Notes on the stimulus bill

By Joel Wendland

The Republicans in Congress hated the economic recovery bill from the beginning. I think it reminded them too much of the past eight years and Bush's failure to handle economic matters in any intelligent way. It reminded them of how they toed Bush's economic line without deviation and voted for every single one of his budgets and his $3 trillion war in Iraq blindly. It reminded them of all the reasons they lost power.

This psychological turmoil combined with the humiliation of the loss in November prompted a bad decision-making process on how to handle the new political and economic reality in the country. When Obama and the Democrats introduced the stimulus package, top Republicans said to each other, let's fight the election battle all over again. Let's put our free-market fundamentalist, trickle-down ideology and policies that lost us the election out front – even with John McCain leading the way – and have it out all over again with Barack Obama.

So McCain led the way with an amendment to the stimulus bill that would have cut all the job-creating provisions in favor of hundreds of billions in new tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Needless to say, it flopped.

Other Republicans had other ideas. They have been a little trickier. They wanted to influence the outcome of the bill without having to actually vote for it.

Republican Sens. Tom Coburn, Chuck Grassley, Johnny Isakson, Mel Martinez, and David "DC madame client" Vitter added their own amendments or co-sponsored other amendments that were ultimately adopted to the bill and finally passed.

So much for the argument that the bill lacked bi-partisan input. Ironically, none of these Senators voted for final passage. Each one, instead, claimed the bill lacked bipartisan support and cost too much.

Funny claim, because two of those amendments offered by Republicans with bipartisan support added something like $100 plus billion to the final Senate version of the bill. One of those provisions actually would have provided $30 billion or so for a housing tax credit. They claimed it addressed the country's housing problems. In fact, the bill would have given a $15,000 tax credit to real estate speculators trying to take advantage of falling house prices by buying foreclosed homes on the cheap and flipping them for quick profits, and the government, under the Republican amendment would guarantee them a $15,000 profit for each house -- paid for by taxpayers.

That scheme wouldn't have fixed "the housing problem"; it would have exacerbated it. In fact it would have robbed taxpayers to pay off speculators.

But even with that Republican amendment, those Republicans who insisted it was meant to fix housing failed to vote for final passage of the bill.

(Note: the compromise package hammered out in conference Wednesday evening cut that $30 billion tax credit to $2 billion and reasonably limited it to first-time home buyers and imposed an income cap on who could claim the credit.)

Even more ironically, after the group of five Republicans named here (and probably more I have overlooked) added their amendments and raised the price tag of the total bill by more than 12 percent, most Republicans refused to vote for the bill.

Guess what their argument was. You got it. It cost too much and raised the deficit too much. This only shows a deficit in the Republican thought process. Their tax cut policy and war in Iraq added more than $5 trillion to the national debt after Bush inherited a surplus. Their tax policies delayed economic recovery after the 2001 recession for more than four years. Their economic policies and ideology of free-market fundamentalism handed the big banks the keys to the kingdom. They looked the other way as bankers robbed home buyers and made business decisions that caused the credit meltdown and the current economic collapse.

I don't envy Barack Obama the political and economic difficulties under which he leads this country. But the Republicans have proven, if nothing else, the bankruptcy of their ideas and the hypocrisy of their politics.

Why Chambliss Victory Was Both Expected and Doesn't Mean Much

by Norman Markowitz

Senator Saxby Chambliss, a right-wing Republican was re-elected in a runoff election in Georgia against his centrist opponent Jim Martin. The turnout was a little more than two million as against 3.7 million in the general election. Actually, Martin ran well ahead of Obama in the general election, since Obama brought out as I see it both African-American and other progressive voters for him and anti-African-American white voters (some of whom ended up voting for Martin to bring about the runoff) in the first election. With this kind of turnout in a right-wing dominated "right to work" Southern state with all of its historical baggage, this was to be expected.

David Gergen on CNN contended that this was a message to Obama to "govern from the Center rather than the Left" although I don't see how it should be taken in that light, since Obama lost the state the first time by a vote similar to Martin's defeat yesterday. It would make more political sense to say that if Obama pushed the Employee FreeChoice Act and a single payer national health program,(which would be changing the center by moving it to the left) many of those white voters who voted their prejudices today for a Senator who will fight to keep them poor and their employers as rich as possible would change politically.

