The Agonist - USA: Congress: Senate

Catholic Bishops' leader defends role in health debate, (& swipes at New York Times)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:35:03 -0800

Julia Duin | Baltimore | Nov 16

Washington Times - Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, defended the bishops' involvement in national health care legislation Monday, saying the church must be "leaven" in the debate.

Speaking at the opening of the bishops' annual business meeting, "to limit our teaching or governing to what the state is not interested in would be to betray both the constitution of our country and, much more importantly, the Lord himself," he said.

Not only did USCCB staff and individual bishops play a vital role in getting abortion restrictions into the recently passed House version of the health care overhaul bill, they served notice Monday they will influence the bill's future.

"We will work to persuade the Senate to follow the example of the House and include these critical safeguards in their version of health care reform legislation," Cardinal George said.

Other prelates expressed jubilation at how the USCCB's lobbying proved crucial to the House bill's passage earlier this month as well as anger at some of their critics.

"This is a principled position, not a political position," Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre said.

In a reference to the New York Times, "The grey lady of New York has continued to misrepresent this as a fundamental change to the availability of abortion in this country being curtailed because of the nefarious bishops," he added. "That is not the case."

Politicians Have Filled the Pipeline with Pain for Middle America

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:59:44 -0800

The announcement of financial overhaul legislation in the U.S. Senate this week smacked of irony as its author, Senator Chris Dodd—the recipient of a sweetheart rate on his own home mortgage—announced a sweeping 1,136 page piece of legislation to “protect consumers.” It appears at this point that the protection consumers and Middle America really need is from this nation’s politicians, who have too long lined their pockets with campaign contributions from big business and who have allowed financial institutions to fleece Middle America.

It wasn’t but a couple of years ago that big business and congress all but eliminated the ability of consumers to effectively discharge their debts in bankruptcy proceedings. At the same time, banks and financial institutions were making loans to borrowers who clearly could not qualify. Banks, financial institutions and credit card companies continued extending generous limits on credit cards and lines of credit to consumers. Now be fair, much of the mortgage activity came from Democrats in congress who believed that everyone had an inalienable right to own a home, evidently whether they could afford it or not. And naturally, Republicans, who long ago sold their soul to big business, positioned their bank and financial institution contributors for all of the mortgage business.

Middle America knew and assumed the risk that what goes up would someday come down, perhaps crashing down, which it did. But when it did and as many Americans lost and continue today to lose their jobs, bankruptcy was and is simply not an available option. Our politicians and big business have virtually eliminated it as an effective option for many consumers.

Now, consumers that are interested in honestly reworking their mortgages cannot even get a return phone call from their lender, and if they do they are told they do not qualify for any sort of loan modification.

So here we are—after encumbering themselves with mortgages they cannot afford, credit cards and credit lines they cannot pay down, financial institutions have the shameless and arrogant audacity to raise consumers’ credit card interest rates to 30%. Clearly, consumers have to take a certain degree of responsibility for their own condition, but how did our elected members of congress and the senate allow big business to systematically repeal consumer protections at virtually every turn?

Middle America really needs to understand how and why our politicians have allowed financial institutions to raise credit card interest rates to a level that is clearly usury. No consumer knowingly consents to a 30% interest rate, regardless of whether there’s a meaningless disclosure on the back of his or her monthly credit card statement on page 3 in tiny type font. Nor do consumers knowingly consent to what has become an ordinary practice by banks and financial institutions of charging consumers $35 for overdraft protection or checks returned due to insufficient funds. Sure, consumers can choose to bank elsewhere, but the practice of fleecing consumers with fees has become so universal by financial institutions that consumers really have no choice.

Without bankruptcy as a viable option for many in Middle America, there is plenty of pain left in the pipeline for years to come as consumers will remain enslaved with unmanageable consumer debt. With no end in sight, consumers will continue to labor under the heavy load of mortgages on devalued homes they cannot afford, credit card bills they cannot pay, and no available remedy in a bankruptcy court that can set them free to start over. It appears that consumer protection is dead and caveat emptor is alive and well.

