“Every economist agrees that the government spending in a recession is essential”

Obviously not, Senator – as a recent economists’ conference in Nevada indicated.  And certainly the Republicans do not agree, as they have been criticizing the bill as the height of pork-barrel spending.  But this brings me to the second point of confusion – how to separate a genuine ideological clash from political maneuvering.  In a previous post, I mentioned some of the qualms that Republican congress members had with the original House bill, many of which I thought were legitimate.  However, as I also noted in that post, the sum of their complaints amounted to a very small percentage of the projected total spending.  So it seemed to me, upon further consideration, that their complaints were more likely a political tactic to undermine the Democrats political advantage.  The Republicans set the tone for the debate, and left the Democrats – including President Obama – scrambling to defend their positions.

How is the party with the clear advantage put on the defensive?   Probably because President Obama was insistent upon “reaching across the aisle” – which while honorable – opened the Democrats up to political attack.  It would seem to me that the skeleton crew of Republicans remaining after the massive Democratic victory in November, are those who are the most ideologically opposed to any Democratic initiative.  After all, Republicans in conservative strongholds were unlikely to lose their seats, meaning that most of the casualties were the more moderate in the party.

Therefore, President Obama would be more reaching across a chasm than an aisle.  And really, bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake is absurd.  The Democrats won handily, which signaled an ideological shift amongst the electorate, and left no real need for bipartisanship.  The voters elected to place the future – at least temporarily – in the hands of the Democrats, in the hope that they would at least do things differently than the previous administration.  It’s my opinion anyway, that partisanship is an unavoidable consequence of having parties at all, and I’d just as soon seem them dissolved.

Bipartisanship, in any case, would require a “reaching” from both sides, and in spite of President Obama’s efforts, it is pretty clear that most sitting Republicans had no real intention of doing so.  They are probably still in the process of licking their wounds and attempting to repair their damaged pride – and be damned if they were going to concede any further victory to Democrats in the way of compromise.  That much is obvious in how they used minor flaws in the House bill to criticize the overall initiative.  Furthermore, there is the irony of criticizing spending while advocating for sweeping tax cuts, both of which amount to the same thing – a massive and sustained national debt.  Both spending and reducing taxes bring about similar, if not the same results – and the Republicans’ proposed tax cuts would near triple the Democrats’ projected spending in a few years.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that there are two separate bills – the House version and the Senate version – which while they overlap considerably, will require some serious reconciliation before a final version can reach the President’s desk.  The Senate version, which initially raised the overall tab to more than $900 billion, has since been trimmed down in another attempt at compromise between Democrats and the few remaining moderates amongst the Republicans.   While some of those cuts came from the more extraneous provisions of the bill, a sizeable portion came from the bedrock of the Democratic agenda – most lamentably, funding for education.

So as I said in the beginning, the only thing that’s clear about the stimulus is that nothing is clear.  Hardly anyone can agree – with differences appearing between economists, along party lines, within parties along ideological lines (liberal vs. moderate vs. conservative) and even between the two houses of Congress.  Personal interests taint if not fully steer any motivations for supporting or opposing the legislation – Democrats stuffing it with agenda items, Republicans fighting it to make a political point, and individuals within each party arguing to ensure their own priorities are adequately represented in the final version.  All of this superseding the purpose of the bill  – to stimulate the economy.

With all of this bickering and maneuvering and chaos, how is anyone – most of all the average citizen – to make any sense of this debacle?  Because hardly anyone can agree, and because even economists – the presumed experts on the subject – can only speculate on the outcomes of any stimulus bill, we can only follow in the politicians’ footsteps, and evaluate the merits of the bill through the lens of those issues that are most important.  For those few of us who support ideology before candidates, and try to remove ourselves from partisan bickering, it would seem to be the only option.

There are many reasons. First is that during the Bush administration, which has run roughshod over the rights of Americans and citizens of the world, there was really no sense of hope. People organized and spoke out, but in the end we still had to endure 8 years of awful, and all it may have done was ensure that Bush goes out with a dismal approval rating. Now with Obama, however, there is that inkling of hope, that possibility that the world could really change for the best. The bad thing about this, though, is that should the change we want fail to come, then it will be that much more painful because we dared to hope.

Second is that Obama has consistently moved towards the political “center”, against the ideology of many of the people who supported him, to maximize his electability. From a purely political standpoint I understand it, but I can only hope that he returns to his liberal roots. Furthermore, as many progressive commentators have observed, Obama got the vote of the left by default. He did not have to work for it, and so he was not held accountable BY the left.

Just because it was the people in the center – those ever hard to define “independents” – who may have pushed Obama over the line, he would not have even been a contender were it not for the the people on the left who voted for him in huge numbers. The left MUST hold him accountable after he has taken office, MUST have his ear more than the lobbyists.

The economic and political climate changed dramatically during the Presidential campaign, and in a way that no doubt gave Obama the edge where he previously might not have had it. Because of that, we can expect him not to be able to deliver on all of his campaign promises. There is one promise that he MUST keep, however, and it is one of his first – to not succumb to “special interest groups”.

As of now, I am concerned about his choice of Rahm Emmanuel for chief of staff, given that man’s background and history as not only a quintessential Washington insider, but a member of the pro-Israel lobby. While I am not someone who thinks that “pro-Israel” always has to mean “anti-Palestinian” or “anti-justice” – I’d like to see peace for all people in that region – that is what it has amounted to historically. The choice of Emmanuel represents – especially to the people of the Middle East – a maintenance of the status quo instead of any real “change”.