But what may be more important is the entire media and the Democrats themselves running with the number 60 as a "filibuster proof" majority. This has been pushed hard since the election but, as a U.S. historian (and here I am not speaking as a Marxist historian which I am of course, as such) this has been nothing more than a symbolic issue. Filibusters were important in the 1950s and 1960s when Southern segregationist Democrats filibustered Civil Rights legislation whose strongest supporters were Northern Liberal-Labor Democrats. Lyndon Johnson's ability to get Republican support to break the Southern Segregationist filibuster in the Senate against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a major turning point in modern U.S. political history. But just because there are 59 Democrats and 41 Republicans doesn't mean. that the all of the Republicans would support a filibuster against progressive legislation(and it doesn't mean from the other side that all of the Democrats would oppose such a filibuster). Chambliss arrogantly and foolishly called himself the "41st" Senator, meaning to me that he saw himself as a replacement to Strom Thurmond, who as a segregationist Democrat was the filibuster champion of the Senate until Johnson broke the anti-Civil Rights Act filibuster and Thurmond joined the Republicans in 1964.

Let us say that the Obama administration has the votes to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Chambliss and the great majority of the Republicans would probably try to filibuster it. Would George Voinovich Republican of of Ohio support such a filibuster. Given the role of labor in his state, I doubt it. Would Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania support such a filibuster? Given the role of labor in his state, I doubt it. Would Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, centrist Republicans from Maine, support such a filibuster? Even Norm Coleman if he ends up winning in Minnesota? I would doubt it. Attempts by the Republican leadership to coerce all Republicans to support such filibusters would further weaken their party.

Also, filibusters can and have been waited out and beaten. Here mass forces really come into play. For example, if the Republicans would launch a filibuster to stop a single payer national health program, this could easily have disastrous consequences for them, since filibusters are usually unpopular with large sections of the electorate, even those who don't necessarily support the legislation that the filibuster is attempting to kill without a vote. Filibusters, we should remember, while they are completely legal and sometimes even merited as an attempt in certain circumstances by a substantial minority to block a majority from enacting destructive legislation, are always seen as a tactic to thwart a majority vote, which is always contradictory in its relationship to representative democratic government.

Rather than encouraging President Elect Obama to retreat to a conservative "center," Chambliss election should encourage him to advance a progressive program, since a progressive program that changes the lives of the people of states like Georgia for the better is the only way to insure the defeat of politicians like Chambliss in the future.

John McCain Ignores Economic Stimulus Vote

In his whirlwind campaign in economically-strapped Michigan in January, Republican presidential front runner John McCain tried to generate interest in his campaign by talking to Michigan voters about jobs and the economy.

His recent actions in failing to be present for a vote on an economic stimulus package suggest that he really doesn't care about the economy or working families that much.

According to the Associated Press, McCain missed yesterday's vote in the Senate on an economic stimulus package that would have provided direct economic relief to working families, expanding the recipients of the rebates to include millions of seniors and disabled veterans excluded in the White House proposal.

The bill included aid to low income families facing rising home heating costs and an extension of unemployment benefits for the long-termed unemployed, currently estimated at 1.4 million workers.

Republican Senators led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) filibustered the economic stimulus package.

Eight Republicans facing tough reelection battles this year joined with 48 Democrats and two independents to end the filibuster and force a vote on passage of the bill, totaling 58. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to switch his vote before the voting closed in order to maintain control of the bill by Senate rules.

John McCain reportedly had promised to make the Senate vote on the package, but failed to appear.

He could have been the deciding vote to end the filibuster and force an up-or-down vote on the package which probably would have passed and speeded up economic relief to millions of working families.

In a moment when working families needed someone to stand with them and fight with them for relief, McCain opted not to decide. He chose to play politics in order to please the right-wing extremists in his party.

He's no "maverick." He's just another Republican politician sticking it to working people.

Antiwar Majority Grows in Congress, Bush and GOP Still Out of Touch with Reality

Senate Republicans, using the filibuster, blocked a vote today on an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill, to change course in Iraq.

The amendment would have started a redeployment of troops from Iraq beginning 4 months after passage and would complete withdrawal of nearly all US troops from Iraq by April 2008.

The filibuster of the bill is clearly an attempt by the Republicans to 1) avoid being on the record as rubber-stamping Bush's Iraq war policy, and 2) protecting the president from congressional criticism and oversight.

The filibuster happened on the heels of a Republican filibuster of an amendment last week which would have ended the "stop-loss" and extended tours imposed by the Bush administration on troops serving in Iraq. This amendment, offered by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) would have increased rest and "dwell" time for troops being forced to return to Iraq again and again for three and four tours of duty.

The vote on the troop withdrawal amendment garnered 4 Republican votes, however. An increase over the the last Senate vote on troop withdrawal. But the filibuster can only be stopped if 60 Senators vote to "end debate," and 67 votes are need to override a Bush veto.