A. Muser
http://americanmuser.wordpress.com/

Middle America is Disillusioned with the Left and Right

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:54:28 -0800

“Disillusioned” is the word that best describes how many Americans feel after eight years of George Bush and the election of Barack Obama a year ago. Republicans had a majority in congress and the presidency, yet achieved little for Middle America. They betrayed voters by inflating the deficit and growing government, sending men and women into nation-building wars whose purposes are still unknown, and created a culture of moral and ethical corruption in Washington D.C. It was under lax and pathetic regulatory oversight that a Republican president and Republican congress allowed corporations to betray shareholders with questionable and highly leveraged credit default swaps, only to be followed by a $700 billion taxpayer bailout created by the Bush administration—so much for limited government. Republicans are a party without a message and without a messenger.

Last week’s election results in Virginia and New Jersey, where Republican candidates for governor triumphed over their Democrat opponents, say more about the public’s rejection of Obama’s big government solutions and less about Republicans articulating a message to help Middle America. If Republicans think the public is embracing the party again, they are simply whistling past the graveyard, drunk on their own greed, and completely out of touch with the needs of Middle America.

Not that Democrats are offering any worthwhile solutions to address the most pressing needs of Middle America—job creation—but at least Democrats are intellectually honest about their desire for big government, universal healthcare, taxpayer-funded abortions, labor union power, and a litigious society for plaintiff lawyers to fleece the public. There is something, dare I say “refreshing and frank” about knowing where Democrats are on issues that impact Middle America, whereas Republicans pretend to be something they are not.

It is time for the Republican party to stop blindly whoring for the business community and begin addressing the issues that impact Middle America—job creation, affordable healthcare for all, and quality public education for our children. Republicans are a one-trick-pony, where “tax cuts” are their solution for all of Middle America’s problems. It’s because the party cannot articulate rational policy solutions to the real problems we face.

Take healthcare for instance; the Republican solution has been health savings accounts (HSAs). Are you kidding me? We can’t get people to save money in IRAs, never mind HSAs. That’s the best Republicans have got? Why don’t Republicans push to allow consumers to shop for healthcare across state lines, require everyone to have healthcare, and deny insurers from rejecting consumers with pre-existing conditions?

If Democrats have any hope of maintaining power, they too need to put viable solutions on the table for Middle America, where people care a hell of a lot more about jobs and the economy than government-run healthcare, union card check, the protection of gays from hate crimes, and cap and trade. Both parties have failed miserably to address the needs of Middle America, which I suppose is why I feel so disillusioned with both parties.

A. Muser
http://americanmuser.wordpress.com/

Graham Censured for Sensible Climate Stance

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:22:11 -0800

Kate Sheppard | Charleston County, SC | November 11

Mother Jones - The Republican Party of Charleston County, S.C. on Monday voted to censure Sen. Lindsey Graham over his support for climate legislation and his willingness to work across party lines on the issue.

The Republican has often worked with Democrats in Congress, but Charleston County Chairwoman Lin Bennett says his work on climate legislation is the last straw.

The party resolution passed Monday says Graham has weakened the Republican brand. Bennett expects a similar resolution to be introduced at the state GOP convention next year.

Bennett called his views "out of step with the beliefs of Republican voters."

GOP Senators Absent at Start of Climate Debate

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:32:59 -0800

Washington DC | November 3

AP - Republicans boycotted the start of committee debate Tuesday on a bill to curb greenhouse gases, protesting that the bill's costs have not been fully examined. The action put a spotlight on the difficulties Democratic leaders face in moving climate legislation this year.

Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio attended the session for 15 minutes to explain the GOP's argument for staying away. He insisted the tactic ''is not a ruse'' to block the bill, but concern that its widespread impact on the country has not been made clear.

But Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, the panel's chairman, argued the EPA already has provided ''a full blown economic analysis'' and that Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised further studies when the bill is merged with other legislation. She insisted ''we're not rushing we are taking our time.''

The partisan rift in the Environment and Public Works Committee, which delayed votes on amendments to the legislation, exposed the sharp divisions in the Senate over how to address global warming. Democrats also have been split on the issue. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who said he had deep reservations about the bill also was absent.

Lieberman To Filibuster?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:47:00 -0700

New from Politico is that Sen. Lieberman will filibuster the Reid plan if it contains the public option:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid’s has said the Senate bill will.

