UNITED STATES: Obama's strategy shapes stimulus debate

The House of Representatives last week passed an 819 billion dollar economic stimulus bill, which was notable for the unusually partisan character of the vote: the entire Republican caucus opposed it, while all but eleven Democrats voted in favor. The Senate is now debating its own version of the bill, which has swelled to over 900 billion dollars. In theory, the Republicans have the votes to filibuster the package. In practice, the administration is in a strong position to secure its objectives.

Weak Senate opposition. Republican opposition in the Senate is potentially a more serious danger to President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan than in the House, where the minority has little leverage. Senate rules allow a disciplined opposition to effectively block ('filibuster') legislation if it can deny the majority the 60 votes (out of 100) necessary to secure 'cloture' and end debate. However, Senate Republican leaders have not threatened to engage in such tactics -- nor are they likely to do so in the coming weeks, for several reasons:

Obama's intimidating popularity. Most Republican senators do no favor outright obstruction, due to the president's unusually strong approval ratings (65%, according to the latest Gallup reading). The public image of the Republican party also remains very negative.

Lack of unity. Republican leaders doubt whether they can achieve the unity necessary to block the bill in the Senate. The party holds just 41 seats in the chamber, and would need both iron discipline and defections from the Democratic side to have a plausible chance of success. Given that at least ten Republicans favor some sort of stimulus measure, an attempt to block the bill might turn into an embarrassing debacle.

Republican stimulus sympathy. Indeed, many more Senate Republicans would back the bill, provided that more of it were devoted to immediate economic relief (especially in the form of tax cuts and aid to the housing sector) and some extraneous spending items were stripped out.

Bargaining with Obama. Therefore, Senate Republicans are simply testing the concessions that the White House would be willing to make, in order for Obama to secure his stimulus package quickly and plausibly claim it enjoyed 'bipartisan' support. If he achieves these objectives, the president would be able to begin work on the rest of his domestic agenda while he is still in his political 'honeymoon' period. Republican leaders calculate that Obama is more open to their attempts to shape the stimulus package, for these reasons, than many of their Democratic counterparts in the Senate.

This assumption is almost certainly correct, as the White House is likely to accept amendments that:

provide additional tax concessions to the business community;

boost the housing sector (in the form of a 15,000 tax credit for all new home purchases);

water-down 'buy-American' provisions that would restrict government purchases in many areas to 'US products' -- possibly leading to tensions with US trading partners; and

eliminate some provisions in the House version of the bill that smack of 'pork barrel' spending (eg political patronage spending in the districts of influential House members).

If such minor concessions are forthcoming, the likely result would be a Senate bill larger that the president's highly flexible 'limit' of 850 billion dollars (probably approximately 900 billion to 1.0 trillion dollars) which would largely dictate the final shape of the package approved by the House-Senate conference committee. The majority of Senate Republicans would still vote against a bill in this form, but enough would support it to allow for its relatively swift passage this month.

sources:http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/05/news/05oxan-stim.php