For summer recess, lawmaking to pause, not partisan sniping

By Lisa Mascaro

Sunday, Aug. 2, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Both of Nevada’s Democratic congresswomen made time in their schedules last week to visit the House floor and talk up the good work of the economic recovery package.

As Congress prepared to adjourn for its August recess, Rep. Shelley Berkley said the $787 billion package passed by Congress this year is helping to keep Nevada families afloat during the downturn.

Rep. Dina Titus noted the money coming to the state to help extend unemployment benefits.

Their kind words couldn’t have come too soon.

Republican Party leadership has vowed to turn August into one long, hot month of discomfort for Democrats, hammering away at the legislative agenda of the Obama administration and the majority party in Congress as failures.

A sign of just how well-tuned the Republican message machine is can be seen in the colorful, multi-page packages sent home with House lawmakers, along with detailed suggestions on how to get out their side of the story.

Aug. 17, for example, is radio day, when Republican lawmakers in the House are encouraged to call their local radio stations on the “day that marks six months of failed ‘stimulus’ policies.”

No word yet on whether Republican Rep. Dean Heller will be on the air that day.

Another memo for those gearing up for election in 2010 suggests visiting small businesses or holding job fairs and repeating the question: “Where are the jobs?”

With polls showing support for President Barack Obama’s agenda slipping from earlier highs, Republicans see August as their chance for resurgence after two consecutive years of losses at the polls.

Americans tell pollsters they don’t believe the $787 billion economic stimulus bill has had much effect in fixing the economy — even as they believe it will bring new jobs in the long run.

Yet those same polls also show that Americans still believe Obama will do a better job than Republicans at handling the nation’s problems. They also still prefer having Democrats in charge of Congress.

They also tell pollsters they are following the health care debate in great numbers, and a large majority think health care reform is important (69 percent according to last week’s Time poll).

During a meeting in late June with reporters, White House officials conceded the Obama administration — and most leading economists — did not understand the depth of the nation’s economic problems as the new president was transitioning to office late last year.

They had wrongly promised the national unemployment rate would rise no higher than 8 percent if the recovery bill was passed.

But they learned that the gross domestic product for the final quarter of 2008 had actually fallen much lower than original estimates. The first quarter of 2009 showed the economy had contracted by 6 percent when normally it would be growing by a few percentage points.

At a news briefing, White House advisers cautioned that the economy had to stop worsening before it could get better. The country won’t go from losing 500,000 jobs a month to gaining overnight, without first stopping the losses.

So it was with cautious optimism that the president welcomed Friday’s numbers, which showed the economy had contracted just 1 percent during the second quarter of 2009.

“Part of the progress is directly attributable to the Recovery Act,” the president said.

Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, put it this way: “The recovery act turned this quarter’s economic performance from disastrous to merely bad,” he said in a statement. “That’s a major achievement.”

On the floor of the House, Berkley outlined the benefits for Nevada of the recovery package.

She detailed money coming to the state that is helping to prevent teachers from being laid off, paying for the increasing number of Nevadans on Medicaid and providing $250 cash payments to more than 100,000 seniors and veterans.

“Money is flowing into Nevada and is keeping many families afloat during this economic crisis, and it is an economic crisis the likes of which none of us have ever seen and none of us ever thought would happen,” Berkley said.

“There has been a lot of criticism about the stimulus package,” she said. “People say it is not big enough. People say it is not fast enough and that it is not working. But I have to tell you, the people of Nevada have received extraordinary benefits from this stimulus package.”

Titus noted the tax cuts for 95 percent of Nevadans have “put extra money in the pockets of workers.”

The freshman congresswoman talked about the $13 million the state received from the recovery bill to develop green energy jobs, and the “more than $75 million to extend unemployment benefits for those struggling to find work.”

Democrats are sending lawmakers home with their talking points, too. They are focused on the health care debate, a priority for the president that will be the top agenda item when lawmakers return in September.

Democrats are encouraged to hold telephone town-hall meetings and tap into weekly events being held nationwide.

They also have given Democratic lawmakers a hotline number they can call if they need “help refuting opposition misinformation” — in other words, the attacks from across the aisle.