As is well-known, in order to secure the votes of the handful of Republican Senators necessary to overcome the 60-vote hurdle, Obama had to make some non-trivial concessions. Those concessions have made the stimulus much less effective than it otherwise might have been and will lead to hundreds of thousands of people being unemployed who could have been engaged in productive labor. Suppose that instead of making this sort of large, substantive concession Obama had just been able to offer pointless pet projects for Pennsylvania and Maine. It seems to me that because those projects would have had locally concentrated benefits you could have made the deal worthwhile to Sens. Specter, Collins, and Snowe for a much lower bottom-line cost and ultimately better-served the public interest.
In other words, simply eliminating the most effective means of buying votes in the legislature doesn’t eliminate the practical necessity to do it. It just ensures that the vote-buying gets done in less efficient ways.
I always thought the anti-earmark fervor was a bit overblown, but they always seemed a bit unsavory, so I didn't mind that they were falling by the wayside. Matt's point, though, is solid, and one I hadn't thought of.
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This might be fine for a pragmatist like Yglesias, but personally I think he's using "vote-buying" over-broadly. I respectfully disagree with someone who believes the stimulus creates more cost than benefit and therefore votes against it because he believes it's bad for America. I mildly despite someone who believes the stimulus creates more cost than benefit but votes for it if he gets thrown some earmarks for his constituents, even if it's still bad for the rest of America. Senators, in particular, ought to be conscious of the interests of all Americans, not just the folks who elected them.
despite s/b despise
My feeling, though, is that the centrists don't really feel like the bill is "bad for America" so much as they feel like they want to make it more "centrist-y" and exert their power and influence by picking out some identifiably left- and right- provisions to gut (which, of course, is the essence of bipartisanship). In which case, I'd rather "respect" their power by throwing up a museum in Oakland, Maine than by gutting school construction funding.
You don't think the centrists might honestly believe that some of the stuff in the original House bill had f--- all to do with a stimulus to the economy?
Potentially, but their statements to the press (remember the whole random line about how $800 billion dollars was an economically meaningful redline -- beyond "symbolism") indicate that they also are enjoying throwing their weight around. See also: Susan Collins stripping the bill of whistleblower protections guarding against waste.
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