It takes two to "bipartisan"

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Post he expects Senator Judd Gregg to receive a "standing ovation" when he walks into the next gathering of the Senate Republican Conference.

See, he's a hero to them for rejecting Obama's offer of bipartisanship.

Senator Arlen Specter, one of the three moderate Republicans who voted for the recovery bill, thinks there are a number of other Republicans who are glad the bill is passing -- but passing "without their fingerprints." Some of them have told him privately that they're proud of him for acting on principle to help save the economy, but they won't follow his lead out of fear of conservative opposition in 2010.

It's clear now that they are not going to dance with President Obama in the "bipartisan two-step." I think it's time for Obama to take it off the front burner. He gave up too much to get the three votes (which maybe was necessary to move the bill to consideration in the Senate) -- but he got nothing else and wound up with a package that will do less to stimulate the economy.

The Republican strategy is obvious now: work against it, vote against it, whine that you weren't consulted; then, when the economy gets worse, yell "We told you so! You should have listened to us!!"

This is the party that yelled "Unpatriotic" when Obama didn't wear a flag lapel pin -- and now they're putting loyalty to their failed Republican economic strategy rather than help a Democratic president lead us out of the economic mess they got us in to.

I think the American voters are on to them. If so, there will be fewer of them after the 2010 election.

Ralph

Bipartisanship cannot be a one-way affair

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Post he expects Senator Judd Gregg to receive a "standing ovation" when he walks into the next gathering of the Senate Republican Conference. See, he's a hero to them for rejecting Obama's offer of bipartisanship.

Senator Arlen Specter, one of the three moderate Republicans who voted for the recovery bill, thinks there are a number of other Republicans who are glad the bill is passing -- but "without their fingerprints." Some of them have told him privately that they're proud of him for acting on principle to help save the economy, but they won't follow his lead out of fear of conservative opposition in 2010.

It's enough to give "bipartisan" a bad name, and I think it's time for President Obama to take it off the front burner. He gave up too much to get the three votes (which maybe was necessary to move the bill to consideration in the Senate) -- but he got nothing else and wound up with a package that will do less to stimulate the economy.

The Republican strategy is obvious now: work against it, voted against it, whine that you weren't consulted; then, when the economy gets worse, yell "We told you so! You should have listened to us!!"

I think the American voters are on to them. If so, there will be fewer of them after the 2010 election.

Ralph

Those dull, smart Canadians

A Canadian friend delights in pointing out to me all the ways life in Canada is better than in the U.S. I have to concede that in many ways he is right.

Today, he sent me a link to a Newsweek article (by Fareed Zakaria, Feb. 07) that backs this up with some facts. Coming in one of the most widely read U.S. news magazines, we can't dismiss this as Canadian boosterism.

Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th.

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. . . .

So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense. Over the past 15 years, as the United States and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries, the Canadians refused to follow suit, seeing the old rules as useful shock absorbers. Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to 1—compared with U.S. banks at 26 to 1 and European banks at a frightening 61 to 1. Partly this reflects Canada's more risk-averse business culture, but it is also a product of old-fashioned rules on banking.

Canada has also been shielded from the worst aspects of this crisis because its housing prices have not fluctuated as wildly as those in the United States. Home prices are down 25 percent in the United States, but only half as much in Canada. Why? Well, the Canadian tax code does not provide the massive incentive for overconsumption that the U.S. code does: interest on your mortgage isn't deductible up north. In addition, home loans in the United States are "non-recourse," which basically means that if you go belly up on a bad mortgage, it's mostly the bank's problem. In Canada, it's yours. Ah, but you've heard American politicians wax eloquent on the need for these expensive programs—interest deductibility alone costs the federal government $100 billion a year—because they allow the average Joe to fulfill the American Dream of owning a home. Sixty-eight percent of Americans own their own homes. And the rate of Canadian homeownership? It's 68.4 percent.

