POLITICS DECEMBER 23, 2010
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After last November’s election, one might have expected the Obama White House and Democratic Congress to take six weeks off to mull their defeat. Instead, they used the lame duck session in December to win cloture-proof majorities for some very significant bills. Just today, the Senate ratified the new START arms control treaty by a whopping 71 to 26 vote. On December 18, the Senate voted by 65 to 31 to strike down the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy against gays serving openly in the armed forces.
Today’s ratification of the New Start treaty reduces U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, and resumes inspections between the two countries, but its real importance is in strengthening U.S.-Russian relations, which had become frayed under George W. Bush. The U.S. needs Russian support to achieve American objectives in Iran, Afghanistan, and East Asia. And the treaty’s ratification may also boost the stock of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, with whom Obama negotiated the treaty, at the expense of the more intransigent Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The votes on START and on DADT also displayed the outlines of a coalition between Senate Democrats and moderate or moderately conservative Republicans that could overcome the kind of filibuster strategy that the Republican leadership has used over the last two years against administration proposals and appointments. The Republicans who signed onto these bills were willing to put the merits of the legislation above the leadership’s attempt to cripple Obama.
Utah Senator Robert Bennett and Ohio Senator George Voinovich are leaving the Senate and don’t count. But Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Massachusetts’s Scott Brown, and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, who voted for both bills, would seem to constitute a dependable moderate bloc. And add to them newly elected Mark Kirk from Illinois (who represents a blue state), North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, and Nevada Senator Jon Ensign (who represent states that Obama carried in 2008), Johnny Isakson (who comes out of suburban Atlanta), and Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker (who come from eastern Tennessee, the home in the past of moderate Republicans like Howard Baker.)
Obama and the Democrats also won a victory on a bill granting health benefits to September 11 responders. On December 9, Republican senators used a filibuster to block consideration of the bill. But, after the success of DADT, New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand reintroduced the bill. This time, with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Fox News commentator Shep Smith shaming the Republicans, the bill won unanimous support and passed.
Perhaps the most lasting, and controversial, achievement was the passage of the $858 billion tax proposal that the White House worked out with Republican leaders. The bill extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy another two years and reduced the tax on multi-million dollar estates. But it also maintained middle-income tax cuts that would have expired and put into effect a 2 percent payroll tax cut this year. While tax cuts for the wealthy may do little to help the economy—and, over time, hurt it by deepening the deficit—the other tax cuts in the bill promise to jack up the economy by raising consumer demand.
There was probably no other way that this administration was going to get Congress to pass a desperately needed stimulus for an economy that still suffers from near 10 percent unemployment. And simply doing nothing, and letting all the tax cuts expire in January, would have depressed the economy. So, while the tax bill had serious failings, it was better than the alternative. And Obama and the Democrats deserve credit for making the best deal in the circumstances.
Obama and the Democrats didn’t win everything this month—they couldn’t beat the filibuster against the DREAM Act—but they won far more than any administration I can remember. Those of us who were gravely concerned after the November elections that the Obama White House would be unable to deal with an emboldened Republican party can take heart from the achievements of this lame duck Congress.
John B. Judis is a senior editor for The New Republic.
11 comments
I think any discussion of the 9-11 responders bill is incomplete without a mention of John Stewart's role. Yeah, Shep Smith finally got after the GOP and even brought some of his Fox colleagues along, but not UNTIL John Stewart ran a full show on the topic, lambasting both the GOP for inaction and Fox for not calling them out. Huckabee was his guest that night and Stewart all but forced him to get on board, and then the whole momentum on that bill changed. I generally see Stewart at a fine satirist and entertainer, but on this issue he was a huge catalyst.
- rambooride
December 23, 2010 at 7:18am
We constantly misread Obama. He is the most steady and purposeful of men and because of that he will succeed in affecting real and long lasting change. Watch his pole numbers in the next week or two.
- paskunac
December 23, 2010 at 7:26am
"He is the most steady and purposeful of men and because of that he will succeed in affecting real and long lasting change." Color me skeptical. Obama is nothing if not steady, and maybe he's purposeful too, but to WHAT purpose? Transcending partisanship? That it can be hailed as a great victory for the Senate and the White House to have passed DADT repeal, START and the 9/11 compensation bill all of which are complete no-brainers morally, practically and politically only goes to show how far we've fallen. Imagine yourself the victim of a prolonged assault. You have been thrown to the ground and vicious thugs are beating and kicking you about the head. If and when the beating should relent, you would be well-advised not to confuse the feelings of relief you would no doubt experience with an orgasm. These bills passed because the Republican leadership allowed them to pass, and the Republican leadership allowed them to pass because they recognize that in the grand scheme of things, none of them is all that important and that, as with the tax-cut compromise, it might actually strengthen their position if they deny Obama and the Democrats the right to label them The Party of NO. Also they get to throw some of their more liberal members such as Snowe and Brown a bone and will therefore more readily be able to call them heel when it really counts on any matters to do with government spending levels or taxation. The problem with this whole postpartisan, together-we-can-do-it! schtick is that we liberals--and the American working people who liberals still best represent--is that it guarantees that we win on the small stuff--DADT repeal, START--and on the stuff we already had in the bag--extension of unemployment benefits--and lose on the big stuff that could and should have been contested--the Bush tax cuts. The Republicans know full well that two years from now when the job market is still in the shitter as current fiscal policy all but guarantees it will be, no one is going to give a crap that Obama and the Senate Democrats supported DADT repeal or START. The Republicans know this, but does Obama?
