What can President Obama learn from President Bush’s bipartisan successes?
23 February
Conventional wisdom says the tenure of President George W. Bush was dominated by partisanship. There were deep partisan splits over the war in Iraq, enhanced interrogation, wiretapping, the 2003 tax cuts, and Social Security reform.
This conventional wisdom ignores significant bipartisan legislative accomplishments led by President Bush. I will focus on domestic policy accomplishments.
Each of the following major laws was enacted on a bipartisan vote:
- The 2001 tax cuts;
- the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001-2;
- the 2002 extension of Trade Promotion Authority;
- the 2003 medicare law;
- the 2005 energy law focused on electricity;
- the 2006 pension reform law;
- the 2007 energy law focused on fuel;
- the 2008 stimulus law;
- the 2008 housing reform law; and
- the 2008 TARP law.
President Bush also reached across party lines to reform immigration law. His bipartisan outreach on this issue was successful, but the legislation failed due to opposition from both wings. In that effort President Bush’s team negotiated with a broad group in the Senate, led by Senator Kennedy on the left and Senator Kyl on the right. President Bush’s attempts deeply split his own party, yet he persisted until it became apparent there was not a 60 vote coalition to succeed.
I imagine some readers are skeptical of the above list so, once again, I’m going to show you some pictures. I’m going to show you a lot of pictures. I want to hammer home the Bush-bipartisan success point. I will then try to draw some lessons for Team Obama.
Let’s begin with the 2001 tax cuts to orient ourselves to the graph format.
- Dark shading means they voted aye. Light shading means they voted no. So in the top bar in this first graph, 12 Democrats and 46 Republicans voted aye, while 31 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted no.
- Blue shows Democrats and independents caucusing with Democrats (like Senators Lieberman and Sanders).
- Red shows Republicans.
- I left out those who didn’t vote, which explains why many Senate votes don’t total 100, and many House votes don’t total 435.
- In each case I tallied the vote on final passage.
- As always, you can click on any graph to see a larger version.
On final passage of the Bush tax cuts of 2001:
- in the Senate 46 Republicans and 12 Democrats voted aye, while 2 Republicans and 31 Democrats voted no; and
- in the House 211 Republicans and 28 Democrats voted aye, while 10 Republicans and 154 Democrats voted no.
It should be fairly easy to see that the 2001 tax cuts were enacted by a center-right coalition. Almost all Republicans supported the final product, and about 1 in 4 (Senate) or 1 in 6 (House) Democrats voted aye.
This bill was bipartisan largely because the Bush White House, Senate Majority Leader Lott and Senator Grassley worked closely with Democratic Senators Breaux and Baucus to craft a bill and keep moderate Democratic Senators onboard. We used the reconciliation process, and therefore had 58 votes when we needed only 51 for final passage in the Senate.
You can see that the 2001 tax cuts would not have had even a simple majority in the Senate if Republicans had acted alone. The Senate was split 50-50 at the time.
Now let’s turn to education.
This was a broad bipartisan coalition. President Bush reached out to Senator Kennedy and instructed his team to negotiate directly with Kennedy. You can see the result. This is about as bipartisan as it gets for major legislation.
The Senate was a 51-49 Democratic majority when this bill became law.
Next up, trade.
Trade Promotion Authority, formerly known as fast track, gives the President authority to negotiate trade deals with other countries and have them subject to only an up-or-down vote by Congress, rather than being amended to death. It is essential for Congress to give the President this authority if you’re to have free trade agreements.
Again you can see the center-right coalition that dominates much of American economic policymaking. This has even a little more Democratic support than the 2001 tax cuts, and slightly more opposition from protectionist Republicans. As with the 2001 tax cut, you can see that there are more economic centrist Democrats in the Senate than in the House.
This bill could not have passed either the House or the Senate with only Republican votes. A bipartisan coalition was necessary for legislative success.
This is with a 51-49 Democratic majority in the Senate.
Medicare and Health Savings Accounts are next.
Now we’re back to a Republican majority in the Senate.
Once again, President Bush, his team, and Senator Grassley worked closely with centrist Democratic Senators Baucus and Breaux to negotiate a deal. The final details were hammered out in a fierce negotiation between Baucus/Breaux and Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), with extensive White House support.
President Bush held a few meetings at the White House with Baucus, Breaux, and the key Republicans to strengthen the coalition and keep the ball moving forward. This bill created the Medicare drug benefit (which split Republicans) and Health Savings Accounts (which Republicans and conservatives especially like). Democratic leaders opposed this bill, but we managed to hold Democratic moderates anyway.
