Noone Could Have Predicted
I, for one, am shocked that Barack Obama’s strategy of making preemptive concessions to the GOP in the stimulus bill, slashing rail funding to make room for more tax cuts, hasn’t stopped Republicans from still wanting more:
Republicans accused Democrats of abandoning the new president’s pledge, ignoring his call for bipartisan comity and shutting them out of the process by writing the $850 billion legislation. The first drafts of the plan would result in more spending on favored Democratic agenda items, such as federal funding of the arts, they said, but would do little to stimulate the ailing economy.
Nor can I really blame the Republicans here. Everyone knows that you don’t accept the first bid. Now of course the Democrats have substantial majorities in both houses and don’t need to get Republican votes. But the very fact of having made preemptive concessions created expectations that Obama would get GOP support for his bill and generate pissy grafs like this:
The GOP’s shrunken numbers, particularly in the Senate, will make it difficult for Republicans to stop the stimulus bill, but the growing GOP doubts mean that Obama’s first major initiative could be passed on a largely party-line vote — little different from the past 16 years of partisan sniping in the Clinton and Bush eras.
Meanwhile, I’m not even sure it’s true that bills being “passed on a largely party-line vote” really has been the defining quality of the past 16 years’ worth of governance. If we think back to Bill Clinton’s administration, then his first budget certainly was party-line. But NAFTA, the other major initiative of his first two years in office, very much wasn’t. And then after the GOP takeover in the 1994 midterms it was impossible to do anything on a party-line vote. The major legislation of that era—the 1997 budget deal, welfare reform, etc.—was necessarily bipartisan. In his first term, I would say that Bush’s major endeavors were the 2001 & 2003 rounds of tax cuts, the No Child Left Behind re-write of ESEA, and the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of those, only the 2003 tax cuts passed without significant Democratic support.
And yet, there really was sniping all this time! Which I think mostly goes to show that the vote counts for bills in congress ultimately has very little to do with whether or not there’s a general spirit of comity in town.
46 Responses to “Noone Could Have Predicted”
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January 23rd, 2009 at 8:26 am
I think it’s time for Boehner to cry on the floor again, being careful not to let the orange from his skin stain anything.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:46 am
“No one” is two words.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:59 am
Obama is going to get taken for a real long ride if he thinks he can work with these maniacs. We’re already on the way to a timid, inadequate, Republican-infested stimulus bill. The Democrats should proceed as if the Republicans don’t exist. That is how the Republicans worked when they had the majority, and it worked well for them. 218 votes in the House, and 60 in the Senate. That’s all they need.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:59 am
He clearly meant that it could have been predicted by Peter Noone, actor and famed singer “Herman” of “Herman’s Hermits.”
Peter Noone could have predicted.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 am
Come on now, have a heart. You can’t object to the Congressional Dems’ negotiating (badly) with themselves- it’s the only legislative skill the poor sods possess!
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:27 am
Maybe Obama has something up his sleeve, and is just giving them enough rope to hang themselves. If so, then they’re playing into his hands. If his “bipartisanship” consists of splitting off a few Republican Senators to break filibusters, thus making the Republican leadership irrelevant, it’s good bipartisanship.
On the other hand, if Obama really believes the bipartisan BS he’s been spouting, I hope he’s capable of learning something on the job right now that everyone else figured out during the Clinton administration.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:33 am
“Noone” is atrocious, even for Yglesias. Everyone makes mistakes, but “noone” featured so prominently shows outright contempt for the English language. Totally unacceptable.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:33 am
Obama is from the Chicago school of politics. I refuse to believe he is naive as the blogs are painting him here today.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
We knew what we were getting–Obama said, as clearly as anyone could say anything, during the primaries that this would be his approach. As someone who supported Clinton mostly because I favor confrontation with Republicans over cooperation (especially of the preemptive sort), I have no problem with Obama’s approach because this is what he promised. I’m completely and a little contemptuously mystified that so many people are expressing surprise and disappointment.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
Darkness at Noone, anyone?
