One of the point I've been trying to hammer away at in the past few days is that the fierce partisanship and centrist power votes that afflicted the stimulus are broadly structural in nature: They're not about this bill or this party. For instance, remember 2001?
The House and Senate had passed different versions of the tax cut, the centerpiece of Bush's legislative agenda. The House version of the tax cut was largely what Bush proposed: a $1.6 trillion cut that reduces the top tax rate from 39.6 to 33 percent. The Senate reduced the overall tax cut to $1.35 trillion and kept the highest tax bracket at 36 percent.Conservative Republicans in the House had hoped to use the conference process to push for deeper tax cuts. But Grassley had warned that any package going much beyond the bipartisan compromise crafted in the Senate may not have enough support to pass.
There were, of course, a couple of differences: The tax cuts were pushed through using budget reconciliation, which meant the filibuster was inoperative. They only needed 50 votes in the Senate. That changed the incentives considerably and probably led to more Democratic support (in contrast, Republicans are swearing full opposition of Democrats use reconciliation for health care). But still: The path of the stimulus has been pretty standard.
