Balance of Power

A man in the position of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, with a shrunken caucus and limited leverage, would try to push for as many tax cuts as possible.

"I think most of my members believe that if you put money straight in the hands of individuals and businesses, it will have a quicker stimulative effect than having the government spend it on projects, particularly ones that are likely to spend out, you know, in year three and year four," he said on Fox News this morning.

But Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. says the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have already done plenty of compromising.

"If you notice, roughly 40 percent of this entire package is tax cuts. That's not what the Democrats wanted," Biden said on CBS' Face the Nation yesterday. "And 60 percent of it is spending, economic stimulus. That's not what the Republicans wanted. But we've come a pretty long way already."

In fact, Biden said, most of the compromises were made in advance.

"I, for one, personally was on the phone with six Republican senators, key Republican senators, asking what they need, what they want. And we compromised ahead of time, in terms of what we put in the bill."

If true, that raises the question of what President Obama expects to accomplish when he meets with Hill Republicans tomorrow. McConnell will be pushing other tax cut ideas, such as a "payroll tax holiday" for one to two years. But Obama and Democratic leaders have said the test of any new ideas will be how quickly the money gets into consumers' hands.

And the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank whose work gets close attention from Democrats, says a payroll tax holiday wouldn't produce much "bang for the buck" because most of the benefits would go to higher-income taxpayers, and they'd probably save the money rather than spending it.

Most likely, tomorrow's meeting will produce lots of footage of Obama trying to make nice with Republicans, so his team can say he bent over backwards to hear their views. And there's some validity to that.

Although George W. Bush did work with Democrats at the beginning of his term on the "No Child Left Behind" education law -- much more than he worked with them on anything else -- Obama has already visited the Hill more often to hear opposing views than Bush did during that period.

But once that meeting is over, it would be a shocker if the Republicans were able to sell any significant tax cuts that aren't already in there.