Jim Cooper on the stimulus package

Glenn Thrush reports that Blue Dogs are sitting down this afternoon with President Obama's team.

I look forward to hearing how that goes. After contacting James Lueschen in Cooper's Washington DC office, I got this response from Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) about the stimulus bill:

Thank you for contacting me about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

President Obama gets high marks for trying to bring change to Washington, but Congress isn't living up to its end of the bargain. In the face of millions of lost jobs and an economy that continues to shut down, the House passed a bill loaded with pet projects that won't provide the jobs Americans need.

Let me be clear: our economy needs immediate stimulus. That's why I called for Congress to pass President Obama's plan to cut regressive payroll taxes, invest in the nation's infrastructure and extend social insurance for Americans going through hard times. That plan would provide an immediate, much-needed jolt to our economy.

Unfortunately, some longtime House members saw the recovery plan as an opportunity to advance parochial political agendas. Some of these may have been good ideas, some may have been bad ideas-but we didn't get a chance to discuss them, and they weren't designed to help our economy recover in the short term. (Many of them contained new, long-term commitments.) President Obama delivered a bipartisan, win-win proposal, and Congress turned it into the rare lose-lose: a plan that may fail to stimulate the economy while saddling our children and grandchildren with unprecedented debt.

The Senate is taking up this bill today, and already its price tag is growing. It will be a mistake to add more ornaments to this Christmas tree. Instead, we should pass the timely, targeted bill President Obama proposed: one that helps America start recovering from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

(I bold-faced key passages)

A couple notes...

1. Obama specifically said yesterday that the bill contained no earmarks or "pet projects," which directly contradicts the rhetoric from Rep. Cooper's letter. There appear to be differences of opinion on this.

2. Cooper is right about the need for timely, targeted stimulus that works to create jobs and increase spending. But I wonder if he's missing the reinvestment part of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act".

You've gotta give Cooper bonus points for standing his ground. While Heath Shuler (D-NC) got a rebuke from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's assistant Jim Manley, Cooper's more low-key approach has been conciliatory and progress-oriented.

Expect this to be a trend from the Obama Administration - working with Blue Dogs in the House and fiscal conservatives like Kent Conrad in the Senate to change the way Congress works and create a culture of fiscal discipline and accountability. Obama promised it as a key part of his campaign platform.