Canada has been remarkably responsible over the past decade or so. It has had 12 years of budget surpluses, and can now spend money to fuel a recovery from a strong position. The government has restructured the national pension system, placing it on a firm fiscal footing, unlike our own insolvent Social Security. Its health-care system is cheaper than America's by far (accounting for 9.7 percent of GDP, versus 15.2 percent here), and yet does better on all major indexes. Life expectancy in Canada is 81 years, versus 78 in the United States; "healthy life expectancy" is 72 years, versus 69. American car companies have moved so many jobs to Canada to take advantage of lower health-care costs that since 2004, Ontario and not Michigan has been North America's largest car-producing region. . . .

If President Obama is looking for smart government, there is much he, and all of us, could learn from our quiet—OK, sometimes boring—neighbor to the north.

This sort of reminds me of the fabled race between the tortoise and the hare. No question which is which here, is there? The slow, steady one won the race.

Ralph

What do we mean by 'bipartisanship'?

Steny Hoyer, House Majority Leader, has not been my favorite person, often seeming to spout a more conservative point of view than Nancy Pelosi's more progressive politics. But quoted here on Politico he makes sense in talking about a working understanding of bipartisanship.

Responding to Repubicans whining about not having input on the economic recovery bill, he scorned the idea that they should be able to "write half of every bill." If that were the case, he said, speaking at a forum sponsored by Georgetown University and Politico, it would be "the kind of bipartisanship that would make elections irrelevant."

"It's a deeply elitist view if understood in that context," he added. "We're in the majority, so we have the power and responsibility to foster bipartisanship. But it takes two to tango."

Hoyer explained that “ultimately, the keys to bipartisanship are respect, decency, and fair input. What matters is listening attentively to our opponents, responding to them with facts, not emotion, and with arguments, not with talking points. What matters is never questioning the motives of the other side.”

The Democratic leader pointed to the $785 billion stimulus deal as an example of how the two parties find ways to work together.

"$785 billion was not a scientific number, but a political one," he said. "Three Republicans set that as the limit of what they would vote for."

“Several economists have said that this may not be enough. And they might be right, but this is what we could get.”

Like Obama says, "just keep talking to them with civility and rational thinking; maybe they'll come around."

Ralph

It was a very good year

The year 1809 -- two hundred years ago -- brought us two of the most influential people in the history of the world: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, born within two days of each other. Both are being suitably celebrated on the 200th anniversaries of their births.

There were other notables born in 1809: Nikolai Gogol, Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Felix Mendelssohn, and Louis Braille (inventor of reading system for the blind).

Which brings to mind that other incredible year of births, 1882, which brought the world none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Jacques Maritain, Georges Braque, and Igor Stravinsky.

Expand that a bit to include the five year span of 1879 thru 1983 and we add: Albert Einstein, John Maynard Keynes, Pable Picasso, E.M. Forster, Franz Kafka, Lytton Strachey, Bela Bartok, Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, and Helen Keller -- but also Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, and Benito Mussolini.

Wonder who 2009 will be remembered for?

Ralph

Who won?

It's less clear who won in the battle over the recovery package, but it is starkly clear that the Republicans lost. The little clout they gained in the Senate negotiations was largely overturned in the conference committee with the House.

Georgia's Johnny Isakson got an amendment passed in the Senate version that would have given a $15,000 tax break to home buyers (largely benefitting the more affluent); it was stripped in the reconciled version. And why not? He voted against the bill that he had amended, so why keep his provision, when it garnered not a single Republican vote?

The relative balance between infrastructure spending and tax cuts for business was shifted toward spending, though still less than progressive wanted. Money for schools, unemployment, and other spending was largely retained. So it looks like the final bill is less expensive that either original (a disappointment to progressives) but more focused on spending than the Senate version and less on tax cuts than either one. Yet, at the same time, it preserves Obama's broad tax cuts for working people and those on Social Security.

Considering all, it's probably the best that could be passed at this time. The risk is that the spending is too little to effect the economic boost that's needed. But it's better than either House or Senate version was, and more can be added in a later bill. Obama clearly seems to have won -- a pretty good bill with three Republican allies, and perhaps a few more might join in to vote for the final bill.

