Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) criticized the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission to overturn precedent and strike down limits to corporate financing of political advertisements in campaigns.
Leahy’s remarks at the 2:36 Mark. He deviated a little from his prepared remarks. Instead of calling him misguided and wrong, he all but said Justice Alito was a liar...but did it in polite Senate speak.
Good.
Thus, I present the amended transcript here for you to enjoy.
Now, only six years after upholding 100 years of precedent a thin majority of the Supreme Court, made possible by President Bush’s appointment of Justice Alito, has thrown out important parts of the law and they’ve run roughshod over a long line of longstanding Court precedent. Mr. President, this is a threat to the rule of law. It overrules congressional efforts to keep powerful, moneyed interests from swamping individuals’ voices and interests.
Now in his confirmation hearing Justice Alito, I might say under oath, testified that the role of the Supreme Court is a limited role. It has to do what it’s supposed to do vigilantly, but it also has to be equally vigilant about not stepping over the bounds and invading the authority of Congress. That was then, when he was seeking confirmation. This is now. And as Justice Stevens’ dissent makes clear, the narrow majority of the Justices, including Justice Alito, substituted their own preferences for those of the duly-elected Congress, despite a hundred years of their own Supreme Court precedents.
"I think we all thought this gathering today would be a celebration," he said. "Well, it may not be a celebration, but it's not a funeral either," he said.
From that moment, Franken called for those present to keep fighting for the cause and not to give up so close to victory.
"The opponents of reform have found their bumper sticker, their slogan, their rallying cry, it's one word: No. You can read that on a bumper," Franken told the members of Families USA, drawing laughs. "Our bumper sticker has — it's just way too many words. And it says, "'Continued on next bumper sticker.'"
While Franken acknowledged there were some parts of the Senate bill he does not agree with, he said that called for the House to pass it, with the understanding that Congress would then "fix" the bill through the process of budget reconciliation which only needs a simple majority.
"We have to stop letting perfect be the enemy of the merely very good. And I believe that the bill we passed in the Senate is a very good foundation on which to build," he said. He highlighted several "very good" aspects of the Senate bill, including his medical-loss ratio provisions, which would require that 85 percent of premiums be spent on actual health care costs, not profits and overhead.
Franken acknowledged that the Democratic loss in the U.S Senate race in Massachusetts was a setback, but reiterated Obama's words in the State of the Union speech Wednesday night that this is not the time to give up.
"If they did anything, it helped remind us of why we're doing this in the first place. They reminded us of how hard it is, how truly hard it is, to bring about big change in America. And they reminded us of what we're up against. And they reminded us about how close we are to the biggest health care victory in half a century."
I've said to my colleagues, go in the door. The door's locked? Go to the gate. The gate's locked? Climb over the fence. It's too high? Pole vault in. That doesn't work? Parachute in. We have to get this done for the American people one way or another.
“If Republican colleagues are serious about fixing our health care system and want to avoid using the reconciliation process, then I will go to the negotiating table with them,” Senator Nelson said. “If Republican senators join me at the table, we can use bipartisanship for health reform rather than use reconciliation, which needs only 50 votes to approve legislation.
“All it takes is one Republican to come forward, put partisanship aside, and work on behalf of those that do not have or cannot afford health insurance,” Nelson added. “Working together, we can fight to ensure health reform relies on our private market system, rather than the government to reduce the cost of health care and deliver better care for millions of Americans.
“Reconciliation has never been my preference for moving legislation. Instead, I always prefer the regular order process that allows full and open debate, many amendments and an opportunity for broad bipartisanship. That can be achieved, if Republican colleagues come to the negotiating table with their ideas and proposals,” Nelson said.
I know some of y'all out there have doubts, should bear in mind that the man is an actual expert on the Economics of the Great Depression. He did a crappy job under Bush, but honestly, consider that President's agenda. Bush was a President who did not believe in accountability, regulation or Government for that matter. Is it any surprise the Economy nearly tanked?
For those of you with doubts, I refer you back to this interview from back in March. It let me know there was a man behind this job, told he that he got it, and was worth keeping on...at least with a President who believes in accountability, regulation and Government.
We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities -- and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which supports clean energy jobs. And to encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America.
Now, the House has passed a jobs bill that includes some of these steps. As the first order of business this year, I urge the Senate to do the same, and I know they will. They will. People are out of work. They're hurting. They need our help. And I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay.
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We need to make sure consumers and middle-class families have the information they need to make financial decisions. We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. Now, the House has already passed financial reform with many of these changes.
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To create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.
I am grateful to the House for passing such a bill last year.
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When we renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we will work with Congress to expand these reforms to all 50 states. Still, in this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job. That's why I urge the Senate to follow the House and pass a bill that will revitalize our community colleges, which are a career pathway to the children of so many working families.
Can we finally put to rest this meme that Obama favors his old Senate colleagues over the House?
He all but screamed from the podium: Senate, GET OFF YOUR ASS!!!