- AaronW
December 23, 2010 at 8:51am
Don't bet on Burr being any kind of "moderate" voice for long.
- tnmats
December 23, 2010 at 9:09am
North Carolinians are becoming more and more...what do you say? Socially moderate. There may be some righteous anger against Wall Street that gets morphed (somehow) into hatred against the liberal elite, but if Asheville is one of your most populous cities and you have an area called the "research triangle," plus a ton of African Americans, I'm pretty sure Sen. Burr will have to curtail some of the more extreme Tea Partyesque views of his. It is the state where John Edwards is from, after all.
- RedState
December 23, 2010 at 9:39am
Well, this is great. Now all we have to do is wait 2 more years for the NEXT lame-duck Congress to do in 3 weeks what they should have done in the previous 2 years. In all the crowing and celebrating that all this good stuff finally happened, I think it's being lost that a LOT of stuff that should have happened still didn't -- court appointments at the top of that list -- and that a huge deficit maintaining "compromise" was made while holding the American People hostage. In January it's back to "business as usual, only worse" -- as these lovely lame-duck moderates get replaced by Tea-Party extremists. Still, we should celebrate successes while we have them.
- AllanL5
December 23, 2010 at 9:49am
Robert....perhaps the current Democratic strategy to defeating the GOP in the long run by passing these short-term but meaningless, no-brainer bills is "death by a thousand cuts."
- singlspeed
December 23, 2010 at 10:24am
RedState, I live in North Carolina, in the RTP area specifically and have lived in NC all my life except for a short stint in Texas. I've been in the RTP area since 1980. You have a skewed view of NC if you consider Asheville one of the more "populous" areas. It's small and politically not that significant in state politics compared to the RTP area (Raleigh/Durham), Charlotte metro area and the Triad (Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point). Most of the power brokers in the state are from the central/eastern part of NC, not the west. I disagree on NC becoming more socially moderate. I'm seeing quite the opposite, especially in the last election cycle. I'm seeing the NC electorate getting more harsh socially in the last 5-6 years. NC would elect some moderates in the past but I do not think Terry Sanford/Jim Hunt could get elected anymore in a state-wide race. And the Democrats in the NC often act more like Republicans than real Democrats in the last 5-7 years.
- tnmats
December 23, 2010 at 11:34am
J Judis: "There was probably no other way that this administration was going to get Congress to pass a desperately needed stimulus for an economy that still suffers from near 10 percent unemployment." This is fast becoming the CW, but it is a self-serving (for Obama) rationalization. The bulk of the stimulatory effect comes from the unemployment benefits extension which could have been achieved without the tax compromise, and extension of Bush tax rates only to the middle class could also probably have been achieved, although in terms of economic stimulus this would have been less critical. singlespeed: "...perhaps the current Democratic strategy to defeating the GOP in the long run by passing these short-term but meaningless, no-brainer bills is 'death by a thousand cuts.'" Where's the cut? I see no blood in the water. If anything the Republicans come out of this lame duck session looking more reasonable and statesmanlike than, in fact, they are. What this is all about is power. The Republicans are like bloodhounds for power. The real power of Congress is the power of the purse, of spending and taxation, and also, at least in modern times, the power to seed the judiciary with like-minded ideologues. DADT and START are as far removed from these twin foci of Congressional power as Homer, Alaska is from Manhattan. It cost the Republicans nothing in the way of real power to lift their barracade and let these measures through. For Democrats to celebrate these real but minor achievements overmuch is a little like celebrating the "capture" of Tora Bora after bin Laden has already flown the coop.
- AaronW
December 23, 2010 at 4:55pm
I agree with some of the more skeptical comments here at least on the grounds that one shouldn't get over-confident about the hand the White House and the Dems are going to be playing with, but I'm astonished by AaronW's comment to the effect that ratifying the New START Treaty is a kind of throwaway gesture by the Republicans. A major treaty between the U.S. and Russia on strategic nuclear arms reduction and control, in a world where loose nukes are floating around and U.S.-Russian collaboration on issues like Iraq is small potatoes?
- ironyroad
December 26, 2010 at 12:56pm
that should read ". . . and U.S.-Russian collaboration is required on issues like Iraq . . . "
- ironyroad
December 26, 2010 at 12:57pm