Once again, the winning majority coalition in both the House and Senate was bipartisan, and the bill could not have become law without Democratic support. A key vote before Senate final passage was a cloture vote, in which some of the 9 Republicans who ultimately voted no supported cloture.
Now we turn to the first major energy law during the Bush tenure.
Senators Bingaman and Baucus were key to this legislative success, which you can see was more bipartisan than some of the prior successes. The legislative process was filled with amendments and negotiations across the partisan aisle and fierce regional conflicts.
Senate Democrats split roughly equally and 75 House Democrats supported final passage. This law focused on electricity (rather than fuel), which sometimes has more of a regional policy focus than a partisan split. This bill originated with VP Cheney’s Energy Task Force, which was labeled by the Left as a dark and evil conspiracy. And yet the final legislation had significant bipartisan support.
Pension reform gets less attention than the others but is important.
I highlight this law because it is easy for pension issues to break down along party lines, with Republicans favoring management interests, Democrats favoring labor interests, and the taxpayer getting shafted. Republican committee chairmen and the Bush Administration reached across party lines to elevate the interests of protecting the pension system, future retirees, and taxpayers, battling against tremendous lobbying pressure from business and labor interest groups to relax the pension rules and allow pension plans to be underfunded.
The law was far from a complete victory for good pension policy, but it was a definite improvement over what preceded. And again, you can see the tremendous breadth of bipartisan support.
Still in President Bush’s tenure, we now shift to Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. The 2007 energy law focused on fuel.
In the 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush proposed to increase fuel economy standards (CAFE), and to increase the mandated amount of renewable fuels (ethanol) that had to be blended with gasoline. This “energy security” proposal infuriated conservatives – the Wall Street Journal editorial page trashed us for it all year. The President recognized that, with new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, he would have to build a different legislative coalition than had worked for him when his own party was in the majority.
The final bill was negotiated via an exchange of letters between the Bush White House and Speaker Pelosi. You can see unanimous Democratic support and Republicans deeply split, especially in the House. As with his unsuccessful immigration reform efforts, President Bush was willing to negotiate a compromise with leaders and even wingers from the other party.
Next is the early 2008 stimulus law.
Before announcing his stimulus proposal, President Bush called Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid to brief them on it. They urged him to propose a broad outline rather than detailed specifics. President Bush agreed to do so.
President Bush hosted a meeting with the bipartisan / bicameral leaders to discuss the stimulus, similar in composition to the upcoming Blair House meeting. That Cabinet Room meeting was unproductive.
The President then assigned his Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, to negotiate directly with Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Boehner. The three of them negotiated a compromise that followed the President’s outline, and that the President, Speaker, and Minority Leader supported. Almost all Democrats supported the bill, as did most Republicans, but with a significant contingent voting no.
Housing reform legislation was stuck for a long time until Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started to collapse. Then it suddenly broke free.
Again you can see the results of negotiations between a Republican President and a Democratic-majority House and Senate. The bill had unanimous Democratic support and a fairly serious split on the Republican side.
Finally we have the TARP.
The first version of TARP was negotiated by Secretary Paulson with Democratic and Republican leaders and committee chairmen in an intense and conflict-ridden negotiation. The legislation failed spectacularly on the floor of the House the first time. The President’s team then negotiated by phone with House and Senate leaders of both parties, leading to a few modifications to the original package. The Senate formed a broad center-out coalition to pass the bill easily, which then succeeded the second time around in the House.
You can see broad bipartisan support, as well as significant opposition from both parties. As with the 2007 energy law and the 2008 stimulus, the 2008 TARP was enacted with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, with leaders from the opposite party working out compromises with a Republican President.
Now we turn to the three big domestic policy issues of President Obama’s tenure so far. We begin with the February 2009 stimulus.
Other than three Senate Republicans, the bill was passed and became law on party line votes. There were no negotiations with Congressional Republicans.
Cap-and-trade is next, but only in the House.
Eight House Republicans voted for the bill, providing Speaker Pelosi with her winning margin. A significant block of Democrats voted no.
We end with the health care bills that are the subject of this Thursday’s meeting.
Once again you can see straight partisanship.
Observations and common threads
Senate Republicans peaked at 56 votes during Bush’s tenure.
President Bush used reconciliation twice three times: once in 2001 for the bipartisan tax cuts, once in 2003 for the partisan tax cuts (not shown), and once in 2005 to cut spending.
In all other cases he had to deal with potential filibusters, occasionally from both sides of the aisle.
In Republican majority Congresses, the winning margin was often provided by Democrats, especially in the Senate.