Now, even after paying for what we spent on my watch, we'll still face the massive deficit we had when I took office. More importantly, the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will continue to skyrocket. That's why I've called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can't be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline.
Now, yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I'll issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans. And when the vote comes tomorrow, the Senate should restore the pay-as-you-go law that was a big reason for why we had record surpluses in the 1990s.
Well, the good news is that this very afternoon, the Senate finally passed Pay-Go, allowing it to be sent to the President’s desk.
Four Republican senators who opposed the measure on Thursday voted for nearly an identical measure in 2006.
That list includes Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both moderates from Maine, George Voinovich, the retiring Senator from Ohio, and John McCain, the party's standard-bearer in the 2008 presidential elections.
What prompted the four to switch isn't entirely clear. The respective pieces of legislation are not that far apart, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office confirmed.
It’s pretty damn clear to me. The Republicans are still committed to failure, specifically they want to make sure this President fails. That's all that matters, that's all they'll ever vote for...even the so-called moderates. They've calculated that political interest outweighs country.
(This is also why I'm pessimistic of any strategy by the House to send a comprehensive Health Bill back to the Senate. If Republicans aren't willing to vote for something as common-sense as PayGo, what hope is there that they'll cross the aisle for Health Care Reform?)
Now, interestingly Senator Elect Scott Brown (R-MA) has said that he might vote along Democratic lines in some cases. Well, that’s obvious, because it’s his @#$ if he doesn’t. He’s going to be running again in 2012. He’s running in a state that Obama’ll carry by 10-20 points (yes, even now). He’s running in a Presidential Election cycle, where turnout will be far, far, far higher than it was this January. If he has any hope of re-election, he needs to blunt the passions of the opposition (me). Voting even occasionally Democratic does that.
On the other hand, how he would have voted for PayGo is a mystery.
The Bubble. The mysterious object that floats over and around all Presidents, cutting him off from all thought, all sanity, all objection. (Think old episodes of “the Prisoner” only harder to get through...)
There’s something to this concept, but in the end I think it’s more of a “mental” bubble than an actual one.
That’s a whopper of a number. Even I, Mr. Sunshine, was expecting at most the high sixties. But more polling is sure to come later today, and I expect it to be mostly positive.
What happened last night, to paraphrase the West Wing yet again, is that people were reminded why they like the President so much. (Sorry, I can repeat that line in sign-language…regular West Wing watchers will know what I mean). I think another reason for the (presumed) polling success of the speech, is the that the people felt like they were heard last night. The people got through the “bubble” and got through to the President. The polling should reflect that:
One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted -- immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.
But the devastation remains. One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. And for those who'd already known poverty, life has become that much harder.
This recession has also compounded the burdens that America's families have been dealing with for decades -- the burden of working harder and longer for less; of being unable to save enough to retire or help kids with college.
So I know the anxieties that are out there right now. They're not new. These struggles are the reason I ran for President. These struggles are what I've witnessed for years in places like Elkhart, Indiana; Galesburg, Illinois. I hear about them in the letters that I read each night. The toughest to read are those written by children -- asking why they have to move from their home, asking when their mom or dad will be able to go back to work.
For these Americans and so many others, change has not come fast enough. Some are frustrated; some are angry. They don't understand why it seems like bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded, but hard work on Main Street isn't; or why Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems. They're tired of the partisanship and the shouting and the pettiness. They know we can't afford it. Not now.
At the same time, I would like to respectfully remind my fellow citizens that the bubble cuts both ways. That sometimes (actually a lot of times) what the President says to the people doesn’t get through to them.
Ahhh, remember all those times the President said that turning around the economy “was going to be tough”, and that “it took us a long time to get into this mess, and its going to take us a long time to get out of it”, and he was going to “make mistakes”??
It was like the American people heard that. Let that sink in for about two days, and then started asking “WHY HAVEN’T YOU FIXED THE ECONOMY, YET?!?!?” They also seemed shocked that the President made a few mistakes along the way.
By way of example let me present you a quote from last night’s speech, specifically on America’s Foreign Policy:
As we have for over sixty years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores. But we also do it because it is right. That is why, as we meet here tonight, over 10,000 Americans are working with many nations to help the people of Haiti recover and rebuild. That is why we stand with the girl who yearns to go to school in Afghanistan; we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran; and we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea. For America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.
Now, I took that quote as a statement on America’s role in the world, and why its important to stay involved, and more importantly, reminding America that even in these tough times, doling out Foreign Aid was pretty damn important, and has important consequences.
