Let's do the numbers on the House re-vote

Can House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her GOP counterpart John Boehner find the dozen votes necessary to pass a “tweaked” bill?

Three crucial factors are working to Pelosi’s advantage:

• Time: House members are feeling even more restless about the economic uncertainty, the fast-approaching elections and their need to campaign back home.
• Some House Republicans are rethinking their “no” votes.
• Most of the 95 Democrats who voted “no” on Monday don't come from electorally competitive districts, so it's not risky for them to switch. And Pelosi needs to convince only a few of those safe Democrats to vote with her.

But the focus Wednesday was entirely on wooing House Republicans .  

House leaders “are bringing in the small business lobby and the banking lobby to buy the 12 Republican votes they need,” said Bob Borosage, the co-director of the progressive group Campaign for America’s Future.

Additions to the rescue plan package are designed to attract House Republican votes.

These include a $100 billion package of tax “extenders” — provisions set to expire at the end of the year, including tax credits for research and development and one for producing windmill electricity.

“I’m personally disappointed that the Senate has chosen to add the so-called extenders bill to this recovery package," said Hoyer. “...We’ve been told on the extenders: 'take it or leave it. So in all likelihood, the House will take it."

The importance of the recovery package is exactly why the Senate did add the extenders bill to it.

Stare-down politics
This is old-fashioned stare-down politics: It was just two days ago that Hoyer told Senate leaders that the House would not accept the extenders, rebuffing what he described as the upper chamber’s attempt to legislate by “blunt force.”

Now it seems that the tax cut extenders package will pass, because it is grafted onto a bill many see as imperative to the banking and credit system.

Referring to his own Democratic members, Hoyer said, “Certainly there are people who are upset with the fact that we are making the deficit worse."

The tax cut extensions are not offset with revenue increases or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

What's $100 billion?
But in a package of $700 billion, another $100 billion may not seem particularly shocking to some House members. 

Another provision could gain GOP support for the bailout bill: increasing bank account protection from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from $100,000 to $250,000.

House Democratic Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina said on MSNBC Wednesday that a proposed loosening of the "mark to market" accounting rule that requires financial firms to value assets at their currently depressed market prices could also lure Republican votes.

“And I’m trying to make sure we don’t lose any Democrats and that’s why I want the property tax relief to be in there because that will get us more Democrats,” he said.

A housing bill that passed last month created a one-time $1,000 tax deduction for homeowners who do not itemize on their federal tax returns. The latest financial proposal would extend this tax break into 2009.

For now, sitting mostly on the sidelines are the progressive, or left-of-center, Democrats who either voted against Monday’s bill, or voted reluctantly for it.

End game scenario
One plausible end game scenario looks like this: The Senate passes the rescue plan Wednesday night and the House passes it on Friday, though not without misgivings and many loud complaints.

In any event, Pelosi would still be able to give her freshmen members who are in potentially tough races a pass to vote against the bailout proposal.

The Democrats voting “no” on Monday were trying to make a point. Most of them stand to the left of the political center in the House and they wanted a more anti-Wall Street, pro-public spending (on infrastructure) program.

Infrastructure spending next year
Billions of dollars on infrastructure spending can be passed next year, assuming that Obama is elected and there are bigger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

Dissenting from this “12 will switch” forecast is syndicated columnist and Democratic activist David Sirota.

He warns against “underestimating the difficulty of 12 lawmakers changing their vote. It certainly could happen, but those who change are going to be hammered at home, especially now that it would be such a high profile flip flop.”

If there are vote switchers when the House votes again, how do they defend themselves from the flip-flop charge? Answer: if they hold safe seats, a switch is not likely to matter since they face no credible opponent, or in several cases, are running unopposed.

As for a promise of more infrastructure spending next year, Sirota said, “Obama has already said that he's going to have to scale back his spending priorities if and when this passes. Promises later of massive infrastructure spending ring a bit hollow — especially to legislators who understand that the political capital to pass that kind of spending will far less without this Wall Street crisis.”

Sirota also predicts that the economy “will continue hurting for the next month, giving those who voted against the bailout, or challengers who oppose it, an easy way to say ‘Look, they gave away $700 billion, and the economy is still in the tank.’”

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