Politics
House Democrats take unexpected back seat as stimulus hammered out
By: Susan Ferrechio
Chief Congressional Correspondent
February 13, 2009
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| House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California walks to her office on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. (AP) |
The $789 billion package Congress will vote on Friday comes only after cuts to some spending programs favored by many House Democrats and the preservation of a major tax cut they wanted removed. About $20 billion for school construction and $25 billion in state aid had to come out of the bill in order for moderate Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania to sign on. Their backing took Democrats, who hold 58 seats, over the critical 60-vote threshold required to block a Republican filibuster that could have killed the bill.
“There are three senators running Congress,” one top House Democratic leadership aide complained.
House Democrats have grumbled mightily about the situation to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and they want a new game plan to ensure the House has more power to negotiate in the future, perhaps by setting conditions early in the legislative process with President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders.
“Believe me, we are thinking and working on this,” Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said. “There has to be more discussion up front with the Senate before we dig deep into it.”
Angry House Democrats plan to hold a “post-mortem” meeting with Obama to discuss what happened “and to see how we can move forward together,” a Democratic leadership aide said. “There are a lot of Democrats frustrated with the process.”
With the economy suffering and a new Democratic president in the White House, House Democrats said they had little choice but to back down to get the bill passed quickly.
Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., a top ally of Obama’s, argued to disgruntled House Democrats in a closed-door meeting this week that many of the House spending priorities are still included in the bill, even if they had been pared back.
“The truth is, there is no way for us to win without the three Republicans,” Fattah told The Examiner. “Everyone had to give a little bit.”
House Speaker Pelosi must also contend with power grabs from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who faces a potentially tough re-election fight in Nevada in 2010 and is eager to show his constituents he is playing a leading roll in the negotiations.
Reid first announced a deal had been reached on the stimulus without Pelosi by his side, essentially grabbing the credit and the limelight he traditionally shuns. The move set the final agreement back a few hours as she scrambled to placate angry members of her caucus who felt blindsided by the news of the cuts.
The majority leader’s motivation for enhancing his profile may be positioning himself to defend his seat in next year’s election.
“Reid has a problem, which is that sometimes up to 20 percent of the population of Nevada could be new, to the point that they didn’t vote for him in 2004,” said Nevada historian Michael Green. “He has to reintroduce himself to people who are newer to the state.”