Juan Cole, who’s forgotten more about the Middle East than I will ever know, took it another way:
The attempt to position the US military occupation of Afghanistan and the sabre-rattling and threatened sanctions against Iran as somehow beneficial to women in those countries is a continuation of Bush administration rhetoric that is unworthy of Obama. These themes may appeal to the Mavis Leno faction of American feminists, but are unconnected to Afghan and Iranian women's lived reality. The position of women in Afghanistan is better now than under the Taliban, but the new Afghanistan is still an Islamic republic, and president Karzai pandered for votes among the Shiite Hazaras by allowing Shiite law to operate among them on personal status issues, rather than national law. One implication of this step is that Hazara women are now liable to marital rape. So this is the liberation the Obama administration is bringing Afghan women? Moreover, Obama's escalation of the war will have a negative impact on women and families caught in the crossfire. It is a foolish argument to make because so easily disproven.
I’m not trying to dismiss the concerns Dr. Cole is making, but…that’s not the point President Obama was making in that phase of the speech. America is spending money, money it could be argued, is best spent in areas of domestic concern right now. He needed to stand up and say: “Hey, I know this money isn’t being spent here, but it’s going to do long term good around the world, and its going to make us friends that we’re going to need into the future."
What Dr. Cole does here is telescope everything through the lens of his particular field of expertise, and in no small way, crowding out all the other information therein. I don’t want to call it disingenuous. It's not. It’s a natural enough habit (particularly for University Professors -- yeah, I'm talking to you, Dad), but it doesn’t provide a fair reading of the speech.
We also have the usual critics and pontificators rambling on and on. Dana Milbank thought it was long detailed and tepid. Marc Halperin was baffled by it. How Mark Halperin isn’t baffled by spelling his name correctly eludes me, but someone appointed Mark Halperin an expert on Politics. Someone ought to clue the Mainsteam Media that that person was Mark Halperin. Ross Douthat thinks if Obama keeps going this direction, he’s going to lose reelection. But…Douthat’s an asshat, so…
But there were people who got it, and absorbed it in the way I thought (and Obama hoped) it would be absorbed…
It was a terrific performance. He almost seemed to be having fun up there; he delivered the speech in a free, almost informal manner. It was easily digestible, user-friendly...but it was also a fighting speech. Certainly, he stuck the needle time and again into the hides of the recalcitrant elephants in the room. It started early in the speech when he recounted the numerous tax cuts that had been passed in the past year as part of his much-distorted Stimulus Plan, to applause from Democrats and silence from Republicans, and he ad-libbed, staring at the Republican side of the room, "I thought I'd get some applause on that one."
This was the president I supported and still support and will support because he alone is calling us away from the cynicism, the ideology, the rhetorical poison, and the red-blue divide that keep us from the reform we desperately need.
Listening to this litany, I'm reminded how Republicans are on the wrong side -- just politically, let alone on policy -- of most signature issues in a populist economic moment. I think there were zero Republicans standing up on any part of Obama's financial reform agenda -- something that polls exceedingly well in addition to being good public policy.
I’ll admit it. I got most of these highlights from Andrew’s blog, but they’re some of my favorite writers, and they all saw it pretty much as I did.
I think it's worth noting that Chris Matthews wasn't trying to take a shot at anybody. I also think it's worth noting that he was attempting to compliment Obama and say something positive about what he's done for race relations. (See Matthews' clarification here.) But I think it's most worth noting that "I forgot Obama was black"--in all its iterations--is something that white people should stop saying, if only because it's really dishonest.
One way to think about this is to flip the frame. Around these parts, we've been known, from time to time, to chat about the NFL. We've also been known to chat about the intricacies of beer. If you hang around you'll notice that there are no shortage of women in these discussions. Having read a particularly smart take on Brett Favre, or having received a good recommendations on a particular IPA, it would not be a compliment for me to say, "Wow, I forgot you were a woman." Indeed, it would be pretty offensive.
The problems is three-fold. First, it takes my necessarily limited, and necessarily blinkered, experience with the fairer sex and builds it into a shibboleth of invented truth. Then it takes that invented truth as a fair standard by which I can measure one's "woman-ness." So if football and beer don't fit into my standard, I stop seeing the person as a woman. Finally instead of admitting that my invented truth is the problem, I put the onus on the woman. Hence the claim "I forgot you were a woman," as opposed to "I just realized my invented truth was wrong."
Ditto for Chris Matthews. The "I forgot Obama was black" sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance--you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don't know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn't forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white.
I'm put back in the mind of the The Wire, when Slim Charles tells Avon that it really doesn't matter that our wars are based on a lie. Once we're fighting, we fight on that lie until the end. I would submit that a significant number of white people in this country, can not stop fighting on the lie. They can't cop to the fact that they really have no standing to speak on Obama's relationship to blackness, because they know so little about black people. It's always hard to say, "I don't know." But no one else can say it for you.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, told ABC News in an interview that she’s “absolutely” certain that a health care bill will pass, but added that it’s “only a beginning.”
“The day this bill passes, and if it doesn’t have a public option in it, I’m introducing my public option bill,” said Woolsey, D-Calif. “On to the next.”
Bingo! This is what House Progressives should be doing. This is what Tom Harkin said a couple of weeks (months?) ago. With the passage of even the crappier Senate Bill, Health Care turns from a one a decade discussion to a yearly discussion. "How are we going to improve the Bill this year?"
