February 12, 2009

2/12: The Newest New Deal

While they're disappointed that lawmakers cut various spending provisions, liberal bloggers are generally happy about the final version of the stimulus bill. Lefty bloggers believe that the bill "isn't perfect", but they nevertheless view it as "a major victory for President Obama" and "probably the best piece of legislation to pass Congress in, oh, 15 or 16 years".

Conservative bloggers, of course, feel differently. Most of them are blasting the stimulus bill, calling it "the Generational Theft Act" and "the most hasty and poorly thought-out piece of legislation ever to come out of the US Congress". Some are complaining that GOPers were shut out of conference negotiations, while others are calling for a primary challenge to PA Sen. Arlen Specter (who voted for the bill).

The upside for many bloggers on the right is that Dems (in their view) are damaging themselves politically by passing this bill. Hugh Hewitt declares: "The overreaching is so great, the tax hikes so high and the spending so massive that conservatives should take heart: Rarely have so many masks dropped so quickly in American politics." John Hinderaker makes a similar point: "In my opinion, pretty much everything the Democrats have done or propose to do will hurt the economy...Their future, therefore, is cloudy at best."

STIMULUS: At The End Of The Day, A Win Is A Win

While they're disappointed about the removal of various spending provisions, liberal bloggers are generally happy about the final version of the bill:

• Atrios: "Looks like a win. [...] It certainly isn't perfect, but it is pretty much what Obama wanted."
• TAPPED's Tim Fernholz: "[I]t's hard not to see this as a major victory for President Obama. The bill still reflects the priorities he set out initially, its still more or less on schedule, and the legislation (and Obama personally) still have broad public support. I also expect that this bill will have a net positive effect on the economy, although the scale of that effect remains to be seen."
• Open Left's David Sirota: "I'm not happy that the stimulus bill was made less stimulative by reactionary Republicans and embarrassingly incoherent Democrats. I'm also not happy that direct spending on infrastructure/social programs comprises a miniscule 4.6% of all the government funds spent to deal with this economic crisis. However, considering how far progressives have pushed the debate, I'd say the deal on the economic stimulus package is a huge victory."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "While there's some debate about whether the Obama White House scored a big win with this package or not, the administration, a month ago, envisioned a $775 billion plan, with $300 billion in tax cuts. The finished product looks pretty similar. The package should be more aggressive and more ambitious, but 'as a legislative achievement, coming so early in the term, this is astonishing.'"
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "The deal isn't perfect, but it is still probably the best piece of legislation to pass Congress in, oh, 15 or 16 years. [...] 16 years ago, the last Democratic trifecta managed to pass some good legislation which, despite also being watered down, still had very positive effects for the nation. Hopefully, the same thing will happen this time, but with one big difference. Instead of the political situation deteriorating, and no major progressive legislation following the initial trifecta victories, let's work to make sure that this stimulus package is a starting point from which our legislative and political prospects only improve."

STIMULUS II: Not Everyone's A Happy Camper

Other liberal bloggers were more upset about the compromises that were made:

• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "[T]he pared down size of the new package will make it far more difficult for the bill to have the impact it needs to have and virtually guarantees that Obama is going to have to come back for more, which sort of makes you wonder if that's the whole point."
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "Assuming the bill is still about 40% tax cuts, you can see that our priorities as a country are still insane. I don't remember anyone calling this year's over $500B spending on defense 'generational theft'. And keep in mind -- the stimulus bill includes, surprise!, more defense spending. Depressing."
• dday: "The Axis of Centrism sees reducing the effectiveness of the bill as an end in itself. They've already reduced it to a half-measure, and they're coming back for more. Did Obama's early emphasis on post-partisanship rather than browbeating Republicans into acceptance change this reality? I'm not really sure. The moderates seem to be goring this bill and liking it, and no matter Obama's pose he would still be constrained by the essential nature of getting something passed. It's Susan Collins and Ben Nelson's world, we're just living in it."

Meanwhile, Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias is grateful to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for fighting to keep school renovation funds in the bill: "I think people who saw the Senate's watered-down stimulus as just a clever bit of rope-a-dope to set the 'centrists' up for conference committee hijinks have been debunked. The pivotal Senators -- the Ben Nelsons and Arlen Specters of the world -- in whose hands lie the fate of filibusterable legislation are just genuinely committed to bad public policy. Still, the Senate bill was a lot better than nothing and the conference report is better than the Senate bill, largely thanks to Nancy Pelosi who continues to be the most underrated progressive leader in America."

STIMULUS III: A Looming Disaster?

Most conservative bloggers are pretty upset about the likely passage of the economic stimulus bill. Several are complaining that the bill will lead to a reversal of the '96 welfare reform legislation:

• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "I miss Bill Clinton. He signed welfare reform! But now Barack Obama is set to sign its undoing."
• AmSpec Blog's Quin Hillyer: "As is pointed out by Katherine Bradley and Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation, the stimulus package guts the 1996 welfare reform which stands as both the most successful and the most popular federal government policy reform of the past, oh, 40 years or more. [...] Stiumulus opponents should ask a short series of questions to Arlen Specter and [ME Sen.] Olympia Snowe and anybody who was around in 1996. (1) Did you vote for welfare reform in 1996? (2) Do you think it worked? (3) Do you think we should kill something that worked? (4) If so, why? Hundreds of thousands of citizens might be well advised to flood senatorial offices with these questions. They are questions that could be game changers."

