The prospects for achieving comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year, let alone a bill with enough teeth to cut climate-warming pollution in a serious way and tip the playing field toward clean energy, have dimmed considerably over the past few weeks. But other legislative opportunities are cropping up that hold keys to getting our country's response to the climate crisis on track.
The declining momentum for comprehensive climate and energy legislation is not surprising, considering the diminished resolve among Senate Democrats do anything big. Increasing numbers of Democratic senators have indicated that they would be comfortable running for the hills and passing an "energy-only" bill -- in other words a modest bill that lacks a cap on carbon pollution and contains industry-friendly policies. This approach resembles that taken in energy bills passed during the Bush administration. If senators decide they want to move in this direction, they've got a place to start. A polluter-friendly energy-only bill passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June.
President Obama offered only tepid pushback against such inclinations last week. And while Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the key Republican working with Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to craft a comprehensive bill, albeit a compromise one (e.g. one with more nuclear and offshore drilling), has said he is not ready to settle for a "half-assed" energy-only fallback, this is not very reassuring. Sen. Graham has indicated that one of his intentions in working with Democrats is to craft a bill that's even friendlier to corporate polluters than other, already polluter-friendly proposals.
While frustrating, the dismal prospects for achieving strong legislation this year need not forestall progress in the fight against global warming. There are other pressure points around which progressives can mobilize, not only to propel our country down a path to clean energy, but also to help crash the party polluting corporations have thrown with funds from our federal treasury. These include ending billions in subsidies to fossil fuel industries and stopping an expanded taxpayer bailout of the nuclear industry.
Some good news from out in the states following the Hawaii House's defeat of a civil unions bill.
In New Hampshire, the House Judiciary committee voted to kill an effort to reverse the state's same-sex marriage law that the legislature passed and Gov. Lynch signed last year. It also voted down a call for a public vote on the issue.
In Iowa, where a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality would have to be passed in two consecutive legislative sessions before being voted on by the public (several years from now), two "discharge petition"-type efforts failed this morning to pull a constitutional amendment out of committee in both houses of the legislature. The measure, like a discharge petition in the U.S. House of Representatives, would have required a majority number of signatures to pull the bill out of committee. As OpenLefter desmoinesdem reported at Bleeding Heartland yesterday, 62% of Iowans think the legislature should focus on issues other than marriage equality.
The one other thing I do want to note is that in the House, all 44 Republicans voted for the petition but only one Democrat supported it, while in the Senate, all 18 Republicans voted for the petition along with only one Democrat out of 32. Like in New York State, a high percentage of the Democratic caucus voted to support marriage equality, while nearly 100% of the GOP caucus voted against it, so hopefully more of the "this is all the Democrats' fault"-type rhetoric that focuses on parties rather than legislators- which I criticized here- on this issue dies down some more, and folks learn to focus on targeting legislators, not parties. Of course, I don't expect to hear "yay for the Democrats" after these wins, since "the Democrats" kept this from succeeding, but perhaps I should. Sometimes it seems folks are content to blame "the Democrats" after losses but refuse to laud them after wins. Funny thing.
As Joe Mirabella noted last month, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the GOP presidential primaries in both early states come 2012.
All in all, good news, and kudos to a number of activists in both states.
In response to my query on the content of the jobs bill and nature of the deal that earned Republican support for the bill, Senator Reid's office sent me a transcript of Reid's statements on the floor of the Senate this morning. The key graph (emphasis mine):
MR REID: I would also say that we are contemplating, if we can work out the procedural difficulties, not being in session tomorrow. We have some things we have to work out prior to that time because as most everyone knows, we have been working on a bill to end this work period. It's really a nice piece of legislation, started with a bipartisan jobs tax credit with Hatch and Schumer. We have a section 179 small business tax issue that small business is really looking for. We have a highway bill extension, and we also have build America bonds.
So, the four key components of the Senate jobs bill are:
A tax credit, proposed by Senators Schumer and Hatch, for small businesses that hire new workers (see more here)
More Build America Bonds, which make it easier for state and local governments to borrow money (see more here)
Compared to the House jobs bill passed in December, the Senate bill has minimal new public spending. Here is what the House passed:
Shortly after increasing the debt ceiling, the House also narrowly passed a $150 billion jobs package, 217 to 212. The bill includes $48.3 billion in infrastructure projects, $26.7 billion for public sector jobs (teachers, fire fighters, police officers, etc), and $79 billion for social safety net programs such as unemployment insurance, COBRA, and Medicaid. Although it isn't in the legislation, Congress intends to pay for the jobs package using unspent TARP authorization funds, although it's unclear if the savings would cover the entire package.
