So, Obama said"It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they've presided over a doubling of the national debt," Obama said. "I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility."
So Obama's clearly blaming the past Republican administration and 3/4 of he past sessions of congress which were run by Republicans. The immediate response is "Well, there were Democrats there too since it wasn't a 60 seat majority, so it's not right to blame only the Republicans." While technically true, I wonder how much it really matters.
By that standard, the current stimulus bill is also a bipartisan bill, since it required R as well as D to get over 60. However, I'd imagine >90% of R find that label outrageous, since >90% of R voted against cloture. That's not much of a bipartisan effort, and I would have a hard time pinning much/any 'blame' for this bill on R senators "as a group", even though D doesn't have a 60 seat supermajority.
I think this is a timely example of how the party in power has significantly more control over Congress than the party not in power. All it takes is a small minority of the opposition to effectively give the ruling party anything they want. To varying degrees, it may absolve much of the minority party from 'blame'.
Add to that, and I'm not completely sure but I don't have time to research, can't senators that hold chairs in committees refuse to let bills from the opposing party out of committee if they're undesirable? That strengthens the ruling party's power even more, in a subtle way.
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