The GOP’s Political Nightmare: Running Against a Recovery

President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill may have helped avoid a second Great Depression, but it was a political fiasco. As then-congressman Barney Frank liked to say: “Things Would’ve Sucked Even Worse Without Us” was an unappealing message for a Democratic bumper sticker. Republicans relentlessly mocked the $800 billion stimulus as a wasteful porkfest, while Democrats tried fervently to change the subject.

Twelve years later, the politics of stimulus has flipped.

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Democrats are relentlessly hyping President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, while Republicans are trying to change the subject to Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head and the Mexican border. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, arguably the shrewdest Republican strategist in Washington, has started floating a half-hearted anti-stimulus message that the coming recovery would have happened anyway.

“We are about to have a boom,” McConnell said last week after the Biden bill passed. “And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion.”

As a message, this amounts to “Things Would’ve Been Just As Great Without It”—an even less appealing bumper sticker than Barney Frank’s.

It may be an overstated political cliché that if you’re explaining, you’re losing. But you’re almost certainly losing if you’re explaining, ahead of time, why the economic boom you’re expecting on your opponent’s watch shouldn’t be attributed to your opponent. One lesson of the volatility of the past dozen years is that fairly or not, the president’s party tends to get the credit or blame for the economy—or at least for the way people perceive the economy. Biden is visiting swing states this week to sell American Rescue Plan’s focus on giving Americans vaccines and money, but with economists across the ideological spectrum forecasting explosive growth, many veterans of the 2009 stimulus wars believe the economy will be all the sales pitch the bill needs.

“We’re going to see some fairly amazing economic numbers, and I imagine for the next few years, people will look around and say: ‘This is pretty darn good!’” says American Enterprise Institute fellow James Pethokoukis, a conservative economist who believes the Biden stimulus is somewhat excessive. “I’m sure Republicans will try to spin this, and I have long-term concerns myself, but the reality of a crazy strong expansion will be tough to spin away.”

Democrats seemed to have learned a bunch of lessons from the backlash against the Obama stimulus—that it’s important to sell your own product, that it’s even more important not to trash your own product, and that it’s supremely important to make sure your product works as well as possible. Even though the Obama White House pushed for the biggest possible stimulus it could get out of a bailout-weary Congress in 2009, most economists believe the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would have produced a stronger recovery if it had been even bigger. Biden was determined to make sure his relief act didn’t undershoot as well, even if that meant he would face criticism for ignoring the budget deficit and failing to attract Republican votes.

Republicans, by contrast, seem to have learned one major lesson from the Obama stimulus—the power of No. Three Republican senators did vote yes in 2009, but the rest of the party consistently and vociferously trashed the “porkulus” as a deficit-busting big-government goody bag, a message that helped the GOP reclaim the House in a landslide in 2010.

This time, not a single congressional Republican voted for the Biden bill, even though the party overwhelmingly supported five earlier relief bills under President Donald Trump.

So far, though, political history is not repeating itself. The approval rating for Obama’s recovery plan dropped more than 20 points from his election until he signed it into law three months later, even though Obama himself remained quite popular at the time. By contrast, the Biden stimulus is polling in the 70s, while Biden himself is polling in the fifties. If the pandemic ends and the economy roars, as independent forecasters like J.P. Morgan are predicting, the rescue plan could get even more popular, and the strategy of No could get even more difficult.

“It worked in 2009, when the economy was still struggling, but I don’t see how it works if we get mammoth job creation numbers,” says Republican strategist Tony Fratto, a former assistant Treasury secretary in the Bush administration. “Maybe you could say the economy is running too hot, but I don’t think ‘the Biden bill was too effective’ would sell too well.”

This time, not a single congressional Republican voted for the Biden bill, even though the party overwhelmingly supported five earlier relief bills under President Donald Trump.

So far, though, political history is not repeating itself. The approval rating for Obama’s recovery plan dropped more than 20 points from his election until he signed it into law three months later, even though Obama himself remained quite popular at the time. By contrast, the Biden stimulus is polling in the 70s, while Biden himself is polling in the fifties. If the pandemic ends and the economy roars, as independent forecasters like J.P. Morgan are predicting, the rescue plan could get even more popular, and the strategy of No could get even more difficult.

“It worked in 2009, when the economy was still struggling, but I don’t see how it works if we get mammoth job creation numbers,” says Republican strategist Tony Fratto, a former assistant Treasury secretary in the Bush administration. “Maybe you could say the economy is running too hot, but I don’t think ‘the Biden bill was too effective’ would sell too well.”
This time, not a single congressional Republican voted for the Biden bill, even though the party overwhelmingly supported five earlier relief bills under President Donald Trump.

So far, though, political history is not repeating itself. The approval rating for Obama’s recovery plan dropped more than 20 points from his election until he signed it into law three months later, even though Obama himself remained quite popular at the time. By contrast, the Biden stimulus is polling in the 70s, while Biden himself is polling in the fifties. If the pandemic ends and the economy roars, as independent forecasters like J.P. Morgan are predicting, the rescue plan could get even more popular, and the strategy of No could get even more difficult.

“It worked in 2009, when the economy was still struggling, but I don’t see how it works if we get mammoth job creation numbers,” says Republican strategist Tony Fratto, a former assistant Treasury secretary in the Bush administration. “Maybe you could say the economy is running too hot, but I don’t think ‘the Biden bill was too effective’ would sell too well.”