I haven't heard a word about Lieberman with regards to the stimulus plan. Is our friendly neighborhood droopy dog on board with the dem leadership on this?

To pass the bill under reconciliation rules they need to have the reconciliation instructions. Those would be written into the fiscal 2010 budget bill that the House and Senate have not yet started, and would normally complete in April/May. Thus, Kevin, while technically correct, is basically wrong, if he wants the stimulus passed quickly.

You know, that's exactly what I've been wondering since you brought this up the other day. Why are we wasting time on fighting a cloture vote that doesn't have to happen at all? If anything, we should be working to make the bill more progressive in its goals (though, not necessarily more expensive in the process).

I'm in the Krugman camp. Let's make sure we give it enough oomph to do it right the first time.

I say let's put it to a vote. Let the Republican's hold it back. Let Dems blame the Replublicans in the media. Let the chips fall where they may. I'm sick of these assholes. Vote -Vote - Vote !!!

If it's not big enough, it WILL fail to do what it needs to. At least that's my understanding (?).

AND--that includes some longer term measures--as this is where FDR failed, isn't it?

So far, a fizzle of an end to a painful week. No word on the promised economic advisors, either -- guess the leadership wants to wait until this whole ghastly thing is over. I'm reminded of various execution comedies, from Maverick to Clint Eastwood, Monty Python and Woody Allen. This time the joke's on the country, left hanging with the noose around our collective necks. What a way to go. I know I'm going to remember this when my friendly neighborhood Senator, Chuck the Grasscutting farmer, comes up for reelection in 2010.

It's time for someone to strap a two-by-four over the limp noodle that's functions as Harry Reid's spine and have him call for a vote. If the Republicans filibuster, then make them filibuster for real. Make them do the whole Mr. Smith Goes to Washington bit where they have to keep talking 24/7 or they lose. And make them keep talking nights and weekends.

Let's see how long they keep going as each day more layoffs in the thousands are announced.

And the Democrats need to set up a war room off the Senate floor to counter the Republican lies and nonsense. This would bypass the filter of the corporate-controlled media and get more Democrats presenting their case to the public.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016782.php

Both Robert Reich and Paul Krugman are excellent at explaining economics in ways that ordinary people can understand. Plus Krugman just won the Nobel Prize for economics. Make them the point men for this little endeavor. They don't completely follow the party line, but if they nudge Obama to the left, then that's just a bonus.

The longer this process goes on, the less effective the resulting bill will be. Forget the Republicans. They're never going to vote for anything that deviates from conservative orthodoxy, so they're never going to vote for something that will actually work.

Where we are now. Why does this creek stink so badly? Where's my paddle?

Oh, and one way the Democrats can be bipartisan is by adopting (and quoting) Mitch McConnell's legislative philosophy:

Up or down! Up or down! Up or down!
Up or down! Up or down! Up or down!
Up or down! Up or down! Up or down!
Up or down! Up or down! Up or down!
Up or down! Up or down! Up or down!

"the Democratic leadership would just turn around and consider the bill under budget reconciliation rules, which require only a majority vote to pass. Sure, they've already said they'd prefer not to do that, but if they have to they will. And since the bill is all about short-term spending, it would obviously qualify under reconciliation rules."

The only problem with that strategy is that passing the Obamination under the budget reconciliation rules would require that every item of new spending in it would subject to the "pay go" rules. This means that all new spending in the stimulus bill will have to be paid for with either cuts in existing spending or with higher taxes. So there's no additional stimulus to be gained by going through the normal budget process.

Of course, the majority can waive the "pay go" rule for each item, but it would take a lot of time to go through very item and there would be lots and lots votes that will come back to bite Democrat Senators in the ass come 2010.

Thank God Harry Reid is so inept as Majority Leader. There's a good chance that nothing with pass today and the longer debate on the Obamination goes on, the faster public support for it decreases.

Scrap... "as this is where FDR failed, isn't it"

I thought FDR "failed" as you put it (although most would say FDR did anything but fail) when he listened to Republicans and tried to balance the budget in 1938. That's what almost sent the country back into a depression.

Lock the doors and cut off all food and water until they pass a bill the helps all of us. That is what they are proposing to the rest of us. Fuck them all!

No Justice, No Peace!

st john

The other big problem with the budget reconiliation idea is that they are holding onto the budget reconciliation act so that they can use it to pass health care reform.

"Obama won an impressive national victory in November, Democrats increased their Senate majority to 58 (59, with Minnesota), and Democrats now enjoy a 77-seat majority in the House. Despite all of this, the strength of the U.S. economy is largely dependent right now on the arbitrary whims of these three center-right Republicans."

Something is really, really, really wrong with this picture.

The bill could be passed quickly on a majority vote by use of a parliamentary device known as the "nuclear option" as described by Wikipedia below. The problem is that "what goes around, comes around" (Sam Rayburn).

