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John Fund starts off our coverage of The Bill, and he has a short on Gregg’s withdrawal too.
Members of Congress were scrambling last night to find copies of the gigantic $789 billion stimulus bill that conferees for the Senate and House had agreed to. After all, the vote is today and members are supposed to have a minimum of 48 hours to examine bills. That rule clearly has been ignored by Congressional leaders, but what infuriates members even more is that Beltway lobbyists had large portions of the bill yesterday while they did not. …
… When President Obama met with Senator Gregg at the White House on Wednesday, he could have simply told him he hadn’t known of the White House power grab and that the Census Bureau would continue to report directly to the Commerce Secretary. But he didn’t, which played a major role in Mr. Gregg’s decision to withdraw. Given a choice between his vaunted “new politics” and the left-wing pressure groups that were demanding White House influence over the Census, Mr. Obama made a clear choice to side with the liberal base of his party.
So you think its tough for Obama now, Mark Steyn says wait until things start to happen.
Few pieces of political “wisdom” are more tediously recycled than a well-retailed bon mot of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Asked what he feared most in the months ahead, he gave an amused Edwardian response: “Events, dear boy, events.” In other words, you can plan all you want, but next month, next year some guy off the radar screen will launch a war, or there’ll be an earthquake, or … something. Governments get thrown off course by “events.”
It requires a perverse kind of genius for the 44th president not to have waited for a single “event” to throw him off course. Instead, he threw himself off: “Is Obama tanking already?” (Congressional Quarterly) “Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed?” (The Financial Times). Whether or not it’s “already” failed or tanked, the monthly magazines still gazing out from their newsstands with their glossy inaugural covers of a smiling Barack and Michelle waltzing on the audacity of hope seem like musty historical artifacts from a lost age. The ship didn’t need to hit an iceberg; it stalled halfway down the slipway. This is still the phase before “events” come into play, when an incoming president has nothing to get in the way of his judgment and executive competence. President Obama chose to nominate Tim “Indispensable” Geithner and Tom “Home, James!” Daschle, men whose enthusiasm for the size of the federal budget is in inverse proportion to their own urge to contribute to it. He chose to nominate as commerce secretary first the scandal-afflicted Bill Richardson and then the freakishly scandal-free Judd Gregg, and wound up losing both of them.
To be sure, the present state of the economy is an “event,” and has blown many governments around the world off course. But again: The hideous drooling blob of toxic pustules dignified as the “stimulus” bill is something the incoming Obama had months to prepare for and oodles of bipartisan goodwill and fawning press coverage to waft him along on. Instead, he choseto outsource it to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank and the rest of the congressional pork barons. So that, too, is not an “event” but merely, like his Cabinet picks, a matter of judgment and executive competence. …
A couple of the Journal’s best look at stimulus and its environs. Bill McGurn first.
Historians tell us it was Roman custom to place a slave in the chariot behind a conquering hero, there to whisper warnings about the fleeting nature of fame amid the accolades of adoring crowds.
Barack Obama is no stranger to the cheers of roaring crowds. If his prime-time press conference last night is any clue, moreover, he intends to use this personal popularity to help Congress get a stimulus bill to his desk quickly. As he does, those who wish his presidency success might do well to whisper in his ear two words of tempering wisdom: “Nancy Pelosi.”
In the public eye as well as on Capitol Hill, the California Democrat has become the mother of all stimulus packages. Whatever issues Mrs. Pelosi may claim with the Senate version, her leadership has defined the direction. Her intransigence has set the tone. And her penchant for excess helps explain why out of 535 members of Congress, only three Republicans seem willing to go anywhere near the thing.
Therein lies a cautionary tale. …
Kimberley Strassel on the GOP 3.
… Barack Obama meanwhile can thank them for providing cover for the fiction that the bill, post-”compromise,” had somehow been shorn of its worst waste. Going into the Collins huddle, the “stimulus” contained $2 billion for a power plant in Illinois, $75 million for the Smithsonian, $300 million for government cars, and dozens of other embarrassing projects. Coming out of the Senate it contained $2 billion for a power plant in Illinois, $75 million for the Smithsonian, $300 million for government cars, dozens of other embarrassing projects, an additional $420 million for Maine’s Medicaid program, and an additional $6.5 billion for the National Institutes for Health (courtesy of Mr. Specter). There’s good reason why the Senate’s true fiscal disciplinarians — say, Tom Coburn or Jim DeMint — didn’t get down with the “compromise” party.
