Obama preparing to work around Republican obstructionism, aides say

Yesterday, as Barack Obama signed the stimulus package, the San Francisco Chronicle reflected on how the debate over the recovery plan has impacted the President's legislative strategy and willingness to offer concessions to Republicans:

Obama campaigned on a promise to change Washington and spent his first weeks in office hosting GOP lawmakers for cocktail parties and one-on-one meetings. But his efforts yielded no House Republican votes for the bill and just three GOP votes in the Senate. Most Republicans saw the debate as a chance to take a stand against the Democratic Congress and the new president.

White House aides now are shifting tactics, dialing back their expectations of big bipartisan majorities for future bills. They plan to capitalize on Obama's high public approval ratings and use public events, like Tuesday's bill signing at a science museum in Denver, to rally public support and put pressure on Congress

Thank goodness.

Democrats have tried to work with Republicans, tried to negotiate in good faith to achieve a bipartisan consensus, and all we have received is scorn.

The Republicans feel differently, of course.

Republicans complained that, in the name of bipartisanship, they were being browbeaten into supporting a massive federal spending program that supported liberal policy goals.

"Does bipartisanship mean we all have to hold hands on the road to socialism?" said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. "If this isn't worthy of a political debate, what is?

Apart from Senator Sessions' use of a fallacious argument (quite a slippery slope there), he seems to have forgotten that tax cuts comprise the largest portion of the recovery plan. That's money that would be better spent if it were invested in infrastructure or sent to states and cities (PDF).

The Congressional Research Service agrees as well, as Mother Jones reports.

Early this week, thousands of reports from the Congressional Research Service, which exists to provide unbiased answers and info to curious lawmakers, were leaked on the website wikileaks.org. One such report from January 23 of this year called "Economic Stimulus: Issues and Policies" makes it clear that the GOP's talking points place ideology over good economics. "Economists generally agree that spending proposals are somewhat more stimulative than tax cuts since part of a tax cut may be saved by the recipients," says the report. "The primary way to achieve the most bang for the buck is by choosing policies that result in spending, not saving. Direct government spending on goods and services would therefore lead to the most bang for the buck since none of it would be saved."

Do the Republicans want to be known as the Party of Obstructionism? Do they want to be known as the party that is too set in its ways to change?

Considering that their alternatives consisted of tax cuts or do nothing, they evidently did not learn much from the decline and fall of the right wing regime that was the Bush administration. That's their Achilles' heel: They continue to believe that conservatism can't fail. It can only be failed.

The rest of America knows better.