If I were Reid I would tell Lieberman this: "if you join the Republicans on this your committee assignments and all privileges with the Democrats are done. You are toast."

It won't, however, happen.

Still: dude's not a Democrat. Time to kick his ass out of the party.

Public Option To Have Opt-Out?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:23:55 -0700

Harry Reid is expected to announce that the "public option" in current healthcare reform legislation will have a state by state opt out clause. From the Times:

The Senate health care legislation will include a government-run insurance plan, but states would be allowed to “opt out” of it, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, will announce officially on Monday afternoon, Senate Democratic aides said.

How would states do this?

Mr. Reid’s office has not released any details. In theory, states that wish to opt out of the public plan would have to adopt a law to do so, which would require agreement between the state legislature and the governor.

I think that is a reasonable hurdle, or to put it another way, an acceptable compromise, because it is a hurdle. It puts the burden on state legislators to justify why they think their state shouldn't be a part of the plan.

That being said, I don't like The National Journal's take on it:

Reid's apparent intent to move ahead with a public option, including an opt-out, has led some Senate aides to suggest Reid is readying a strategy in which he might lose the cloture vote but then quickly bring to the floor a bill with a compromise public option designed to attract more centrists.
That approach would reduce the chance of attacks from liberals by proving that the votes are not there for a more robust public option, an aide to a centrist senator said.

That, on the other hand, doesn't surprise me and would be very typically of the Senator from Nevada. Is it an attempt to water the bill down and sell out progressives? Might very well be.

Obama, the Dems, and Discipline

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:48:38 -0700

In response to the question of whether support for any non-laughable health reform bill from "moderate" Republicans like Chuck Grassley was ever a possibility, Lindsay Beyerstein nails it:

"Simple answers to simple questions: No, there was never any realistic prospect of getting Chuck Grassley to support healthcare reform. Grassley is a Republican and, unlike Democrats, Republicans have party discipline. Scuttling health reform is the GOP's number one priority. It should have been clear from the outset that any plan that depended on the cooperation of Republicans was doomed."

When you get beyond the by-now reflexive timidity of most Democrats on hot issues, the Dems' second-biggest mistake is their having confused party discipline with goose-stepping anti-democracy. The two are not the same, and although they sometimes go together, they don't have to.

For instance: ironclad party discipline in the service of a dishonest war or the smearing of a popular idea such as a public health care option is indeed anti-democratic discipline. It is the closing of ranks to sabotage the public will or the public interest. But ironclad party discipline to hold together the votes needed for a bill that will give a majority of Americans the choice they want in health care is pro-democratic discipline. It is the force required to fend off reactionary opposition to giving non-wealthy Americans a slightly fairer shake. Stern party unity for the sake of greater social or economic equality is not a vice. It is a virtue.

Ask anyone who has led an egalitarian social revolution – say, Nelson Mandela – if "bipartisanship" mattered at the height of the conflict between an entrenched controlling minority and the rest of the society.

The Dems don't get this. Softened by lack of true pressure from the left in a corporate-controlled campaign system, Democrats have forgotten how to fight, how to risk personal harm for the sake of the public good. True, somewhere deep in the Dems' lizard brains, the labor and civil rights legacies of their party still nudge them subliminally toward a "high road" sensibility that the GOP lacks. But the Dems have forgotten that the high road – the road of King and Mandela – has also been a bloody one, and that surviving and prevailing on that road has demanded, above all else, a soldierly unity unbroken by shattered bones on the back roads of the South or shattered political decorum in the Capitol dome. Today, all that remains of the high road for today's Democratic Party is its sense of style and etiquette: its aversion to combat, its refusal to meet the amorality of the GOP with righteous Democratic ruthlessness, its naive insistence on the freedom of Democratic politicians to follow their own personal muses through the grassy fields while a united Republican Party erects iron walls hemming in the political landscape.

And so we now have Democratic President Barack Obama. He is eminently civilized. He is almost saintly in comparison with the opponents whose daggers hack away at his bowels. He gives a great speech. His aides tell us he'll wow us on Wednesday night.

But in the darkness away from the cameras, will he fight?

