Blogs

Deem and Pass

— By Kevin Drum

| Tue Mar. 16, 2010 8:33 AM PDT

If you have a life, you don't care about the subject of this post and have never heard of it. But then there are the rest of us, the people who read (and write!) this blog, and for us the issue of the day is "deem and pass":

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it. Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic — known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

For Republicans, this is the latest sign of a liberal apocalypse. Here's Sarah Palin tweeting frantically: "Listen2 MARK LEVIN radio;he argues Obamacare passage plan UNCONSTITUTIONAL (will Dems care about that?) Art. I is clear how bill becomes law"

Well, whatever. Republicans have used this procedural tactic before too, Democrats have challenged it, and the Supreme Court ruled that it was fine. So they're on thin ice both on grounds of partisan hypocrisy and legal fundamentals. Still, it's remarkably tone deaf for Democrats to do this. Like it or not, process has become a big issue as healthcare has dragged along into its second year, and the public really does seem to have grown wearly of endless procedural wankery. What's more, there's no benefit. Any Democrat who thinks that Republican attacks this fall are going to be blunted even a smidge because, technically, they voted for the package of fixes, not the main bill, is living in fantasy land.

In fact, it will probably just make things worse. They still will have voted for the Senate bill, but it'll look like they're trying to hide the fact. That's the worst possible tack they can take. For the fence sitters, their best hope is to pass the bill — through gritted teeth if they must — and then come out of the House chamber smiling broadly and proclaiming it a historic advance for ordinary Americans of all incomes etc. etc.

To summarize then: deem-and-pass won't help anyone, puts process back in the news, will give Republicans another free shot at Democrats, and makes individual House members look like cowards. But other than that it's a great idea.

Continues Below

Continued From Above

Checking Up on Obama's Transparency Promises

— By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Mar. 16, 2010 7:35 AM PDT

Improved transparency was one of the Barack Obama's major promises coming into office last year. And it wasn't just an empty campaign pledge. On his first full day in office he signed an executive order declaring that the Freedom of Information Act  "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." FOIA, Obama said, "is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government."

Journalists and open govenrment advocates heralded the move, which came after eight years of disregard and outright distain for the act under George W. Bush. But when it comes to information requests from citizens and the press, it looks like a number of agencies aren't doing much better under Obama. From the Associated Press:

The review of annual Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that overall, the use of nearly every one of the open-records law's nine exemptions to withhold information rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.
Among the most frequently used exemptions: one that lets the government hold back records that detail its internal decision-making. Obama had directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.

The administration has made much more information available to the public through initiatives like its Open Government web site and the disclosure of the White House visitor logs. While they are improving transparency, there’s still plenty of information that Americans have asked for and not received, as the FOIA denials indicate. A better measure of openness in government might well be how the administration deals with information that it would rather not make public. As Obama put it in his FOIA memo last year, "The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears."

Chamber's New Anti-Dodd Blitz

— By Andy Kroll

| Tue Mar. 16, 2010 7:23 AM PDT

This morning, the radio airwaves here in Washington, DC, featured a new ad from lobbying behemoth the US Chamber of Commerce attacking Sen. Chris Dodd's new financial reform bill, unveiled yesterday afternoon. The bill, the ad says, would add burdensome bureaucracy to financial regulation, and that we'd all be better off with a revamp of the system in place then creating new entities like a council of regulators and a consumer protection agency. The ad essentially echoes the Chamber's public position on the Dodd bill—which is outright opposition. "This bill takes three steps backwards with the hope of making future progress," said David Hirschmann, president and CEO of the Chamber's Center for Capital Markets Competitivenes.

That the Chamber opposes Dodd's bill is far from surprising. The organization, which has spent as much as $300,000 a day lobbying, fervently opposes many of the key reforms in the Dodd bill—it even started an entire website, StoptheCFPA.com, to fight plans to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, an independent organization whose purpose would be to protect consumers against predatory lenders, unscrupulous credit and debit card practices, exorbitant rates charged by payday lenders, and more. The Chamber, however, has claimed that the CFPA would kill jobs and place undue burden on small business owners.

Today, the Chamber is holding a press conference on the Dodd bill at its Washington offices. We'll be there, so check back for more later this afternoon.

 

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for March 16, 2010

Tue Mar. 16, 2010 2:00 AM PDT

war photo 031610

Pvt. Jeffrey Pohl, left, with his son Pvt. Zackary Pohl, take a short break to stop for a picture while during a recent exercise. The pair unknowingly ended up in the same basic training company after enlisting at different times. Photo via the US Army.