“Once you break the [special interest] stranglehold and you get the architecture in place, then it is not a massive reform to change this or add this or modify that,” he said. “My hope is that we move ahead on this and as reforms are in place, people will begin to say, ‘Gee, I didn’t realize that was what they were talking about.’ As more and more of these reforms take place, people will say that this is good, but we need something else, to change this or do that.
“In the future, amending it and changing it isn’t going to be as tough as passing it in the first place. We amend Medicare and Social Security all the time. We are changing rates, fixing this, doing this to make sure that they are viable. That’s what we will do in health care. I’m absolutely convinced of it.”
And there is one other thing Harkin is convinced will eventually come to pass: A public option.
“At some point in the near future, and I don’t know exactly how long it is going to be, we are going to have some sort of a public option out there,” he said. “We might not get it in this bill, but it will come in as the years go by and as people begin to look at insurance companies and how much they are charging. I have no doubt in my mind that we are going to have to go to some kind of a public option, some type of a single-payer type system to bring the costs down. When the administrative costs of Medicare is somewhere around the 3 percent range, but the administrative costs of the private insurance companies are in the 15 percent range, there is a lot of money that can be saved by going to a better system such as a single-payer or a public option-type system.”
Fine by me. More (and quicker) Public Option, the better...
It's been a mixed up hour or so, in regards to the Congressional Democrats who (allegedly) want Health Care Reform.
Yesterday, we had word (courtesy of TPM) that the House was prepared to go with Plan B, in effect passing the Senate version of the bill, coupled with a Senate promise to amend the bill to the House's liking via reconciliation.
Leading Democrats in the House still insist that "all options are on the table" to move ahead on health care. But for the first time since last Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, it's clear that they're coalescing around the most widely discussed option: moving ahead with the Senate bill once it's clear that it will be changed through the filibuster-proof reconciliation process. Before they can move ahead, they need the Senate to make some real headway on their end of the bargain--and they're not getting the signs they need.
Fine, this is what I wanted since the New Year. Failing all else,and seeing what appears to me to be 41 solid "No" votes in the Senate, this would appear to be the only track available.
But no...
Politico then came out with a story that set my hair on fire. That Nancy was considering a two track solution, in effect passing the stuff we all like (like the ban on pre-existing conditions), and holding a comprehensive bill to the end with the stuff we might not (like the individual mandate). Never mind that the two items have to be paired together or Health Care costs will skyrocket...
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday floated the idea of a two-track plan for health care reform — with Congress pursuing easier-to-pass incremental changes now and comprehensive reform later.
That last phrase being the "hair on fire part". It actually prompted immediate calls to the Speaker's Office and my own Congressman Adam Schiff.
Still, in the very next paragraph she was quoted as saying:
“We believe that it’s possible to have comprehensive health care reform as we go forward, but at the same time, it can be on another track where some things can just be passed outside of that legislation, and we’ll be doing both,” Pelosi said in an interview with POLITICO.
Which doesn't quite match up to what was summarized (by the ever un-trustworthy Poltico) before.
"We can work on a comprehensive bill...we've got to figure out what the process is, who goes first, and whether the Senate goes first or second it doesn't matter but the fact remains that it could take a couple weeks for them to debate on the floor," the aide said. "While we're doing that: What else can we do in the meantime?"
"This is just an example," the aide went on, "but the anti-trust exemption isn't in the Senate bill. So that couldn't be added through reconciliation. So the House could pass a couple of smaller things that can pass as freestanding items, and can't be added through reconciliation."
Offering Democrats a potential means to revive their top domestic priority, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flatly predicted Wednesday afternoon that she could muster enough votes to pass the Senate version of health care reform if the upper chamber agreed to adjust the bill through the reconciliation process.
Speaking to columnists just hours before President Obama's first State of the Union Address, Pelosi said that if the Senate used the reconciliation process to revise elements of the legislation unacceptable to her members, the House could approve such a two-track approach. "What I'm saying to you is the Senate bill, stand-alone, I don't see any chance of it [passing the House]," she said. "Reconciliation resolving some of the issues: then we can pass this thing."
So I don't know what the hell is going on right now. Sounds like to me, this last quote from the National Journal was the same thing as Politico got...but Politico decided to spin it their own special way.
I'm turning onto Huffington Post less and less as the days wear on. Bob Cesca is a lonely voice out there...
Stating the obvious by way of a preface, the goal of the progressive movement is to, of course, move government further to the left and thereby achieve progressive policies. The argument right now is about how best to achieve this goal in the context of the current political landscape. I've always thought that a successful progressive movement involved three things: an ongoing marginalizing of the far-right; arguing for progressive policies; and promoting and encouraging the careers of politicians and organizations that are best equipped to help pass progressive legislation.
