By Jim Tankersley

The Democrats running for president are promising sweeping changes to reinvigorate America's economy and boost its workers, including health care for all, overhauling or scrapping of trade deals, broad tax cuts for the working class and a crackdown on companies that ship jobs overseas.

Back in Congress, where other Democrats are working to actually pass bills this year, the fate of the economy is equally of concern, but the promises are more modest. Party leaders are quietly pursuing smaller-scale and less expensive plans to create jobs and ease the burden on the middle class, focusing on children's health care, public works and enticements for retirement savings and higher education.

The different approaches underscore the competing realities of the campaign trail, where bold ideas sell best, and the halls of Capitol Hill, where change typically comes in short bursts and where President Bush wields the ultimate power -- his veto pen. They also reflect a split among Democrats on how much to embrace globalization and how best to help the middle class. And oddly enough, it's congressional Democrats who are pushing the more Clintonian -- as in Bill -- plans.

"We shouldn't be renegotiating NAFTA," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who worked in the Clinton White House and is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House. "We should be renegotiating the social contract."

Read all about it in my story from today's Tribune.

Democrats' styles differ on the trail, on the Hill

By Jim Tankersley
Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Democrats running for president are promising sweeping changes to reinvigorate America's economy and boost its workers, including health care for all, overhauling or scrapping of trade deals, broad tax cuts for the working class and a crackdown on companies that ship jobs overseas.

Back in Congress, where other Democrats are working to actually pass bills this year, the fate of the economy is equally of concern, but the promises are more modest. Party leaders are quietly pursuing smaller-scale and less expensive plans to create jobs and ease the burden on the middle class, focusing on children's health care, public works and enticements for retirement savings and higher education.

The different approaches reflect a split among Democrats on how much to embrace globalization and how best to help the middle class.

Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have sounded populist themes in their presidential campaigns, particularly when attacking the North American Free Trade Agreement in such manufacturing hubs as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Leading congressional Democrats have taken a more Clintonian -- as in former President Bill Clinton -- stance that favors trade.

"We shouldn't be renegotiating NAFTA," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who worked in the Clinton White House and is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House. "We should be renegotiating the social contract."

The differences underscore the competing realities of the campaign trail, where bold ideas sell best, and the halls of Capitol Hill, where change typically comes in short bursts and where President Bush wields the ultimate power -- his veto pen. In one example, Bush has repeatedly blocked a congressional effort to expand federal health coverage for children.

"It's much easier for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John McCain to say they're going to do X, Y and Z" on the economy, said Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the House majority leader, "than it is to get a bill passed and signed by a president who doesn't think investment here at home is as important as defense spending or even spending in Iraq."

Bush joined congressional Democrats and Republicans this year in crafting a $152 billion economic stimulus package of payments to taxpayers and tax breaks for businesses. But the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said he expects few other economic initiatives to clear the president's desk before Bush leaves office.

"Between the Republican filibusters and the administration's opposition to anything that's bold," Durbin said, "we don't have much to work with."

Slowing economy

Republicans have criticized Democratic proposals from the campaign trail and those in Congress, saying they would raise taxes and further stunt the economy.

Bush told the Economic Club of New York on Friday that "I'm deeply concerned about law and regulation that will make it harder for the markets to recover," that "it is dangerous for this country to become isolationist and protectionist" and that "if the Congress truly wants to send a message that will calm people's nerves they'll ... make it clear they're not going to run up the taxes on the working people."

Opinion polls show working Americans increasingly feel squeezed by the economy. A February survey by the non-partisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 62 percent of respondents who called themselves "working class" said their incomes were falling behind the cost of living. Exit polls in recent Democratic presidential primaries showed the economy topping voters' concerns.

Clinton and Obama have responded by pledging to renegotiate NAFTA and slow or pause America's expansion of trade agreements, all in an effort to protect domestic jobs from being outsourced. They have proposed defraying thousands of dollars per family in college costs, extending health coverage to uninsured Americans and giving new tax breaks to the working class -- paid for, in part, by allowing some of the Bush-backed tax cuts that largely benefit wealthier Americans, such as the cuts in the top two marginal income tax rates, to expire.

In Congress

House Democratic leaders, meanwhile, convened a panel of academics and economists beginning late last year to discuss remedies for the root problems of the slowing economy. Many of those advisers served in Bill Clinton's administration, including former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Laura Tyson, who once headed Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.

Emanuel, who co-wrote a book in 2006 urging Democrats to revamp the social safety net to fit America's changing economy, left the meetings steeled in his view that the party needs a comprehensive economic vision.

"Republicans only have one thing" -- tax cuts, he said. "Cutting taxes is not an economic theory. It's just a thing you do."

Emanuel's vision, which he hopes to push piece by piece through the House, includes a mechanism to encourage retirement savings; expanded health coverage for children and retirees; outlays for infrastructure, alternative energy research and worker training; and new incentives for students to pursue education after high school.

The budget that passed Congress last week calls for more funding for children's health care and alternative energy development. Hoyer said he hopes to move soon on a bill that would create jobs by fixing roads, bridges and other parts of the national transportation system that are deteriorating with age.

The presidential hopefuls have suggested infrastructure investments too, along with billions of dollars in alternative energy spending. They also have pitched plans to assist homeowners struggling to ward off foreclosure.

Congressional Democrats are working on their own housing plan. Bush has threatened to veto it. So far, Senate leaders have been unable to schedule a vote.