Owning the stimulus

It won’t be clear for some time whether supporting the stimulus bill will be viewed as the right decision.

But unlike last year’s stimulus package and the $700 billion financial rescue legislation, one party will own this year’s stimulus measure.

{mosads}If it works, Democrats will reap the political rewards. If not, Republicans will pounce. Of course, the true impact of the legislation may not be easily deciphered.

Should the final bill be approved mostly along party lines, there will be a lot of political posturing throughout 2009 about how it has or has not improved the nation’s economy.

The House last week approved its stimulus bill, but it did not attract one GOP vote. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was put on the defensive by that partisan roll call, explaining during her weekly press conference that she didn’t come to Congress to be partisan or bipartisan.

“I came here, as did my colleagues, to be nonpartisan, to work for the American people, to do what is in their interest,” Pelosi said last week.

“When you can’t win on policy,” Pelosi added, “then you turn to process and then you turn to personalities.”

For years, Republicans have sought to win political points and campaigns by portraying Pelosi as a San Francisco liberal intent on moving America to the extreme left. It hasn’t worked — at least not yet. Some GOP lawmakers, in fact, say they underestimated Pelosi when she took the Speaker’s gavel in 2007.

Unlike others on Capitol Hill, Pelosi doesn’t mind taking her opponents’ best shot.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Pelosi’s longtime friend, last year told The Hill that the Speaker “is not a white-knuckle leader. She makes a decision, and then executes it.”

Pelosi acknowledged last week that the House’s passage of the stimulus package is one of many steps the bill will take before it gets to President Obama’s desk.

And in all likelihood, the final legislation will attract at least a few votes from both House and Senate Republicans.

It is hard to imagine House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) attending the bill-signing ceremony, a photo-op that will be on the front pages of newspapers across the country. If other GOP leaders, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), oppose the final legislation, the effectiveness of the stimulus will be seen through a political prism.

Regardless, House and Senate Republicans have, by and large, rallied against the stimulus bill that has been crafted and embraced by a popular president.

The GOP decision to reject the legislation has significant political risks, but Republicans are showing something that’s been in hiding since 2004: party unity.