Other conservative bloggers are angry at Specter for voting in favor of the bill:

• AmSpec Blog's Jeffrey Lord: "[L]ocal talk radio in the Harrisburg area, (the Bob Durgin Show follows Rush [Limbaugh]) is pounding the daylights out of Specter. The anger is palpable, many citing Rush as their source for news. One topic: health care and any rules in this bill that would have kept Specter from his cancer treatments had he been a private citizen. Resentment, and the certainty that taxpayers are being robbed blind in perpetuity, is running very high."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "To be sure, if Arlen Specter were to win the GOP nomination in Pennsylvania in 2010, I'd support him. He's still far better than the Democrat alternative and is not a Lincoln Chafee. But...it'd be great to have a strong primary for Specter from Glen Meacham, who'd also be an attractive general election candidate. Specter is a good trench fighter on occasion, but this stimulus vote is unacceptable. Sometimes tough actions must be taken to keep Republican Senators toeing necessary lines. This is one of those times."

STIMULUS IV: Where's The Transparency?

Many conservative bloggers are complaining that congressional Dems shut GOPers out of conference negotiations on the stimulus bill:

• Hinderaker: "Remember when the Democrats pledged to bring openness and transparency to the federal government? No more back-room midnight deals? Yeah, I remember that too, but the Democrats seem to have forgotten."
• Michelle Malkin: "Yes, it's sunlight-evading, earmark-stuffing business as usual there."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "This kind of behavior goes against everything the President promised he would seek to engender in the culture of Washington. George W. Bush got pilloried as a 'divider,' a 'polarizer,' and 'hyperpartisan' for a whole lot less."

Balloon Juice's John Cole doesn't think GOPers have a right to complain about being shut out of negotiations: "I guess next time you want a final say in the shaping of a piece of legislation (and you already had a ginormous say in the current legislation) in the conference committee, you probably should bring more than three votes to the table in both houses. Kind of funny how that works, as all the people who voted for the bill on the GOP side are right there working with the Democrats to finalize the bill. You WATB's demagogued, lied, whined, and had a hissy fit about the bill, then voted against it en masse even though it contained a number of provisions you wanted and you had inserted in the bill, and then took to the air waves pleased as punch with yourselves. The adults watched you and then decided you needed a timeout. This is bad and wrong, why?"

STIMULUS V: Keep Digging, Dems

While most conservative bloggers are outraged about the likely passage of the economic stimulus bill, others are confident that Dems are hurting themselves politically by passing this legislation:

• Hinderaker: "In my opinion, pretty much everything the Democrats have done or propose to do will hurt the economy. We will see unprecedented budget deficits, more wasteful spending than ever, higher taxes, inflation, and a stagnant stock market. I haven't gone back to re-check the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that Jimmy Carter was more popular at this stage of his administration than Obama is now, and I don't think the Carter administration did anything as directly damaging to the economy as what we're seeing now from the Obama administration. So, while it's interesting to follow the immediate political fallout from the Democrats' maneuvering, in the medium or long term, it's pretty much irrelevant. The Democrats, try as they might, can't repeal the laws of economics. Their future, therefore, is cloudy at best."
• Townhall's Hewitt: "The overreaching is so great, the tax hikes so high and the spending so massive that conservatives should take heart: Rarely have so many masks dropped so quickly in American politics. [...] Rarely has a majority party promised so much through its leader only to deliver exactly the opposite once in power. The Congressional GOP just has to make that point again and again, even as it loses battle after battle as various combinations of Senators Collins, Snowe and Specter provide the razor thin margins the Democrats need in the upper chamber."
• RedState's Brian Faughnan: "It's become clear that the voters turned to Democrats because they had forgotten how damaging Democrat economic policies are. And now that they're getting a reminder, buyer's remorse is starting to set in. While they may have hoped for change -- for something other than economic salvation in the form of a big government wish list of spending items that date to the [Dwight] Eisenhower administration -- they're starting to see that Democrats offer nothing more than the tired old statist solutions. [...] And as Democrats continue to deliver more of the same, the voters are going to become more disillusioned."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Case For Judicial Term Limits

Yglesias:

"Lifetime tenure for federal judges is a very dumb idea. The fact that anyone supports it is, in my view, just a pure example of status quo bias. If we lived in a country where the nine justices of the Supreme Court were serving staggered eighteen year terms (i.e., one new justice every two years) absolutely nobody would be saying 'if only justices stayed on the bench until death!' The point of life tenure is to give the judges independence from short-term political considerations. But a long fixed term, combined with a reasonable pension, completely meets that goal and avoids the high level of arbitrariness associated with the current system along with the macabre spectacle of wondering when people will die and the goofy incentives to appoint justices who are as young as possible.

But if you're not convinced by me, listen to Sandy Levinson and Scott Lemieux."

LEST WE FORGET: Who Says New Yorkers Are Unhelpful?

From Overheard in New York:

Tourist looking at a subway map, drawing a line with his finger: Where does this train go?
New Yorker: Exactly where you just pointed.

Posted by Ian Faerstein at February 12, 2009 12:54 PM