And So It Begins

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:29:28 -0700

As I wrote a few days ago. It was only a matter of time until the Republicans politicize the death of Senator Kennedy. They are nothing if not predictable. As Ian has noted ad nauseum: they know how to be an opposition party.

First from the Times of London:

Democrats were accused of exploiting the death of Senator Edward Kennedy yesterday after immediately trying to use his name to revive President Obama’s flagging attempt to overhaul the US healthcare system.

Ed Feulner, the president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, chastised Democrats for invoking Mr Kennedy in their push for healthcare reform.

He said: “It is wrong and tactless to use Senator Kennedy’s death, or anyone’s, simply to advance a particular policy agenda. This is a time for genuine tribute, not crass politics.”

More after the jump.

And then there is this nauseating story in Politico:

Key conservative voices have begun to charge in the day after Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death that Democrats are inappropriately politicizing the senator’s death, his memorial and his legacy.

Kennedy was that ultimate political creature, a “lion of the Senate,” and the last son of the archetypal American political family — his passing is inevitably political. In his final days, he focused on a narrow political goal, pleading with state leaders to change state law to posthumously fill his Senate seat with an interim appointee who would be a vote in favor of the health care legislation he championed.

So his allies on the left have made no secret of their hopes that his legacy will serve to bolster the uncertain health reform plan, with Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) even suggesting the bill be named for Kennedy.

And that has some influential conservative voices sounding the alarm and calling foul.

More like, crying foul. All they seem able to do these days is cry. Cry-babies, the lot of 'em.

Saying goodbye to a lot more than Teddy

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:25:47 -0700

This news, only a little earlier than anticipated, still shocks me and greatly saddens me.

Now and then I start to write posts in which I would grapple with and, mostly for my own sake, try to account for my own transformation from a rather uninformed conservative youth to a self identified liberal. I usually gave up and never posted.

Dammit, I am actually sobbing as I read the obits.

But I can't say why I will miss Ted Kennedy without describing how my attitude toward his politics and his political skills changed over the years.

When I first moved to Massachusetts in the early 70's, fresh from Nevada and straight from a home of staunch paleolithic republican sentiments, my typical reactions to Kennedy's causes such as health care were un-researched quips. "Oh sure," I would think, "a guy that has never lacked a massive family trust fund thinks I should pay more taxes so everyone can go see a doctor when he wants". I am now in a position to set up our own family trust fund and I can't always see a doctor Its so much easier to be heartless when your ignorance enforces a distance from the realities of hardships and unjust distribution of rewards that Kennedy mustered us to battle. Find any wingnut who still vilifies Kennedy and I will show you an ignoramus.

In 1976, I worked for a consulting firm and had to travel to Washington DC just to be an extra in a show of resumes for a potential customer. On one shuttle flight down there, it happened that the the Senator had the seat next to me. He rode coach without any ceremony at all, just another passenger not hinting any expectation of deference. I was not even positive it was him when he first sat down. I did not speak to him. He was paying a lot of attention to a copy of NY Times Magazine with a cover story on some political upstart who was then the governor of Georgia. It was a crowded field that year.

It was the Viet Nam war that still repelled me from Republicans but Carter has always conjured up hope and decency and I voted for him in hope. Kennedy seemed to me at that time a man beaten by his own bad luck but he resolutely soldiered on. His wary dance with corporate powers while he introduced bill after bill to make life livable for what we used to call the working class simply never let up. He had the big ideas if not the charisma to turn our political hearts. But it takes so much more work and organization and granite-willed persistence to redirect a nation that, in its private dreams, sees itself as potentially wealthy and independent individualists. Those dreams were exploited easily and have given us the local and the presidential politics of the Reagan revolution. And all through that dark period, Ted strove on, cutting deals, compromising where compromise would at least gain the embattled middle class some small help.

I was so disgusted by the response a self-absorbed electorate and media handed the profoundly decent but unwily Carter that I voted for John Anderson in 80. The national political scene had become an ethical vacuum. Yet all that while Teddy beat the drums for better benefits and programs. Even as I withdrew from the fights over the wrong issues that could have no winners, I recall being impressed how Kennedy could so respectfully engage the barking and repugnantly narrow representatives of One Selfishness Under God. That capacity to remain engaged, to find a way to get any opponent to look you in the eye ...that is the gift of a great politician. I grew to know I was not such a creature and he, with few peers, was.

