Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for Friday, January 30th.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz in New York, Assembly Baselon.

And this week, we're going to talk about the stimulus package.

It passed the house.

It's had some bumps along the way.

Our second topic will be presidential drinking and the power of alcohol in the legislative and governing process. And the third topic will be on the Lilley Ledbetter Pay Equity Act, Emily. Is that the full title anyway, which is now law. That was good. The law of the land. And we will discuss that in our third topic.

And the first, though, topic, David is – well, no, let's go to you, David, because

you've stood up for the process of things.

I will stand up.

I just want to remind our listeners that we are – the Slate Political Gapfest is sponsored

this week as in all weeks by Audible.com.

And you can go to audiblepodcast.com forward slash GabFest to get the great offer that Audible is making towards you, our listeners.

We'll talk a little bit more about that later.

Okay.

So now my question is a little more refined.

In the House, Barack Obama got a victory.

His stimulus package won, and so it's now going into the Senate.

But the bill, the package didn't get a single Republican vote.

This is after Senator, this after President Obama went to the hill, talked to both Republican and Democratic leaders, but made a real push with Republicans on Tuesday in the House and the Senate to try and listen to them, get their ideas.

His staff has been reaching out. There were no votes. How big a deal is that, David?

Well, I think it reflects a few things. One, the congressional Republicans are kind of in a rump caucus position, which is that the party has

been pushed very, very, very far to the right because of the losses. They've lost a lot of

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