With that in mind, one of the many reasons why I endorsed, voted for and still support President Obama is because I strongly believe that he's perhaps the only American politician equipped to move the nation in a distinctly leftward direction from within the context of the Oval Office. But at no time have I ever held any delusions that he was some kind of progressive superhero -- a Kucinich or Sanders or Dean with a better jump shot and Jon Favreau on the payroll.
While Barack Obama is, in fact, a liberal, he's not necessarily a progressive who fits squarely into the progressive movement's wheelhouse.
But he's close.
I've always believed that he would be, and currently is, the most liberal president in a generation -- if not since FDR. Furthermore, he's uniquely equipped with the talents to sell it. Who else, off the top of your head, has the presidential right stuff while also being as relatively left-leaning as Barack Obama? I'm talking about the complete package here. Loyal family man, well-above-average intelligence, sense of humor, dynamic personality, legendary oratory skills, political instincts, the knack for managing chaos and possessing a fundamentally liberal world view. (Say nothing of the historical nature of his presidency.)
All that said, he's not perfect. I don't know anyone who's suggesting he is. He's made a variety of miscalculations in his first year, and he'll surely make more mistakes as his first term continues to roll out. Some of the mistakes are only mistakes in that they don't entirely line up with progressive priorities; some of the mistakes are political errors regardless of policy.
Here's where everything begins to fall apart in terms of the anti-Obama left. How do we best call out these mistakes? What does accountability look like?
Some very prominent members of the progressive movement have taken a punitive approach, not only towards the president but even towards allegedly disloyal progressive members of Congress. You've read all of the various descriptions of this movement. The kill-billers. Activists and writers who have a penchant for suggesting that the president is too similar to George W. Bush. Some have promoted the idea of pressuring Bernie Sanders with a primary opponent, while others have suggested that maybe progressive Democrats in the House should return their donations as punishment for (eventually) voting for health care reform without a public option. Some have attempted to team up with wingnuts like Grover Norquist and Dick Armey's tea party movement to attack the administration, as if this will somehow help progressivism.
Granted, Andrew Breitbart paying one of the Mary Landrieu "burglars" (we might as well call them that) may be nothing. But as of last night, I thought this was O'Keefe's ego getting out of control and doing something stupid...but doing it on his own.
But now, we have to ask...what did Breitbart know...and when did he know it? Did he authorize these actions? Did he play any part in these actions?
And, of course, was someone paying him?
You can bet the Federal Marshals are going to be asking him these questions in the next 24 hours.
"This thing's coming out an inch at a time, and there's still a mile to go..."
First, an important note on timing. No one is arguing that we should take our foot off the accelerator today, when the economic recovery remains fragile and job growth has yet to return. In fact, you’ll hear from the President tomorrow night about measures we should undertake right away to jumpstart job creation. In his words and deeds, the President has made clear that recovery comes first. But that doesn’t mean we should wait to start changing the same bad habits in Washington that left a $1.3 trillion deficit on our doorstep when we entered office in January 2009, especially when we can do so without cutting back on our jobs agenda.
Second, a little background on freeze-eology: there are two ways to do a freeze like this: (1) an across-the-board freeze on every program outside of national security; and (2) a surgical approach where overall totals are frozen but some individual programs go up and others go down. In short, a hatchet versus a scalpel.
During the campaign, you may recall that John McCain touted option 1 – the hatchet approach of an across-the-board freeze.
The President was critical of that approach then, and we would be critical of it now. It’s not what we’re proposing. To the contrary, the entire theory of the President’s proposed freeze is to dial up the stuff that will support job growth and innovation while dialing down the stuff that doesn’t. Under our plan, some discretionary spending will go up; some will go down. That’s a big difference from a hatchet.
40% cuts to veterans' benefits and cuts in overall military spending. He removed 500,000 veterans and widows from the pension rolls and slashed benefits for the remainder. Protests erupted, led by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Roosevelt held his ground, but when the angry veterans formed a coalition with Senator Huey Long and passed a huge bonus bill over his veto, he was defeated. He succeeded in cutting federal salaries and the military and naval budgets. He reduced spending on research and education.
What FDR did was far, far, far more drastic than what the President was doing. FDR's mistake was trying to re-balance the budget too fast. It didn't work.
I'm not sure this is going to work either, but I see what the President's thinking. I'm just saying that it could.
But isn't it interesting that the President's Spending Freeze is scheduled to happen at the same time Bush's Tax Cuts are supposed to sunset...
“A lot of our caucus won’t like it but I don’t think we have any choice,” said an adviser to Congressional Democratic leaders, who would only speak on condition of anonymity about internal party deliberations. “After Massachusetts and all the polls about independents’ abandoning us for being fiscally irresponsible, we can’t afford to be spending more than Obama.”
Okay, so let's see what we've got. (I feel like I've scribbled this all down on various napkins, and now I have to pull them together...)
So it may have the added benefit of good Politics and possibly good policy...
Maybe...
Obama is proposing this Spending Freeze in order to keep the confidence of the Bond Traders, so that they will help keep Interest Rates low.
You want to keep interest rates low in order to keep the wheels greased for personal spending.
