The end-game of this congressional session has suddenly come alive with developments that could have a major political impact down the road, if not sooner.
Last night’s House approval of the Obama-McConnell tax deal is a case in point. The White House survived its most emotional collision yet with the left wing of the Democratic Party, and managed to secure a majority (139-112) of House Democratic votes for the deal, despite an earlier Democratic Caucus resolution disapproving it. It’s probably worth remembering that in his own disputes with House Democrats, Bill Clinton wasn’t always so successful: majorities of House Democrats voted against NAFTA in 1993 and welfare reform in 1996.
If you look through the roll call on the tax deal, the Democratic votes are generally not surprising: most “nays” came from the more liberal Members, including, interestingly enough, all members of the leadership other than Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi (who didn’t vote). There was, however, a smattering of deficit hawks among the naysayers. The vast majority of true “lame ducks” (defeated or retiring Members) voted for the deal.
Approval of the deal will obviously create another big tax debate during the 2012 presidential campaign. But more immediately, it will be interesting to see to what extent the deal and the debate over it has set back efforts to build bipartisan support for deficit reduction measures. Without question, congressional Republicans will now be under more pressure than ever to cut “liberal” spending programs, but the very limited Democratic support for such steps probably got a lot weaker during the tax deal debate.
That brings me to the other big development yesterday: the defeat-by-threatened-filibuster in the Senate of an omnibus appropriations bill for the current fiscal year. This outcome resulted from no fewer than nine Republican senators reversing earlier support for the bill, and was very heavily influenced by publicity over earmarks—many inserted by Republican senators—which is now officially a no-no for Republicans.
Tea Party types were actually upset not just by the earmarks, but by overall levels of spending. And Republicans may have bought themselves some early trouble: after a short-term continuing resolution, they will bear new responsibility for drafting a House version of either individual or omnibus appropriations bills, and will finally have to admit that items more popular than waste, fraud and abuse would have to be cut to produce sizable savings.
On the other hand, as David Dayen has pointed out, by losing the omnibus appropriations fight, Democrats could have set the table for undoing the stimulative effect of the tax deal. If Republicans succeed in securing major appropriations cuts—say, an across-the-board reduction attached to a continuing resolution—then that could indeed reduce aggregate demand, particularly in conjunction with the wide-scale spending reductions that will soon be initiated by state governments who can no longer count on the safety net dollars of the 2009 stimulus legislation.
Other bills kicking around the Senate at the end of this session also carry a lot of political freight: the DREAM Act, which was once an acceptable Republican vehicle for offering a hand in fellowship to Latinos, yet is now an opportunity for casting an angry anti-immigrant vote; the DADT repeal, which is inevitable, but is also still a source of great angst in Christian Right circles; and the START Treaty, which could determine whether anything like a bipartisan foreign policy can be carried out in today’s polarized atmosphere.
We’ll know a lot more after a frenetic weekend that could feature a DADT vote on Sunday.