WaPost: Bipartisanship is Good, Nevermind the Consequences
Washington Post editorial page offers up an excellent example of the highly ideological nature of Beltway pragmatism and centrism:
The gang of 20 or so moderate Democrats and Republicans, led by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), heeded the president’s call for bipartisanship and hunkered down to produce the bill announced Friday night. Though the details of the package still need to be examined, the senators’ effort was an admirable one — one that aimed at providing the quick and large injection of funds into the economy experts say is necessary, while modifying or removing parts of the bill that were too long-range or complex for an emergency bill, or which blatantly served special interests.
As we see here, the cart of bipartisanship is straightforwardly put ahead of the horse of policy merits. They say the details of the package need to be examined, but don’t actually examine them before deciding that the effort deserves praise. But there’s no indication that the Collins-Nelson modifications actually do these things. Elements of the package such as special tax breaks for homebuyers or new car purchases that are ineffective stimulus but likely to benefit the prosperous and special interests were left in, while highly effective stimulative measures like fiscal aid to state governments and an expanded child tax credit were taken out.
27 Responses to “WaPost: Bipartisanship is Good, Nevermind the Consequences”
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February 7th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
The problem isn’t the nature of bipartisanship, it’s the nature of the Senate: all senators get to have input into the final product even though many of them are too stupid to contribute. We can complain all we want about excessive focus on bipartisan solutions which marginalizes good solutions, but the fact is that too often the bottom-of-the-intellectual-barrel Senators are putting their dirty fingerprints all over the bills, and we need to have their input because they won’t shut up until they feel like they’ve “contributed” something, like an insecure professor playing an auxillary role on a thesis committee who insists on a bunch of changes in order to remind everyone of his presence.
Condemn this if you want, but there’s simply no way to prevent Senators from holding the Senate hostage until they have “their say” on an important bill. It’s up to the Harry Reids to channel their desires in a direction where they will do as little damage as possible.
February 7th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
“WaPo and Collins, sitting in a tree.
Fucking up the ec-o-no-my.”
Get a fucking room at the Very Serious By-The-Hour Motel already.
February 7th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I can’t figure out why pundits always worships “centrism” or “bipartisanship.” IMHO, a midway point between 2 crappy GOPocratic choices gives us a third crappy GOPocratic choice. Whatever, the pundits get their way as practically every piece of major legislation that comes out of Congress must first pass through the filter of the same dozen or so “centrist” RINO/DINO senators.
February 7th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
and we need to have their input because they won’t shut up until they feel like they’ve “contributed” something
This is true. There were hundreds of amendments from the Senate alone, before Reid had them cut off and replaced by the Collins-Nelson one? Coburn’s No Money To Culture amendment, Vitter’s No Money To ACORN Amendment, DeMint’s Replace Everything With TAX CUTS amendment. Seriously. Being a United States Senator shouldn’t mean you’re a special flower who can’t be told to STFU on things you don’t understand.
February 7th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
But Obama should have understood this dynamic and started out with the best bill he could possibly envision in his wildest dreams. (Nancy Pelosi, bless her, does understand and I hope that as a result of her efforts on the House version this piece of garbage can still be improved in conference.) The “centrist” morons would have been just as happy to whittle a fantastic bill down to something that was still good, instead of taking an already inadequate pre-compromised proposal and turning it into the turd they’ve just produced. Why just as happy? As Matt said, they don’t care about content, they just want to split the difference so they can look all “responsible” to the WaPo editorial board cretins.
February 7th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
So is the President helpless?
February 7th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
He is NOW, because he didn’t have the sense to start from a maximalist negotiating position and work down from there. I sure as hell hope he’s learned his lesson from this.
February 7th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
So is the President helpless?
No. The stimulus bill even in this bastard form will be viewed as an Obama/Reed/Pelosi win.
That is half the battles going forward.
And you can be sure that Condoms Fo Hos and a Soddy Mall will reappear in the normal appropriations process.
Yes there will be the usual clucking from WaPo but most Americans don’t know what “WaPo” means and will see the stimulus bill as an ObaVictory.
February 7th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Not if it turns out to be inadequate to stop the economic skid.
February 7th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
JT says: Yes there will be the usual clucking from WaPo but most Americans don’t know what “WaPo” means and will see the stimulus bill as an ObaVictory.
Let’s unpack this.
1) Who gives a flying fuck whether Americans “see the stimulus bill as an ObaVictory”? What’s important is whether it helps them hang onto their jobs. This bill does a substantially worse job of that than the bill would have if Collins, Nelson, etc. hadn’t got their grubby paws on it.
2) Most Americans don’t know what ‘WaPo’ means, but the Senators certainly know what makes Fred Hiatt and David Broder say nice things.
To the extent that the WaPo’s advocacy of centrism and bipartisanship as a goal in and of itself, divorced from actual policy and its real-world consequences, encourages Senators such as Collins and Nelson and Specter to make bills substantially worse in terms of policy, which means that people are going to lose their jobs because of their stupidity, then it doesn’t MATTER whether most Americans don’t know what a ‘WaPo’ is, because it’s damned sure making their lives worse.
February 7th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
It’s funny. America would never give folks like Ben Nelson or Susan Collins the power to determine which direction the country should take. WE sort of said pretty clearly we wanted the guy with the funny name to do that, but instead a lot of people will end up on unemployment lines because spending on things that don’t make sense in Maine or Nebraska are “pork”.
February 7th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
As we see here, the cart of bipartisanship is straightforwardly put ahead of the horse of policy merits, working at cross purposes.
That metaphor wasn’t mixed enough. Fxd.
February 7th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
At least with Republicans, you know what you get. The Nelsons and McCaskills are much more insidious. All I can say is that if I were a Democrat in those states, I wouldn’t give a dime or an hour of my time for their re-election: I would sincerely prefer a Republican. McCaskill’s advocacy for Obama and her grandstanding on CEO pay count for nothing now, and it’s hard to imagine anything that would change that for me. As for Nelson, we already knew he was a piece of crap, and for people who point out his high approval ratings in Nebraska, that’s because they are Republicans!
February 7th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
I would point out that over at the DLC they haven’t been heeping praise upon these ‘centrists’. As Will Marshall has written:
‘It will require the President to pursue ostensibly contradictory policies over the next four years: first, a spending surge, then, as the economy starts to recover, a smart pirouette toward fiscal restraint.’
February 7th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
The real problem with the DLC is that it is out of date. The idea was that interests groups had too much control over both parties. Democrats they argued should pay attention to popular opinion more and special interests less, and they should broaden their financial base to include business. In doing so some of the interests who had controlled the party would have less control and Democrats would no longer oppose policies like the Death penalty which had huge popular support even among Dems.
The problem with the DLC now is that right now we don’t need to reform the Democratic party as much as we need it to be effective at solving problems. If Republicans want to go form their own version of the DLC I encourage it, but reforming your party is something you do when you are losing elections not when you are kicking ass.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Is there some way we can rescue the word “centrist?” Or rather, is there some way we can get into the mainstream understanding that what it really means is “somewhat less right-wing idiot?”
February 8th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Picking the one thing I’ve followed closely in the stimulus debate, science funding, I can’t think of a single way in which stimulus funding for NSF/NIST/NOAA/NASA (which were all cut to some degree in the compromise and are funded less than in the House bill to start with) are “too long-range or complex for an emergency bill, or which blatantly served special interests.”
NSF funding is disbursed within months, extremely straightforward (just approve more grants for projects that are ready to roll today), and the inability of science funding agencies to capably advocate for themselves in this process disqualifies them as special interests I think.
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