Personal spending means, you and me having a lower interest rate on our damned credit cards will encourage us to buy that Playstation 3, or Canon EOS-7D Camera.
That in turn helps the Best Buy guy with his salary, which will, in turn, allow him to afford a night out on the town to eat at...well, say...Michael's Bar and Grill, which he leaves Heidi and tip, and so on and so on...
Okay, get that. It's not a bad idea in an of itself, but this grand notion, as said before, needs to be tied to a job package so that other people, besides the Best Buy guy can...say go to Michael's spend money and help pay Heidi's salary (and, of course, leave her a big tip).
Yes, dear...I'm making sure to stress that last part.
So, it would really help if the Congress would pass a whopper of a jobs package.
And according to the Washington Post, the Senate is letting us down...again...by not passing a $100-$200 Million dollar jobs package...but aiming at $80.
Krugman is freaking out, of course. I wish he'd wait until the State of the Union, and see what the details are before melting down...but this is what he does. He's in GET IT DONE mode...again. He writes with a temper, I've said so before.
That being said, both he and Ezra are right about the appalling way the Senate is about to behave...
Nuance is dead in America. The principal goal of this blog, when the President does something that I don't understand or don't necessarily agree with...is to ask why. Why are you doing this? What are the benefits?
There is a logic to Orszag’s gambit, which runs roughly as follows: It’s almost certain that Congress will pass, and the president will sign, a jobs bill early next year, probably in the neighborhood of $100 billion to $200 billion. Given that, and given the difficulty of doing anything about the long-term deficit next year, the administration needs some signal to U.S. bondholders that it takes the deficit seriously. Just not so seriously that it undercuts the extra stimulus.
Okay, so the $800 Billion Stimulus...will increase to a more Krugman friendly 1 Trillion (though still short of 1.2 Trillion that was apparently needed), but in a more politically digestible way. (Oh no, we can't do 1 Trillion in one bill, but $800 and $200? That we can do!) All this to gain the confidence of the Bond Traders...
...so the next question is, is this worth it to get...whatever we get from the Bond Traders? I'm not sure. The cuts don't seem large enough to risk another 1937, my main concern. More on this as it comes...
Tooling around on Erza's blog has been useful at times. Who else takes the time to make something like this, and more to the point...who take the time to actually watch it?
I missed Countdown on Friday...mostly because of a trip to the Pet Store...but partly because all I recorded by MSNBC's coverage of the Haitian Relief Telefon. So I didn't know Countdown was on the air at all (thanks, DirecTV DVR!). So I nearly missed this...
Be sure to watch to the end of the segment to see Keith's response, which will remind you why you like Keith in the first place...
From my perspective, I believe that the average kid just out of college answering phones in a members office (or at least the same type of kid who has to write constituent letters to people on health care bill) knows a helluva lot more about the policy details in the health care reform bill than the vast majority of reporters writing the daily political story on health care reform.
Quick point on that. Karen Tumulty has a piece up about the MA election where she talks about the people in MA knowing about the Nebraska medicaid deal, and other legislative deal making. She says that's because that what was being reported at the time of the election and people could find it from various sources. I agree. But that's a choice made by reporters. We KNOW from myriad polls that voters have no idea what actual provisions are in the health care reform bills. And when questioned, most reporters will point to some overall piece from months back about the issue. But reporters LIKE to write about the political deal making, rather than the policy issues, so that's what people know.
There's a certain kind of column I like to do. One that explains a policy debate in simple terms, even if it's about complicated things. One that calls bull@#$% on conventional wisdom or a rapidly spreading meme. Paul Krugman does that in spades today...
The President talks about his first year fighting against special interests and barring lobbyists from his Administration, as well as the fight to come in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision.
Because the Corporations…of which you are so rightly a feared…are going to @#$% it up.
Not might @#$% it up…they will @#$% it up.
I work for a Corporation. I work what you would call a Mega Corporation, one of the largest in America, if not the World. I won’t tell you which one, but I will give you a hint.
People keep talking about too big to fail…well howzabout too big too function? That’s us in a nutshell.
The idea of International Corporations being all knowing, all seeing and thus omniscient…is just a damn joke. They can barely handle their own business, much less anyone else’s.
Let me repeat an example I made on TPM Blogs yesterday: the decision to save money, by cutting jobs in IT Support, but laying off a bunch of people in America, and outsourcing those jobs...to Poland.
It @#$% you…not.
First, the idea of me having a problem in America…calling some dude in Poland to explain my problem...having him or her barely understand the problem...then having said same dude (or dude-ette) call America again to fix that same problem is...
You can’t write comedy this golden.
And let’s not even get into the issue of the language barrier. While, I'm certain that there is a sizeable chunk of the Polish population with good English skills odds are they’ve already been hired to phone bank somewhere (or God forbid were so good, they were promoted off the phones). You’re running this Polish IT Company, you suddenly need to hire a bunch more people…now you have to cull from the B Team of English Speakers. Your new hires step in and start screwing up Service Requests, slowing things down because the people who made the requests can’t get their work done, and--
--okay, I’ll stop.
