Making It Worse
by digby
Matt Yglesias explains why you don't want the Goldilocks centrist faction making policy:
Nelson and Susan Collins (R-Maine) took a look at a huge bill, and zeroed-in with laser-like efficiency on one of its least-controversial and most highly-stimulative provisions, deciding that that was a good place for “adjustments downward.” And while doing this, Nelson and Collins left in place the least-stimulative elements of the House package and added new non-stimulative stuff like an AMT patch extension and a tax break for people who buy homes. Consequently, as CAP’s Will Straw explains, the Senate “centrists” managed to come up with a bill that creates fewer jobs while increasing the deficit by a greater amount.
Or as Krugman says:
What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?
A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.
Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.
Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.
It's quite interesting that these "centrists" never seemed to manifest themselves to mitigate the excesses of the Bush administration, even when the Senate was split right down the middle. In fact, if I recall correctly, the last time the "centrists" flexed their muscles it was to stop the Democrats from filibustering the extremist Federalist Society pets, Roberts and Alito.
Collins and Nelson and the rest of their enablers are not actually centrists. They are typically incoherent conservatives, and particularly pernicious ones because they pretend to be sober, realistic "grown-ups" mediating between the two extremes which creates a false equivalence between someone like Barney Frank and the mendacious fool, John Kyl.
Norah O'Donnell interviewed the somewhat thick Ben Nelson today:
Norah O'Donell: The first test, of course, from this compromise proposal comes this evening, when the senate begins the procedural vote on your proposal so far, only three Republicans have signed on. Can we expect any more?
Nelson: Well, I don't know. When we actually take the vote we'll find out. But there were more Republicans involved in putting this action together. We had six in almost every drafting or negotiating session as well as with a dozen Democratic senators. So, it had a lot more bipartisan input than might meet the eye when perhaps there are only three who are committed to vote for it.
O'Donnell: No doubt you have been working hard on some of the cuts to this plan. But they've ben criticized, including by the president today. I want to play what the president said about those education cuts, take a listen.
Obama [video]: The Senate version cut a lot of those education dollars. I would like to see some of it restored. And over the next few days, as we're having these conversations, we should talk about how we can make sure that we're investing in education. (applause)
O'Donnell: What about that Senator? You've beegn working hard on making all these cuts and now the president says he doesn't like what you guys did. Maybe he's closer to the House version.
Nelson: Well, I think it's important to point out that we left in the 13 billion dollars plus for special education. [big of them. ed.]
Actually, when it comes to education in this bill and investment in the future, it's about 60 billion dollars. And when you realize that the US Department of education's total budget for the year is 40 billion dollars, this is one and a half times more than their regular budget, plus the Omnibus bill will be passed in the very near future and that's on top of the 60 billion. So when you look at a hundred billion for education in the days ahead, that's a sizable commitment that I'm comfortable with. We'd like to do more, we'd like to do a lot of things. But you have to balance the cost vs what you are able to do.
That's very convincing.
O'Donnell then read Krugman's column today.
O'Donnell: What about that Senator? They said that centrist like yourself, Paul Krugman says you've ruined this bill.
Nelson: I don't know where he's from, but in Nebraska 60 billion dollars for education on top of 40 billion, that's a pretty big commitment nationwide. Now this is on top of what the states are able to do. The Governors have the opportunity within their special fund that they can put more money into school construction and other areas of education, so I'm not going to take a backseat to anybody on what we've done here. The president said something in the 800 billion dollar range, we gave him 780. We want to hold to that.
I think at some point we have to be able to put together bipartisanship and there was a lot of effort put into hold the line on the top line part of this package.
O'Donnell then asked if anything is added back in from the House package would the plan lose Collins, Snow and Specter and Nelson said yes. In the spirit of bipartisanship, of course.
Nelson: You have to recognize that this is a consensus. I didn't get everything I wanted and they didn't get everything they wanted. You never do. If there's give and take you can put things together. That's why it's truly a bipartisan effort.
Right, if bipartisanship means a dozen Democrats helping six Republicans cut the guts out of the president's necessary emergency stimulus bill for no good reason (and for which only three of the Republicans are voting after they already destroyed it!)
Nelson clearly doesn't get the point and doesn't understand the problem. He thinks that this is just another bill and he's exerting himself as the power broker with no real insight into what this bill is supposed to accomplish. These details actually translate into something real for real people, and have specific purposes. He proves his ignorance with his comment that Governors could use their "special fund" to fund education if they want to. That means, naturally, that they have to take it away from something else, which are already going to be squeezed from other vital services. He seems to think that Obama is blathering about raising test scores or something and simply can't seem to grasp that education is a government function to which the government can quickly direct cash to stave off terrible cuts. Here in California we have reached a crisis stage in public education where teachers are being laid off, they are talking about shortening the school year and worse. Federal money is vital to prevent a total disaster here.
But Nelson and Collins don't seem to think that is something they need to worry about and they are the deciders. Those of you who pra should probably do so. Our economy is in free fall and the centrists in charge are actually making it worse.
Update: From Atrios, here's a bit of good news among all the dreariness. Obama mentioned the cramdown legislation today and it's perhaps a good indication that we are going to see it come through in the housing crisis legislation that's yet to be introduced. The Republicans will rant about "moral hazar": and all manner of other nonsense, but Obama should insist on this one. It's a vital part of fixing the housing crisis.
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