Over before it began
by digby
That didn’t take long. Following up on my post from this morning, I see they’ve already capitulated:
Republicans just won a round of jousting over President Obama’s jobs bill.
President Obama supports passage of House GOP legislation that would eliminate a tax compliance rule affecting big government contractors and pay for it by limiting Medicaid eligibility, the White House announced Tuesday.
You can read about the legislation — contained in two separate bills — here. Republicans crafted the legislation by pairing two conservative measures the White House proposed as part of their jobs and deficit reduction proposals. That in effect boxed Democrats in, despite its questionable implications for economic growth, and a pay-for that scales back Medicaid, instead of increasing taxes on wealthy Americans.
The administration announced its support in terse statements of official policy, which makes it more likely that Democrats will back it in the Senate. That would give the GOP cover to claim they’re working productively and seeking common ground to pass elements of President Obama’s jobs bill.
What, at this point, is the rationale of the Democratic Party? We’ll kill terrorists twice as hard and only slash the safety net half as much? We’ll pass the Republican agenda so they don’t have to?
So here’s what’s happened so far. The President put forth a jobs bill, which didn’t make it through the congress, as expected. This jobs bill was highly touted as containing “ideas” that Republicans had proposed in the past and therefore, it should have “something for everyone.” Needless to say, the GOP wasn’t interested in any one from column A and one from column B negotiating. After the defeat of the big jobs package, the Democrats announced they were going to propose popular pieces of the bill and force the Republicans to prove once and for all that they don’t care about the plight of the average American as they join together in Scrooglike conformity.
Unfortunately, the Republicans decided not to play (surprise!) and are instead proposing their own combinations of the most toxic conservative elements of the President’s bill and the President is apparently signing on, thus signing into law a terrible GOP policy while simultaneously giving them a “bipartisan” win.
I’m not sure what the President hopes to gain by proposing and then signing deeply unpopular GOP legislation, but that appears to be the plan.
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