There are at least four different versions of a bipartisan vote:
- Unifying your own party (or nearly so) and picking off a moderate block from the minority: tax cuts, TPA, Medicare/HSAs. You do this by trying to split the other side’s moderates from their party leaders.
- Picking up the majority of the other party, at the cost of a losing a significant block from your own side: 2005 energy, TARP. You do this by negotiating with the other party’s leaders.
- Working with the majority of the other party and getting all of their side while your own side splits deeply: 2007 energy, 2008 stimulus, housing. You do this by negotiating with the other party’s leaders when they’re in the majority.
- Near consensus: No Child Left Behind, Pension Protection Act (in the Senate). You do this by negotiating with everyone. Miracles occasionally happen.
Why did Bush succeed at enacting bipartisan legislation?
I assume that some on the Left will say the Republican minority is now far more unified, partisan, and obstinate than the Democratic minority ever was. I think this is silly. Whatever you think of Republicans, they’re not that unified. I’m reminded of the organized crime boss in the movie Sneakers: “Hah. Don’t kid yourself. It’s not that organized.”
I believe there are six keys to President Bush’s bipartisan legislative successes:
- He sometimes reached out to Congressional Democrats and negotiated directly with them, even at the expense of upsetting his Congressional Republican allies.
- He knew how to count votes, and when not to rely on a razor-thin partisan margin for victory.
- He knew how to nurture existing bipartisan discussions and alliances in Congress and turn them to his own advantage.
- He was willing to preemptively split his own party when necessary to get a deal.
- He knew when and how to split the other party, negotiating with Democrats who were potential supporters of a compromise and isolating those who would oppose a deal no matter what.
- He and his allies generally stuck with a traditional legislative process, which builds credibility and makes members feel they are getting their fair shot, even if they lose a vote.
President Obama needs to learn each of these lessons if he wants to succeed as President Bush did.
- President Obama explains that his proposals include {modified versions of) Republican ideas. That’s not how you bring the other party on board. You can end up at the same place by bringing members of the other party into the room and negotiating with them. Then they (in this case, Republicans) have ownership of the compromises and are more likely to support the final product. The way you get someone to agree is by bringing him into the room and negotiating with him (or her). Make the other guy feel like he got a win.
- For a year he tried to enact legislation by relying on a universe of 60 votes from which he needed 60. That’s nearly impossible to do on any important issue, especially when you simultaneously provoke the other 40 to stand firm by shutting them out.
- On health care he undercut Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, whose bipartisan “Gang of Six” had the best chance to negotiate the core of a bipartisan compromise. Recently Leader Reid blew up a Baucus-Grassley deal on the jobs bill, further poisoning the water for any potential future bipartisan efforts. No Senate Republican can now have confidence that any Democratic committee chairman has the authority to negotiate a binding deal. Why should Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham enter into bipartisan cap-and-trade negotiations after he saw what Reid did to Baucus-Grassley?
- President Bush alienated a significant share of his own party when he announced his 2007 energy proposal, his 2008 stimulus proposal, immigration reform, and the TARP. On cap-and-trade and especially health care, President Obama has instead tried to hold onto his left wing as long as he possibly could, making the inevitable break even more painful and losing the ability to demonstrate to Republicans that he is willing to make hard choices in his own party to bring Republicans onboard.
- Bipartisan doesn’t always mean negotiating with the leaders of the party. You have to know when to negotiate with the opposition leaders, when to negotiate with a winger from the other party (e.g., Bush-Kennedy on education, or Bush-Kennedy-Kyl on immigration), and when to try to pick off a few moderates from the other party to squeak out your margin of victory. Other than Speaker Pelosi picking off eight House Republicans for cap-and-trade, Team Obama and Congressional Democrats have failed with each of these tactics. But have they actually tried?
- The traditional legislative process creates legitimacy within the halls of Congress. Committee markups, bipartisan negotiations, open amendment processes, and traditional open conferences are processes that create predictability, order, and a sense of fair play. It is much easier to cultivate members of the minority party when they perceive you are playing by the rules. Team Obama and their allies repeatedly try to bypass the rules, creating new substantive products behind closed doors and relying upon nontraditional legislative processes. This undermines both public confidence and the minority’s willingness to play ball. If Senator Reid were to allow floor amendments to be offered to major legislation, even amendments he might lose, he might not face quite so many filibusters and failed cloture votes.
If President Obama wants bipartisan legislative success, he could learn a few things from his predecessor.
(photo credit: Official White House photo by Eric Draper)
Related Posts
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- Partisan premises for the 2010 election
- More health care stumbling by Team Obama
- Is Team Obama contingency planning for a Republican House?
