Over the last week, there’s been a growing realization that President Obama’s budget makes big structural changes to the federal budget and thus to the federal government in general. As the preferred cliches have it, he’s going long or swinging for the fences. And in the last few days we’ve begun to hear not only about Republican opposition, which is expected, but substantial Democratic opposition, or perhaps better to say, resistance. Fourteen Democratic senators (plus Joe Lieberman) met yesterday to discuss their opposition to various parts of the 2010 budget.
In the case of the Stimulus bill, a lot of the objections struck me as pretty weak. That is not to say that there were no grounds for opposition. But the reasons the opposers actually brought forward didn’t really even hold up logically, let alone on policy terms. You don’t think the bill provides enough stimulus, so you cut the parts which provide the most efficient stimulus, and so forth. So my general sense was that the objections were driven more by optics and positioning than specific disagreements on policy.
So we’re digging in on this story to get our best sense of who the opposers are, what’s motivating them, who opposes which provisions and so forth.
This isn’t just any legislative battle. These are big changes and they’ll have profound effects on the country going years and likely decades into the future, especially if they’re perpetrated out through an eight year presidency. So this basic cleavage within the Democratic party, how deep it is, what’s driving it, how imbedded it is, is of the greatest importance. We’re kicking into high gear on the reporting side. But we want your input and insights, and of course your tips if you’re up there on the Hill watching or somewhere else that gives you some angle into what’s happening.
