Republican lawmakers have had quite a week. If there was any question of who controls political debate inside the Beltway, it’s been firmly answered.
Things got off to a dispiriting start on Tuesday, when President Barack Obama announced that he had reached a deal with Republicans to extend the George W. Bush tax cuts—including handsome cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans—for an additional two years. While the White House argues that the deal provides short-term stimulus by extending unemployment insurance and ostensibly offering lower-income citizens a package of tax credits, it inevitably will lead to a greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands and will likely hurt Democratic chances of competing in the 2012 congressional race. The president himself acknowledged that while he had to make concessions in his game of hardball with the GOP, that in two years time, Americans will finally have woken up to the fact "that we can't afford these tax cuts any longer."
On the bright side for progressives, though, the tax deal looked as if it might temper Republican opposition to immigration reform. On Wednesday night, the House passed the DREAM Act by a uncomfortably slim margin of eighteen votes. More troubling still, while eight Republicans jumped the aisle to vote in favor of DREAM’s passage, forty Democrats defected by casting "no" votes in opposition. Still, DREAM Act-ivists celebrated the House victory and ramped up efforts to ensure that the Senate followed suit.
But this morning, House Democrats rejected the president’s tax proposal in a caucus session that likely reflected liberal anger at being shut out of the tax negotiation process by the White House more than an intent to kill the move altogether. Indeed, as the Huffington Post reports, an alternative proposal is currently being drafted to supplant the original. If key elements of the White House plan are modified, House Democrats will likely drop their resistance.
But the caucus vote was enough excuse for the Republicans to halt any forward progress on the realization of immigration reform. While the DREAM Act was to be voted upon by the Senate as early as this morning, it became immediately clear that majority leader Harry Reid didn’t have the votes to secure the measure’s passage. While Reid’s decision to cancel calling a vote saved the DREAM Act in the short run, it likely signed its death warrant in the long.
Republican senators continue to hold the DREAM Act hostage until they get their way on the Obama administration proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts. With that fight still being engaged by frustrated Democrats in the House, the likelihood that a Senate vote on DREAM might take place before the new Republican-led Congress takes the helm is increasingly remote. As the Associated Press noted in a piece today,
In the Senate, Democrats had virtually no chance of attracting any GOP support to move the legislation since all 42 Republicans have signed a letter pledging to block action on any issue until bills to extend expiring tax cuts and fund the government were completed. Even once those agreements are reached, though, it's unlikely Democrats would be able to gather the 60 votes needed for quick action on an issue as emotional and complicated as immigration.
And if no vote takes place on the DREAM Act before the end of the current lame duck session, pushing the measure forward in the next Congress is almost impossible to imagine.
And just as hopes for the DREAM Act begin to fade, the GOP scored additional victories that expose Democrats’ weakness. First, they blocked a 9/11 health bill that, according to the New York Times, "sought to provide medical care to rescue workers and residents of New York City who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke from ground zero." As with DREAM, chances for the bill’s passage in the next Congress is next to none if drastic action isn’t taken immediately to salvage it in the current term. Apparently Republicans only support the heroes of September 11th when it serves their political advantage.
On the heels of GOP willingness to hang 9/11 first responders out to dry, Republicans followed up by blocking Democratic efforts at repealing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell." The defense bill, which also looks to include increased health benefits for troops, failed to reach the sixty votes needed for cloture as Senators dutifully lined up and voted along party lines. In a surprise move, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, joined Republicans and pushed for filibustering the measure, leaving liberal hopes for repealing the ban largely confounded.
It remains to be seen if the GOP successfully frustrates the White House’s efforts at having the Senate ratify the New START arms control agreement with Russia. But if the examples of Republican victories this week in the Congress are any indication, ratification of the treaty will suffer a similar fate, especially now that House Dems are pushing back on the Obama tax proposal.
Regardless of the outcome, however, this week has demonstrated that the president’s willingness to compromise with the opposition has achieved little for anyone other than Republicans. And the GOP shows no signs of letting up. During the 2008 campaign, the president promised to stand tall against the forces seeking to undermine the interests of ordinary Americans, a position he has largely forfeited by choosing to govern so firmly from the center. But Barack Obama was right: the country needs a showdown over the basic principles that drive this country’s policies, a fact that Republicans understand only all to well. Trouble is, they’re the only ones that come ready for a fight.