- Cliff Notes: The President’s Carnegie Mellon economic speech
- Six month economic policy status update
- Six good Obama economic policies
- Voting for health reform before voting against it
Keith,
You hit the nail on the head with "the Republican minority is now far more partisan and obstinate than the Democratic minority ever was". This is not silly! It’s what any post-partisan observer can plainly see.
What we're witnessing in today's Congress is unprecedented intransigence by the Republican minority. We see a Republican minority that eschews serious policy solutions. We see a Republican minority that has gone to unprecedented lengths to torpedo all legislation. Say what you will about Democrats, but they're deal-making centrists. It's impossible for Democrats to cut deals with an opponent whose raison d’être is to nuke & spin everything put forth.
So your analysis, while interesting, holds no water.
Bob is right here, of course. One only needs to look at filibuster rates, lock-step voting, nomination hold-ups or insanely hypocritical comments to realize that Keith's "silly" argument is, well, silly.
And he uses the same lunatic argument that most Republicans are using. Republicans refuse to come to the table, or cast a single vote for many bills, and then say "See? You're polarizing and against partisanship!" It's like the bully who uses a kid's own fist to punch himself and asks "Why are you punching yourself?" He's not. You are. And you're causing the problem you are blaming me for.
Ahem, Democrats have voted down republican bills and amendments, shut them out of committees, and then lied about them as the "Party of No." All the while they know the Republicans have been proposing ideas, but they lie. You believe their lie.
However since Obama had to admit in his Q&A with them that indeed they have been submitting ideas, that lie has less traction. Everyone noticed the WH website goofed when it asked GOP to post their healthcare proposal and GOP sent all the journos the URL showing they had posted it months ago and included a link to the WH proposal. Obama had to admit as of today's healthcare summit that the GOP has been submitting ideas all along, and he made it clear he was not going to bend.
They're not trying to torpedo all legislation; they're trying to torpedo legislation that would take an already-unustainable level of federal health care financing commitments and add to them by nearly a trillion over the next decade, and more after that. There's nothing unserious about that.
The highly partisan vote totals shown in this post reflect the highly partisan nature of the substance of the bills.
Except the highly partisan Democrats can't make their case without lying about the GOP attempt to participate in the debate.
Do you give no credence to the fact that the CBO says the deficit will be REDUCED by the Senate plan? It's $1 trillion over the next 10 years that's paid for. You can disagree with the policy, but how do you argue that the economy would be worse off? The CBO is wrong?
A couple of points. One is that any expected deficit reduction seen by CBO doesn't come from the health coverage expansion. It comes from hiking Medicare taxes, applying the Cadillac plan tax, and cutting Medicare cost growth. We need measures at least that strong just to cover part of the commitments the federal government has already made. If we turn around and spend almost the entirety of that savings, we leave ourselves almost no way out of the hole we're in. Second point is that the CBO score depends on a lot of gimmicks. It depends on passing the "docfix" provision as a separate standalone bill. The original draft would have worsened the deficit, so they split it into two bills, calling one a deficit-reducer. CBO itsef called attention to the gmmick. They also assume that this Medicare commission restrict access to medical technology going forward; will Congress stand for that?
WOW!!! i think the tarp is the greatest thing to come out of congress since the constitution….
Bottom lines:
a) The overall bills increase the deficit — it's only one piece that was judged as not doing so;
b) Even that score relies on several assumptions that even CBO criticizes; and
c) Even if the bill does reduce the deficit, net, it's irresponsible in the extreme to find a trillion dollars in offsets for new spending, when we desperately need that to finance for our current plight.
Chuckles, many of your points make a lot of sense, and I appreciate them. My only question (and I don't know the answer) is this: how much of the hole we're in, which involves expected future cost, relates to the current trajectory of health care costs? That is, if we can bring health care costs down, does that mitigate the degree of the "current plight" you correctly reference?
I don't know enough about the detail to know the answer, but your comment (c) above is a comment on revenue. Even if we were to direct the "revenue" toward current obligations and not this new plan, is there any reason to think that the rising medical costs wouldn't continue in such a way as to eat up the new revenue, even if our breathing time was extended by a number of years?
I guess my question is this: If you were to take the current offsets and apply them to the current, existing problem, is that a long-term fix or just a short-term patch? I wish I knew the answer.
Yea bush gave the middle finger to: his base, the libertarian wing of the GOP, and pretty much everyone else who wasn't part of the rich uppe rclass faction of his party. How is this a good thing again?
Interesting contrast, though I'm not sure there isn't more to it. Most of those Bush votes didn't take place in the midst of 10% unemployment and fears of economic collapse. I don't think the Democrats could have made a similar political calculation at the time that stalling conservative legislation was going to necessarily lead them to a blowout November election, as the Republicans are doing today. I feel like the viability of bipartisanship in general is dependent on the overall public mood and political climate, rather than the intentions of either party.
