See? I make a suggestion and the White House races out to do my bidding.
After pledging to send a job-creation package to Congress next month and daring Republicans to block it, President Obama offered few specifics Tuesday about the form the plan might take as he stuck to a broad outline of how to improve the economy…
…And he continued to hammer away at Republicans in Congress, suggesting they stand in the way of economic growth, even as some Democrats expressed discomfort with what they saw as a potentially divisive stance.
Naturally, this will please progressives, since they’ve been clamoring for confrontation for over a year now. I can include myself in that group since this is exactly what I suggested needed to be done.
Also, naturally, there are Democrats who are terrified of confrontation.
Congressional Democrats and former administration officials gave a mixed review of Obama’s declaration. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) welcomed the president’s feistier tone.
“I heard more of that approach yesterday than I’ve heard in a while, and I think it’s very important,” she said in an interview. “He needs to say now, ‘I’ve tried it your way, and now we have to create an aggressive approach to creating jobs.’ “
But one Senate Democrat, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the White House, was troubled by the president’s gambit.
Voters are tired of the partisan back-and-forth and it would be a mistake for Obama to present Congress with a large-scale, high-stakes jobs bill and challenge them to pass it, the senator said. A more sensible approach would be for Obama to roll out a series of smaller proposals, the senator said, adding that the public “has very little patience for anything that looks like you’re beating up on the other side.”
I would place a lot of money on this “Senate Democrat” being one Benjamin Nelson of Nebraska. But, who knows? It could be Mary Landrieu or Bill Nelson or Mark Pryor or Mark Warner, for all I know. This is what matters:
White House spokesman Jay Carney wouldn’t comment on the shape or the scope of the plan or say whether it would take the form of legislation.
But Carney reiterated the president’s threat that if Congress failed to act, Obama would not hesitate to leverage that failure politically.
“If they don’t do it,” Carney said, “he will take his arguments to the American people.”
Finally, I hope the White House has come around to seeing things Jared Bernstein’s way:
Jared Bernstein, a former economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, said it was futile for Obama to try to accommodate Republicans determined to block the White House agenda. “If the president frames his jobs agenda based on what Republicans will accept, I don’t think he’s going to end up with much,” he said. “He has to prescribe what he and his team believes the country needs and fight for it.”
This presents a challenge because polling (and the last election) shows that the people really do not like stimulus spending. It’s counterintuitive that you get out of debt by going further in to debt. To be effective, they’re going to have to argue for specific programs, like an investment bank or a national jobs fair, rather than talking vaguely about stimulus.
There’s a lot that’s not known yet about how the administration is going to approach this. What will be inside the SuperCommittee and what will be outside? They might try to go for much deeper cuts in the SuperCommittee but attach an investment bank and other stimulative ideas to it as compensation. Or, they might keep things on separate tracks, feeling that the SuperCommittee needs to pass something, while the GOP can maintain their obstruction on the outside where he can make the most political hay out of it.
It does appear, however, that the Grand Conciliator is going to stay on vacation for a while while the Great Campaigner gears up for a fight.
