The Democrats' Education Debacle

[Geee]

Politico:

The Democrats' education debacle

By DAVID ROGERS | 7/13/10 4:44 AM EDT

Education for Democrats these days is an education itself — a lesson in how dysfunctional this White House and Congress can be on domestic policy.

Finding $10 billion in a multitrillion-dollar budget to avert threatened teacher layoffs — months before the midterm elections — would seem a shared goal for the party. Instead, it’s produced veto threats, stalled war funding and created a destructive divide between job-hungry lawmakers and a White House anxious to burnish its business credentials at the expense of teacher unions.

Old resentments, rooted in the Democratic back stabbing that followed the giant economic recovery act last year, have resurfaced. The personal trumps the practical, and each side feels so backed into a corner that neither is really communicating.

In the runup to the July Fourth 4 recess, it got to the point that President Barack Obama personally appealed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi to intercede and protect education reform funds from being cut to pay for the teachers’ jobs. Rebuffed, Obama then put down his marker: a late-breaking veto threat. But this only further united House Democrats — all but 15 of whom joined in a shot across the bow of the president.

“I think their veto threat helped us pass the amendment,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) told POLITICO. “There are so many members of our caucus who think that this administration is willing to use members of Congress as cannon fodder. I think they were looking for a chance to send a message to the administration.”

The White House knives are out now for Obey, and there’s no love lost between the chairman’s camp and Obama’s sputtering chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

But as Congress returns this week, the greater danger is the overwhelming sense of drift. Asked Monday what the next step would be, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) was anything but certain. “I wish I knew; I really mean that,” he said in a brief Capitol interview.

In fact, the Senate has thus far ducked the teacher crisis and shows no appetite for engaging it without Republican support. The Pentagon’s pockets are deep enough to survive a few more weeks of delayed war funding: “The services will find the money to fund our operations in Afghanistan. I’m convinced of that,” Gen. David Petraeus told senators recently. But with the Kabul Conference next week, important State Department operations in Afghanistan are being squeezed — not to mention Iraq funding and Haiti earthquake relief. And as hurricane season approaches, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is running on fumes.