Here are the key difference:
The Senate dealt with unemployment insurance and COBRA in an earlier bill that has already been signed into law.
The House passed the tax extensions in a different bill which has not been signed into law.
The House bill targeted $28 billion in highway funding, versus $20 billion in the Senate bill
The House bill had $20 billion in other public infrastructure projects, but the Senate is focusing on tax credits for small businesses.
The Senate bill makes it easier for states and local governments to borrow money through Build America Bonds, while the Hose bill gave $26.7 billion in direct grants to states.
Effectively, the Senate bill is relatively bare of public spending compared to the House bill. The difference adds up to about $55 billion in public infrastructure and direct grants to save public sector jobs.
So, yet another good, but already too small, bill has been further gutted by the Senate. The jobs bill coming out of the Senate is still better than nothing, but it will not make much of a dent in the broader employment picture.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has apparently orchestrated a deal on a jobs bill with Senate Republicans. The bill will be introduced later today:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will introduce a jobs bill on Tuesday that he said would have Republican support.
Reid told reporters the bill would be introduced on Tuesday, and that it would include an extension of the tax breaks, known as tax extenders, that expired last year.
"As of last night, there will be Republican support for this bill," Reid told reporters.
The apparent deal not only includes extensions on tax breaks, but also will allow a vote on the extension of the estate tax repeal. From a different article in The Hill, published two hours earlier than the one on the apparent deal:
Senate leaders are working on an estate tax deal to make it easier to move a bipartisan jobs bill.
The deal discussed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) involves moving an estate tax bill through the Senate that would prevent a huge hike in the tax from taking effect in 2011, staffers and lobbyists say.
It is unclear if the vote on the estate tax that has been promised to Republicans would require 60 or 51 votes in order to pass. Extending the repeal of the estate tax would certainly be a steep price to pay for a smallish jobs bill, so I will see if I can find out.
I have learned, in background discussions with Republican leaders, of additional demands they have made to President Obama on the proposed health care summit. While these demands were later removed from the letter they eventually sent to President Obama, I have been able to reconstruct them here:
The bipartisan health care summit must be scrapped in order to secure Republican participation in the summit.
The elimination from public instruction in Serbia, both as regards the teaching body and the methods of instruction, all that serves or might serve to foment the propaganda against Austria-Hungary.
A bowl of M&M candies, with all the brown M&M's removed, should be placed in the Republican dressing room.
Leia and the Wookiee must never again leave this city.
Former Air America CEO Danny Goldberg has a must-read on the demise of the radio network and what he believes it tells us about the difference between conservative movement funders and their (supposed) progressive counterparts. Here's the key excerpt:
Conservatives believe in doing whatever it takes to promote their ideas. Richard Viguerie, viewed as one of the architects of the modern conservative movement, wrote a book in 2004 called America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media To Take Power, in which he explains how the right wing used talk radio among other tools. Viguerie stresses that conservatives understand that ideological change does not usually occur overnight; that it takes patience and long-term thinking to build a movement...
The fatal flaw in Air America's genetic code was the pretense that liberal talk radio was a great business opportunity, that progressives could have their cake and eat it too, could do well by doing good, make big salaries and get a great return on investment while also pursuing an ideological agenda. Sure, every once in a while political media like Michael Moore's movies or Rush Limbaugh's radio show will make money, but for those interested in influencing public opinion, media in all venues is vital whether it makes money or not...
Perhaps the major liberal donors are confused because they became accustomed to focus groups and polling, which are useful tools in predicting short-term public reaction to political messages. They can tell you if a particular TV spot will turn off swing voters two weeks before an election. But long-term political ideas have a more complex and uncertain creative path. Conservatives understand the need to focus on both long- and short-term political communication...
Whatever the reasons, the theory of leaving political media to the marketplace has enabled a status quo in which one-third of the American public are never exposed to progressive ideas or even to facts that are incompatible with the right-wing narrative.
Identifying, developing and marketing talent takes a lot of experimentation with a predictable amount of failures in order to establish successes. This is part of the reason it took even an ultimately successful company like Fox News years to turn a profit. Another need for investment was to market a brand-new format with lots of personalities new to radio and to give incentives for radio station owners in smaller markets to give the new format a chance.
Although the earliest and wackiest group of Air America owners overspent on a few items like studios and initial salaries, within months the primary characteristic of Air America was a lack of cash for marketing, affiliate growth and talent development. The pressure from wealthy liberals was not to create a long-term strategy as conservatives had done, but to show a business model that would turn a profit in a year or two.
