ProgressOhio

Our 12th District Congressman, Pat Tiberi, was partly right last night when he declared during a brief television interview that the Obama stimulus bill was "a missed opportunity."

Tiberi, a Delaware County Republican whose district includes part of Licking County, obviously likes the phrase, "missed opportunity."  He repeated it twice in the space of a 5-minute interview on Channel 4, and makes it his headline in an equally brief comment on the bill at his congressional web site:

TIBERI CALLS FINAL DEMOCRATIC STIMULUS BILL “MISSED OPPORTUNITY”
“Today’s vote represents a missed opportunity for those of us in Washington who wanted to prove to the American people we understood their call for change.  This bill is not stimulative; it’s loaded with Nancy Pelosi’s grab bag of big spending wishes.  It does very little to ease our housing crisis, the driving force of the economic downturn.  We can’t counter an economic downturn if the causes of it aren’t addressed.  What the Democratic Stimulus does include is unprecedented, record-breaking spending that saddles future generations with mountains of debt.  Americans deserve better.” (Feb. 13)

http://tiberi.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=111506

As I said, he got it partially right.  The near $800-billion economic stimulus package the president signed last week is an opportunity for Obama and more importantly for the nation, although nobody can yet be sure it will be successful.

And, yes, it was also a missed opportunity - for Tiberi and his fellow House Republicans, all of whom marched lock-step in opposition.

"Congressional Republicans have made a stand on the stimulus package, just as they did on the original bank bailout when they refused to accommodate a president of their own party, George W. Bush. These Republicans are as wrong as wrong can be, and history, I am sure, will mock them, but they were not elected by history, and they are impervious to mockery from the likes of me. They come from conservative districts, and they are voting as their people want them to. That's partisanship. It is also democracy." (Richard Cohen, Washington Post, 2/17/09)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601104.html?referrer=emailarticle

But, in fact, Tiberi's 12th District isn't the sort of solid-red conservative district Cohen is talking about here. Tiberi has been elected to Congress five times now because he's usually faced weak opponents and the district has been gerrymandered to make it reasonably safe for a moderate Republican.

Now, by joining the "Just Say No" Boehner gang, Tiberi jeopardizes his own moderate reputation

He's betting against the president - and worse yet, against the country - by playing Hoover to Obama's Roosevelt, even though the President and congressional Democrats agreed to include $288 billion in tax cuts in the package.  Unfortunately, tax cuts seemed to be the only element of the recovery plan Republicans showed any interest in.

According to the Obama administration (see www.recovery.gov ) the recovery package will produce (or preserve) 133,000 jobs in Ohio alone.  It also comes to the aid of state and local governments, the schools and the poor and unemployed while making major investments in energy, health care and the nation's crumbling infrastructure.

This is also a missed opportunity for Tiberi who, although in the minority, now has the experience and seniority to begin demonstrating for voters that he brings more to the table than another predictable "No" vote on behalf of the GOP.  Need he continue to be a Yes man to the caucus and the party after 8 years in congress?  At a time when the Republican Party is struggling to develop a new message, does Tiberi have nothing more to contribute than "ditto."

Maybe he'll surprise us as more elements of the administration's plan come before Congress for approval.  According to this Feb. 16 column by Bob Herbert in the New York Times, the President hasn't given up on his bi-partisan pledge - yet.

"He (Obama) said that the fact that he’d been rebuffed so far in his quest for bipartisanship would not stop him from reaching out for Republican support.

“Going forward,” he said, “each and every time we’ve got an initiative, I’m going to go to both Democrats and Republicans and I’m going to say, ‘Here’s my best argument for why we need to do this. I want to listen to your counterarguments. If you’ve got better ideas, present them. We will incorporate them into any plans that we make, and we are willing to compromise on certain issues that are important to one side or the other in order to get stuff done.’ ”

When I asked him if there was any reason to believe that the G.O.P. had made a good-faith effort at bipartisanship, given the fact that only three Republicans voted for the stimulus plan in the Senate and none in the House, he said he did not want to question the motives or sincerity of those who opposed the plan.

But he made a point of adding, “Now, I have to say that given that they were running the show for a pretty long time prior to me getting there, and that their theory was tested pretty thoroughly and it’s landed us in the situation where we’ve got over a trillion-dollars’ worth of debt and the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, I think I have a better argument in terms of economic thinking.”

He also made it clear that he won’t let his desire for bipartisanship undermine important initiatives. “I’m an eternal optimist,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I’m a sap.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/opinion/17herbert.html?_r=1&emc=eta1