Posted by
AJH on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 3:02:57 AM
Democratic leaders in Congress did not expect much Republican support as they pressed President Obama's ambitious legislative agenda. But the pushback they are receiving from some of their own has come as an unwelcome surprise.
[T]he internal revolt has served as a warning to party leaders pursuing Obama's far-reaching plans for health-care, energy and education reform.
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There are a lot of items in the budget that would normally get a lot more attention, if we were in a normal year," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who heads the House Democrats' fundraising arm. "They've been eclipsed by the tidal wave of the economy." But Van Hollen added: "They are waiting in the wings."
[M]ost costly was [the] defection [...] of Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), a member of the Democratic leadership, in protest of a little-noticed Cuba provision that would ease U.S. rules on travel and imports to the communist-led island.The Menendez rebellion was a jolt of political reality for Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama, signaling that the solidarity of the stimulus debate is fading as Democratic lawmakers are starting to read the fine print of the bills they will wrestle with in the coming weeks and months, and not always liking what they see.
Reid had been focused on fending off a bloc of conservative Republicans who were seeking to eliminate more than 8,500 pet projects in the bill, many of them inserted by GOP lawmakers. Democratic leaders were hearing some internal grumblings, but those concerns focused largely on the bill's hefty overall price tag.
AJH