Obama is in the catbird seat now. The new Congress has a few more Democrats in both the House and the Senate. The Dems have retained their solid majority in the Senate, and now they have a solid majority in the House, for all practical purposes.
85 Republicans defected the conservative brand and voted for the fiscal cliff deal. The Republicans couldn’t even muster the votes to send an amended version of the Senate’s bill to eke out a few more concessions on reducing entitlements. They were that weak.
There has always been a cadre of “blue dog Democrats” who trend conservative in the House. Now there is a group of “yellow dog Republicans” who trend liberal.
The problem is that the “blue dogs” are now firmly behind the Obama agenda, and Team Obama has the “yellow dogs” running with their tail between their legs. This bodes ill not just for the future of the GOP but for the resolution of our debt situation.
The first bill passed by the House in the new session shows how this will all play out.
The $10 billion Sandy relief bill sailed through without even a whisper of dissent. This is what’s needed to pay off the debts in the National Flood Insurance Program, everybody said. Speaker Boehner has scheduled a vote in 10 days on the remaining $50 billion of the Senate’s $62 billion Sandy bill.
Early reports last year were that only $9.7 billion of the Senate’s bill would be spent within 12 months. This was the “emergency” part of the legislation. The rest of the money would be spent over decades on infrastructure (sea walls, pump stations and other massive concrete projects to harden the area against flooding), and much of it on projects unrelated to Hurricane Sandy (fisheries in Alaska, a new roof for the Smithsonian).
It’s pretty clear that the entire $50 billion is 100% pork, prime grade pork at that. If the House can’t squeal any about that, in the current fiscal climate, the conservatives will be fried up and served with a side dish of scrambled eggs come time to debate raising the debt ceiling.
Obama is on the offensive already. In his weekly radio address today (from Hawaii of all places) he said it was totally irresponsible to even debate raising the debt limit.
It will rattle world markets, Obama said. World markets? What about the U.S. debt? When is Obama going to stop being international rock star and start being President of the United States?
Clearly, never.