To his credit, Goldberg acknowledges that he was far from a perfect manager during his tenure at Air America. But he goes on - rightly, IMHO - to point out that regardless of management, this key difference between conservative and progressive investors have inherently tilted the scales against Air America and progressive media in general.
What explains this difference? That's a good question. I think it is a mix of starfucker-ism and ideological bankruptcy on the part of major progressive individual and institutional donors.
There are a lot of clever-sounding explanations for the declining approval ratings and political fortunes of President Obama and the Democratic Party. For example, Edward Luce and Steve Clemmons take aim at President Obama consulting a narrow group of Chicago-based advisors. Another example comes from Zach Exley, who proposes that the center-left isn't articulating as coherent a worldview at Glen Beck and the tea partiers (and no, he isn't being snarky). Tim Dickinson offers up a third explanation, arguing that Organizing for America should have become a more energetic outsider organization, rather than being brought under the auspices of the DNC.
These explanations are all thought-provoking. They also strive very hard to ignore the galatically obvious reason for the decline in President Obama's misfortunes: the rapid rise in unemployment. Over the past sixty years, rapid, 12-month increases in unemployment have caused five other Presidents to suffer rapid declines in approval rating.
Presidential approval declines during rapid 12-month unemployment increases, 1957-2010
Compared to the five previous occasions where a President suffered significant declines in approval ratings during a rapid 12-month increase in unemployment, Obama's drop is actually pretty severe. However, it is reasonably safe to assume that this is because his approval was inflated in January of 2009, when he was inaugurated. All Presidents suffer a decline in approval ratings from their peak immediately following inauguration. The combination of the natural post-inauguration decline and the rapid increase in unemployment did the trick.
Since 1957, there have been three instances where a President did not suffer a sharp drop in approval rating during a 12-month period of rapid increasing unemployment. Here they are:
Presidential approval improvements during rapid 12-month unemployment increases, 1957-2010
It is pretty easy to determine what separated these three periods from the six listed in the first chart. In every case, there was a major foreign crisis that led the country to rally around the President. The Iran hostage crisis began on November 45th, 1979. The first Persian Gulf war lasted from August of 1990 through February of 1991. And, of course, the attacks of September 11th took place in September of 2001.
All of this suggests that unless a major foreign policy crisis occurs, any President will suffer a severe decline in approval ratings during a year when unemployment increases rapidly. While nine data points is an admittedly small sample size, the rationale behind it is so intuitive that it is very hard not to believe it.
That isn't to say that there is no problem with President Obama consulting with a close circle of mainly Chicago-based advisors, with the lack of aggression in Organizing for America, or that the American center-left has failed to articulate a cohesive, compelling worldview. However, identifying those problems as the main cause of the current electoral trouble facing the Obama administration and the Democratic Party is a lot like thinking that the main problem facing travelers on the Titanic is the slippery deck.
Democrats and the Obama administration would only been in a significantly improved political position if they had implemented policies that would have resulted in a dramatically different employment picture. Is there a different set of advisors, a different organizing technique, or different messaging that would have resulted in economic policy that would have turned the employment picture around? That is the question that needs to be asked about current political and electoral difficulties for Democrats, not whether Obama's advisers are all from Chicago or not.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congressman John P. Murtha (PA-12) passed away peacefully this afternoon at 1:18 p.m. at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA. At his bedside was his family.
Murtha, 77, was Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.
First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in February of 1974, Murtha dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. A former Marine, he became the first Vietnam War combat Veteran elected to the U.S. Congress.
This past Saturday, February 6, 2010, Murtha became Pennsylvania's longest serving Member of Congress.
Murtha will probably be best remembered for speaking out against the Iraq war in late 2005, and calling for American troop withdrawal. Doing so rocketed him into the national spotlight, made him a top campaign surrogate for Democrats running for Congress in 2006. Murtha was a major factor in galvanizing Democratic support for troop withdrawal (withdrawal which continues apace), and even resulted in a Pelosi-backed run at becoming Majority Leader in November 2006 after Democrats took control of the House. Steny Hoyer eventually won that position.
Murtha's district is the Pennsylvania 12th, with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of Republican +1. The special election to fill his seat will likely take place on May 18th, the date of the Pennsylvania primary. Republicans will likely be favored to take the seat, given the current political climate.
Apologies to those who are offended by an analysis of the political ramifications of his death. Such concerns do seem crass at a time like this, but we still need to consider them.
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