Republicans are betting on being able to claim that the whole plan was an expensive failure. That's their current strategy, along with whining that they were shut out of the process and that the deals were struck in secret. Of course you were left out of serious negotiations when all you bring to the table are "tax cuts, tax cuts" that have proven to fail, plus an obdurate refusal to look at reality.

They were given a chance to have input at the beginning; the majority just didn't buy what they were sellilng, so why have them at the table in the final negotiations? Even they can't pretend they had anything constructive to offer at that stage.

Now their campaign is on to discredit Obama and the Democrats. They're betting on failure so they can crow and gain political advantage. How patriotic !!! I'm betting on Obama and his team. Let the American people judge.

Ralph

An amazing 3 weeks

Barack Obama has been president of the United States for just three weeks. Already I'm afraid we are taking him for granted, with criticism coming from all sides that he isn't giving all of us everything we had hoped for.

But I can only stand in awe and admire how he is handling it all. Bob Herbert's article "The Chess Master" in Wednesday's New York Times really gets it. It's worth reading in entirety.

It was just a week ago that the bad-mouthing of Barack Obama seemed to be reaching a fever pitch.

The president was taking heat for the tax problems of Tom Daschle, Timothy Geithner and other appointees and nominees. Liberal supporters of the president were upset that he was making such a high-profile effort to get Republicans to climb aboard his stimulus package bandwagon.

Self-styled middle-of-the-roaders were snarling that Mr. Obama was not doing enough bipartisan outreach, even as Republicans on Capitol Hill were attacking his economic package with the kind of venom usually reserved for the handiwork of Satan.

Mr. Obama was called a hypocrite, dismissed as both craven and politically naïve and taken to task for being too much in the public eye.

The president was even accused — oh, my goodness — of working in the Oval Office without his suit jacket on. And what was Mr. Obama doing as this chaos and tension and criticism swirled about him? Not surprisingly, keeping a level head.

Mr. Daschle, who was supposed to be the administration’s point person on health care reform, withdrew his nomination as secretary of health and human services, and Mr. Obama promptly took the blame for the foul-up. “I’ve got to own up to my mistake,” he said.

Polls showed that this went over very well with the public.

After making every effort — and failing — to generate significant G.O.P. support for the stimulus package, the president ratcheted up his rhetoric, pointing to the stunning job losses in January and sharply criticizing the Republicans’ obstructionist tactics. On Friday, a weakened but still enormous stimulus bill was agreed upon in the Senate, a crucial advance for Mr. Obama.

On Monday, he was on the road, making the case for his stimulus bill in Elkhart, Ind., which is enduring Depression-levels of joblessness and is desperate for federal assistance. Speaking to a crowded town-hall-style meeting, Mr. Obama said: “Endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will only bring deepening disaster. I can tell you that doing nothing is not an option.”

The crowd cheered and supported him enthusiastically throughout his appearance.

There is always a tendency to underestimate Barack Obama. We are inclined in the news media to hyperventilate over every political or policy setback, no matter how silly or insignificant, while Mr. Obama has shown again and again that he takes a longer view.

There was no way, for example, that the Daschle flap was going to derail the forward march of a man who had survived the Rev. Jeremiah Wright fiasco. It’s early, but there are signs that Mr. Obama may be the kind of president who is incomprehensible to the cynics among us — one who is responsible and mature, who is concerned not just with the short-term political realities but also the long-term policy implications.

He has certainly handled himself much better than some of the clowns carrying leadership banners for the G.O.P. Michael Steele, the new Republican Party chairman, could barely contain his glee over the fact that no Republicans voted for the stimulus package in the House. “The goose egg that you laid on the president’s desk was just beautiful,” he said.

“This bill stinks,” said Lindsey Graham of South Carolina during the Senate debate on the package.

Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, made it clear that his party was committed to the low road when he talked about picking up pointers from the Taliban.

I’m not joking. “Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” said Mr. Sessions, in an interview with Hotline, which is part of NationalJournal.com.