The Nuclear Option is used in response to a filibuster or other dilatory tactic. A senator makes a point of order calling for an immediate vote on the measure before the body, outlining what circumstances allow for this. The presiding officer of the Senate, usually the vice president of the United States or the president pro tempore, makes a parliamentary ruling upholding the senator's point of order. The Constitution is cited at this point, since otherwise the presiding officer is bound by precedent. A supporter of the filibuster may challenge the ruling by asking, "Is the decision of the Chair to stand as the judgment of the Senate?" This is referred to as "appealing from the Chair." An opponent of the filibuster will then move to table the appeal. As tabling is non-debatable, a vote is held immediately. A simple majority decides the issue. If the appeal is successfully tabled, then the presiding officer's ruling that the filibuster is unconstitutional is thereby upheld. Thus a simple majority is able to cut off debate, and the Senate moves to a vote on the substantive issue under consideration. The effect of the nuclear option is not limited to the single question under consideration, as it would be in a cloture vote. Rather, the nuclear option effects a change in the operational rules of the Senate, so that the filibuster or dilatory tactic would thereafter be barred by the new precedent.

"centrists from both parties scrambled to cut the massive, $900-billion-plus price tag of the package "

I love the way this reporting makes is sound like there are a whole bunch of people working on this when in reality it's Nelson and Collins.

Technically they are bipartisan, and two DOES make a plural, but I object to calling Nelson a "centrist"

Let republican do an actual filibuster, easy. Reid needs to go, we need someone to turn the threat into reality.

There's not a significant piece of legislation that Senate Republicans won't filibuster between now and the next election (including legislation they actually support). None.

In addition, they'll continue to swarm our airwaves (radio and television) to spread their lies.

If Dems/Progressives can't figure out how to deal with these scorpions soon, then our country is doomed. Seriously.

Something is really, really, really wrong with this picture.

I'll say. I'm sitting here listening to a full fledged fucking idiot -- Olympia Snowe -- explaining what is stimulative and what isn't. She wouldn't recognize a stimulus if it ran up her leg. All government spending that triggers private spending or investment is stimulative.

For Christ's sake, if the government bought everyone in Maine a pack of rubbers that would be stimulative, Olympia baby.

Now, Haley Barbour is on!

WHERE'S BARRY???

Looks like Reid's moving toward cutting back both on tax cuts and and spending, so we're left with a bill that is substantially less stimulative.

Reconciliation rules now! We have seen the obstructionist repiglicans in all their glory. Make the stimulus as robust as possible and pass it with 51 votes in the senate.

Who cares about the Republicans, even the centrist ones. There are a handful of Democrats who are spouting the same nonsense as the hard core Republicans.

This includes the centrist group who are cutting good programs which will keep teachers and other state and federal employees in their jobs.

Instead they have bought into the idea that spending on health, education, and safety and transportation jobs and the necessary infrastructure for same isn't stimulus. Anytime you buy something it is stimulus.

There's a good chance that nothing with pass today and the longer debate on the Obamination goes on, the faster public support for it decreases. -Chicounsel

You're just making stuff up, as usual.

Support for stimulus has been constant despite your ilk's coordinated series of falsehoods. Support is going to steadily increase as more and more people lose their jobs.

I can only hope that more people like yourself, who cheerfully applaud the collapsing economy because you think it's politically beneficial to the soulless sphincters your head is crammed up, lose your jobs and homes.

This isn't something to be jockeyed about for positioning in 2010. It's a real grown up problem; it's time for you to run along and let real grown ups deal with it.

Back to your bridge now.

Who are the morons who vote these Republicans into office?

Answer: those who have been told repeatedly, and consistently, that "government is the problem".

This is Ronald Reagan's legacy: millions of people who believe that government doesn't work and cannot work (except for defense, social security, medicare, . . . .).

How can a country with so many smart people in it be held hostage by idiots?

This country truly does not deserve to survive.

Any chance any Democrat would actually vote for a filibuster? No? Then there's no reason not to do this thing. If Republicans filibuster and can't get even one Democrat to help out, it will go badly for them.

Maybe I can help. We need a stimulus package to put our people back to work so they can buy the stuff made in China so the Chinese can buy our bonds so we can pay for the Republican tax cuts.

Running the stimulus bill through the budget process is certainly the best way. Yes, it won't be done until April, but an independent stimulus bill can't be passed until Jan 2011. And that's still riding on the 2010 election results. At this point, if the stimulus bill includes any non-military spending, it won't pass. We have two choices now: pass a bill that won't help and cost a lot of money, or pass nothing and wait until the budget process starts. I'm for option 2. But when we start the budget process, let's start with a defense budget of $100. Make the Republicans trade votes to get to a reasonable defense budget. That's their weakness, so exploit it.