There's also something fundamentally different about being the party that largely stands for tested status quo ideals, and one that stands for new, stark departures from what the people know. Bipartisanship is not equally viable or desirable for both sides at any given time.
Nevertheless, powerful contrasting images.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Killinger, Rotella will tell Congress that bank was on the mend when seized
What WaMu execs will say
PUGET SOUND BUSINESS JOURNAL (SEATTLE) – BY Kirsten Grind STAFF WRITER
In his first public statement since the seizure of Washington Mutual, former chief executive Kerry Killinger plans to tell a congressional subcommittee that the bank could have survived and that regulators seized it precipitously, according to people familiar with his testimony.
Killinger’s testimony, and that of former WaMu President Steve Rotella, obtained in advance through interviews by the Puget Sound Business Journal, will paint a picture of a bank that was close to stabilizing its finances amid the financial turmoil of 2008.
Killinger plans to use charts and graphs at the April 13 hearing in Washington, D.C., to show the Seattle-based bank’s improving financial condition at the time, and to argue against the “bargain purchase” of WaMu by JPMorgan Chase & Co. The New York bank paid $1.9 billion for WaMu’s $307 billion in assets.
The testimony is part of an inquiry into events leading up to WaMu’s seizure and sale in September 2008 in what has become known as the largest bank failure in U.S. history.
The official purpose of the hearing by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is to question executives about their decision to expand into risky mortage lending, particularly in the last 10 years of the bank’s life.
But the hearing may also address the other big question that looms over WaMu’s downfall: Did regulators move in too soon?
According to people familiar with the prepared testimony, Killinger and Rotella will treat the question differently. Killinger is expected to say regulators should not have seized the bank.
It’s unclear if Rotella will echo that view at the hearing, but it currently isn’t part of his prepared remarks, according to people familiar with the testimony who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation.
The hearing, which will include other high-ranking WaMu officials, also will highlight the competing narratives that have developed to explain the bank’s downfall. One line says WaMu had become hopelessly mired in subprime debt, posing a risk to depositors, and that federal regulators acted to prevent a messy and expensive failure. The other line says that despite deep exposure to subprime losses, the bank had largely stabilized its finances and qualified as “well capitalized” when regulators seized it.
Last year, a Business Journal investigation found that Washington Mutual was solvent when regulators seized it, that regulators undercut the bank’s own efforts to raise capital and that the eventual buyer, JPMorgan Chase, had a plan in the works to buy the bank from the government months before regulators took over.
The testimony, followed by questions from U.S. senators, represents the first time any of the executives will talk publicly about their actions at the bank.
The hearing is particularly significant because Killinger and Rotella have remained out of the public eye since WaMu’s closure.
The hearing is part of the continuing attention WaMu’s collapse commands more than a year and a half after it was seized by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC).
In addition to the hearing, a nearly 600-page settlement in the complicated Chapter 11 bankruptcy of WaMu’s holding company was recently proposed. The move has sparked a new wave of legal wrangling over the billions of dollars of assets remaining after WaMu shut down.
What’s more, a long-anticipated report on WaMu by the Inspector General offices of the FDIC and the OTS is expected to be released soon, according to the Treasury Department.
“WaMu is a political nightmare,” said Stephen Klein, an attorney at Seattle-based law firm Graham & Dunn.
“The question in this case is, ‘Did the FDIC seize the bank prematurely?’ It’ll be interesting to see politically how that’s handled.”
Killinger’s testimony is expected to be the most dramatic. He is expected to say that government officials turned their back on the century-old Seattle institution in the months before they seized it because WaMu was not part of an elite “club” of Wall Street bankers.
The former chief executive, who was ousted three weeks before WaMu was closed, plans to point to the Treasury Department’s refusal to place the bank on a list of financial institutions that were off-limits to short sellers during the summer before its closure, a move that would have helped support WaMu’s plummeting stock price at the time, according to people familiar with the testimony.
Killinger also was expected to discuss the changes in federal laws in the weeks following WaMu’s seizure that allowed the government to bail out other large financial institutions, these people said.
is it fair !?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT-NuYQQ6G0
he can learn that he can do whatever he wants in the country because he is the president. Also that the people are to puney to stand up to him. Sounds like a parliament doesn't it? It's coming very close to it.
he can learn that he can do whatever he wants in the country because he is the president. Also that the people are to puney to stand up to him. Sounds like a parliament doesn't it? It's coming very close to it.