Senate GOP  put in a bind on stimulus

Senate Democrats want Republicans to make a decision during this week’s debate over an economic stimulus package: Support GOP leaders, or back disabled veterans, senior citizens and the growing number of unemployed workers. The choice does not come by accident.

Lawmakers, aides and party strategists say this showdown signals the shape of future Senate debates heading into November. Democrats will attempt to make the most vulnerable Republicans cast politically sensitive votes, and Republican leaders will look for ways to protect their colleagues in tough races. The vote strategy will likely become even more calculated with the growing chance that each party will nominate a sitting senator as its presidential nominee.

{mosads}“If you’re a vulnerable or half-vulnerable Republican, the Democrats are going to try to make you walk the plank with your party,” said Jenny Backus, a Democratic strategist and a former aide to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

With Election Day nearing, Democrats say they have the upper hand in this year’s policy debates, after being thwarted time and again last year. They are betting that fewer Republicans — especially some of the 23 seeking reelection this year — will be willing to stand with the White House on politically volatile issues like this week’s economic stimulus debate, allowing the majority to push its preferred measures through Congress. And if Republicans do block those bills, Democrats argue, it will give them ample ammunition on the campaign trail.

“Let me tell you what, there’s going to be incoming fire on their ground,” said Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), warning Republicans not to block a bill approved last week by the Senate Finance Committee.

But Democrats also will not be able to escape volatile votes this year. On Tuesday, they will be forced to cast votes on an electronic surveillance bill that Republicans say is needed to defend national security and their liberal base derides as an infringement on civil liberties.

The Senate on Monday voted to begin debate on a $117 billion bill negotiated delicately between House leaders and the White House. The most critical votes will occur Wednesday, when Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are expected to return from the campaign trail to vote to substitute the House bill with the Finance Committee’s measure, which would expand the House’s eligibility requirements for rebate checks to include $500 for people living on federal disability payments and senior citizens on fixed income. Unlike the House plan, the bill would also extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks.

The $155 billion Senate Finance bill also would provide businesses with generous tax write-offs for losses, allocate funding for coal companies and extend $5.5 billion worth of tax credits for renewable energy use.

“Senate Democrats on Monday also added $1 billion for low-income heating assistance, a move that angered GOP leaders but is politically appealing to a number of Republicans.”

Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) expressed confidence Monday that Democrats would be able to attract six additional Republicans — in addition to the three who supported the committee bill — to secure the 60 votes needed on the floor to break a GOP filibuster.

At a Monday morning news conference, Baucus stood alongside an 84-year-old Washington native who lives on a fixed income, Mattie Carvon, as well as Jos Williams, head of the DC Labor Council, and Joe Violante, legislative director of the Disabled Veterans of America.{mospagebreak}

The Democratic senator summed up the debate succinctly.

 “A vote for this package will be a vote for 20 million seniors; a vote against the package will be a vote against 20 million seniors,” Baucus said. “A vote for this package is a vote for 250,000 disabled veterans who also get rebate checks; a vote against this Finance Committee package will be a vote against 250,000 disabled vets who will not get the benefit of a rebate check.”

{mosads}That argument was not lost among New Hampshire Democrats who slammed Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) for his vote during last week’s Finance Committee markup, his first since being appointed to the panel last month.  

“Time and again, John E. Sununu has voted against extending unemployment benefits and against healthcare benefits for New Hampshire’s veterans,” said Bill Lofy, director of the Stop Sununu campaign of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. “His record on these two issues is long, consistent and abysmal.”

Echoing Republicans and the White House, as well as some House Democrats, Sununu warned that adding extraneous provisions to a bipartisan House-passed bill would delay a timely and targeted stimulus needed immediately for the slumping economy.

“By delaying passage and implementation, we make it much more difficult for anything we do to have a positive impact,” Sununu said.

Democrats say justifying a vote against the bill will be difficult, given the strong lobbying push launched by a slew of influential groups such as the AARP. In addition, they say they have new leverage after the government last week reported a drop of 17,000 jobs in January, the first workforce decline in four years.

But Republicans warn that attempting to jam through legislation will not be productive, especially in light of the public’s growing disapproval of the hardball tactics in the nation’s capital and the rock-bottom approval ratings of the Democratic Congress.

“We’ve got a bipartisan compromise, widely praised, that some on the left in the Senate seem willing to upset to try to make political points more than legislating,” a senior GOP aide said. “That’s not what people expect from us.”

National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Rebecca Fisher said it is “too soon to know how are voters falling in line with” the stimulus package.

Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, does not support the Finance Committee bill and doubted the bill would stimulate the economy, arguing that instead it would expand the deficit to well over $400 billion.

Kyl, who spent Monday whipping his members to kill the Finance Committee’s package, downplayed the political risks for Republicans seeking reelection.

“It’s not easy to get to be a U.S. senator, and if all you do is do things so you get to stay one, it ain’t worth it,” Kyl said. “You do what you think is right.”