Top Stories on U.S. Congress

As House and Senate leaders met last week to negotiate the final provisions of President Barack Obama's stimulus plan, we turned our attention to the U.S. Congress as our featured topic. Debate over the bill dominated coverage. Our best news and analysis centered on the unraveling of the bipartisanship President Obama had hoped to achieve, as well as predictions of how the final bill would impact the economy.

The Council on Foreign Relations gave the big picture of the stimulus plan -- where the money will likely go and how it could affect the U.S. and world economies -- in a highly rated special report at the beginning of the week:

Majority Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed a stimulus bill favored by Obama on January 28, 2009, with a price tag of nearly $820 billion, and their counterparts in the Senate passed a slightly larger measure on February 10, 2009. Negotiations to reconcile the two versions must occur before Obama can sign the bill into law.

The package comes amidst a global wave of stimulus spending, and if it succeeds in pulling the U.S. economy from recession, economists say, the positive impact could be felt around the world. Yet experts also see a number of ways the plan could go wrong. Some encourage targeted, temporary spending measures and say lawmakers should take budgetary concerns into consideration. Doing too little to solve the financial crisis could prove calamitous, they say, but legislative overreach could also have serious consequences.

When the Senate approved an $838 billion version of the plan Feb. 10, McClatchy looked at the looming party-line battle over what should be cut in the final version. Their news report highlighted the bill's scant Republican support:

Since Republicans control only 178 of the House's 435 seats and 41 of the 100 Senate seats, they're likely to have little say in the compromise.

However, as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky pointed out, "there are 219 Republicans in Congress and only three found the bill acceptable."

If those three don't like the final version, they could sink it in the Senate.

Members of both parties have escalated their partisan rhetoric. Obama complained last week that Republican initiatives too often are "rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems, that government doesn't have a role to play, that half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough, that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges "

Most Republicans, on the other hand, have become emboldened and united in their opposition, dismissing the stimulus bills as loaded with spending that would do little to spur the economy.

Mid-week, The Hill, an independent weekly that covers Congress, shed some light on the inner workings of the bill's negotiation. In a news story that touched on the personalities and tactics at play in the Capitol, The Hill reported that Rham Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, kept a high profile during the debate:

[I]f anyone's fingerprints are on the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package being sorted out in Congress this week, they belong to Emanuel, the former Illinois House member who is now the White House chief of staff.

There he was on the morning before the House stimulus vote, bringing Blue Dogs back into the fold as he huddled with their leaders in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-Md.) hideaway off the House floor.

That was in addition to the unrequited courtship of Republican centrists by Emanuel, who was the No. 4 leader in the House before he resigned to become President Obama's top aide. ...

Emanuel's successful courtship of fiscally conservative Blue Dogs has been less publicized than the outreach to Republicans.

Blue Dogs were growing restless amid news reports of projects in the stimulus, such as the re-sodding of the National Mall, or that their demand to reinstate "statutory pay-go" wasn't in the bill.

The fiscally conservative Democrats might not have been able to defeat the bill, but a large chunk of Democrats defecting on the top priority of a new Democratic president would have heaped insult on the injury inflicted by the GOP's wall of opposition.

After the final version of the bill cleared both houses of Congress on Feb. 13, the Washington Post followed with a news analysis that examined how the plan's success or failure could be used for political purposes in the next round of elections:

President Obama's advisers are betting that the historic legislation he will sign tomorrow will bear fruit quickly, and they plan to do everything they can to highlight evidence of it creating the jobs he has promised. That public relations effort kicks off tomorrow as a two-day swing through the West begins.

But the Republican Party has made its own bet: that the stimulus package that Democrats rushed through Congress will have been deemed a failure by the time the 2010 elections arrive, leading voters to rebuke Obama and reward the GOP with much-needed victories.

Whichever side proves to be right, the sharp, partisan lines over the stimulus bill make it plain that both parties intend to exact a political cost over last week's votes. And their leaders are looking to history for inspiration as they consider how to maneuver in the weeks and months ahead.

Top Stories
Here's a sampling of the best Congressional news coverage from last week;

Democrats and Republicans line up to do battle over results of stimulus package
Washington Post
GOP seethes over Charlie Crist's stimulus-plan support
Miami Herald
Rahm's fingerprints all over package, tactics
The Hill
Immigration fight simmered during stimulus negotiations
Washington Independent
The U.S. economic stimulus plan
Council on Foreign Relations
For Senators, tax questions are taxing
The Politico

Top rated stories on U.S. Congress (full listing)
Top stories on U.S. Congress (full listing)

This week: Foreign Policy
Our featured topic this week is Foreign Policy. In the first hundred days of his administration, the world is keeping a close eye on how Barack Obama's foreign policy differs from that of his predecessor. Help us find news and opinion on the approach President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton take with America's allies and antagonists, on our Foreign Policy topic page.

Comments

[Sharon Stone]

This story blew my mind because it deconstructed and reconstructed traditional notions of maleness, Blackness, longing, natural and unnatural boundaries. Most important, it allowed for a liberal interpretation of what it means to be free, open, alive, here in our global, boundary-less new world order. There are those living at the margins even when their lives are centered, or brought to the center.