Democrats find themselves in a lose-lose situation. According to the latest NBC News/WSJ poll, if the Democratic majority passes or fails to pass their health reform legislation, they might be swept out of office in the 2010 elections. The Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas discusses.
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US House narrowly approves Democratic Jobs Plan
President Barack Obama's Democratic allies in the House Wednesday muscled through a year-end plan to create jobs, mixing about $50 billion for public works projects with another almost $50 billion for cash-strapped state and local governments.
The unemployed would get continued benefits. But conspicuously absent from the plan were Obama's recently announced initiatives to give Social Security recipients $250 payments, a tax credit for small businesses that create jobs and a program awarding tax credits to people who make their homes more energy efficient.
Not a single Republican voted for the plan, which passed on a 217-212 vote after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., worked the floor for an hour before it passed. The measure now goes to the Senate, which won't consider the measure until next year and which generally has a smaller appetite for such deficit-financed economic stimulus measures.
Given increasing anxiety among Democrats over massive budget deficits and the party's poor marks with voters for its free-spending ways, the measure could face a tough road. Almost 40 Democrats voted against the plan, mostly moderates and junior members elected from swing districts.
According to documents released by Democrats, the measure would cost $154 billion. But there's also another $20 billion from the federal treasury to keep the highway trust fund afloat.
The measure blends a familiar mix of money for highway, transit and water projects and aid to help communities retain teachers and firefighters. There's also $41 billion for a six-month extension of more generous unemployment benefits and $12 billion to renew health insurance subsidies.
Many of the ideas are renewals of programs started in February's $787 billion economic stimulus bill, which has earned mixed reviews from the public as unemployment has hit 10 percent.
The idea behind the "Jobs for Main Street Act" was to enact fast-acting steps that would quickly boost employment. The bill also reflects concerns among rank-and-file Democrats that the original stimulus measure didn't have enough money for infrastructure projects.
But infrastructure spending is notoriously slow to spend out as projects need to be planned and can require a lengthy contracting process. Most of the so-called shovel ready projects have already been funded.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, less than half of the $39 billion in the measure for transportation and housing projects would be spent over the next decade, with just $1.7 billion being spent through next September.
Democrats claimed $75 billion of the measure is "paid for" with unused money from the Wall St. bailout. Republicans countered that the bill is really financed with red ink since the bailout money would otherwise revert to the Treasury to lower the deficit.
Republicans branded the new bill "Son of Stimulus" and were withering in their assessments.
"More spending, more debt. Same lousy policies that haven't produced jobs all year," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Democrats also say that economists largely credit the earlier stimulus measure for the fledgling economic recovery and the improving unemployment picture.
"The situation is worse than we thought and getting better more slowly than we hoped but it's clearly getting better," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
Democrats said that the measure would prevent a double-dip recession by giving state and local governments $23 billion to retain teachers and lesser amounts to keep firefighters and police officers. And it would help prevent tax increases by state governments by giving them $23.5 billion for the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled.
Republicans also distributed a chart showing that roughly half the money goes into accounts brimming with cash from the earlier stimulus bill.
"The agencies are awash with money coming through the pipeline," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.
But Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., countered that most of the earlier stimulus money has been committed if not actually spent.
The measure also includes money for Amtrak construction, school renovation and job training. There's also $1.1 billion for part-time college jobs, summer employment for low-income teenagers and money for workers in national parks and forests.
The bill also allows very poor people with as little as no income to claim a $1,000-per-child tax credit in what Republicans charged was simply a welfare payment to 16 million poor families.
The bill also would extend federal surface transportation programs through the end of next September.
Democratic leaders had to scramble to find the votes for the measure, which came up right after the House approved a $290 billion increase in the government's ability to borrow. That 218-214 vote reflected unhappiness by moderate Democrats about adding to the nation's red ink.
Nancy Pelosi in "Campaign Mode"
Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted Wednesday that job creation and deficit reduction will be the central Democratic themes for the coming year – and that public support for health care reform will rebound once a bill has been sent to President Barack Obama.
On the divisive issue of Afghanistan, the California Democrat ducked the question of how she would vote on increased war funding: “Let’s see what they request,” she said. But she has urged her party, including old allies on the anti-war left, to listen and give some “room” to Obama, recognizing that the president had been “dealt a very bad hand because there was no plan in Afghanistan for years.”
Pelosi made her comments at a year-end roundtable with reporters where she described herself as back in full “campaign mode” and confident House Democrats will retain “a strong majority” after the 2010 elections.
“He didn’t give me 72 hours notice,” she joked of Rep. Brian Baird’s surprise decision to not seek re-election in his swing district in Washington state. But Pelosi said her rule of politics was “don’t assume anything” and she wasn’t panicked by the recent spate of retirements in her ranks.
In the case of health care reform, Pelosi credited House Democrats with having saved Obama’s initiative after the onslaught of attacks during the August recess. And if the Senate can complete its bill this month, she will work to try to send a House-Senate compromise to the White House before the State of the Union.
“They will pass a bill and we will have a bill,” the speaker said, and once that happens, she predicted the focus will shift away from the differences among Democrats and more on what is in the package itself.
“We are in a define-or-be-defined occupation,” she said, and her adversaries have had the advantage of picking out single issues, such as abortion or the public option, to characterize the whole.
Matching the House bill against the still-evolving Senate package, she said she saw differences of affordability for families and the revenue-raisers that would have to be negotiated. But she downplayed differences over the public option for coverage, saying the emphasis had always been on giving consumers an insurance option, not that it be public or government run.
“We know that, between the two bills, we have the makings of a big difference for the American people,” Pelosi said. “When we have a bill . . . the discussion is no longer about the bishops or about the public options, and it’s about what’s in the bill for people.”
She plans to travel to Michigan for the Detroit auto show in January and is already pressing the Senate to respond quickly next month to a new job-creation package on the floor Wednesday. When a Michigan reporter asked her response to White House proposals about job-creating investments in environmental technologies, she bridled a bit: “We need no introduction to these subjects, and we’re thrilled that the White House is joining them.”
But in contrast with this past year, dominated by the Democrats aspirations for health care or climate change legislation, she said the grim federal debt now loomed over the agenda.
“There is a very, almost fierce determination to reduce the deficit,” she said, and repeatedly returned to her early years in Congress and budget battles under President Bill Clinton that contributed to the Democrats losing control of Congress in 1994.
“We’ve been here before,” she said. “We had to make very difficult decisions, and as you know, we paid a political price for it but we had to do it.”
Pelosi predicted in January ‘we’ll come to terms on a commission” such as those proposed to make recommendations to Congress on difficult deficit-reduction measures. But without mentioning Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) by name, she seemed cool still toward his legislation, which would usurp the speaker’s power over legislation and dictate an up-or down-House vote -- without amendments -- on whatever the commission recommends.
“I said pass it in the Senate,” the speaker said. “Send it to me, I’ll have to face it.” But when Senate leaders told her that it was unclear still if the Conrad plan had the 60 votes needed for passage, her answer was: “Then let’s talk about what we can both pass rather than talk about what some people think should happen but doesn’t really have the votes.”
“This is not a completely whole new ball game because we had to do it when President Clinton made the determination that we would go forward,” the speaker said. “We know how to do it -- we’ll do it again.”
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Sources: MSNBC, Politico, Wall Street Journal, Google Maps
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