What's in a package?

What's in a package? By: Andie Coller February 4, 2009 04:30 AM EST
Republicans in Congress scored a free Super Bowl ad Sunday: a Vizio commercial for HD-TVs that referred to President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan as a “stimulus package.” By using that particular phrase, the ad told 95.4 million people what the Republicans already knew: They’ve won the war of words over the economic plan now being debated in the Senate — a victory that has significantly undercut the president’s chances of achieving bipartisan support for the bill he envisioned. “If the terms are defined on your terrain, you have a better chance of winning, and that’s what the Republicans have done,” said Republican consultant John Feehery. “Everyone thinks of it as a ‘stimulus package.’ That’s how everyone has talked about it — that was the expectation.” The problem with the word “stimulus” is that the bill, as the president conceived it, was never meant to be purely a fiscal jolt, but rather a far broader economic plan that included everything from investments in alternative energy to supports for those likely to be hit hardest by the economic downturn. Team Obama certainly recognized the import of the language to describe the legislation. They used focus groups to determine which words to employ and carefully crafted the bill’s title: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. What they didn’t count on was that pretty much no one would call it that. Without a snappy nickname (even the non sequitur TARP, with its unfortunate connotations of shrouds and opacity, has come into more common usage) or an obvious headline phrase (“recovery” can’t stand on its own without “package,” “bill” or “act,” and therefore takes up too much real estate on the page), the media and just about everyone else have continued to cling to the word “stimulus.” “‘Stimulus’ was the term everyone was using in the beginning ... and once the media starts using a term, it is very hard to change,” explained Democratic pollster and strategist Celinda Lake. Even fellow Democrats have had a hard time getting with the program. Earlier this week, Politico reported that an Appropriations Committee staffer lectured House Dems about their loose language with respect to the bill — and then held up a chart with the word “stimulus” to describe the legislation. “You have to make sure that everyone on your side has message discipline in order to get something like this to stick,” says Drew Westen, a political consultant and author of “The Political Brain.” “You really have to have widespread agreement from everyone on your side that that’s what you’re going to call it, and we are not hearing all Democrats use the same phrase.” The battle is more than a rhetorical one, as the differences in language reflect real differences in philosophy: One approach treats the economy as if it is in coronary arrest and simply needs to be shocked back into rhythm. The other assumes that the economy is fundamentally unwell in some respects and that even once it has been “stimulated,” it will require a double bypass and years of rehabilitation in order to recover and thrive.
“‘Stimulus’ implies immediacy, implies fast acting, implies a program that is meant to prop up and inspire the private sector, which really does fit in with what the Republicans are trying to do,” says Feehery. Agrees Lake: “‘Stimulus’ sets it up for people to make more judgments about it being short term and more tax-sensitive.” The prevalence of the word — coupled with the Obama administration’s desire to make the legislation a bipartisan effort — has put the Democrats on defense, forced to explain how one provision or another fits under the “stimulus” umbrella. “Stimulus equals short-term job creation, so it’s easy to hold up any longer-term investment and shoot it down if it’s not obvious how it creates jobs in the short term. And that allows the Republicans to shoot down a lot of perhaps worthwhile investments,” says Doug Hattaway, president of Hattaway Communications. Indeed, during the debates in the House, the word “stimulus” became a kind of litmus test among Republicans, who held various provisions up for scrutiny against that standard and dismissed as “bloat” or “pork” anything that didn’t conform. During the debate, Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) objected to $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts because “that is not economic stimulus.” Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) objected to $726 million for after-school snack programs for schoolchildren. “I’m sure our school kids need more snacks at taxpayer expense, but does anyone really think that will help the economy? Probably not.” If the bill is a “stimulus package,” Poe and his colleagues are saying, the question is whether school snacks will stimulate the economy. And in that formulation, it becomes irrelevant that the snacks may be necessary in the context of an economic downturn that is likely to increase hunger. Rep. Judy Biggert of Illinois is among many Republicans who have begun to refer to the bill as “the so-called economic stimulus package,” by way of suggesting that the legislation is not what it was intended to be. It is working: Everyone from the Washington Post’s editorial page writers to Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota have begun to hold the bill to the standard that has been used for past stimulus packages: Provisions, they say, should be “targeted, timely and temporary.” “It does suggest that there’s a metric for judging every part of this proposal, which is, Does it put money back into the economy right now?” says Westen. “And that’s the wrong metric.” At least, it is if you agree with the Obama administration, which pollster Lake says most Americans do. She suggests that while the GOP might have won this battle, it may ultimately run afoul of public opinion. “Everything being short-term is not that popular with the public,” says Lake. “They are interested in job creation and getting our economy back on sound footing, and they think of those as long-term goals.” If what the Republicans are trying to do with the word “stimulus” is emphasize the short term, she says, “I hope they stay on that.”
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