Can Obama Tame the Democrats?

[question everything]

Thursday, May. 14, 2009
Can Obama Tame the Democrats?
By Michael Scherer
TIME

Barack Obama has filled his White House with all sorts of academic prodigies and propeller-heads, a crew more comfortable with the mortarboard than the flag pin. They are, as a group, masters of the art of the optimal, of creating great solutions on paper if not always in reality. And so every now and then, sobering discussions occur behind closed doors, like the one in mid-April when a collection of Cabinet secretaries, former academics and political advisers gathered to discuss the Administration's blueprint for a global-warming bill. The experts called for a significant increase in the cost of carbon as a way to reduce Americans' energy consumption — just as Obama had promised in the campaign. Then the White House political minds at the table jumped in: Democrats in Congress were not going to just go along without some concessions. "If you figure you need the Democratic votes to pass, you have to give the coal-state people something they can take home," said a participant at the meeting, recounting the course of the conversation. Buying votes with concessions "would not be something that you would draw up in a case study at the Kennedy School of Harvard."

So it has gone in the first four months of the new Administration. Despite Obama's early legislative victories — including passage of the largest stimulus bill in history — the new President has learned how limited his power can be, even when the Democrats control Congress. While much of the political chatter continues to focus on the waning Republican opposition, Obama's real challenge comes from within his own party. With increasing frequency, Democrats have been scratching away at the promises Obama made during his campaign, watering down reforms, removing possible revenue sources and protecting key constituencies.


In the meantime, small defections have become routine. Farm-state Democrats have blocked Obama's plans to cut agricultural subsidies, while others have scoffed at his proposed $17 billion in spending cuts, which target pet projects. Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee have shot down Obama's plans to increase taxes on some charitable donations to fund health-care expansion. Though under scrutiny for his close ties to lobbyists at the center of a corruption investigation, Pennsylvania Representative John Murtha, a Defense appropriator, pushed to add $9.3 billion to a war-funding supplemental bill, with line items like nearly $2.3 billion for C-17 cargo planes that the Pentagon calls unnecessary. At the end of April, a dozen Senate Democrats helped hand Obama his first major legislative defeat by voting down one of the President's big campaign pledges, a plan to allow bankruptcy courts to restructure the mortgages of strapped homeowners. So infuriated was Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, one of Obama's close allies, that he accused his colleagues of bending to the will of bank lobbyists. "They frankly own the place," he told a Chicago radio station. The White House, by contrast, made no public comment on the defeat.

(snip)

Obama is emerging, on the other hand, as a President who convenes the players, points them down the road and then lets the chips fall where they may. Obama regularly gathers members of Congress at the White House to give them broad encouragement, not marching orders... The hands-off approach has costs. What has begun to emerge from the House committee is a set of carbon-reduction goals and funding mechanisms that falls short of the President's plans — and still might not pass muster with moderate Democrats in the Senate. Members such as Indiana's Evan Bayh, North Dakota's Byron Dorgan and Nebraska's Ben Nelson have already expressed skepticism about the proposal to cap carbon emissions and create a market for pollution permits. Nelson also opposes Democratic proposals for a public health plan and the elimination of subsidies to private-sector student-loan firms, one of which is based in his state.

(snip)

At some point, though, Obama may be forced to draw some lines in the sand with his party, especially as small defections turn into big price tags. President George W. Bush's legacy was tarred by his unwillingness to challenge the GOP leadership on its flagrant spending sprees. Similarly, Obama's more passive approach with Congress runs the risk of achieving broad victories that lack the policy punch he has promised — a health-care system, for instance, that covers just a fraction of the uninsured while making only a marginal dent in costs as the deficit threatens to explode. "The principle we have is success," Emanuel likes to say. The question, of course, is just what exactly success will mean.


http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1898166,00.html

[FrenchieCat]

1. A lot of those "Democrats" in congress aren't worth

much at all.

Many get on my nerves.

At least Pelosi seems to have some control over her side....
but Reid, boy...what a disaster! He can't even keep Bayh in line.