Dangerous Thoughts

The Stimulus Fight You Should Be Watching

Dan Gerstein

Democrats may be Obama's biggest obstacle.

The conflict-addicted Washington press corps must have missed the part of President Barack Obama's inaugural speech admonishing the country to put away childish things. Or so it would seem from the silly coverage of the friendly, bipartisan White House meeting on the stimulus bill last Friday. Even worse, they missed the real story:the power jockeying going on within the Democratic family.

For those who missed Friday's doings, here's a quick recap. First came a mindless mini-frenzy over Obama's playful reminder during the meeting that he won the election. Then came the breathless declarations by reporters and anchors that the new comity and bipartisanship Obama had promised were almost dead and buried just four days into his administration--simply because some Republicans expressed some disagreement with some portions of the House legislation.

That's right. No one called the president a liar. Or accused him of promoting socialism. Or threatened to drown the bill in the bathtub. Republicans just went back to talking like fiscal conservatives and arguing against social spending they believe won't stimulate the economy or help the middle class. Which is to say, they criticized the policies, not the person advocating them. That sure sounds like change to me.

The great irony in all of this is that while the press corps was over-blowing the relatively tame partisan differences on the bill, they were overlooking the far more interesting and consequential fight that is brewing within the president's own ranks over the pork-like provisions the Republicans are protesting.

In this case, it's not the outcome that's in question--Obama will, in all likelihood, get to proclaim "I won" on this one, too--but how he manages the resolution that bears watching. For this bill could go a long way toward defining his relations with Congress and, in turn, the success of his presidency.

The cause of the tension is billions of dollars in new funding for liberal Democrats' favorite programs--health care, education and the arts in particular--that House leaders have loaded into what Obama has been selling as an emergency rescue plan. These additional funds comprise a relatively small part of the $825 billion package. But they make a robust political target for a Republican Party that has had little political and numerical leverage since the beating it took last year.

That's why the GOP is playing up the economic equivalent of midnight basketball the bill contains--especially the extra $50 million allotted to the National Endowment for the Arts and an untold amount of Medicaid dollars for states to spend on contraception and other forms of family planning. They smartly see an opening to reassert their relevance, reinvigorate lingering doubts about Democrats' big spending habits and ultimately rebalance the mix of spending and tax cuts in the final bill.

Comment On This Story

For the last few weeks, the president has strenuously avoided getting dragged into this quite legitimate and ultimately losing policy squabble. He did not seek these legislative Christmas tree ornaments, and it seems clear he does not want to expend any political capital to defend or preserve them. But at the same time, he knows many of these programs are priorities for his base in the House. And, taking a cue from the disastrous well-poisoning fights Bill Clinton waged with Hill Democrats in his first year, Obama has been loath to alienate his foot soldiers before he knows his way to the Situation Room. So he was content to let the bill come out of committee on a straight party-line vote.

But after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's damaging interview Sunday on ABC's This Week program, in which she lamely tried to defend the family-planning money as vital to economic recovery, Obama apparently had enough. On Monday, the president made a personal appeal to the House leadership to abandon the contraception money--and remove a major liability from the negotiation equation. And on Tuesday, Pelosi and company acceded to Obama's request. Score one for common sense, if not common purpose.

It's doubtful, though, that pruning other parts of the House Christmas tree will be that easy. Obama can't count on the speaker to make another path-clearing gaffe, and the House Democrats will be even more intent on defending their institutional prerogative after being forced to relent on their family-planning folly. Plus, Obama would clearly like to squeeze through some of the big-ticket, non-stimulus programs that Republicans will continue to skewer, like new money for Pell grants and Medicaid.

Complicating matters further for the president, many of the allocations the Republicans are targeting are for backlogged and depleted federal infrastructure projects that are big priorities for Obama's own internal constituencies--like modernizing Social Security's computer systems. This may be these agencies' only chance, given the massive deficits this stimulus bill will create, to get any new funding for the foreseeable future.

My prediction: Obama will wisely turn to the Senate to rescue his rescue package from a partisan breakdown that would undermine his promise of change.

He will not press for any more concessions from House leaders and let them push through their bill this week with only modest Republican support. He'll take the minor hit he's certain to get for failing to deliver a consensus on this critical test vote for the sake of intra-party harmony. That's the signal he sent during Tuesday's meeting with House Republicans, when he said he would oppose adding more tax cuts to the House bill.

Once that hurdle is cleared, Obama will ramp up his bipartisan negotiations with the Senate on a compromise bill that will preserve his priorities, include more tax cuts (like the ones proposed by Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus) and pare down some of the bureaucratic and social spending that are not essential to Democratic interests or critical to Obama's long-term investment agenda. Those moves will be enough to defuse the potential for a filibuster and could get upwards of 70 to 80 votes.

The real test will be the process of reconciling the two different bills in conference--and convincing the House Democrats they need to sacrifice some of the pet programs that are hard to justify as part of an emergency rescue plan. Then we'll see just how strong Obama's mandate for change really is.

Dan Gerstein, a political communications consultant and commentator based in New York, is the founder and president of Gotham Ghostwriters. He formerly served as communications director to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and as a senior adviser on his vice presidential and presidential campaigns. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.com