Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee is the lead Republican negotiator for a bipartisan financial reform bill. | John Shinkle/POLITICO GOP weighs costs of bipartisanship

Thirteen Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Harry Reid’s jobs bill Wednesday, but it’s hardly time to herald a new era of bipartisanship on the Hill.

Just ask Bob Corker.


The Tennessee Republican is close to cutting a deal with Democrats on financial regulatory reform, but he’s gotten pushback from GOP colleagues nervous that he’ll give the veneer of Republican support to one of President Barack Obama’s biggest legislative priorities.

In an interview, Corker said his negotiations with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut prompted some “awkward” and “not very pleasant” discussions with his Republican colleagues — and that he and Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the committee, didn’t speak for nearly two weeks after he picked up discussions with Dodd that Shelby had dropped.

Things are better now, Corker said, but leadership is cautiously watching him. “I think the issue is just making sure he’s consulting with our leaders, and it doesn’t end up being a bill where it’s all Democrats and one Republican; two Republicans and they can say it’s a bipartisan bill,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), No. 4 in the GOP leadership.

If Republicans cut a deal on a sweeping financial-services bill, they risk giving Obama and Democrats in Congress a major legislative victory that could lift their sagging poll numbers ahead of the midterm elections. But if Republicans stand in opposition to the plans, they expose themselves to populist attacks that they are siding with Wall Street at a time when Washington is seeking to avoid another financial meltdown.

And Republicans’ worries over regulatory reform underscore larger questions facing GOP leaders in the run-up to November’s midterms: How much leeway can they give their members without undercutting efforts to draw stark contrasts with the Democrats? And how much party unity can they enforce without playing into Democratic charges that they’re the “party of no”?

For his part, Majority Leader Harry Reid seems intent on forcing an answer.

The slimmed-down jobs bill that cleared the Senate on Wednesday is only the first of several the majority leader plans to bring up for votes between now and November. Reid’s thinking: He’ll either rack up a series of wins for the Democrats, or he’ll get ammunition to use against Republicans if they unite in opposition.

“One of two things is going to happen,” said Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. “Either we’re going to smoke them out on the merits, or they’re going to wear this mantle of obstructionism.”

In the next few weeks, Reid plans to take up legislation that ties unemployment benefits, health insurance subsidies and Medicaid funding with tax breaks that are popular with Republicans.

Democrats are also drafting proposals to extend federal aid to state and local governments and expand small-business lending using remaining TARP funds — proposals that the Democratic leadership believes would be difficult for Republicans to oppose.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he’s not worried about the Democrats’ vote-and-vote-again strategy.

“The leadership thinks that by forcing us to vote no on bills that are unpopular they think that’s going to work to our disadvantage when just the opposite is true,” Cornyn said. “The American people want us to stop the spending.”

But some Republicans acknowledge that a succession of votes will be a challenge for their party — particularly if the unemployment rate remains near 10 percent.

“I’m sure they’re going to design them so it looks bad to vote against them,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). “They’ll probably pass some of them — some Republicans will feel like they have to vote for them.”

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) predicted that all of the bills will pass because “some Republicans” will feel compelled to vote for some of them.

But Cornyn said that his party made a “tactical decision” not to use complaints about Reid’s process as a basis for stopping the jobs bill — and that it’s unlikely to make that same decision in the future.

“I don’t think that will continue,” he said. “They’ll see that bring our conference together.”

In fact, there are few areas where bipartisan agreement in the Senate is even within the realm of possibility. The partisan lines are firmly drawn on health care and climate change, leaving the jobs bills and regulatory reform as the areas where the leaders can let their members play for compromise — or demand that they fight tooth and nail.

Corker said he understands his colleagues’ concerns about signing onto a regulatory reform bill without broad GOP backing.

“I’m not tone deaf,” said Corker, who in 2008 abandoned an auto-bailout deal he attempted to negotiate with Dodd after Republicans rebelled. “I’m a Republican, and I have the same concerns that many of my colleagues have about consumer protection — I want to see it strengthened greatly — I just don’t want it to be done in a way that really hurts our financial system.”

Republicans were nervous early on when Corker suggested he’d be willing to be vote No. 60 for the Democrats on the issue, but in an interview, Corker seemed to walk that back.

“I would be a 60th vote on a great bill,” Corker told POLITICO. “But that’s never going to happen, because if it’s a great bill, there’d be a ton of votes.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who himself has taken heat for trying to negotiate a climate change bill with Democrats, said that if Corker can’t get other Republicans on board, it “says something about the deal — or maybe it says something about the [GOP] Conference.”

But given the financial mess, Graham said, “I just think it’s imperative for our party and the Democrats to come up with some reasonable solution.”

But more conservative members of the party are watching warily.

“I do think Bob Corker is very much a free-market person,” said DeMint, a conservative member of the Banking Committee. “I’d be very disappointed if they came up with something that really expanded government.”

Victoria McGrane also contributed to this report.

