The Right Elevates Partisanship Over Patriotism

Only three of 41 Republican senators backed President Obama’s American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment plan today. Last week, not a single Republican supported the bill in the House. This is a case of naked partisanship.

No doubt the mainstream media will cluck its collective tongue and declare that both sides are to blame. But when they say that, it will be patently untrue. The truth is, President Obama bent over backwards to give Republicans the chance to participate in this legislation. There is not a single instance during the eight-year Bush presidency when he made half this much effort to include the Democrats.

No, what happened these past two weeks is that, following the lead of Rush Limbaugh [1], congressional Republicans coolly decided to slap away the hand that Obama extended to them, and oppose any kind of compromise—entirely for partisan political reasons.

Republicans made no secret of their unwillingness to compromise on the economic recovery package. As Robert Borosage put it [2]:

The overwhelming majority of conservatives chose partisanship over patriotism and obstruction over action. GOP leaders were thrilled that not a single Republican voted for the President’s economic recovery plan in the House, and they’re delighted that only three Republicans supported it in the Senate. Aside from those three Senators, not one Republican said, suggested, or even hinted that he or she would be willing to vote for the President’s package if amendments were accepted.

Faced with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, all but a handful of Republicans worked to block the only solution that can address the problem. They fought to continue the same Bush economics that got us into this worldwide economic crisis. Even worse, they made a cold-blooded decision to excite their right-wing base rather than participate in the effort to save jobs and rescue our economy.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins told her colleagues [3], “The worst thing we can do is just say no.” But that’s exactly what they did—the worst thing. In the face of America’s urgent need for economic solutions, the Republicans’ hyper-partisanship, discussed here [4], here [5], and here [6], is simply shameful.

The right-wingers in the Senate didn’t oppose everything. They had their own plan, the Thune amendment [7], which attempted to delete the entire economic recovery bill and replace it with just four real provisions. Here’s the swill the GOP tried to serve to Americans:

1. Cut the bottom two tax brackets. Made to sound like it helps lower-income Americans, this section would, (you guessed it), actually help the rich. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [8]pointed out that under this provision, “Higher-income households would get a much bigger tax cut than less-affluent ones. A married couple with two children with income of $100,000 or more would get a tax cut of $3,395. This is 17 times the $200 tax cut that the couple would receive if its income were $30,000.” And “roughly 23 million lower-income tax filers would receive no tax cut at all.” This would cost $291 billion.

2. Give a flat 20 percent tax deduction to “businesses with less than 500 employees.” With a straight face, the GOP calls these corporations “small businesses.” This section would cost $48 billion.

3. Extend the current $7,500 home buyer tax credit from first-time home buyers to all qualifying home buyers. This would cost $21 billion, and obviously, benefit the more-affluent and certainly not the poor.

4. Extend unemployment benefits and make those benefits tax-free. Sounds good, but it’s actually a big cut from unemployment benefits in the Democratic plan. The Republican provision would cost $33 billion; the Democratic unemployment sections would cost $44 billion.

So, overall, the GOP’s Thune amendment [7]would cost $385 billion over two years (somewhat less than Senate Republicans claim). And here’s the amazing thing: although the total cost was way too low to have the slightest positive impact on the economy, and although it is just warmed over Bush economics, 37 of 41 Republican senators voted for it last Thursday. What better proof that these senators were never serious about addressing America’s economic crisis?

There was a similar amendment in the House [9]that I blogged about two weeks ago [10]. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center [11], that Republican substitute was grossly tilted to favor the rich. A person earning $1 million would get a tax break of $35,000; a person making $10,000 to $20,000 would get $85. That's the amendment 168 of 178 Republican representatives voted for.

Every House Republican but 10 and every Senate Republican except four voted for these extreme right-wing substitute amendments, which were principally composed of tax cuts for the rich. Subsequently, every House Republican and every Senate Republican except three failed to support President Obama’s recovery plan. If that’s not barefaced partisanship, what is?

The writer is a Senior Fellow at Campaign for America’s Future and author of the recent book, Framing the Future: How Progressive Values Can Win Elections and Influence People [12].