When Republickers were in the majority, the Democrats could never mount any opposition to what the majority wanted. All the repubs had to do was say "the democrat party is not patriotic or doesn't support the troops." When that hit the repub echo chamber and public sentiment was swayed because it was a simple argument which the most brain-washed could understand, Democrats buckled and voted whichever way the repub party wanted them to.

Now that the majorities are reversed, the republickers still win because the pick a small item in a large bill that they can ridicule, send it to the echo chamber, sway the brain-washed - the press reports that public opinion is with the republickers and the Democrats buckle. It happens every time.

The Republicans are willing to see the bill adopted on a straight party-line vote. The Democrats, at least the smart ones like Diane Feinstein, are the ones wanting cover if it blows up. Last I heard, she was not on board. I guess you folks were still taking your dinner from a bottle still when Marjorie Margulies walked down the House aisle to pass the deciding vote on Clinton's tax increase in 1993. Straight party line vote. One year later was 1994.

Mike K -- Shhh!

"How can a country with so many smart people in it be held hostage by idiots?"

Because we are vastly outnumbered by those who don't want to take the time to think for themselves. For whom repetition is way they learn, and since they hear over and over and over that spending is not stimulus, they believe it.

There is a big problem with the MSM repeating Republican't talking points as if they make sense. You can see that news readers (I can't really call them reporters) as just as susceptible as the 48% or whatever that voted for Dimbulb McCain and Dimbo Palin.

Paul Krugman: Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now.

If saving now is good for the future, then now is when we should be saving. If spending now is bad for the future, and if we spend now, then our spending will make the future worse. Krugman has not wrapped his head around the fact that money spent now will not be available for future investment.

There is always someone who wants to eat the seed corn. That makes sense when the alternative is starvation. But when the alternative is a 10% decline in current living standards, then it is better to preserve the seed corn.

The U.S. economy will recover faster if the government takes its time and increases funding only for a few investments of long-term value. That way the economy can save itself, as it always did before Hoover and FDR.

i keep wondering why people think a filibuster is a good thing for the stimulus? filibusters worked in the '50s and into the early '60s to block civil rights legislation; that's why the threat of a filibuster has been enough. why should we doubt that the insane people who make up the republican party - the people who had no problem signing a blank check for iraq - are perfectly willing to filibuster? that's good enough from their perspective....

as for mike k: i love that the gop lesson from the clinton bill isn't that clinton did a better job than either reagan bush 41 or bush 43 and that conceivably mindlessly voting no wasn't such a smart thing but rather that they picked up seats in '94, economic improvements notwithstanding.

still, what the mike k's and his intellectual cohorts in the republican party don't seem to understand is that in 1994, the gop finally took over the last redoubts of the civil war traitors who were still housed in the democratic party. those seats ain't available for republican picking any more.

but like i say, self-reflection and the gop are not things that go together....

marketer, you might actually want to do some homework: the human and social cost of letting markets find their own clearance point is enormous and always was: that's why a desperate public and a desperate FDR finally tried radical measures - the human suffering while waiting for the market to clear was much to great.

as for good and bad policy: no, marketer, that isn't the way it works: to everything there is a season. the transition from a high-consumption, debt-financed economy to a higher-saving, investment-led economy can't occur overnight: the point is for the system not to collapse in the interim. that's why now is when you do have stimulus, to offset the savings that individual households are increasing.

imho, the Republican members of the House, and
Senate should simply be arrested/detained
on treason charges.

I suggest the 101st Airborne make the arrests
at bayonet point, with the miscreants being
frog-marched away ...

I thought FDR "failed" as you put it (although most would say FDR did anything but fail) when he listened to Republicans and tried to balance the budget in 1938

As I understand it, you're both right.. Keynes thought FDR didn't spend enough, and that he shouldn't have tried to balance the budget, because, as he saw it, the Depression required massive spending.. and only worry about balancing the budget when the country recovered. If Obama truly believes in the Keynesian philosophy, he won't compromise and push for the entire amount for the stimulus package.. but looks like he won't get it.

Krugman has not wrapped his head around the fact that money spent now will not be available for future investment. -marketeer

Yes, because once you spend money, it evaporates and can never be used again...

...or...

...that money is transfered to someone else who will spend, save, or invest it and the cycle continues.

Fuck, the trolls are dumb lately. And I don't mean just slightly dumb, I mean, really, how do you have the brain power to post a comment on a website? I'm shocked you were able to scrape the brain cells together required to dress yourself, let alone operate a piece of machinery so complex that, thank goodness, humanity does not have to depend on you to invent. Stupidity of this magnitude has to be a willful choice.

I don't get it. Why scramble to get to 60? Why not just let the Repubs filibuster? I mean, seriously, you can't tell me that every vote will require 60 senators- nothing will ever get done. Certainly the Republicans passed plenty of bills without 60 senators. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems that the filibuster is a bluff. It would be a PR coup for the Democrats to be able to show Republicans blocking a vital bill while the economy is burning. Am I missing something?