The point is that a bunch of people on the ground...who don’t work in offices…who, like me, work in cubicles, knew this was a bad idea from jump. It’s not just the fact that we knew some of the people in Corporate IT, we did…they were friends of ours. It’s not just the fact we use to pick up a phone, and someone you knew would come bounding across the street and fix the damn problem. We knew that sooner or later the BigWigs were going to decide this isn’t going to work, and they’d pull the plug anyway and try to hire everyone back. In the meantime, a lot of lives were changed, a lot of money was wasted, and a bad idea that shouldn’t have been enacted…was enacted anyway because it looked good on the bottom line.
This is what you should be afraid of. Not Corporate Omniscience ruling your life like Big Brother, but Corporate Idiocy making a mess of it like the Marx Brothers.
I bear no illusions. The Court's decision was damn dangerous. They’re going to try to get what they want, when they want, and how they want it. They are going to succeed in a lot of cases…but not all. And even in those cases where they do succeed, the odds are they’re going to screw it up for them as they will the rest of us. All manner of resistance launched against this decision is right and should be enacted.
But just don’t be afraid.
Don’t assume the world’s coming to an end. It’s not.
(I’m still trying to figure out what Keith meant when he kept semi-joking about being yanked off the air at any second. Uhhh, he does realize he works for a Corporation right now, right? I mean, if NBC/Universal wanted him off the air tonight, it could do it.)
And let me suggest another strategy for future use against our Corporate Overlords.
How about pitting them against each another?
Another part of the myth of Corporate Omniscience is that they’re all working in fascistic concert with each other. Bull. There are 13 separate companies (not divisions mind you, actual distinct companies) where I work and we don’t work well with each other, must less anyone else.
Remember, Ford Motor is tacking on $1500 dollars to the price of every vehicle it rolls out for Health Care for its employees. You don’t think Ford Motor doesn’t hate the Health Insurance Industry? Now, Ford Motor spends way too much time taking this anger on its employees, but what if they would be convinced to take it out on United Health Care?
The seismic events of the last few days ends, in some respects, the phony war of the first year of Obama's presidency. As is the case in truly fracturing democracies, the opposition simply does not and cannot accept the fact that it is out of power. The incoherence of the opposition to Obama - that he is both Jimmy Carter and Adolf Hitler, as Stephen Colbert pointed out last night - reveals the irrationality of the hate. It began immediately on the FNC/RNC right. And the ferocity of the campaign against Obama, the sheer dickishness of the GOP and its acolytes, the total oppositionism to everything he has done and indeed anything he might do... suggests that any hope for some kind of cooperation from this rump is impossible.
But the truth is that these forces have also been so passionate, so extreme, and so energized that in a country reeling from a recession, the narrative - a false, paranoid, nutty narrative - has taken root in the minds of some independents. Obama, under-estimating the extremism of his opponents, has focused on actually addressing the problems we face. And the rest of us, crucially, have sat back and watched and complained and carped when we didn't get everything we want. We can keep on carping if we want to. But it seems to me that continuing that - as HuffPo et al. appear to be doing - is objectively siding with the forces of profound reaction right now.
Don't get me wrong. Criticism is still vital. I'm not going to give up on advocating marriage equality or a carbon tax, rather than cap and trade, or for an independent investigation of Bush era war crimes. I think pushing Obama to a more populist position on banks is well and good. But given the alternative, I am going to step up my support of this president in the face of what he is confronting, even when he is not exactly doing everything I want. In my view, you should too.
Look at what we are facing right now: a take-no-prisoners right, empowered by a massive new wave of corporate money unleashed by the Supreme Court, able to wield a 41 seat minority to oppose anything Obama wants, setting up a cycle of failure for a president whom they can then pillory at the polls, and unrepentant about near-dictatorial powers for the presidency, and the routinization of torture in the American government. These forces cannot be appeased. They simply have to be confronted.
I do not believe in some massive turn left or faux-populism that Obama cannot characterologically embody. I do not think ramming the healthcare reform bill through before Brown is seated is good politics. I still believe that Obama should embrace a major assault on long-term debt and make that a center-piece of his SOTU next week.
But I have come around to thinking that the one huge mistake right now would be to surrender the Senate health reform bill.
The dust should indeed settle. But it is absurd that one special election should upend a clear campaign promise, a year of work, and a necessary start on a critical reform without which we hurtle toward bankruptcy even more quickly.
More to the point, politics is also about morale and will as well as reason and moderation. I believe Obama has been both reasoned and moderate and civil in navigating between the Democratic Congress and the embittered, mutinous GOP. I don't think his tone should change. But I do think that any surrender on health now would be a betrayal of his entire campaign. I don't think the Senate bill is perfect; but it's far far better than nothing. And not passing it means not passing anything and surrendering to forces that are as proto-fascist as any we have seen in recent times.
