Mice, hypocrisy and GOP unity mark debate

Republican Reps. Joseph Cao, Mike Castle and Fred Upton delivered victory for their party Friday afternoon on President Obama’s economic stimulus.
           
Not that they defeated the bill. Far from it. With the Democrats’ 77-member advantage, there was all but zero chance the conference legislation would fail on the House floor.

{mosads}But up until the final votes were registered, it looked like Democrats would win the symbolic victory of finally picking up a few Republican backers in the House. Instead, the only members who crossed party lines were seven Democrats voting no.

Going into Friday’s vote, Democratic leaders benefited from low expectations. No Republicans voted for the bill when the lower chamber passed its version of the stimulus bill late last month.

If even one House Republican flipped, someone — from, say, the White House podium — could conceivably call the vote “bipartisan.”

Republicans were a little like the defensive line of a football team lining up in their own end zone, trying to prevent a quarterback sneak.

And they did.

All eyes were on Castle, a centrist from the blue state of Delaware, and Upton, a centrist from Michigan, whose economy is in tatters. Republican leaders had identified them as the most likely defectors.

Those leaders also knew that Cao (La.), who stole away with a Democratic seat in a surprise victory over Rep. William Jefferson last year, was getting lobbied hard by the White House. And his district, nearly washed away by Hurricane Katrina, is heavily dependent on federal aid. Republican leaders fought back, saying the White House couldn’t say how it would help with hurricane relief efforts.

Castle and Upton entered the chamber together and walked to center aisle seats, where they sat together. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) quickly appeared by their side.

After the bell kicked off the vote, they took their time to vote as reporters analyzed their every move. A GOP leadership aide who closely monitored the vote theorized that the Castle and Upton watched for Cao’s position and felt reassured when the light next to his name turned up red, meaning a “no” vote.

It was said many times this week by Republican leaders that “there’s safety in zero.” And there was.

The foregone conclusion of the vote didn’t prevent heated rhetoric steaming up the largely canned statements on the floor.

Democrats, casting the bill as a New Deal response to the next Great Depression, reveled in FDR-Hoover comparisons. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recalled that Herbert Hoover, as the Depression bore down, said, “What the country needs is a good laugh.”

Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said that Roosevelt said it best when he said the Republicans who all voted against him were “frozen in the ice of their own indifference to the plight of the American people.”

“That’s what we have here,” Larson said at the Democrats’ post-vote celebration for the cameras.

But in their floor speeches, members of both parties failed to mention more recent history. Democrats dismissed as petty the complaints they themselves used to make about midnight meetings, votes held on thousand-page bills hours after they were released before it was physically possible to have read them.
           
“Not one member has read this bill,” Boehner said, as he dropped the foot-high legislation on the floor of the House with a thud. “Bad process leads to bad policy.”
           
Republicans railed against the spending in the bill, conveniently forgetting to mention that it was a Republican Congress and White House that ran up massive deficits and put an entire war on the nation’s credit card.
          
“You cannot borrow and spend your way into prosperity,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), encapsulating the policy debate with Democrats who are hoping to do just that.

While they brushed aside complaints about process and spending, the Democrats who now control the executive and legislative branches felt bitten by a mouse.
           
Republicans peppered their speeches with accusations that stimulus money would go to restore the habitat of the salt-marsh harvest mouse. Since that habitat is in the San Francisco Bay Area, they portrayed it as a pet project of Pelosi’s.
           
The bill, however, doesn’t say anything about a mouse. Indeed, the word “mouse” isn’t in the entire measure of 1,000-plus pages. Republican leadership offices say they were told by a  government agency, most likely the Environmental Protection Agency, that it might spend money protecting the suddenly controversial rodent.
           
Early in the debate, House Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) scolded Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) for wasting floor time when he started to engage Republicans on the mouse debate.
           
But eventually, the gruff Obey could take it no longer when a Republican complained about a “San Francisco rat.”
           
“I wish the other side would make up their mind whether it’s a mouse or a rat, neither of which is in the bill, if they would have read it,” Obey said.
           
The guffaws and jeers coming from the other side indicated he’d just made their point — no one could have read the whole thing.

Democrats did notch one victory — in addition to passing the bill, of course: They limited their own defections from 11 last time to seven on Friday afternoon.
           
But even that was overshadowed by a quirky “present” vote by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), a free-trade critic who had strongly supported the “Buy American” provision that was watered down by the conference committee when senators objected.
           
Democratic members stared up with bewilderment at the yellow light by his name on the tally board.
           
As Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) prepared to close the vote, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) made a time-out sign to stop the gavel from coming down. A hush came over the chamber just as Hoyer bellowed “Lipinski!” like an angry father standing over a broken lamp.
           
He wasn’t to be found, and the gavel came down with the yellow light still on.
 
Jared Allen and Molly K. Hooper contributed to this article.
Mike Soraghan can be reached at msoraghan@digital-release.digital-release.thehill.com