Is Today The Day?
With more bad news of payroll cuts, Senate Democrats Friday stepped up their efforts to win passage this weekend of a massive economic recovery bill sought by an ever more impatient President Barack Obama.
New Labor Department numbers show that as many as 598,000 workers lost their jobs in January — the worst since 1974 and pushing the unemployment rate up to 7.6 percent.
“We have to get this bill finished today,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), and Obama complained that the continued delays were becoming “inexcusable and irresponsible.”
“These numbers demand action,” the president said. “It is inexcusable and irresponsible to get bogged down in distraction and delay while millions of Americans are being put out of work. It is time for Congress to act.”
Senate passage would not be the end of the process but simply allow the administration to move into final negotiations with both the House and Senate together, when more adjustments are sure to be made. But 60 votes are needed to first waive Senate budget rules, and swing Republicans are demanding cuts up front before letting the bill go forward.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he is “cautiously optimistic” of success. But as Obama has stepped up his rhetoric, so has his old rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Friday’s exchanges sometimes resembled a flashback to the 2008 presidential campaign.
Added tax cuts have expanded the Senate package to the point where it is more than $100 billion above the House-passed bill. But Obama said the estimated $900 billion-plus price tag was “broadly speaking” the right size of the challenges now facing the economy. “It is the right scope. ... It will take months even years to renew our economy,” he said. “But every day that Washington fails to act, that recovery is delayed."
Taking on the Senate floor later, McCain accused his old opponent of failing to reach out to Republicans as much as Obama once promised.
“We want to have legislation that stimulates this economy,” said McCain. “But we want it to stimulate the economy, not mortgage the future of our children and our grandchildren by the kind of fiscal profligate spending that’s embodied in this legislation.”
McCain appeared to zero-in on those swing Republicans courted by Obama and Reid, and the hot rhetoric could make it more difficult to strike a deal.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) — just tapped by Obama to be the new Commerce secretary — has insisted so far that he will not participate in any more Senate votes, though it would be surprising for him to let the president fail based on this position. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania are three Republican votes in play, but Reid would like more in case Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) will be unable to vote due to illness.
Toward this end, a handful of such moderates met privately in Specter’s first floor Capitol office Friday morning, after which Specter and Collins went upstairs to meet with Reid on a package of proposed cuts to help secure their support.
“The ball’s really in their court,” said Collins, speaking of the Democratic leadership. “And I am hopeful that they will respond to the points that we’ve made.”
Reid appears to be taking a more direct hand in dealing with swing Republicans like Collins. It was at her urging Thursday night that he changed his plan to keep the Senate in all night, and the two could be seen through the open doors of the Senate back lobby as she appealed to the Democratic leader to back away from what might have been a tense standoff.
“I told him if we had more time, we could achieve what everyone is shooting for,rdquo; Collins said. “But if the process is rushed, it diminishes our chances.”
Spending cuts between $80 billion and $100 billion have been discussed, but the negotiations have become more difficult as individuals have sought to not just scale back spending but also redirect money with the package.
Collins herself favors some formulation that adds more money for infrastructure spending, such as clean water and transportation projects. But the risk is that the offsetting cuts become too much to sustain, and Reid’s challenge is to find the right balance between getting Republican votes and protecting his support on the left.
“Everyone’s going to have to give a little and understand this is a process,” Reid said.
Thus far, the White House budget team has not been directly involved, letting Reid take the lead. But it could become necessary to pull them into the Senate fray — always a delicate chore since House Democrats are sure to resent any side deals between the White House and Senate Republicans.