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:40 am
Maybe these changes were made on the merits–its a stimulus bill, not a transportation bill..
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:53 am
“Noone” is atrocious, even for Yglesias. Everyone makes mistakes, but “noone” featured so prominently shows outright contempt for the English language. Totally unacceptable.
Just one of the many major errors Matt will amke in his 147 posts today. Actually this one is not nearly as bad as his regular habit of using the exactly opposite word or name he intends. We need a poll to determine which Matt find most onerous: spellcheck, proofreading, or reading his comments. He clearly does none of the three.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 am
Spending produces more stimulus than tax cuts. And tax cuts for the well-off produce practically none.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:55 am
Winner of today’s Irony Award!
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:08 am
I’m sure “noone” is, in fact, just an ee cummings reference.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:12 am
Waaah! Waaaaaah! Someone made a spelling error! Oh no, boo hoo! Forget about the billions in stimulus–let’s pay attention to what’s *really* important!!!!!111!
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:13 am
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you didn’t run that comment through Spellcheck.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:45 am
Every time the House GOP whines, go back and tack another $50bn in infrastructure spending onto the total. That’ll have Boner crying.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:59 am
I think first impressions matter, and I think Obama wanted to build an early reputation as somebody who was not seeking open warfare with the GOP. I imagine he did this with full knowledge that full warfare would come anyway, but he can now plausibly blame the GOP while, at the same time, completely railroading them. Win-win.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:00 am
Also…I’m not normally interested in taking potshots over spelling, but seriously, Matt…
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Wait, what? A coherent view of politics in a democracy being written by a professional political commentator??
Matt really needs to reconsider his chosen field.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
He clearly meant that it could have been predicted by Peter Noone, actor and famed singer “Herman” of “Herman’s Hermits.”
Peter Noone could have predicted.
Actually, if you play “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” backwards, Noone appears to be singing “Those Republicans are terribly ‘ard to please, they are.”
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
The Ledbetter bill, passed by all Democrats (Kennedy absent) plus five Republicans, is the likely template of votes to come: solid Democratic support, with Snowe, Collins and (maybe) Specter, plus stray GOPers attracted to or vulnerable on single issues.
More “consensus” than that is almost always going to be ill-advised. The 35 or so far-right senators in the GOP caucus will never consent to any meaningful progressive reform; most of them won’t go along with anything that makes Obama look good.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I hope that, at this very minute, Rahm is kicking some behind the scenes ass and explaining to the Republican leadership that they’ve f*ed up badly and, as a consequence, they’re not going to get anything.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
This wasn’t too long ago:
—- Juliet Eilperin in Fight Club Politics
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
“Noone”?????
Harvard should have had some remedial English classes for Matt.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Obama should react by saying that if the bill as he proposed it doesn’t get some specified substantial level of GOP support, then he’ll back a larger stimulus bill (increasing the money for rail and other spending while perhaps reducing the tax cuts). He could then let the GOP choose between supporting the original proposal (but not a penny less) or seeing the larger package enacted.
January 24th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Ummmm, what’s wrong with federal funding for the arts? Wouldn’t that be supporting the infrastructure? Didn’t Obama specifically say he’d be supporting the infrastructure?
January 24th, 2009 at 8:32 am
They don’t want him to “snipe”, but they’d rather randomly send money to everyone and just hope it would go somewhere it’s supposed to, rather than Obama specifically sending the money places that would help to keep society up.
February 7th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
That’s right Jason! The Arts are infrastructure, no less important than any other! The nation needs MORE crucifixes upside down in urine and paintings of those ridiculous xtian personalities with feces smeared on them! Homoerotic art, art depicting the destruction of traditional; white male xtian America, yes, that’s what we need, and more of it!
MORE money for the NEA! Thats what I say!
February 7th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Candidate Obama promised change, and that’s what he’s delivering! In the past we saw big spending bills filled with money for cronies, special interest groups, political payoffs, and other pork. But this is different; this is on a massive, gargantuan, almost unimaginable scale! THAT’s change, REAL CHANGE! Change we can believe in!!!
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