This is about more than health reform and we have to see it in that context. This is about a cynical nihilist attempt to break this presidency before it has had a chance to do what we elected it to do by a landslide vote. It is an attempt to destroy a majority's morale, to break a president's foreign policy autonomy, to prevent engagement in the Middle East peace process, to stop action on climate change, to restore torture, to increase tensions with the Muslim world, to launch a war on Iran. We cannot delude ourselves that if Obama fails, this is not the alternative. It is.
And we have to re-engage as powerfully as we did in the campaign to fight back against these now emboldened forces of reaction. I think this is true not just for the sake of the country but also for the sake of the GOP. The nihilist obstructionism and rhetoric they have embraced makes constitutional democracy close to impossible. Their total lack of any workable alternatives to dire problems is a form of degeneracy we have to avoid empowering.
So fight, Mr President. And to the House Democrats who won't go along with the only way to salvage health reform: this is the only sure-fire way you will lose in November. If you pass this bill, you may also go down in this climate. But you will have done something you can be proud of. Politics cannot always be about narrow self-interest. If it always is, nothing important can get done.
Do your duty. And grow some. Fight back. Explain why you're right. Tell the liberals they can always come back later to reform the bill. Just get this passed.
Funny thing, I remember Keith saying that the Network wanted him to do a Special Comment every night. His reply was: "Well, they wouldn't be very special then, would they?"
Guess what he's doing now? A "Comment" every night.
This is from Laurence O'Donnell, regularly of MSNBC, formerly of the West Wing, and a regular guest blogger on Huffington Post. (Fine! Fine! I'm not a fan of Huffington Post, but I like Laurence, thus...)
Let's remember, even though Laurence has gone Hollywood and all (writing West Wing, acting in Big Love), he was Chief of Staff to the Senate Finance Committee for a bunch of years. So understanding the intricacies of the Senate is definitely in his purview.
So, Laurence's opinion on Senate matters is always valued. At least, it is by me.
Thus, these two paragraphs really got my attention:
In Washington, where everyone is desperate to know what's happening behind closed doors, all you have to do to keep something secret is do it out in the open, preferably on C-Span. Mitch McConnell did exactly that when he entered a unanimous consent agreement with Harry Reid about how to proceed on the health care bill. McConnell knew that agreement was going to make it impossible for Republicans to amend the bill and would put it on a fast track toward passage.
McConnell accepted an agreement brilliantly designed by Reid that required 60 votes to pass an amendment. McConnell did that without anyone noticing anything odd after a year of saturation coverage of the importance of 60 votes in the Senate. Everyone outside the Senate now thinks it takes 60 votes to do anything. Not amendments. Amendments pass by a simple majority, 51 votes. Amendments are usually debated for a couple of minutes or hours or days, then voted on. Once in a while, a 60-vote cloture motion is needed to end debate on an amendment. What McConnell agreed to was an implicit cloture motion in every vote on every amendment, thereby completely surrendering the minority's real power. In all my years in the Senate, I never saw a leader make such a mistake. If it was a mistake.
Reid's motivation was simple. Getting this agreement with McConnell made it so that Reid's version of Senate HCR was going to be the final Senate version of HCR. There would be no surprises from anyone...(including unfortunately a good Prescription Drugs Amendment by the retiring Byron Dorgan...but Sen. Dorgan said on the Randi Rhodes show he can get that passed anyway.)
Oh, this was a pretty important graph as well:
And now the strategy becomes clear: Repeal it! That is the Republican Party battle cry for the 2010 election. Repealing Obamacare is going to be the centerpiece of their campaign to take back the House and Senate. But how can you repeal it if they don't pass it. Hence, Mitch McConnell's enabling.
Umm...
Okay...
Just...gathering myself here...
If the 2010 strategy is to run on a repeal of Health Care Reform, this may go down as one of the dumbest excercises in political history.
Why? Right now, whether I'd like to admit or not (and I really don't) the President is reeling a bit. I don't think he's in any danger of losing re-elect in 2012, but could we see a major, major cut into the Democratic majority in 2010? Most certainly. In fact, history tells us that's exactly what's going to happen...
But if the GOP runs on a total repeal of Health Care. I'm sorry, but that's tone deaf to the point of being insulting to people who are tone deaf.
While we of the Liberal creed have certainly had our arguments over HCR (Health Care Reform) -- I only do this because I note I have a follower...who's not Dad or Heidi. Yay! -- even if the Senate Version of the bill were to pass as is, no one from the Democratic side is gonna want to repeal the sucker.
Amend the living hell out of it, yes. Hell, even I'm for that. But repeal?
Sen. Mitch McChinless (Stephanie Miller reference) actually thinks that running on a platform in defense and support of Insurance Companies is a winner in 2010.
It may actually keep the Democratic Majorties right where they are.
Unless, that's the plan, to let the Democrats run wild for two more years, and get the people even sicker of them, then they'll--