The simple truth is that most Republican politicians would like Mr. Obama to fail because that is their ticket to a quick return to power. I think the president is a more formidable opponent than they realize.

Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He’s smart, deft, elegant and subtle. While Lindsey Graham was behaving like a 6-year-old on the Senate floor and Pete Sessions was studying passages in his Taliban handbook, Mr. Obama and his aides were assessing what’s achievable in terms of stimulus legislation and how best to get there.

I’d personally like to see a more robust stimulus package, with increased infrastructure spending and fewer tax cuts. But the reality is that Mr. Obama needs at least a handful of Republican votes in the Senate to get anything at all done, and he can’t afford to lose this first crucial legislative fight of his presidency.

The Democrats may succeed in bolstering their package somewhat in conference, but I think Mr. Obama would have been satisfied all along to start his presidency off with an $800 billion-plus stimulus program.

And now comes news that the House and Senate conference committee has reached an agreement, acceptable to the White House, on the Economic Recovery and Reconstruction Act (NOT the "stimulus bill" that everyone keeps calling it.)

It's not all we progressives wanted but it is a good start. And Obama deserves most of the credit. This has been an extraordinary week -- and it's only Wednesday night.

Ralph

Ignorance unbound

The Georgia legislature is not known for operating with intellect and rational thinking, but I thought perhaps we had moved beyond the days of rampant ignorance. Apparent not so.

Last week, Representative Calvin Hill (R-Canton) created quite a stir by spreading the titillating misinformation that Georgia universities were teaching classes in oral sex, male prostitution, and queer theory. Another colleague joined him by speaking out on the House floor against having taxpayer money used to pay for this.

It turns out that Hill mistook a GSU guide to its faculty members' individual expertise, prepared for use by journalists and policy makers seeking expert advice -- Hill thought he was looking at a catalogue of classes offered to students.

Two of these experts met with a House committee yesterday to explain. One professor, a Viet Nam veteran, said his expertise on male prostitution and its effect in the spread of HIV had been sought by the CDC in forming its policies to combat the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s; and he pointed out that Georgia has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the nation, hinting that maybe we do actually need some expertise in that area.

Another professor's work is a serious sociological study of patterns of sex among teens. She specifically addresses the increasingly common practice of oral sex among teens as "casual and socially acceptable." Remember the flap about whether oral sex is really sex, when Bill Clinton said he did not have sex with that woman, and it was revealed that many young people do not equate oral sex with "having sex."

As as for "queer theory," that is the completely accepted term in academia these days for studies not only about gender but about moving beyond the binary distinctions in classifying people's identities. All of the better universities have divisions of "Queer Studies."

It's not the same thing that people of Rep. Hill's generation sniggered about in the boys' bathroom in elementary school. Queer Studies is not about "how to be a queer" but a challenge to the idea that people have to be pigeonholed into one category or another. Admittedly, the title is provocative to those not in the know; but in academia it signals an attitude of individual freedom to be who you are without labels or stereotyped images, as well as studies of the pernicious effects of stereotyping and prejudice.

So, you might think Rep. Hill would have been embarrassed to have his ignorance exposed. Not so. First he blamed the media for blowing it out of proportion. Then he argued that, in a time of budget cuts, universities should not offer classes that do not help students find jobs.

Here is a legislator who sees no value in education itself, only job training. Is he really advocating that we turn our universities into trade schools? I find that even more appalling than his using sexual titillation to stir up political opposition.

Ignorance is alive and well in the Georgia State Capitol.

Ralph

News conference

My overall reaction to President Obama's first full news conference last night: Wow !! He really does understand all this. Imagine george bush standing up there for an hour discussing the economy, fielding questions in such a way as to turn each one into a teaching opportunity, being able to explain it all. After repeating his memorized mantras "times are tough" and "tax cuts" a few times, he wouldn't have anything to say.

