Less than 48 hours after President Obama announced a plan to create a $50 billion national infrastructure investment bank, Republicans — and at least one Senate Democrat — have set it up for long odds. Republicans denounced it as another “stimulus” bill, and resumed their calls for broad tax and spending cuts. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), in a fight for his political life, said he’d only support the proposal if it constitutes no new spending.
“I will not support additional spending in a second stimulus package. Any new transportation initiatives can be funded through the Recovery Act, which still contains unused funds,” Bennet said in a statement. “Public-private partnerships that improve our infrastructure are a good idea, but must be paid for, should not add a dime to the deficit, and should be covered by unused Recovery Act dollars. We must make hard choices to significantly reduce the deficit.”
Add in a filibuster, and already the legislative pathways to infrastructure spending — and therefore jobs — have crumbled.
But President Obama isn’t proposing the infrastructure bank in isolation. To the contrary, he’s pairing that plan with billion-dollar tax cuts — of questionable stimulative value — for businesses, both of which have plenty of bipartisan support.
Moreover, every single element of the plan the White House has outlined has broad support from traditional Republican allies like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.
That sets the stage for an interesting legislative fight, if Democrats are both serious about pursuing the President’s plan and willing to use it to draw distinctions between themselves and Republicans, while wedging the GOP from its influential interest groups.
The legislative fight over the new plan will be centered around infrastructure spending. In his Ohio speech today, Obama drew the explicitly: “[D]espite the fact that this has traditionally been an issue with bipartisan support, Mr. Boehner has so far said no to infrastructure,” Obama said. “That’s bad for America – and that too is what this election is about.”
But Bennet’s pre-emptive strike isn’t a great harbinger for a successful legislative fight and suggests that the very Democrats Obama is trying to help by pushing a new jobs plan don’t want any part of it.
