A Democratic president elected with his party in control of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi putting the squeeze on her “moderate” members. So-called centrist Democratic senators sweating the fallout of their party’s agenda at home and putting the brakes on their leaders in Washington.
This is our national politics in 2021, but it also applies to Washington during the fall of 2009 as the legislative fight over Obamacare hit high gear. In many ways, both Republicans and Democrats carry the scars and the trophies from that period.
Both sides should apply lessons from that skirmish to the fight brewing over the $3.5 trillion spending bill.
For the Democrats, the 81-year-old Pelosi knows her speaker’s gavel and her political career are heading into the sunset. Already imperiled by redistricting, her four-seat majority has low odds of surviving next year’s midterm elections, and they decline with each downtick in President Joe Biden’s sagging approval rating.
Pelosi knows successful politicians make hay when the sun is shining. In 2009, she held her caucus together on tough votes over Obamacare, only to watch the GOP enjoy a net gain of 63 seats the following year.
Their congressional majorities were gone, but the Left had a silver lining: Obamacare was, and remains, the law of the land. Despite their best efforts, repeal efforts by congressional Republicans never came to fruition. For all intents and purposes, Democrats lost the political battle but won the policy war.
Government giveaways are difficult to unwind once implemented, and Democrats know it. Right now, they are hiding some of the true price tags of the provisions in their spending bill by allowing them to sunset. As currently written, big-ticket items such as child allowance, universal child care, and free community college would all expire a few years after passage when they would become weaponized against any Republican opposing reauthorization.
That brings us to the Republicans. Under Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the GOP exacted an enormous price of admission for Obamacare supporters in a red or purple state. Each time a Senate Democrat tried to make the bill more palatable with individualized kickbacks, they got taken to the political woodshed.
Who can forget Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback”? What about Sen. Mary Landrieu’s “Louisiana Purchase”? Or Florida Sen. Bill Nelson’s “Gator-Aide”? The details on each state-specific carve-out varied, but all had one important factor in common: They contributed to the respective senator’s imminent political demise.
Early architects of the legislation, such as Montana’s Sen. Max Baucus, retired rather than face the political music. In pickups few saw coming, Obamacare allowed Republicans to flip seats in the blue wall of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states the Senate majority runs through next year as well.
The GOP would be wise to apply similar principles to the brawl over how exactly the Democrats want to pay for their $3.5 trillion bill. The new 95% tax on prescription drugs and European-style drug controls? That’s Washington-speak for outsourcing the medical needs of elderly people to communist China. Raiding retirement accounts to “intensify federal investigations”? Merely code for hiring an army of IRS agents to spy on your bank accounts.
Of course, there are important distinctions between 2009 and 2021. President Barack Obama’s Gallup approval rating then was 52%; Biden’s now is 38%. Pelosi’s majority then was 79 seats; now, it is 10. The Senate was divided 60-40; presently, it is 50-50. The majority party was united in Obama’s first year. The same cannot be said for Biden.
Yet, the bedrock principles remain true for both parties. For the Democrats, the time to act is now — before the tab comes due and their majorities get stuck with the bill.
For the out-of-power Republicans, stick together and extract a steep political price. Your job is not to govern, but to serve as a check and offer an alternative. The strategy succeeded in 2010, and history can repeat itself in 2022.
Kevin McLaughlin is the president of the Common Sense Leadership Fund and served as the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2020 cycle.
