Pres. Barack Obama should learn from his tumultuous struggle to drag his “stimulus” measure through Congress. Rather than let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid craft major bills, Obama should offer specific proposals and have his allies push them toward adoption.
So far, he has employed the legislative strategy that sank George W. Bush. From farm subsidies to highway funds to Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulation to last fall’s $700 billion bank-bailout fiasco, Bush passively let Congress write major bills instead of actively drafting them at the White House and asking sympathetic lawmakers to shepherd them to passage.
Like a king who signed whatever document shared the silver platter with his roast hasenpfeffer, Bush approved everything the GOP Congress sent him for six years. His Social Security reform flopped partially because he never advanced his own plan, and gelatinous GOP congressional leaders were too busy quivering to do so. Bush vetoed nothing until 2007. Congress pushed legislation his way, rarely the reverse.
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Obama should avoid this mistake. As Ronald Reagan usually did, Obama should design his own proposals, select congressional allies to introduce them, and then harness his 65 percent percent popularity and abundant persuasive talents to propel them as nearly intact as possible through a Congress saddled with a 20 percent approval rating.
“We believe that had [Obama] had free rein and a free hand in crafting this legislation, it would look a lot different,” Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) told the Washington Times January 27. “But because it’s gone through the congressional Democrats, it’s basically a grab bag for every program they’ve wanted to see funded for years.”
Capitol Hill is the North Pole as this $1.3 trillion bill becomes a visit from St. Nick. Consider some of the details, as described in news accounts and summarized by the House Republican Study Committee:
$88 million for a new polar icebreaker for the Coast Guard.
$400 million for NASA to research so-called global warming.
$400 million for the Social Security Administration’s National Computer Center. “An estimated 400 jobs will be created during the construction process,” boasted House appropriators. Cost per job: $1 million.
The State Department’s $524 million Capital Investment Fund would create 388 positions. “That comes to $1.35 million per job,” said Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell.
$600 million to train doctors and nurses as “a key component of attaining universal health care,” House appropriators said.
$650 million for digital-TV conversion coupons. At $40 each, why not tell Americans to suck it up and fund this themselves? Sacrificing $1 per day accumulates the needed money within six weeks.
$800 million for biomass projects.
$2 billion for a near-zero-emissions electrical plant in Matoon, Ill.
$2.4 billion for carbon-sequestration technology.
$15.6 billion in Pell Grants to aid college students.
According to January 28’s Wall Street Journal, “dairy and beef cattle producers butted heads over talk that the government might buy up dairy cattle for slaughter to drive up depressed milk prices.”
And there is much more.
