David Broder continues to worship at the altar of bipartisanship, echoing various Republican talking points without criticism. Consider this gem (emphasis mine):
Last week the $819 billion tax and spending bill passed the House with all but 11 Democrats supporting it and not a single Republican voting yes. The first important roll call of the Obama presidency looked as bitterly partisan as any of the Bush years.
It was not for lack of effort on the part of the new president. Obama went to the Capitol to visit Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers, and he encouraged the Democratic draftsmen to scrap a couple of egregiously irrelevant spending programs they had penciled into the bill.
The two ‘egregiously irrelvant’ spending programs?
200 million dollars to re-sod the National Mall
The elimination of a waiver requirement for states that want to provide a family planning component to their Medicaid programs.
The first line-item is a straight forward appropriation for something that is obviously needed after millions trampled the lawn during Obama’s inauguration. It would create jobs in the District and prevent the capital of the country from looking like the capital of New Jersey. The second-line item would help poor people avoid unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, while empowering them to make good decisions for their health and the health of their babies and their families. Lowering the state’s health costs under Medicaid might seem irrelevant to a stimulus package, but it is certainly not egregiously so. Broder lazily repeats the Republican talking points.
He thinks it’s important that Republicans have a bigger role in shaping the stimulus plan. Does he think this is important because they have good ideas that will improve the bill? Not exactly. While Broder says we have to get it right…
This bill, so much larger than ordinary legislation, even the wartime defense appropriations, is almost certain to be the biggest, if not the last, weapon the government employs to halt the sickening economic slide that has gripped the country in the past five months. So much is uncertain, and so much is riding on it, that it’s worth taking time to get it right.
…his special bipartisan pleading has no logical component other than politics.
This vote will set a pattern for Obama, one way or the other. He needs a bipartisan majority because, tough as this issue is, harder ones await when he turns to energy, health care and entitlement reform.
The good news is that Obama can find such support in the Senate, if his allies are smart about how they handle the bill and allow the Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Chuck Grassley and John McCain, to have a real voice in reshaping it.
But, what if Mitch McConnell et. al. don’t have any good ideas and aren’t contributing anything that will improve the stimulus package and to make sure we ‘get it right’? What then, Broder?