End of Day Roundup

— By Kevin Drum

| Mon Mar. 15, 2010 10:55 PM PDT

Late night tab dump:

  • Healthcare. Is California a bellwether for the nation again? From the LA Times: "The state's uninsured population jumped to 8.2 million in 2009, up from 6.4 million in 2007....Among those over age 18, nearly 1 in 3 had no insurance for all or part of 2009, the UCLA researchers found. The ranks of uninsured children also grew."
     
  • The Middle East. Gen. David Petraeus recently dispatched a team to the Pentagon to carry a message: lack of progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is endangering American troops. "The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises....The Mullen briefing and Petraeus's request hit the White House like a bombshell."
     
  • Debt Bomb. We all know about the coming wave of option ARM resets and commercial real estate defaults. But in 2012 a huge pile of junk bonds are going to come due too. "With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies....Even Moody’s, which is known for its sober public statements, is sounding the alarm. 'An avalanche is brewing in 2012 and beyond if companies don’t get out in front of this,' said Kevin Cassidy, a senior credit officer at Moody’s....The result is a potential financial doomsday, or what bond analysts call a maturity wall. From $21 billion due this year, junk bonds are set to mature at a rate of $155 billion in 2012, $212 billion in 2013 and $338 billion in 2014."

And in other news, Federal Express says that my new computer will arrive tomorrow. Hooray! Or maybe not. If I disappear from the intertubes but you hear lots of swearing and broken crockery from the general direction of the Pacific Ocean, you'll know that things aren't going so well.

From the Annals of Laughable Threats

— By Kevin Drum

| Mon Mar. 15, 2010 4:16 PM PDT

A bunch of people have already commented on this, but it's hard to resist piling on. On Sunday, Sen. Lindsay Graham warned that if Democrats push through healthcare reform via reconciliation, "it's going to poison the well for anything else they would like to achieve this year or thereafter." Today, Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation agreed: "If they pull off this crazy scenario they are putting together, they are going to destroy a lot of the comity in the House."

Reasonable guy that I am, I'll concede that there's a colorable argument that Democrats haven't really tried all that hard to be genuinely bipartisan. Still, that pales compared to what Republicans have done. The GOP caucus voted virtually unanimously against a stimulus bill that was 40% tax cuts. They voted against the Waxman-Markey climate bill. They pretended to negotiate for months in the Senate over healthcare reform before Max Baucus finally figured out they weren't serious. Then they voted unanimously against it. Then they did the same thing to Chris Dodd over financial reform. They've held up nominees out of sheer pique. They've filibustered everything in sight, even bills they approve of, just to clog up the Senate calendar. If Democrats float a Mother's Day resolution this year, the GOP will probably filibuster it on the grounds that it doesn't explicitly exclude illegal immigrants.

So what can Graham possibly be talking about? I mean, we're talking about the guy who floated the notion that if Obama agrees to try al-Qaeda suspects in military tribunals then he'll round up Republican support for closing Guantanamo Bay, even though he must know full well that he can't possibly hold up his end of that bargain. The well was poisoned long ago. There's no comity left. Who do these guys think they're kidding?

Continues Below

Continued From Above

Save the Newts from the Internet

— By Julia Whitty

| Mon Mar. 15, 2010 3:25 PM PDT

— Photo courtesy TRAFFIC

The CITES meeting is underway in Qatar this week, with 175 member nations struggling to regulate international trade in everything from Atlantic bluefin tuna to elephant ivory, plus all kinds of other important stuff.

Getting less attention, but nevertheless interesting, is the story of the Kaiser's spotted newt, an Iranian salamander. The species is critically endangered in the wild, believed to number fewer than 1,000 mature individuals.

The little amphibian also illustrates a new conduit for danger for wildife: the internet. The species is avidly sought by pet by collectors and wildlife enthusiasts, and its numbers have declined by more than 80 percent in recent years. Now it's the first species under consideration for an Appendix I listing—the highest level of protection, which bans all commercial international trade in the species—under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Endangered Fauna and Flora (CITES).

