Until the country came to be governed by serial brinksmanship, the writing and passage of annual spending bills weren’t huge stories in American politics, and you had to be unusually attuned to both the content and the process to understand the political currents underlying both. When problems arose, there was always the palliative of earmarks to smooth things over. But the narrow passage Thursday night of a big spending bill in the House of Representatives brought everything to the surface, even though the risk of a government shutdown was near zero. Here are six things we learned from the raucous debate over the omnibus. Elizabeth Warren is a bigger powerhouse than we thought. That the omnibus was in any danger of failing at all was almost entirely attributable to Warren’s influence. Her mastery of the media is well understood, but she also demonstrated an ability to sway House members that no other Democratic senator has evinced. Democrats are divided tactically. Warren’s gambit was pretty straightforward. Republicans needed Democratic votes to pass the omnibus, so Democrats should use that leverage to shave a policy rider authored by Citibank lobbyists off of the bill. And with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in her corner, she almost succeeded. Republicans nearly lost a key test vote on the bill, when Democrats voted overwhelmingly to send the bill back to the drafting table. If they’d prevailed—if GOP leaders hadn’t been able to flip that one last vote—Warren’s plan might have worked. But it didn’t. At that point the Democratic divisions surfaced. If Democratic leaders, and President Obama specifically, had decided to unite and take up Warren’s cause, they could have left it to Republicans to decide whether to demand a Wall Street rider as the cost of funding the government. Reasoning that Republicans would respond to such a power play not by agreeing to strip the rider, but by punting the fight into the new year, when they’ll control both the House and Senate, the White House decided not to issue a veto threat, and Warren’s efforts fizzled. Democrats are substantively divided. Once Obama laid down his cards, Warren’s strategy became untenable. With the White House on board for the omnibus, Warren and her allies were essentially hoping to blow up a done deal, and would have been blamed for an ensuing shutdown. But that didn’t mean Democrats abandoned their objections to the bill itself. They overwhelmingly voted against final passage. We learned that there is a large contingent of House Democrats willing to go to battle against Republicans and the White House if they cut bad deals. … #Progressives #Neoliberals #Corporatism #WageDeflation #IncomeGap #Conservatives #Neoconservatives
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 15:47:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015