Yesterday, the Democrats stripped provisions of the stimulus package that would have provided family planning funding for Medicaid and money to refurbish the National Mall’s lawn. These were not necessary concessions, but acts of good will intended to make it easier for a few Republicans to cross the aisle and lend an air of bipartisanship to the national economic recovery effort.
The Democrats will have no difficulty passing the stimulus bill. On a preliminary, procedural vote yesterday, the House approved the measure by a 224-199 margin. And, in the Senate, Sen. Inouye’s (D-HI) Appropriations Committee approved the bill in a 21-9 vote that saw four Republican members cross the aisle. Provided that the Senate Democrats remain united, they need only one Republican vote to invoke cloture and pass the bill. That four Republicans on the Appropriations Committee alone signed off on the bill tells us all we need to know. The stimulus package has enough support to pass right now without making any more concessions.
This harkens back to what I wrote on Monday, where I noted that the Senate Republicans cannot oppose the Democratic agenda because they can’t control their caucus. I don’t know which four Republicans supported the measure in committee, but we can be sure they supported it in exchange for having some say-so in the contents of the bill. If they were to extract goodies from Chairman Inouye and then turn around and vote against the bill anyway, then Inouye would never do them a favor again. Republican senators have the option of opposing everything the Democrats do or getting something done for the people they represent. As I predicted, members of (in this case) the Appropriations Committee opted for the latter.
But if the bill is already as good as passed, then why are Democrats stripping elements of the bill out? The short answer is that it is politics. The Obama administration would like to get a big vote in favor of the stimulus for three reasons. They want to demonstrate the efficacy of their post-partisan rhetoric, they want to get some cover for the Democrats in case the stimulus doesn’t work, and they want to splinter the GOP caucus on the first big vote of their administration. For all these reasons (tone, politics, demonstration of power), they are willing to make some generous and unnecessary concessions.
We may not like or agree with these concessions, but we should try to understand the game that is being played.