Shared Credit/Shared Blame

Score one for John Boehner (R-Ohio), House minority leader. It appears President Obama is likely to drop $200 million for contraceptives from the stimulus bill. In an eleventh-hour bid to bring Republicans on board for tomorrow’s big vote, Obama appears to have relented on this embarrassing emergency spending item.

“While he agrees that greater access to family planning is good policy, the president believes that the funding for it does not belong in the economic recovery and reinvestment plan,” Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, said today.

This doesn’t mean Republicans will vote for the stimulus package, because some simply won’t. And there will be other Republicans who simply cannot vote against it; the pressure from back home will be stronger than their own aversion to federal spending.

The bottom line is, Obama wants Republican votes. He wouldn’t have, in his second week on the job, met with the House GOP and Senate GOP separately if he didn’t. Obama knows one thing: The stimulus package will grow the government beyond strain. What he doesn’t know is whether his package will produce jobs. Whether it sinks or swims, he wants his Republican friends to share in the credit or the blame.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said today that Obama’s biggest problem on the stimulus package is with Democrats, and he may be correct. According to The New York Times today, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) has written the bill and has made it clear that the new president doesn’t own this process. Obey is coming under fire for beefing up Democratic spending priorities that have been waiting in line all the years Democrats were in the minority.

Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, also of Wisconsin, said the bill “reflects David’s ideology and his economic doctrine. They took everything in their file cabinet that has been piling up for 100 years, threw it in this bill and called it economic stimulus.”

The Medicaid money for contraceptives might fall into the drawer dust Ryan is referring to. One thing has become pretty clear — Obama will find it hard to get Republicans on board until he talks members of his own party into writing a bill that can pass the definition of “stimulus.”

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF OBAMA’S INTERVIEW WITH AL-ARABIYA? Ask A.B. returns Monday, Feb. 2. Please join my weekly video Q&A by sending your questions and comments to askab@digital-stage.thehill.com. Thank you.