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February 06, 2009 06:46 PM UTC

Udall, Bennet Talk Stimulus Goals

  • 28 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

In general terms yesterday, as the Pueblo Chieftain reports:

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet is getting his political baptism this week as he takes part in a bipartisan group of senators working to whittle down the $800-$900 billion stimulus package that President Barack Obama is calling for Congress to finish quickly.

Bennet, a Democrat, has joined with Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., in working behind closed doors with about 20 other senators in trying to trim some $100 billion out of the pending legislation in order to win more bipartisan support. That group is being led by Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Bennet, 44, came to the Senate from his previous job as superintendent of Denver schools. But he also has worked for the Anschutz Investment Co., in Denver, helping reorganize failing companies. Asked to evaluate the stimulus package in terms of job creation, Bennet said he was generally pleased.

“It mostly stacks up pretty well,” he said in a telephone conference Thursday, adding that some provisions could be left out for separate legislation. “I’ve spent my time here talking to economists and I can tell you that if Congress doesn’t pass the stimulus package, we’re going to be in even rougher shape than we’re in now. They are projecting our economy could lose $1 trillion this year and another $1 trillion next year.”

We’re not going to mince any words here: a lot of people are really nervous about this group of about 20 moderates from both parties, including Bennet and Udall, “scalpeling” the stimulus package. Looking at it from a local perspective, Udall and Bennet need to preserve (or increase) funds devoted to infrastructure and state fiscal stabilization, as local officials from Governor Ritter on down have made clear to both. All other priorities are secondary, in our view, for self-interested Colorado residents.

That said, we are willing to accept that that some changes to the bill will be necessary to pull in the few key moderate Republicans needed to ensure Senate passage. Some provisions for which the justification as economic stimulus-related is questionable can be dealt with in separate appropriations bills. This is critical for some on the ideological left to understand, particularly with regard to education and some other long-view spending in the stimulus bill. It’s important but it may need to come after, don’t freak!

To the extent the changes being made here can facilitate passage of the heart of the plan, denying moderate Republicans cheap sound-bite cover to oppose from, and quickly, Udall and Bennet could emerge as heroes. The AP updates today:

Despite their numbers, many Democrats, including newly elected freshmen such as Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Udall of Colorado, want to see less long-term spending and more items directly related to job creation.

And while polls show Obama is popular and the public supports recovery legislation, Republicans have maneuvered in the past several days to identify and ridicule relatively small items in the bill.

Bottom line: what Udall and Bennet are doing is not to be feared–and represents the best shot at defanging opposition to the crux of President Obama’s economic recovery plan, a plan the lopsided majority of Americans want passed without delay.

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28 thoughts on “Udall, Bennet Talk Stimulus Goals”

  1. rather than a Boulder liberal, I never would have supported him. What part of “pretend to be moderate so the hicks will think you’re one of them but then go back to your liberals ways once you’re elected” doesn’t Udall understand?

    2. but did anyone listen to me? No… And now you’re all shocked, repeat shocked, that Udall is triangulating his butt off.

      With that said, I want to wait to see the results but I think this gang of 20 is a good thing. If they drop a couple of things that are not stimulus related we get an example of bi-partisianship and give cover to a couple of Republican Senators to vote for it.

    3. Bennet and Udall got their headlines in the papers, and the gullible will believe these guys are being responsible.

      Get serious. $800 billion is way to much pork barrel spending, and we’re going to pay for it. Plan for a long, deep recession/depression, stagflation and higher taxes.

      Every lib program included in the bill will be under funded sooner than later, but by then, the Dems will have collected their corruptly-earned campaign contributions.

      2. Hahahahaha, you’re suck an idiot. Pork barrel spending includes paying for roads, schools, new energy projects and the whole lot of safety net programs that are NEEDED during a depression.

        Why do you and Rush Limbaugh want America to fail?  

      1. but I do know that do to TABOR and other constraints, small municipalities usually can’t make projects shovel ready until they think they have the $ to complete the project. All they can do is very small stuff and nurture dreams.

        One very large constraint on small towns is that their constituents are also paying county property tax, usually at a much higher rate than municipal property tax even though they get little if anything from the county. Because of that the voters are very, very reluctant to increase municipal prop tax. So, the downside continues.

