SUMMING UP: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. . . ."

NOTE: Following today's posting, this blog is taking a holiday break and will return on January 5. Happy Holidays to all!

-0-0-0-

This posting is intended as a political summing up of recent legislative activity in Congress, although a bit of work remains for the special session including Senate action, up or down, on a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. In thinking about the past four weeks of congressional activity during the special session, lines from the poet Robert Herrick came to mind:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old Times is still a-flying
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
Tomorrow will be dying.

During his 2007-08 presidential campaign, President Obama made much of his goal to bring a new spirit of bipartisanship to Washington to support his larger goal of bringing a new era of change to the country. Throughout the last two years, however, the most often sounded word to describe congressional legislative action was "partisanship" with others, including myself, often prefacing the term with "obstructionist GOP". There was legislation that attracted two-party support but on the biggest issues partisanship was clearly evident. This partisanship was most evident in the early passage of the $800 billion stimulus bill to jump start an economy in deep recession. And despite efforts to get bipartisan support for his health care reform package and greater federal regulation of financial markets, the votes generally split along party lines. Certainly that was the case in the Senate where it took considerable effort to get the support of the two or three GOP Senators needed to cross the 60-vote threshold to prevent a filibuster.

Suddenly in the special session which began in mid-November, bipartisanship seemed to break out and Obama, who said the Democrats had taken a "shellacking" in the mid-term elections, is now looking like the new Comback Kid . For both Obama and the GOP congressional leadership, the special session was a time of opportunity, for gathering rosebuds. For Obama it was get what you can before the Republicans take over the House in January and increase their seats in the Senate. For the GOP leadership, it was a time to horse trade with the President. At the top of Obama's "must" list were preservation of the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and extension of unemployment benefits. The GOP "must" list included extension of the upper income cuts which Obama wanted to end, plus getting whatever additional tax benefits they could for the wealthy. For the GOP it also meant a brief window of opportunity to do some things that might be more difficult in January when the newly elected Tea Party legislators come to town (more later).

The load-bearing legislation was the $800+ billion unpaid-for tax package. For Obama it was also an economic stimulus bill hidden inside a tax package; for Republicans it was a tax package for the rich posing as bipartisanship. But for Obama there was a political cost in the form of opposition from liberal lawmakers, particularly in the House, who thought the package was a sell out to the rich. But liberals got some surprising payoff when, with enough GOP Senate support, a bill repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell on gays serving in the military received final congressional approval and went to Obama for signature. But Republican support faded on the DREAM act to deal with younger undocumented residents when the bill went down to defeat in the Senate failing to meet the 60-vote threshold. If the nuclear treaty, Obama's foreign policy "must", gets the 67-votes needed for Senate ratification, it will be because of Republican support. So does the outbreak of bipartisanship in the special session signal a new "era of good feeling" between Obama and congressional Republicans? As a political skeptic, I would say not likely.

Since this blog began in mid-July, it was noted on several occasions that the Tea Party (TP) with its very visible, vocal, and well-funded activism, had pushed traditionally conservative Republicans even farther to the right ideologically. With the TP's notable election successes, the question turned to whether the establishment GOP would co-opt the new TP legislators or whether the latter would act as a cohesive far-right voice that would force the establishment congressional leaders to bend to its policy demands.

Right now the signals are mixed. The bedrock TP policy since it began in early 2009 has been to cut federal spending and reduce the national debt NOW. Despite that position and TP protests, the establishment GOP in Congress, primarily through Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, carried out an agreement that adds $800+ billions to the deficit and debt over the next two years. Although much of that is from continuation of the Bush tax cuts for everyone, there is a combined new cost of about $175 billion for a 2 point reduction in social security payroll taxes for one year and extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months. Such a deficit/debt-loaded fiscal package might not have been possible come January. While the TP as outsiders were very unhappy about the fiscal impact of the tax package, the legislation went to Obama's desk for signature because of establishment GOP support. But Senate Republicans did hold firm against a Democratic bill to provide $1+ trillion to fund many federal agencies through next September 30; that proposal included nearly 7,000 pork barrel projects plus $1 billion to implement the new health care reform law.

With the number one GOP political objective for 2012 being the defeat of Obama, plus adding the Senate to complete a full takeover of Congress, plus the new, far right TP members or fellow travelers in Congress, it can be expected that partisanship will return in full voice. The political stakes are high and congressional Republicans will have no interest in giving Obama any significant legislative victories to help him with re-election. So the coming of the new Congress next month is likely to herald the next chapter of ugly, hard ball partisanship. As Herrick said, "And this same flower (bipartisanship) that smiles to-day, Tomorrow will be dying."