Instead of a slightly less awful bill, pass a real emergency stimulus bill

There is a bipartisan group of senators sitting around trying to cut out some of the bloated spending so they can get a slightly less bloated bill through the Senate. This would seem to be a lifesaver for the Democrats, something that such senators like Susan Collins are always willing to do. But Harry Reid doesn't seem to be at all grateful that these moderate senators might pull his bacon out of the fire to pass the bill.

"As I have explained to the people within that group, they cannot hold the president of the United States hostage," fumed Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.). "If they think they are going to rewrite this bill and Barack Obama's going to walk away from what he has been trying to do for the American people, they've got another thought coming."

Holding the president hostage? This caused the workhorses to rear up.

"Oh, goodness, no," said Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) as he returned to the dealmaking table in Dirksen. "I'm for human rights."

And Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) chuckled at her leader's accusation. "A little dramatic, don't you think?"

Instead of nibbling around the edges to cut a few billion here and there, I wish they'd take the advice of Alice Rivlin which Bill Kristol distills here.

“This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education.”

With this key sentence from his op-ed in the Washington Post today, President Obama has given Republicans a golden opportunity: Insist on splitting the legislation being debated on the Senate floor into a true short-term stimulus, which can pass quickly, and long-term policy proposals, which require serious debate.

Republicans should stop trying to improve the unimproveable with small-bore amendments to the current legislative package. Instead, they can point out that Obama is supporting under the guise of emergency legislation a bloated catch-all of stimulus, pork and (often bad) policy. They can make clear that Republicans will support a real short-term stimulus (pro-growth tax cuts, housing measures and a few targeted spending provisions unemployment and COBRA extensions) that meets Larry Summers’s criteria of being targeted, timely and temporary. They should introduce such a measure as a substitute -- “The Emergency Economic Growth Bill of 2009” -- and trumpet their vigorous support of it. And they should insist that all the “energy, health care and education” proposals be debated in an orderly and serious way in the regular legislative process -- not jammed through as part of an emergency “stimulus.”

This strategy depends on GOP willingness to slow the process down and to challenge Obama’s arbitrary Presidents’ Day deadline. The Republican position should be: We’ll pass on this emergency timetable a real stripped-down emergency stimulus. But if Obama insists on legislation incorporating an alleged “strategy for America’s long-term growth,” then the country deserves hearings and debate that obviously will take some time. And Republicans should make clear they cannot agree to limiting debate to a couple of days on such momentous long-term legislation.

In other words: If Obama wants a stimulus, Republicans will give it to him tomorrow. It’s the president’s and the Democrats’ insistence on incorporating a huge and problematic policy agenda in this one bill that’s delaying action. Why then, Republicans can ask, is President Obama delaying a necessary, short-term, emergency growth package?

This makes such good sense that of course Susan Collins will ignore it. When they've cut out a mere $100 billion from the bill, we'll have to see whether the other Democrats will still vote for the bill. Probably they will since they'll still have a lot of what they want in the bill. And with Susan Collins and one more Republican senator they'll pass a slightly less awful bill. They still won't be able to answer why the emergency bill can't be stripped down to whatever is related to stimulating the economy right now instead of doing long-term spending that didn't need to go through the normal rules of debate on appropriations. Susan Collins won't be able to answer that question but she'll be happy to preen about her efforts at bipartisanship.