Washington - The monthlong struggle over the stimulus plan left behind a smoking battlefield of partisanship, but it also set the stage for a political collision on a scale seldom seen in Washington - a showdown on a succession of even more divisive issues that could shadow the future of the two major political parties.
Against the background of the worst economic crisis in three-quarters of a century, Congress passed the $787 billion economic recovery bill without a single GOP vote in the House and only three Republican votes in the Senate, the bare minimum required to avoid a paralyzing filibuster. This despite wide agreement among economists across the political spectrum that some sort of federal action was urgently needed on an unprecedented scale.
In effect, the Republicans seemed to bet the future on a daring but precarious gambit: By unflinchingly opposing a popular president on the issue Americans care most about, they hope to place responsibility for reviving the economy squarely on President Barack Obama's back. If his prescriptions fail - or succeed but carry unwelcome side effects such as inflation or higher taxes - the GOP could say “We told you so” and bid for a return to power.
If the president succeeds, or if the economy remains mired down but voters decide Republicans placed partisan gamesmanship ahead of the public interest, the result could be long-term trouble for the party - especially its conservative core, which has shaped the present strategy.
Democrats, meantime, displayed an unwonted level of unity with a political calculation of their own: that voters would give them credit for championing the idea of bipartisanship and not hold it against them if - when the chips were down - they failed to achieve it. In the case of the stimulus, they used their solid majority to roll over House Republicans and yielded no more than necessary to garner three critical GOP votes in the Senate.
If Democrats won the opening battle on the stimulus plan, the outcome of the war lies in tougher struggles just ahead: First is Obama's plan - promised for next week - to use the government to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure. Next he will follow up on a blueprint for reviving the moribund financial system, a task that is expected to require vast new amounts of taxpayers' dollars to help deeply unpopular banks and Wall Street financial institutions.
Still further down the road lies the president's promise to tackle such massive and controversial issues as health care, climate change and energy.
On each of those issues, the stakes will likely be higher because of the polarization displayed on the stimulus bill.
”It is not a good omen,” said G. Calvin Mackenzie, a Colby College scholar of the presidency. “Pulling in Republican votes (on health and energy initiatives) will be as hard as what he's facing now. They worked the Hill; they tried open hands to the Republicans and still couldn't get the votes.”
A senior administration official was optimistic that future legislative battles will be more bipartisan and open because other issues will not require the fast-track, urgent action needed for the economic recovery bill. Calling Republicans' strategy “unsustainable,” the official warned of the political risks that GOP leaders will run if they are as unyielding on other Obama initiatives as they were on the stimulus.
”Republican leaders forced members to vote against their districts and to reject hundreds of billions in tax cuts,” said the official, who asked for anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss administration strategy publicly.
”They used up a lot of chits,” he said.
Most Republicans took no hand in crafting the massive bill, brushing aside concessions Democrats made by including more tax cuts than Obama wanted, cutting back expansion of access to Medicaid to help the jobless, and other bows to GOP priorities.
But Republican leaders expressed satisfaction with their decision to make the stimulus plan an almost entirely Democratic formulation.
”There is a high level of comfort among House and Senate Republicans with where we are politically on this issue,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Whatever the outcome, the tumultuous debate upended many Washington assumptions about what the Obama era would be like. Many political analysts expected Republicans to be cowed by the new president's popularity and loath to oppose him aggressively at a moment of crisis. They were not.
Some Democrats worried that Obama would have trouble keeping his own troops in line, as past Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did when Congress was controlled by their own party. He did not.
Some Democrats were also uncertain whether Obama's talk about bipartisanship would keep him from playing hard ball. It did not.
Through it all, Obama may have failed to win support from Republicans and the opening rollout of his fiscal policy gave the stock market the jitters - but he was retaining the support of the public. A recent Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans approved of the way he was handling the economic stimulus bill; only 31 percent approved of Republicans' performance.
Other Obama initiatives will be shadowed by the economic debate in another striking way: The $787 billion price tag - along with the expected $1-trillion-plus cost to bail out the financial services industry - has increased concern about the ballooning federal deficit and may lead to more second-guessing of other priorities.
On the other hand, having visited the $1 trillion threshold, the $100-billion-plus cost of Obama's health care plan may look like a rounding error.
The stimulus debate gave important hints about how difficult the push for comprehensive health care legislation will be. Fights erupted over health provisions in the stimulus bill that had been considered consensus items - creating a nationwide system of electronic medical records and comparative research about which medical treatments work best.
There also was tension - even among Democrats - about efforts to expand Medicaid. Critics said it was a step toward creating government-run health care.
”The lesson here is that in health care nothing is easy, simple or widely agreed,” said Robert Laszewski, a health policy consultant.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, predicts Democrats will have more success attracting Republican support if their initiatives are presented as individual proposals rather than sweeping packages like the stimulus bill.
He pointed to the January vote to expand children's health insurance coverage, which garnered support from 40 Republicans. He expects a big bipartisan margin in an upcoming vote on a bill to require utilities to generate more electricity from cleaner energy sources.
”As you take out each individual part, you get a response,” said Markey. “People hate government but love the programs.”
In climate change legislation, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., predicted that united Republicans will be able to block Obama's approach to curbing green house gas emissions through a “cap and trade” system.
Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, said a key barometer of whether Republicans will engage on the issue is whether Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., joins the search for a compromise. He has supported curbs on gas emissions, but nothing as strict as Obama's plan.
And GOP leader McConnell left himself and his party an escape hatch, arguing that his party's strategy in the future will be dictated by whether Obama and congressional Democrats are more receptive to GOP views than they were on the economic recovery plan.
”Obviously the president concluded it was easier to pick off a couple Republicans” rather than make big concessions to Republicans, McConnell said. “If he tries to go down the genuine middle, we're willing to engage.”
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