Obama wins his economic stimulus package, but without the bipartisanship he sought

For weeks in the run-up to Friday’s vote, President Obama, along with top advisers, talked regularly with Republican lawmakers to try to get significant GOP support for the stimulus plan. After that effort came up zero in the House, some Democrats called that effort a waste of time and said that the president should give it up.

“It deflected attention from the bill,” says Rep. George Miller (D) of California, who chairs the House Education and Labor committee.

Moreover, Democratic leaders say there’s little basis for compromise with Republicans.
“We’ve done something today that’s transformational for the nation,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a briefing after Friday’s vote. “Republicans want to go down the same old path that got us to this place where we are now. The failed economic policies of the Bush administration were rejected by the American people. We’re not going back.”

In response, Republicans say there are still opportunities for bipartisan cooperation on big policy issues in the future, if the president can change hearts and minds in his own party.

“To his credit, the president reached out. The problem was there was never a reciprocal action on the part of the Speaker,” said House GOP whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, who met with President Obama four times in the run-up to the vote. “It’s not about our being excluded, it’s about the fact that the ideas we’re proposing work. American people are on the side of more tax relief, not more borrowing and spending.”

But even if partisan firefights continue on Capitol Hill, the president’s bid for bipartisanship was not a failure, says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

“When a president reaches out so much and gets back so little, it may look like a failure. But not all things can be measured by votes,” he says. “There’s a higher metric that Obama is shooting for ¬and that’s coming across as a reasonable man who doesn’t engage in the kind of slash-and-burn politics that Americans seem to find so offensive. It’s one of those things that serves him well in his support in public opinion.”

Lawmakers got to see the final version of the historic 1,073-page bill just hours before they had to vote on it. A final scoring of the bill by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was released just before the mid-day vote.

The package includes $308.3 billion in new spending, $267 billion for social services, and $212 billion for tax breaks.

Big ticket items on the tax side include: $116.2 billion for President Obama’s signature “Make Work Pay” refundable tax credit (up to $400 for individuals and $800 for married couples), $20 billion in tax incentives for clean energy, a $14 billion tax credit for higher education expenses, and $4.7 billion earned income tax credits for families with three or more children.

On the spending side, the plan projects spending $48 billion on transportation infrastructure, including $27.5 billion for highways, bridges and road projects, and $8.4 billion for mass traffic. There’s $11 billion to modernize the nation’s electric grid and $6 billion to fund alternative energy research.

The plan gives states access to an additional $86.6 billion in federal matching payments for Medicaid and $19 billion to modernize health information technology. The measure also provides $100 billion for education, including $15 billion to increase Pell grants for low-income students by $500 to $4,860 and $13 billion for grants to schools serving low-income families.

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