I knew we could work together if we just tried! A $410 omnibus spending bill being piloted by Congressional Democrats ran into trouble last night, as Sen. Harry Reid was unable to get 60 votes to end debate on the measure after scheduling a vote for 8:15 p.m. Reid had hoped to ram the giant bill through, blocking amendments and eliminating the need for conference negotiations to reconcile it with the House bill.
But objections from moderate Democrats and Republicans alike thwarted the Majority Leader, as he conceded around 9 p.m. Thursday that he would have to allow a list of Republican amendments, to be voted on Monday.
Republican negotiators, led by Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) indicated that they would keep the list of amendments to 10 or 12. Among the amendments likely to be considered is the Ensign amendment, which would save the D.C. school choice program from being zeroed out by Sen. Dick Durbin. Reid would not allow a vote on it Thursday, when it was likely to fail, but a couple days of activism, along with Arne Duncan's equivocal support for the program, may be enough to improve its chances. No Republican amendments are expected to pass, but this one would at least illustrate the gap between the administration and Senate Democrats on the Washington Opportunity Scholarship.
Another amendment, offered by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) will force Democrats to vote on a politically uncomfortable measure that would require the Senate to vote up-or-down each year on pay raises for Congress, even if they're only cost-of-living increases. Right now, such raises are on auto-pilot. Democrats had hoped to avoid making that "tough choice" in public, considering the state of the economy and the dwindling possibilities of automatic pay raises for regular Americans.
The increasing concerns of moderate Democrats- 20 of which voted against the House version of the bill- come from the fact that the $410-billion bill reflects none too many of the "tough choices" Obama insists he and the government must make in these hard times. Even the NYT noticed:
The ability of the diminished minority to delay the bill signaled growing unease in Congress, among Democrats and Republicans, over the levels of government spending in recent months and the staggering increase in the federal deficit.
The delay of the bill was an embarrassment for Democrats and a striking, if temporary, victory for critics of so-called earmark spending initiatives, who had criticized the bill as bloated with wasteful expenditures.
The momentum of a few temporary victories is showing in at least one small way in the Republican Party, where Sen. Richard Burr used Obama's own language in the response to the President's Weekly Address, calling upon Washington to make the "tough choices" Obama so often demands. The fact that he can use such language somewhat credibly after the last eight years of Republican spending is illustrative of the extent to which the Obama administration has abdicated that responsibility.
Robert Gibbs was mealy-mouthed in the face of inquiries about the administration's refusal to demand the elimination of earmarks from the omnibus, a frequent promise from the Obama campaign team. He argued that because the omnibus represents unfinished business from last year, it's not subject to Obama's new rules, granting Obama an ethical do-over on the next bill:
MR. GIBBS: I think as I said before, Jake, that the President will lay out some very clear objectives on how we move forward. There will be, over the course of the next several years, dozens and dozens of appropriations bills that cross his desk. And we'll change the rules going forward, understanding that we have to deal with last year's business.
Heck, even Chris Matthews isn't satisfied by that answer.
Just weeks ago, Obama held a fiscal responsibility summit at which he decried such out-of-control spending. But instead of taking the earmark bull by the horns yesterday, as Democrats debated a bill with about 9,000 of them to its name, where was Obama? That's right. At another summit, this time on health care.
Is there any better illustration that our new President may actually be all talk, as many on the Right feared and said during the campaign? Presumably, his "urgent" work on health care will be postponed indefinitely by the summit on economic solutions with the guy who started Twitter.
Although, in an ironic and entirely unintentional way, Obama may have been doing battle against the Dems' wasteful spending yesterday. What was it that caused Reid to miscalculate his vote count so badly, resulting in an extra weekend to focus on Dem profligacy? That's right, the summit:
Part of the confusion may be explained by the fact that so many top senators, including Reid, spent so much of Thursday at a White House summit on health care reform. The normal face-to-face floor exchanges didn't happen until the evening, and the whole episode reflects the strain on Democrats- so busy looking forward with Obama's agenda that they can trip over their own.
Update: Peter Wehner wonders if Obama will take the opportunity to do this week what he should have done last week. With so a reserve of good will from the American people, one move in the direction of his campaign promises would do him a world of good.
