Washington Post – If Spending Is Swift, Oversight May Suffer
Writer Robert O’Harrow explains how a federal contract bureaucracy overtaxed by privatization of so many government functions over the past 16 years would buckle under the demands of spending hundreds of billions of dollars as fast as the president is hoping.
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The result will likely be colossal waste – perhaps billions of dollars — as agencies are forced to fast track deals that would otherwise require months of scrutiny.
“The stimulus plan presents a stark choice: The government can spend unprecedented amounts of money quickly in an effort to jump-start the economy or it can move more deliberately to thwart the cost overruns common to federal contracts in recent years.”
Bloomberg News – U.S. Delays Finance Plan as Officials Debate Debt Most reporters took at face value the White House statement that the delay of the announcement of the plan for the second half of the TARP program from today until Tuesday was because of the need to sell the stimulus. But Bloomberg’s Rebecca Christie and Robert Schmidt dug deeper and found that the announcement also had to be delayed because the plan was still up in the air. Still undecided: how to deal with the tsunami of bad debt that caused the problem n the first place. Financial folks seem to agree that it’s long past time for a clear strategy, not a repeat of Henry Paulson’s oblique approach.
“Banks are ‘looking for clarity, we’re looking for this to be the complete package,’ said Wayne Abernathy, an executive vice president at the American Bankers Association in Washington. ‘If they don’t have the details spelled out they will just freeze the market.’”
Partisan Divide Haunts Obama’s Push on Policy
Writer Naftali Bendavid looked back at past efforts toward bipartisan accord in Washington to put in perspective just how silly the recent talk of bipartisanship has been. From Tip O’Neill’s hale and hearty opposition to Reaganomics to George W. Bush’s whiff on uniting, not dividing, the piece looks to put the 2008 expectations and 2009 realities in context.
“Coming items on Mr. Obama’s agenda — rescuing banks, overhauling health care, rewriting energy policy — are no less contentious than the stimulus package. The record so far suggests that even if President Obama and Republican leaders cultivate good relations, that won’t prompt the two sides to make major compromises and meet in the middle. Instead, deep ideological divides and narrow votes could be the norm.”
Politico – Big stimulus risks for both sides Writers Jonathan Martin and Manu Raju provide a handy guide to the new stakes in the stimulus showdown with a roundup of where the rhetoric is now on all sides. And though they point out that Republicans have put themselves in the situation of being all but irrelevant if the stimulus has its intended effect, the real weight is on the Democrats.
“The risks for Obama are considerable. He and the Democrats will have no one else to blame if the package fails to boost the economy. Obama himself has said his first term can be judged on whether it succeeds, whether it creates or saves the 3 million to 4 million jobs he promises.”
Washington Post – A Military Tactician’s Political Strategy In part two of a series on the Iraq surge Thomas Ricks gives an insider’s view on how Gen. David Petraeus mastered the political process in order to get support for doubling down on an unpopular war.
The strategy was all aimed at maximizing the political impact of hearings before Congress, just as the approach for expanding the effort in Afghanistan will.
“Before the hearings, the dominant question in Washington had been how to get out of Iraq with the least damage. Afterward, the question would become how to find the least damaging way to stay.”
