before the embarrasment of having another bill put forth with bipartisan opposition. They likely held the healthcare vote over his head on this one.
Better for Obama to take a small embarrassing hit than a huge one, Harry Reid (under bluedog pressure) just may have saved his butt from taking a bigger hit with Porkulas redux.
“Harry Reid (under bluedog pressure) just may have saved his butt”
Preserving his lobbyist prospects? He is widely suspected of being likely to lose re-election this year.
“Harry Reid coming to SF for fundraiser…and LIBERALS may demonstrate outside
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05electi…
“We don't want bipartisanship with barnacle-infested anchors stuck firmly in the bottom of the sea.”
Never mind that they have no captain and officer leadership, no navigation, poor communications…
Striking icebergs and rocks? Shooting holes in the hold? FULL SPEED AHEAD, HARDER TO PORT!
Does anyone with an opinion know what the bill actually contained? Whether or not Reid was justified in scuttling it? Seriously, I'm asking.
Sam, it included other things than jobs legislation, and included things like tax credits that weren't going to give people confidence that the bill would actually produce jobs. Note that a major reason that the bill was scrapped was that it was considered too big and likely to risk more public anger; an item in the bill was agricultural disaster relief funding, the loss of which makes Blanche Lincoln angry. (See below.) An additional note that springs from this is that the bill included goodies for certain Senators, and this is similar to the “Nebraska Purchase” and aid to Louisiana that bought the votes of Senators for health care legislation earlier. It's not a surprise that this would be reconsidered.
You can go to the legislation (draft legislation, PDF file format) at this Web page.
http://www.finance.senate.gov/sitepages/legisla…
Note that Lincoln, a reluctant Blue-Doggish Dem already drawing the ire of the farther left, is now joining the far left that's already angry at Harry Reid. This makes me think of health care “reform” legislation and that I said that a scaled-down reform effort that removes bribes to get reluctant Senators to vote for passage, risks loss of those additional, badly-sought votes.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32903…