The full complement of congressional leaders, from both parties in both the House and Senate, are meeting with President Obama tomorrow to discuss the coming economic stimulus bill, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today.
Obama’s first meeting as president with his former Capitol colleagues is destined to be a photo opportunity. But it’s also a chance to test whether Obama can still assemble the bipartisan coalition that his team once hoped would help pass the stimulus measure.
Achieving 80 votes in the Senate may be out of reach given the pre-inaugural pushback from Republicans in the upper chamber, and House conservatives have already offered their own tax-cut-centric recovery plan.
But the biggest roadbloack of all for Obama could be a non-partisan budget report released yesterday that said the stimulus bill’s transportation projects might not be as effective in the short term as some had hoped. Suffice to say, Obama and the lawmakers will have much to discuss.
