Did Bush ever try to include Democrats to the extent that Obama has when Republicans were the majority parties in Congress? By this I mean, did he ever go to Capitol Hill to talk with Congressional Democrats? Did he ever invite Congressional Democrats to the White House for talks?
This seems to suggest Bush met with Congressional Democrats in December of 2005, when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
I think every President meets with opposition congressional delegations in the White House, or at least most modern Presidents. But what “matters” is how much input does the President give these people? You can meet with the opposition all day long but if you control both houses of congress then you don’t actually have to give their ideas any substantive backing; although I think horse trading is always wise.
I’d say no. It’s fairly obvious that Obama has plainly included the Democrats far more than Bush ever could have.
Keep in mind, too, that while Bush and Obama both have made bipartisan overtures early on in their administrations (we will see if this continues for Obama) what the parties do in Congress is another matter. And let’s face it - Pelosi and Reid aren’t looking to govern in a bipartisan fashion. Neither are Durbin, Schumer, Hoyer or Van Hollen. And if the Republicans were to miraculously take over, their leadership would include McConnell, Kyl, Boehner and Cantor - pretty much the functional equivalents of the Democratic list when we discuss partisanship.
This implies that Obama has.
Obama has not.
So far, Congressional Democrats (esp. Pelosi, Ried, Kerry) have railroaded Obama into most decisions Obama has made. Obama has largely ignored any input from Congressional Republicans at all, and to date has only met with the GOP minority leader once (as of this writing).
To sum up: Congress (which has a dismal 20% approval rating) is so far controlling Obama (who has more than a 60% approval rating). What’s wrong with this picture?
That’s right. The stimulus bill from the house is one of the least-bipartisan bills ever. Republicans weren’t consulted on it in any way. They weren’t allowed to make any significant changes. It was basically rammed down their throats.
If Obama wanted to be really bipartisan, he could have gone to the House and told them to draft a bill that had reasonable Republican support or he’d refuse to support it, and if the final compromise bill still had no Republican support he would refuse to sign it. But so far, he hasn’t done that.
I agree that Obama largely outsourced the drafting of this stimulus to House and Senate Democrats and thus destroyed any chance for bipartisanship in it - because of how things work there. But how was Kerry involved? I haven’t seen him do much of anything lately, which fits with his general work habit in life.
Do you suppose his being a Senator previously hampers him here? After all, it was only a couple of months ago that Reid was effectively his boss.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
I think that President Obama is inclined to have legislation originate in Congress because of his own constitutional philosophy and the fact that his party controls the place right now.
The problem is that if he is serious about including Republicans in legislation and being an agent of bipartisanship - he’ll have to take the lead on that. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi haven’t shown themselves up to this particular task.
Of course. Every congress sets a new record for the least-bipartisan bill ever, under marching orders from the most liberal president ever :rolleyes:
Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Yes, and from the start.
Nearly all presidents will have the opposition in for meetings, including at the White House. It all means precious little if the president does not take seriously what they say and compromise to some extent.
I’m not a huge fan of bipartisanship for its own sake. But for those who are, it’s easy to forget that Bush did make major efforts in this regard. When Obama starts letting Republicans co-author legislation on his major goals (e.g. No Child Left Behind), or getting significant Republican support for controversial initiatives (e.g. Immigration Reform, Medicare, Iraq), then you could argue he’s reached Bush’s level.
:rolleyes: sigh And so it goes . . .
And here’s the cost of bipartisanship:
All that to get three Pub Senate votes. Dems, you won! Grow a fucking spine already! :mad:
If the stimulus is needed to save the economy, how do they justify trimming it back to placate the repubs who caused the mess? The repubs did the damage when they were in charge. They should sit down and shut up. To watch one repub after another walk up to the senate floor and claim they are after fiscal responsibility is a joke. Their mantra was "deficits don’t matter’. They proved clearly that that was their belief. Now a dem is in charge ,lets start cutting back. The repubs have nothing to stand on. it is time for responsible adults to take over.
And this is different from most of the Bush administration how?
At least this VP isn’t telling people from the other party to “Go fuck” themselves on the floor of congress.
I’m not saying its good to have no input from another side, but this is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black. I hope there is bipartisan input but there’s a reason that the Republicans don’t have a controlling number of seats anymore… And that reason is their own doing.
Bull. The repubs sabotaged this program from the senate floor. They trimmed billions off the bill. How is that no influence?
Obama had sit downs with many republican leaders. They had give and take before the bill was even brought up. And that was after a repub era in which they absolutely suppressed any dem input. If you saw the bankruptcy bill the repubs pushed through a few years ago ,you would see what pricks they were. The dems wanted to exempt people with catastrophic illnesses from the bill. They wanted to exempt soldiers who kept returning to Iraq from the bill. They wanted to exempt seniors on fixed incomes. The repube voted 100 % to kill every dem measure. That is republican majority in action.
Sam, you are conveniently forgetting, or else were never told by your filtered sources, that in Bush’s early years the House Democrats weren’t even allowed to *see *the budget. :dubious:
How do you account for all the concessions and cuts in the Senate version of the stimulus bill? Or for the refusal of any House Republicans at all to vote for the thing?
Cut the crap.
Oh, I don’t deny that. But you guys have to decide whether turnabout is fair play, or whether you want that different kind of leader Obama campaigned as.
Make your choice, and the voters will have a chance to judge you a few years hence.