Congressional Democrats have just begun a public meeting to bless the already-agreed-upon details of their $789 billion stimulus bill, pushing past an awkward first step that saw House negotiators fail to show up for an earlier sitdown on the economic recovery plan.

The House discontent, as many outlets are reporting, stems from the House's $16 billion in school-building aid. As I reported this afternoon, a senior Democratic chairman was appearing with the New York City mayor to declare himself "cautiously optimistic" about the school-building money -- while senators were zeroing out that cash behind closed doors.

Democrats are bouncing back with promises to that the stimulus money given to stabilize state budgets ($39 billion in the Senate compromise, $79 billion in the House bill, now boosted to $54 billion) could also be used for school repairs. But that's unlikely to be enough for House members, and we could see targeted school-building aid put back in before the first votes on the stimulus package occur tomorrow.

Why was this less than a complete victory for Democrats?

Because GOPers are even now passing around stories like this one, relishing the opportunity to play up the bad optics of this afternoon's conference meeting no-show.

With C-SPAN televising the conference meeting right now, Republicans will also have a chance to play up the fact that they were totally excluded from the process, aside from the three GOP senators whose votes were needed to break a threatened filibuster.

Shutting out the minority party was certainly the Republicans' preferred mode when they were in charge, but the mainstream media is awfully susceptible to GOP complaints on this front. And as Josh observes, Obama's early emphasis on bipartisanship is exacerbating that tendency in the press.