A similar measure passed last week in the US House, where the antiwar vote grew by five.

There have been a lot of Republicans who are increasingly challenging the Iraq war and hinting they want to see a change in policy, but so far few of them have translated their rhetoric into votes.

It is possible that the rhetoric is merely a political game to appear to differ with Bush in order to soften sharp critiques in their home states and to avoid losing their jobs in the 2008 election without actually doing the right thing.

48 Democrats, 1 Independent, and 7 Republicans Vote to Change Iraq War Policy

It would have been a minor change. But Sen. Jim Webb's amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill called for giving US troops one year of "dwell" time for every year in the war zone.

Currently, stop-loss requirements can force troops to stay as long as 15 months and reduces the period of rest between war zone duty.

There is no doubt that this Bush administration policy, fueled by the failure to recruit new people to fight a war in Iraq, is seriously harming troops in much larger numbers than Pentagon casualty reports indicate.

Between 2001 and the first half of 2007, about 180,000 veterans have filed disability claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs. 180,000.

Publicized Pentagon casualty reports suggest that only 32,000 people have been killed or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though less public statistics put the total number of people medically evacuated at about 65,000.

So Webb's amendment is about giving troops some time to heal.

Those who still carry water for the Bush administration (such as this blogger) have called Webb's troop readiness amendment "dangerous."

They are afraid that a humane and medically sound treatment of US troops will force the military to draw down forces in Iraq.

Regardless of the Republicans' cynical, and one should say typical, repulsion for the people who actually do the dying in the wars they have started, the Webb amendment was seen as the first of four legislative efforts to come up in the next several days that will require the Bush administration to change its war policy.

That 7 Republicans voted for it suggests they are feeling enormous pressure from their constituents to stop the unquestioning support for the war in Iraq they have so far displayed.

They have started to actually understand what the fact that more than 7 in 10 Americans who support withdrawing from Iraq in the next 9 months means for their future job prospects.

This amendment was a tiny step. But 56 votes is very close to the 60 needed to end Republican filibusters. It is closer to the 67 needed to override Bush vetoes.

The 7 Republicans did not include Sens. Richard Lugar (IN) and George Voinovich (OH), who led a small tidal wave of Republicans breaking with Bush over the war (including Sens. Olympia Snowe and John Warner) over the last two weeks or so.

The 7 also did not include Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) who has broken with Bush and his party on a number of issues, and has even sharply criticized the administration's abuse of civil liberties and for scandals over the firing of US attorneys. Specter may still be smarting from the Pennsylvania Bushies' effort to dump him in the 2004 Republican primary.

But only 3 Republicans of these questionable 10 have publicly announced they will vote for an amendment that would order a troop withdrawal beginning within 120 days of passage offered by Sens. Carl Levin and Jack Reed (RI).

So perhaps all of this "breaking with Bush" is little more than a stunt to give voters the impression that their Senators aren't the Bush clones their voting records will bear out.

Senate Republicans Filibuster "Troop Readiness" Amendment

Senate Republicans just filibustered an amendment to provide for troop readiness by allowing troops deployed in combat zone an equal amount of "dwell" time back home with their families.

The amendment, offered by Sen. Jim Webb, simply states that that active duty troops should have as much time home as they had on deployment, and that National Guard and Reserve troops should have three years at home after their one-year deployment.

Currently, the Pentagon has deployed and redeployed troops to Iraq for 15 month cycles, sometimes over and over again.

Critics of the Bush administration's policies point out that stop-loss deployments have irreparably harmed troops even when they haven't been physically wounded. Extended deployments have been blamed for high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illness afflicting returning veterans.

The Webb amendment is one of four amendments to the Defense Authorization Act being debated in the Senate related to the Iraq war. All four amendments are designed to force a change in the Bush administration's war policy.

In his remarks, presidential hopeful Republican Sen. John McCain, blamed Democrats for the filibuster, ironically. McCain, who has relied on his staunch support for the war as his main campaign talking point, but has seen his campaign falter in funding and several campaign managers flee, argued that Senators should put off Iraq debate until September and that a bill to fund the Department of Defense was no place to debate the war.

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama accused the supporters of the Webb Amendment, which is a concept fueled both by public outrage over the treatment of US troops and a demand that Iraq war policy change, of "flip-flopping." Sessions essentially implied that public opposition to the war policy and and anger over treatment of the troops is "flip-flopping" and an effort to weaken the nation.

When are the Republicans going to stop with the divisive and disgusting rhetoric that people who disagree with them are somehow un-patriotic?

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