Obama was very clear in his answer to "what will be the measure of success of the plan?" First, job creation; second, get credit flowing again; third, the housing market; and fourth, consumer spending. We all tend to look at the stock market; that wasn't even on his list.

Again and again, I see how, where I would want to get in a dig at the opposition, he takes the high road. Not that he doesn't speak bluntly where it's necessary, like hitting back at those who complain about too much spending in the economic recovery package, when they themselves had presided over a doubling of the national debt. And those who keep insisting on policies that helped get us into the fix we're in, fiscal policies that have proven not to work.

But he differentiates those with responsible arguments based on different viewpoints from those who are just playing politics.

And he's not going to be quick to give up on building bipartisan cooperation, as I would. He says it's going to take time to break old habits. This time he got three Republicans in the Senate. It was enough to get the bill passed. He's looking down the road to health care and other hard sells that will need them and more.

Great line from last night, and a challenge: "I am the eternal optimist. I think that over time people respond to civility and rational argument."

Ralph

Leahy says investigate

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy insisted on Monday in firm and passionate terms that a comprehensive investigation be launched into the conduct of the Bush administration, saying anything less would prevent the country from moving forward.

Speaking at a forum at Georgetown University, the Vermont Democrat suggested the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission to uncover the "misdeeds" of the past eight years.

"Many Americans feel we need to get to the bottom of what went wrong," said Leahy. "We need to be able to read the page before we turn the page."

Leahy is right, and I applaud his call for a commission to do a full investigation, not just piecemeal bits and parts by a dozen committees.

I just hope the Republicans don't get the idea to hold the economic recovery act hostage to an agreement not to investigate. If they try that, I hope the Democrats have the guts to expose their trying to play politics with the Constitution.

Ralph

Back in the world

I spent the weekend in Mt. Vernon, Iowa -- no, I'm not getting a running start on a presidential campaign. I was visiting my grandson at Cornell College -- meaning I was away from my computer, email, and blogs and from the New York Times. I caught only glimpses of news on CNN's Headline News on the motel TV.

It felt like a vacation from Washington. Catching up when I got back last night was depressing. It seems like Republicans control things even when they're in the minority, thanks to the 60 vote rule in the Senate.

What's depressing me is that Obama's economic recovery bill -- which everyone insists on calling the stimulus bill --has been made worse in all the ways that economists were already unhappy with. That is, less investment spending and more tax cuts.

How do they get away with it? And is it worth the few Republican votes they will get in the process? And they are santimoniously crowing about how we can't afford to add that much to the national debt for our children? When, as Jay Bookman clarifies in his AJC column this morning, of the $10.6 trillion debt, $8.35 trillion of it was run up during the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II presidencies?

Isn't there some way to have it be accepted as fact that the Republican tax cut mantra just doesn't work -- everybody but them says so. Why are we still being held hostage to that false premise?

I don't even want to know the details of the compromise bill. I don't want to play along with the idea that bipartisanship is a good idea. I want Obama to use his power to mobilize the public and force through a plan that will work -- not some watered down, gutted, "best we can get" substitute.

Then I read Mickey Nardo's blog for a couple of days ago and felt better. An excerpt:

But the reason it was a good day is that I’m sort of over the assault. Whatever they think and whatever they do, it can’t be like it was. For one thing, our economy is sliding in palpable ways. As they attempt to blame that on Obama, their logic becomes increasingly bizarre. We’ll have a real DoJ, and a real State Department. Independent of our disasterous wars abroad and at home, we’ll have rational, honest people dealing with them. Sooner or later, either the Republicans and their media will settle down, or be marginalized in the country’s affairs. Short of a Right Wing Coup, we are no longer governed by these people who are currently acting so badly. Any notion that they are going to join in the attempt to deal with the mess they made is simply a waste of time and energy. And keeping up with their antics is simply demoralizing - it interferes with my world view and mental health. I hope others are beginning to feel that too.

All in all, we are so much better off.

And when Dick Cheney spouts off his told-you-so predictions of another terrorist attack, just remember: he assurred us that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, long after it had been proved that there weren't.

Ralph