    3. …domain is registered thru a company called DreamHost, which seems more adept at Porn and Gambling sites that political tracking.

      I wonder who is hiding behind this site?

      1. There’s all kinds of sites that use DreamHost. There’s nothing nefarious about the site, they’re using the info available to add transparency to stimulus spending.  

          2. Check the FAQ (end of page) here, the site’s creators are listed in some detail.

            http://www.stimuluswatch.org/h…

            They also explain why they picked the Conference of Mayors report for projects, its limitations, and more about the methodology, including how it relates to White House transparency efforts.

            The Who We Are includes bios on a few more people, but here’s the gist:

            Who are you?

            This site was built by volunteers and is not affiliated with any group or organization.

            The project was started by Jerry Brito after Eileen Norcross pointed out to him the opportunity the mayor’s report presented. Jerry herded cats on the project and contributed the graphic design. The development of the site was lead by Peter Snyder, who coded the site in PHP and MySQL and implemented the MediaWiki integration. Peter was assisted by Kevin Dwyer, who helped scrape and format the report data.

            Its creators are:

            Jerry Brito, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research has focused on government transparency and accountability, specifically how the internet can be harnessed to crowdsource the task of keeping officials accountable. You can read his paper on the subject, “Hack, Mash, and Peer: Crowdsourcing Government Transparency,” (PDF) pubilshed by the Columbia Science & Technology Law Review. His personal site is jerrybrito.org. …

              1. I looked for an “About Us” link on the front page and didn’t find it, so went digging. But I also didn’t go to the trouble to figure out whether they shared hosting with gambling sites, so what do I know?

                I think it’s an interesting, if a bit limited, glimpse of where all the money might go. My favorite is the request from a Mississippi town for “Doorknobs,” with no explanation. More transparency, indeed!

  3. From Obama’s speach list night:

    We can’t embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face; that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, or the soaring cost of health care, or falling schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees. I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV – if you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction.

    And from real economists:

    Paul Krugman:

           We truly are flirting with disaster.

           Robert Reich:

           Senate Republicans and the Stimulus: Playing Politics When the Economy Burns

    This kind of monkeying on the details to look like “responsible fiscal heroes” should really be condemned for enabling economic theories that have driven this country into disaster twice in the last 80 years –1929 and 2008.

    1. what states do Krugman and Reich represent in Congress?  Ohhh…that’s right…

      Good grief people, it’s called democracy.  No one gets exactly what they want no matter how right they are.  Krugman and Reich can be right as rain, but if they can’t get 60 Senators to agree with them it doesn’t matter.

      1. It’s a bit elitist to say that since only Senators can vote, only their opinions matter. It frequently happens that public opinion is driven by something other than backroom Senate deals, and it almost as frequently happens that public opinion drives the votes of Senators.

        Democracy is not about electing people and then never worrying again; it’s about making sure your views are taken seriously throughout the process by your legislators.  

        1. This bill is going to pass in the next few hours.  In that context, public opinion isn’t going to change to sway anything one way or another.

          Krugman and Reich’s opinions have been out there since talk of a stimulus plan began.  Senate consensus hasn’t gravitated that way.  So, to that extent, their opinions certainly matter, but they haven’t set the tone for the Senate’s work.

          Anyway, my point is that regardless of how “right” Krugman and Reich are, the outcome of this bill is based on what a handful of moderate Sens think is best.  Whatever swings 2 or 3 repub votes necessary to pass this is what is going to happen…public opinion aside.

    1. If so much of our economic system is psychological…as I’ve been hearing on the money channels all week, I want to ask, “Who started this panic’? Just weeks before Bush leaving office, it ramped up.

      Then, again listening to the ultra liberal MSNBC I hear over and over about Obama’s “red meat” speech where he calls a spade a spade…and gets castigated by the “librul press”.

  5. One of the last polls I saw, which was only a few days ago, public support for the bill fell to only 37%, and opposition to it was around 43% or something… This was a Rasmussen poll.

    Then a CBS poll, today, showed that 51% support the stimulus while 39% are opposed.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories…

    I can’t find the link to the Rasmussen poll, but if I do I’ll post that too.

    Obviously these are two very different results, but either way you can hardly say that a LOPSIDED majority support it when the latest polls show just the opposite.

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