U.S. GOVERNMENT | A resilient balance of institutions
12 January 2009
Obama Seeks “Collaborative, Consultative Process with Congress”
President-elect encourages legislative branch to quickly pass economic bill
Washington — Calling Congress “a coequal branch of government,” President-elect Obama said January 11 that his administration will have to work closely with the legislative body to pass an economic stimulus bill.
In an interview on ABC News’ This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Obama acknowledged that members of Congress might have differing opinions on how best to stimulate the U.S. economy and that the legislative and executive branches will have to work quickly and effectively together to get a bill passed.
“What we tried to do was put forward a plan that says, ‘Let’s act boldly, let’s act swiftly’,” Obama told Stephanopoulos.
The plan, details of which Obama outlined in a January 8 speech, is a multibillion-dollar initiative calling for major investments in the nation’s infrastructure. The so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan “will immediately jump-start job creation and long-term growth” by doubling production of alternative energy, investing in technology that will computerize Americans’ medical records and providing new equipment to modernize U.S. classrooms, Obama said.
Obama’s plan also calls for a $1,000 tax cut for working-class families, which would “get people spending again,” the president-elect said. Obama said this costly plan would add to the country’s budget deficit in the short term, but the “consequences of doing too little or nothing at all … will lead to an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes and confidence in our economy.”
Obama’s Democratic Party has a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but this does not mean the legislative branch will pass a bill that includes all elements proposed by the president-elect. Some Democratic lawmakers disagree with Obama’s proposed tax cuts, while some Republicans likely will support Obama’s proposals.
Aware of concerns from their own party, Obama economic advisers Lawrence Summers and Jason Furman met with 35 Senate Democrats on January 11. Some of those at the meeting said they expect the Obama administration to review their concerns and update the proposal. Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden also have met with congressional leaders from both parties to discuss their proposals.
“There are a couple of basic principles that I laid out … if people have better ideas on certain provisions … then we welcome that,” Obama said in the ABC interview. “And so we’re going to have a collaborative, consultative process with Congress over the next few days.”
For additional details on Obama’s proposal, see the full text of Obama’s January 8 speech.
A COEQUAL BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT
When Obama takes the oath of office January 20, the United States will be entering a relatively rare period of “unified government,” in which the White House, the House and Senate all are controlled by the same party, in this case the Democrats.
James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said presidents typically have a much easier time getting their proposals passed during periods of unified government. But Obama still will face many challenges, Thurber told journalists in Washington in December 2008. (See “Obama Will Have to Work with Congress to Implement Proposals.”)
Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, shared Thurber’s view. “You can’t simply wave a magic wand or change a majority and expect that we are suddenly going to move to a very, very different environment,” Ornstein said.
Ornstein and his colleagues Sarah Binder and Thomas Mann, both senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, participated in a January 8 discussion about their recent report, Assessing the 110th Congress, Anticipating the 111th.
The Obama administration is “starting out with an enormously high level of sensitivity to the importance of dealing with Congress as an equal branch,” Ornstein said. Obama, a former senator, has chosen a chief of staff and several Cabinet members from Congress.
During the Bush administration, there were sometimes “tugs of war over executive and legislative power,” Ornstein said, predicting that there will be disagreements about the branches’ roles in the Obama administration as well.
Ornstein cited a recent incident in which Biden, who has served in the Senate for 36 years, was told he would not be welcome at weekly luncheon meetings that Senate Democrats hold. Suggesting that Biden’s presence would limit opportunities for dialogue and criticism of the administration, Ornstein described the move as Congress’ way of saying, “We are an independent branch.”
The full text of the Brookings Institution report (PDF, 41 pages) is available on the Brookings Web site.
