Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) muscled a $154 billion jobs bill through the House on Wednesday evening just before Congress departed for a holiday recess. With the vote in serious doubt until seconds before it was gaveled to a close, Pelosi worked the floor furiously, imploring her caucus to stick with her and move the measure through.The bill passed 217-212, but when the time on the clock expired, it was losing 208-212. A few minutes later, when it hit 214-213 and then 215-213, someone shouted "gavel it!" from the Democratic side. A bill doesn't need the full 218 to pass -- only a simple majority of those voting. The presiding officer took the suggestion and closed the vote.
Not a single Republican approved of the bill.
The slim margin is strong evidence that deficit hawks have momentum in the ideological battle between one camp that demands more spending on job creation and another, dominated by the GOP and Blue Dog Democrats, calling for immediate reductions in the deficit. Even the fact that the money was being redirected from Wall Street couldn't sway 38 Democrats, who voted with the Republicans.
It's rather amazing to watch Democrats reflexively cower when a Republican operative merely whispers "fiscally irresponsible" as if those words ensure electoral disaster. People vote on the economy. And not even that. They vote on the job they have, whether they like it, and whether they think the country is going "in the right direction." Whatever the hell that ephemeral notion of group-think positivity means. What people don't do is consider the deficit's impact on borrowing and the consequential deflationary aspects in relation to international economic trends. At least, they haven't to this point, which helps explain how we've arrived at a $11 trillion national debt. Yet this continues to escape Democrats who allow themselves to be hamstrung by a governing philosophy that Republicans themselves don't bother adhering to when controlling the purse strings.
In recent decades the GOP has routinely demonstrated its inability to manage the federal budget. The atrocities are well documented. That's doubly true for the George W Bush administration, when the GOP found a way to take a thriving economy, plus a federal surplus and nearly turn it into Great Depression 2.0 (check out that chart, which also shows spurring a bit of economic growth, perhaps through a Jobs Bill, would do quite a bit to help rein in the deficit). Point of fact: Nobody sucks at fiscal responsibility more than the Republican Party. But that doesn't prevent mealymouthed Blue Dogs from trying to shield themselves from not only a false charge, but an empty one:
O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.Cheney wasn't talking about economic policy and channeling his inner Nouriel Roubini. Deficits. Don't. Matter? Of course they do, at least with regard to long-tern economic strength. What Cheney was talking about is the politics of deficit spending and the fact that voters don't punish politicians for going into the red. What they punish voters for is a bad jobs report. And that's exactly what Blue Dogs tried to ensure by voting against the House's Jobs Bill. There are times, like this, when deficit spending is urgently necessary. And it's moments like this when I figure it isn't worth saving Blue Dogs from themselves.O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.
