Not a single Republican in the House voted for the stimulus package. And guess what? No one gives a crap what the House Republicans think. They wanted to prove that they could hold their caucus together but that means nothing unless they can bring Blue Dogs along with them. Only eleven Democrats defected on this vote. Rush Limbaugh hopes Obama fails, and now the entire House GOP is forced to hope for the same.
Update [2009-1-28 19:22:11 by BooMan]: Aah. I think I have this figured out.
CNN reported that about 30 Republican House members wanted to vote for the stimulus but were convinced to make this a unanimous rejection of ‘Pelosi’s bill’.
However, this is not the final bite of the apple for the House Republicans. The House version has to go to conference and be reconciled with the Senate version. At that point, the House will vote again on the final version of the bill which will then be signed by the president and become law.
So…those 30 Republicans will have an another opportunity to vote for the stimulus bill and two years from now, when they are up for reelection, no one is going to care that they voted against the stimulus today.
Why do Boehner and the other leaders want today’s vote to be unanimous? Because they still want to extract concessions in the conference. They want to bitch and moan about Pelosi’s bill. In the end, I suspect that a couple dozen Republicans will vote for the final stimulus bill. But they sent a message today that they have discipline.
The real action, however, is still in the Senate, and the Senate Appropriations Committee has already signed off (with four Republicans voting with the majority) on their version of the stimulus.
After this election where Americans overwhelmingly voted for real change, the fact that not ONE of the republicans voted for this bill is incredible.
No, it makes perfect sense.
If it succeeds, no one will give the Republicans any credit for it.
If it fails, however, they will use that in the next election cycle to say see, we were right.
It’s a no-lose gambit for them.
Can I ask why tax cuts were included when we knew this was going to happen? That 250 billion cap Obama discussed on tax cuts could have gone so much farther on real job creation. Now we’re stuck with tax cuts that won’t do a goddamned thing.
I realize the President is running at a higher political level than I am, but the optics of the past few days look really bad after the vote. It was like a waste of time, or at least appears so.
Because Obama made his middle class tax cut a centerpiece of his campaign.
I thought we wanted politicians to keep their campaign promises?
I get that part, but I’ve read that not all of the tax cuts were related to his campaign promises, but were intended to garner Republican support.
Separately, tax cuts as stimulus are Dubya-era tactics. Did they work? Of course not. Tax cuts may be fine when people are working, but people aren’t working. A national-level jobs program of any kind would have been better, IMO.
Or maybe I’m just stupid. I don’t know.
Eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the rich was also a centerpiece and that was put off. Health care was even more of a centerpiece, and not only is it not in the stimulus, which is arguably legitimate for a permanent change, but there is also not preparation for it. We’re going to need many more doctors, hospitals, nurses to treat the entire population than to treat 3/4 of it, and that will be a surge. None of it in the stimulus. This is what is disturbing: not the optics of Obama reaching out to the Republicans, but his willingness to dilute the substance. This stimulus will fail, we will need another, and it will be much harder to get it through.
And, no, eliminating the tax cuts would not have been contractionary, just as Clinton’s early tax increases were not. But if Obama concerned with that, he could just add that money to spending, getting to increase spending in a revenue-neutral way.
On to the Senate. And then … we’ll see.
I’m less interested in the vote than in whether he can get the economy going again.
The argument is that if he (Obama) strips out stuff to get more useless GOP votes it WON’T get the economy going.
There are lots of arguments.
The proof is in the results.
the bottom line is Republicans don’t care about Americans, they only care about wealthy Americans. there is not other way to frame their party line vote than that.
The stimulus bill was a vote for average working American, probably no capital gains tax cut so Republicans voted against it.
Your update is right on!
Is it? When the Republicans are not able to win the vote with 100% party unity, what kind of pressure can they really exert to extract concessions? Granted, Boehner is stupid enough to think he can extract concessions after demonstrating the House GOP’s complete impotence, but even the most capitulation-prone House Democrats cannot be numb to the obvious message here: not one Republican vote is needed for victory, so not one concession need be given.
Sure, if the Democrats want to throw in some meaningless measure just to be able to claim that they reached across the aisle, that’s okay. Beyond that, however, there’s no reason not to shove it through any way they please and pass around the popcorn when Boehner starts to cry again.
And now, the lesson of everything you need to know about the House of Representatives:
Republicans bravely mustered their ranks and in a show of pure legislative will and obstructionist discipline unanimously rejected the President’s stimulus package.
They still lost by fifty-six votes.
Here endeth the lesson.
The House Thugs just made a very big tactical mistake. At this point in the cycle, I would not want to be on the wrong side of Obama and Rahm. They just put themselves on the wrong side. There are a lot of little things that can go wrong when you are on the wrong side, the the thuglicans are about to find out exactly how many they are. Earmarks, anyone?
Meh. If they were in touch with reality, they wouldn’t be right wing extremists to begin with.
Within a few election cycles, the electorate will produce a crop of opposition politicians who aren’t completely out of touch. In the meantime, we should take advantage of the window of opportunity afforded by facing an opposition composed completely of clowns.
During the House debate, Obey called out the Republicans for exactly this strategy.
Also see Greenwald today: all that partying with Republicans has resulted in MORE opposition to the Obama plan!