There’s little cheer in D.C., Carson City as holidays near

By Lisa Mascaro

Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Snow fell outside the Capitol windows last week for the first time this year — nothing lasting, really, just flurries that sent a ripple of chatter through the halls much like the anticipated automotive bailout deal that was abandoned before it could become real.

As the warmth of burning wood in the old fireplaces filled a certain main corridor, it became clear we would be here for the long haul.

Both Washington and Carson City are talking about spending the holiday season addressing the great economic problems before them.

Washington was unable to accomplish in its lame duck session last week the $25 billion rescue of the Big Three automakers, which indirectly affects the jobs of one in every 10 Americans. They may return in December for a do-over.

Carson City, too, is staring down budget cuts that even leading Republicans call difficult. Lawmakers and the governor are considering a special session the second week of December to find a way out of the trouble.

Remember how easy it seemed when the president told us after 9/11 not to worry and just go shopping?

But shopping is so potentially problematic this recessionary holiday season that many buyers are looking for ways to more frugally spread good cheer.

Nevada’s unemployment rate hit 7.6 percent last week, the worst since 1985 when the state was climbing out of a recession that had sent joblessness to double-digits.

Economists say we are headed to the same place now.

The new jobless numbers were released the day President Bush signed an extension of unemployment benefits. That means those who have received a more than six months of aid but still have no job will still be able to collect a check. It was the second extension this year. Congress passed the bill the night before.

The country is headed into unknown economic terrain, a recession for sure, a depression perhaps, but a markedly different downturn than experts have seen before.

Global markets are intertwined in the 21st century with complicated relationships still not fully understood.

Inflationary fears one week turn to deflationary fears the next, and even Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson has had to abruptly change course on what just last month sounded like the most inexorable of plans to bail out the financial markets.

At the same time, the old political structures are washing away with the arrival of President-elect Barack Obama, who has created a new coalition of upper- and middle-class whites, as well as Hispanics, blacks and youth that is realigning national politics.

These events leave Washington and Carson City figuring their postures in a new era.

Gov. Jim Gibbons, a no-new-taxes Republican, is reconsidering his options in the face of budget cuts that could leave the state potentially unable to provide basic services.

Democrats and unions, so urgently pushing to bail out Detroit, found the public has no patience for handing out taxpayer money to the once domineering Big Three.

It’s still shocking to hear lawmakers say that GM, Ford and Chrysler should be left to fall into bankruptcy court. Industry titans that helped engineer the 20th century now being thrown overboard?

But voters are tired of special interests getting more than the average American, be it the Wall Street financiers who hit the ritzy spa as they were receiving a federal bailout or the Detroit executives who flew on private jets to Washington to plead for public money.

Maybe if the automotive companies return next month with realistic promises to build better, greener cars no longer reliant on gasoline, popular opinion will yield. But only maybe.

In Obama voters saw change, and they elected him by historically wide margins in Nevada unseen since Ronald Reagan. (Democrats haven’t had such a popular president in the state since FDR.)

Both Washington and Carson City will need to keep pace with popular opinion as they figure out the route forward. Or it will be a long winter indeed.