Not until MoveOn offered me what seemed like a real voice, did I reengage in politics. But after four years of hopeful changes and improvements in US policy, my own politics are now nearly ready to walk off the field again. If a Radical Greens party springs up, I might waste my vote on them in symbolic and futile protest. I see a nation that has lied to itself about how bad its economy was until its crooked and faked affluence nearly collapsed. I see a country that has lied to itself about how to live well until it is rife with life style and environmentally induced diseases and wants only a quick cheap fix. I see a country with a pathologically overgrown sense of its place among the economic and military forces that will shape history. Economic and political power will be wrenched from the hands of any nation that poisons itself and lets the mass of ill, poor and unrepresented only grow. I see a nation that has now lost one of its last lions for the little man, one of the unthanked giants who worked to give those dreaming individualists what they needed rather than what they wanted. Without that concern which Kennedy embodied for the welfare of the citizen above the welfare of corporate power, we will be too weak a country to address our real problems.

An American Princeps Senatus

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:20:56 -0700

Several years and a lifetime ago I read the first three books of Colleen McCullough's 'Master's Of Rome' series. She documents the rise (and fall) of Marius in books one and two and Sulla's march on Rome and the subsequent proscriptions of his enemies and his installation of Pompey as a cat's paw of sorts and his restoration of Caesar, whom Marius had banished to a life of sacerdotal restriction when he appointed him Flamen Dialis. So much for the plot-line of the three historical novels.

What I'm struck by today is a scene in the first novel, titled, "The First Man in Rome." Marius has yet to be consul more than once. He's agitating for it in the Senate. Customary Roman law at the time was that no man could be consul more than once without an intervening period of about ten years--if memory serves me. All kinds of skullduggery is happening in the Senate but the Senate is ably led by a patrician named Marcus Aemelius Scaurus. And Scaurus is the last great Princeps Senatus. I say the last great princeps senatus, because although he was a patrician and had all the flaws of a patrician, he still ably withstood the emerging divide in the Roman republican consensus, which led to the populares and optimates and the civil wars, and in the end, he always did what was in the republic's best interests. His successors were nothing like him, lackeys of the optimates all.

I am reminded of this man on the day of Ted Kennedy's death. Like Scaurus, Kennedy was a patrician and had all the faults a man from that class would have. The mistakes of his early life are proof. But, in the end, he always rose above his wealthy origins to support the broader interests of the people and our American republic writ large.

I can only hope that his passing does not mark a descent into republican immolation as it did in the Roman republic. If ever there were an American princeps senatus, it was Ted Kennedy.

Sixty Votes, Right?

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:31:47 -0700

What kind of utter lamage is this? I mean, seriously, last time I checked the Democrats had 60 votes now in the Senate, right? And how many of Obama's appointees are in place? Less than 50%

Huzzah for unity porn!

On a serious note, Obama, to my mind, has about three or four months, at the most, to figure it out. After that, the Republicans are going to eat him and his brand of bi-partisanship alive. And yes, when the Republicans win back a majority in the House in 2010 I will say I told you so.

Guantanamo ire provokes Senate threats

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:19:40 -0700

Josh Rogin | Washington | August 5

MSNBC - If it takes shutting down the Senate to block the Obama administration from moving prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to U.S. soil, that’s exactly what some Republican senators plan to do.

Following several reports Aug. 3 that the White House was debating two distinct proposals for dealing with more than 250 prisoners still housed at the detention facility at the U.S. military base in Cuba, senators from various parts of the country pledged to fight any attempt to move the terrorism suspects to the United States, severely complicating President Obama’s plan to close the prison by January.

Now That The Democrats Have A Filibuster Proof Majority In The Senate, Will They Use It?

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:57:11 -0700

Coleman Concedes, Dems Have 60 Votes

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:44:05 -0700

The Minnesota Supreme Court issued a judgment in favor of Al Franken this afternoon. Norm Coleman has conceded. The Democrats now have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Will they use it?