Obama woos Republicans on stimulus, seeking longer-term support

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama proved he could win over Republican voters. Now he's trying to show he can do the same with the party's lawmakers.

Obama, a Democrat, plans to meet with Republicans this week and pitch his $825 billion economic-recovery package -- the kind of reaching out Democrats say George W. Bush almost never did.

Obama's effort may determine whether his calls for bipartisanship during the presidential campaign will translate into support for the White House's broader legislative agenda on issues from energy to health care.

The president has called numerous Republican lawmakers to talk about cooperation and win the release of $350 billion in financial- rescue funds, as part of a program that has been used to shore up such lenders as Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. While Republicans say they are impressed, they're skeptical about whether he can achieve consensus after years of rancor between the two parties.

"There's a large difference between gesture and policy," says House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana, the party's No. 3 leader in the House. "The real test for President Obama and his team will be the degree to which they give Republicans and Republican ideas a real hearing."

For a lasting breakthrough, Obama, 47, will need a broad bipartisan vote on the stimulus measure when it moves through both chambers in coming weeks, says Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University in New Jersey.

"He's trying to reverse 20 or so years of bitter history in American politics," Zelizer says. "If he stumbles with the stimulus, it will make it harder the next time he needs their support."

Obama -- who last year became the first Democrat to win Republican-leaning Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia in a presidential election since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 -- passed his first test on Jan. 15.

That's when the Senate rejected by a 52-42 vote a resolution that would have prevented the release of the second half of the Treasury Department's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, enacted last year to boost the sagging U.S. financial industry.

Obama sought the speedy release of the funds and lobbied some of the six Republican senators who voted with Democrats to free up the TARP money.