WWF and TRAFFIC tell us that CITES governments will be considering whether or not to take a more proactive approach to regulating online trade, including:

  • Creating an international database of the trade
  • Implementing scientific research to gauge the correlation between wildlife loss and online trade
  • Forging a closer collaboration with INTERPOL, the international law enforcement agency

In 2006, an investigation by TRAFFIC into the sale of Kaiser's spotted newts revealed 10 websites claiming to stock the species. One Ukrainian company claimed to have sold more than 200 wild-caught specimens in a single year. The problem is the internet connects sparse sellers with sparse buyers willing to pay $300 for a newt, amplifying the troubles for wildlife.
 

Will Health Care Reform Help or Hinder a Climate Bill?

— By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Mar. 15, 2010 3:16 PM PDT

It looks like Congress may finally pass health care reform this week. Environmental advocates have been bemoaning the fact that the prolonged health care debate has tangled up action on climate. But could passage of the bill actually do more to screw up the chances of passing climate and energy legislation? Lindsey Graham – the only Republican actively engaging with Democrats on climate – warned yesterday that moving health care without Republican support may ruin hopes for future bipartisanship.

"If they do this, it's going to poison the well for anything else they would like to achieve this year or thereafter," Graham said on ABC's "This Week” on Sunday, warning against using reconciliation to move the bill forward.

Among Republicans, Graham is one of the few that the administration might care about. In addition to working with John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a climate and energy package, he’s the basically the lone GOP collaborator on Guantanamo and immigration (though he’s had some harsh words for Obama on that of late, too).

He said, however, that maybe the Obama administration would do well to focus on climate and energy--an area where there is some bipartisan interest in collaboration--before moving to other contentious issues. "This is one issue where the president has been great. He's saying all the right things to give us a chance to become energy independent, clean up the air and create jobs. But when it comes to health care, he's been tone deaf, he's been arrogant, and they're pushing a legislative proposal and a way to do that legislative proposal that's going to destroy the ability of this country to work together for a very long time. And that's not necessary."

The Chamber's Civil War in Washington

— By Josh Harkinson

| Mon Mar. 15, 2010 2:43 PM PDT

At the same time that the US Chamber of Commerce is leading the fight against health care reform and a carbon cap, one of its largest grassroots affiliates is strongly disagreeing with its stance in meetings with powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Today, a delegation from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers to voice strong support for cap and trade legislation and the core principles of the Senate's health care bill. The delegation included United Airlines, Pacific Gas & Electric, and several small businesses. "The San Francisco business community has a different perspective on some key issues that are currently being considered in Congress," said San Francisco Chamber vice president Rob Black, explaining why he'd chosen to circumvent the US Chamber's lobbyists. "We wanted to be able to communicate with [Pelosi] directly the San Francisco businesses community's perspectives on both those issues."

Along with the San Francisco Chamber--one of the ten largest Chamber affiliates---ever more businesses and trade groups are distancing themselves from the Chamber's partisan tactics. Earlier this month, a Microsoft representative publicly repudiated the Chamber's position on climate change, writing that the Chamber "has never spoken for nor done work on behalf of Microsoft regarding climate change legislation." And business groups that together count more members than the US Chamber does--groups that include the US Womens Chamber of Commerce, the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce--have signed a pledge in support of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which the US Chamber opposes.

Black is confident that the San Francisco Chamber's positions have wide appeal across Main Street America. Climate change and oil dependence affect everyone from farmers to city merchants, "and rising health care costs are killing our small businesses," he pointed out. "You can look at Main Street and see lots of empty store fronts. A big part of that is health care costs. We have to address that." 

Is Halter Trying to Keep Big Labor at Arm's Length?

— By Suzy Khimm

| Mon Mar. 15, 2010 2:13 PM PDT

Bill Halter kicked off his Democratic primary challenge to Senator Blanche Lincoln with heavy backing from national labor unions. Now he's trying to keep his distance from them. On Friday, an independent group called “Arkansas for Change” launched an attack ad against Lincoln that was co-sponsored by a Texas AFL-CIO organizer. The ad hit on many of Halter’s own criticisms of Lincoln, accusing her of “bailing out Wall Street banks—no strings attached” and going soft on consumer financial protection.

Lincoln charged the ad was it was launched by “Halter’s union sponsors.”  But Halter quickly responded that his campaign “has nothing to do with the expenditure ad." He then tried to disassociate himself from the pledge that the SEIU made in December to help him retire more than $440,000 in campaign debt. The Lincoln campaign has “alleged that the campaign debt has been paid off [by the SEIU], but it hasn’t been—I wish it was,” he told a local news station.

 

[More]