Conventional wisdom holds that Senate centrists (like the group of 20 senators who engineered the changes in the Senate stimulus package) hold the balance of power in this Senate, but I've yet to find out exactly who these people are.
Still Looking.
Here's criticism about their influence:
...centrist Senators exist to take politics as usual - whether it's tax cuts in Republican eras, or spending splurges in Democratic ones - and make it ever so slightly more fiscally responsible. So if the GOP wants, say, $500 billion in tax cuts, the country clearly needs $400 billion in tax cuts - but not a penny more! And if the Democrats want $900 billion in stimulus, then the best possible policy outcome must be ... $800 billion in stimulus! To read this Arlen Specter op-ed, justifying both the stimulus package and the cuts the "gang of moderates" have attempted to impose, is to encounter a mind incapable of thinking about policy in any terms save these: Take what the party in power wants, subtract as much money as you can without infuriating them, vote yes, and declare victory.
In short, centrists resist the fundamental changes in how government works that Obama campaigned on.
