World

Washington watch: Obama's tussles with congress

April 21, 2009
Pelosi: Unaccustomed popularity
Pelosi: Unaccustomed popularity

article body image

Pelosi: Unaccustomed popularity
The first weeks of any administration are marked by a jostling for power as Congress, regardless of political affiliation, reminds the new president that it controls the money. When he let Speaker Nancy Pelosi write the stimulus bill, Obama started losing the fight. The Republicans seized the chance to run a “Democrats-as-usual” campaign over the bill’s special clauses for research on catfish genetics and skin bloom on grapes. Such gems, inserted by congressman with an axe to grind or a donor to reward, are known as earmarks, and after campaigning against them, Obama has said he’ll let them through just this once and fight them later.

Later may not be so easy. Obama is having trouble with his centrist Democrats, who are not sold on his strategy of spending his way out of the recession while pushing ahead with health and education reform.



Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the budget committee, has said there aren’t enough votes to pass Obama’s budget with its $1.7 trillion deficit and $634bn for health reform. “Some of us have a real pause about the notion of putting substantially more money into the healthcare system,” he warns.

Then there are the Democratic conservatives, the 49 congressmen who represent districts that voted for McCain last November. Some of them voted against the $410bn spending package for this fiscal year and Obama faces another revolt over the plan to let Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy expire next year. The heart of the resistance will be in Arizona, where Democrats Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords dread the prospect of seeking re-election at the same time and in the same state as John McCain.

Congress has been emboldened by the way its approval ratings are rising while Obama’s have fallen. The latest Gallup poll found that Congress, whose approval ratings were a lowly 19 per cent in January, are now at 39 per cent, their highest in years.

This piece is also published in the April edition of Prospect, available from 26th March 2009.