And then there’s the self-cover. Ms. Snowe had to be worried that someone might remember that she’s spent 13.99 of her 14 years in the Senate publicly agonizing, usually in view of a camera, about the “deficit.” Or that as recently as, oh, January, she was fervently devoted to “paygo” — which she waived in deference to $839 billion in deficit spending. She might have even worried her enthusiasm for this bill might finally, after all these years, highlight that her fiscal responsibility only surfaces when it is time to oppose a tax cut, and that she’s never met spending she didn’t love.
But no worries! Who has time to remember all those obvious facts? If there’s one thing the Maine duo love and understand it’s the press, which has a habit of forgetting everything in the face of a hearty, happy compromise. These days, the most dangerous place for Chuck Schumer in Washington is between Susan Collins and a camera. …
IBD Editors have a stimulus opinion.
Congress is confident it will send President Obama a stimulus bill to sign by Monday’s holiday. Unless something unforeseen happens, what lawmakers will put on his desk is a $789 billion waste.
The old quip that no one should watch while laws or sausages get made is true — especially with this Congress. America’s legislative body has moved away from creating anything of value and instead habitually turns out things that belong in a landfill.
None have ever been more dump-worthy than the spending bill being sold as economic stimulus.
Harvard economist Robert Barro calls the legislation “probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s.”
“I mean it’s wasting a tremendous amount of money,” he said in an interview with the Atlantic. “I don’t think it will expand the economy. . . . I think it’s garbage.”
Rep. Tom Cole, Republican from Oklahoma, was a bit more refined but no less biting in his commentary. Borrowing from Winston Churchill, he wryly observed from the House floor Thursday morning that “Never have so few spent so much so quickly to do so little.” …
Jennifer Rubin too.
It is not surprising that a hugely popular Democratic president with large Democratic majorities pushed through a gigantic spending bill. But certain things are surprising in the extreme.
It was a surprise after all the soothing bipartisan rhetoric that the president chose not to include Republicans in the legislative process – or to include their ideas in the substance of the bill – in any meaningful way. It was a surprise that only three Republicans in the entire Congress voted for it, a political discipline and unity unheard of in modern times. (By contrast the barely elected George W. Bush got 28 Democratic House members and 12 Senators for his 2001 tax cut plan.) It was a surprise that the president deferred entirely to the House Democrats who showed so little inclination to actually focus their largess on short term, job enhancing activities. …
Karl Rove’s Gregg thoughts.
… What Judd Gregg showed today is that he’s not willing to swap his integrity for a place in the Cabinet. When the administration insisted on gutting Commerce Department supervision of the Census and putting it under direct White House political control, it stung Gregg. And when the administration set aside its own principles of “temporary, targeted and timely” stimulus measures to embrace a big spending measure full of programs that Gregg has opposed since coming to Congress, New Hampshire’s senior senator realized that he was window dressing and that the administration had a greater interest in grabbing his Senate seat in 2010 than in listening to his counsel today. …
Jennifer Rubin notices the White House dumping on Gregg.
The Economist with an overview of electronic books.
JEFF BEZOS, Amazon’s boss, pays attention to symbolism. He named his e-commerce company after the world’s largest river to suggest a flood of books and other products. He named Amazon’s e-book reader, launched in 2007, the Kindle to suggest that it would spark a fire (and not of the book-burning sort). This week he unveiled the Kindle 2, an improved version for the same $359, against the backdrop of a library that was once the private collection of John Pierpont Morgan. Assisting him was Stephen King, a popular author who has written a novella that will be available only on the device. The Kindle 2, Mr Bezos means to say, is about preserving a great tradition—book reading—and improving it, not about replacing it.
In many ways, this is true. The Kindle is an unusual gadget in that it does not obviously target young people, or early-adopting technophiles. Instead it appeals to passionate readers, who want no fiddling with cables (the Kindle works without a computer) or complicated pricing plans (Kindle users pay to buy books and other content, but do not have to pay wireless-subscription fees). It is, in short, perfect for older people. …
Scrappleface says details of The Bill will be released in a music video.
Borowitz reports Obama is looking for a Commerce Sec. on Craigslist
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