What does Nancy say? (0.00 / 0)

This is a leadership/House party question, not one for Obey or Apps.

The rubber hits the road when Bush says he needs a bill, and the Congress don't send him one (or send him one he won't sign): then we get a war in the media. And that's something that, to date, the leaderships have shied away from.

You can't get round that by parliamentary manoeuvering or jiggery-pokery. You need Dem Congressional parties which are united in going on the offensive and betting the farm (retaining majorities in the 111th) on beating Bush.

Remember the Murtha Proviso? Obey's plan looks like a horse from the same stable.

---

by: skeptic06 @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 13:03:31 PM CDT

JTA (0.00 / 0)

I now see (I'm distracted today!) that Obey (with Murtha and McGovern) is proposing an income tax surcharge to pay for the war.

But

The plan's sponsors acknowledged the tax measure is unlikely to pass, and admitted they lacked support from top Democrats, a fact immediately reinforced by the No. 2 Democrat in the House.

"This is not a policy which the Speaker or I have signed off on," said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Mass.

Is this some kind of turf war/power struggle, or just some common or garden Mutt and Jeff-ing?

How does the income tax thing tie in with the three conditions thing? Was this all announced at the same presser? If so, why did the Huff guy not report the income tax thing as well?

And - does Hoyer's search me apply to the three conditions thing as well?

Can't wait...

---

by: skeptic06 @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 18:21:15 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Schedule Isn't Clear to Me (0.00 / 0)

It's not clear to me why you draw the conclusion that Obey is putting off a vote on the supplemental until January. Does he say so explicitly in something you didn't reference? Or is it his statement that he won't report out something "in this session"? Obviously, he could report out a bill that met his three conditions. And there is the missing factor of the Speaker's endorsement for taking it up in January, which she hasn't given, to my knowledge.

I wish it were true that the vote was being put off till January; it would be better to be certain. Other reports have said the same, so maybe so. It does matter in terms of what kind of opposition campaign to the supplemental could be developed.

I'm also interested in what you think the politics behind this are, other than the obvious one of not wanting to take a vote now that gives Bush what he wants. What do the Democrats realistically think will happen if they put it off? Will more Republicans come around as the 2008 election gets closer? Or what?

What happened to the strategy of forcing Republicans to make repeated votes on a bill with withdrawal timelines and then going to one-month funding continuations if necessary? It would be a problem if the strategy was to put off the big vote till January and then have the same result as in May (and September) because there's no movement on the part of the Republicans and no fallback position on the part of Democrats. 

---

by: johnraymond @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 15:05:48 PM CDT

The correct place to focus, all along, is on committee leaderships, (0.00 / 0)

the chamber leaderships, the overall party leadership (not necessarily in Congress or even elected), and the presidentials.

Guys like Tim Walz have almost nothing to do with what happens in Congress (or outside Congress), on Iraq or FISA or any other issue.  Powerless freshmen from marginal districts are NOT the guys making the decisions on these.  They are the ones who wind up voting "badly", but what they're doing is reacting to the fact that 1) the leadership has decided to give up on passing a majority-Democratic bill, for some reason, and has chosen to pass a bill with majority-Republican support, and 2) Steny Hoyer is telling them to vote with the Republicans, to pass the bill, because that is the cautious and "safe" vote that won't become an ad against them in their reelection.

So even though it's Tim Walz' name that appears on the roll call as the "bad guy", he is not the one who is making the consequential bad decisions.  It was leadership's decision to pass a FISA bill with Republican support that screwed us, not the fact that 30 freshmen went ahead and voted for it, as they were likely instructed to do.  And leadership's decision to do something like that is because 1) maybe they didn't have the votes, in which case it's people like Hoyer and Cooper and Tauscher and Chet Edwards, people with some real seniority and swing in the House, who told Pelosi to fuck off, or, 2) the unelected Democratic leadership decided it wasn't prepared to wage the post-vote fight in the media, so they capitulated in advance instead of trying to win a spin war with the GOP. 

In neither case is it the fault of dumbass freshmen.  It's the fault of either 1) conservative or 2) timid elements of the elected and unelected leadership.  Those are the people who are making decisions we hate, and they are the ones who ought to feel our wrath, not the dumbass freshmen.  It's Hoyer and Pelosi and Levin and Feinstein and Tauscher, actual decision-makers of various kinds, who matter.  The guilty parties cannot be identified by looking at a rollcall vote.  Hoyer or Schumer might advocate for capitulation in the leadership conference, and then vote the right way in the rollcall.  Hoyer might literally be the primarily culpable party on FISA, and yet escape our attention cause he voted the right way on the floor, while at the same time telling "his" freshmen to vote the other way.

In this post I see a shift to a focus on leadership, and on the legislative process.  (The other thing related to this is that the process of writing the bill and determining exactly what is going to get voted on, is actually more consequential than the vote itself.  Very rarely is passage of a bill in question; there are very very few close votes in the House ever (close = within ten votes).  Rather, most votes are 40+, and the important question is what is getting voted on, what are the critical details of the bill and how were they negotiated, not how did the vote turn out and who voted which way.  The vote outcome is almost never in doubt, and as a result it's the negotiation process that determines what becomes law, not the vote itself.)

Anyway, in this post I see a shift to a focus on leadership decisions, and on legislative development, rather than on the final vote.  That is a very good thing I think.  The vote is neither 1) where the action is, nor 2) a reliable way to identify good guys and bad guys, nor 3) a reliable way to identify those with real decision making power, vs those without.  Focusing on the rollcall causes us to fail to see the points of real significance, and of real leverage.  And we have real enemies/opponents out there.  Our energy can fight bad behavior.  But the actor of significance is not identified by the rollcall, and is not Tim Walz.  It's Steny Hoyer and his ilk.

We need to start looking at these in a way that will lead us to find the real guilty parties, consistently.  We need to learn the right questions to ask.  We need to figure out where to point the flashlight, where to look for answers.  And while it would have been convenient if the rollcall illuminated those things, I don't think it does.

---

by: texas dem @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 15:20:15 PM CDT

Time to Fight (0.00 / 0)

It is clear that Bush has no intention of engaging in serious diplomacy in the Middle East. His only strategy for the ME is to use the US military to bully and dominate every country there. So the only way to force him to act reasonably is to cut off funds for the Iraq occupation/war and force him to withdraw US troops from the region. This is not a great solution, but given how Bush acts, it is the _only_ solution open to us.

I hope Obey's statements means that the House Democrats are now willing to make a fight of it. We need some leadership so that the grassroots peace movement can focus on a specific thing and begin the process of educating people, lobbying Congress, and challenging the mainstream media. All of these things take time since we have to rely on people power to get the word out.

So far, we've only heard that the Democrats don't have enough votes to pass a withdrawal bill. But we've known for a while that virtually no Republicans would break rank.

What we need is a clear statement that the Democrats will not advance a funding bill unless it includes specific measures. I say those measures should be:

1) The funding bill must include a timeline for withdrawing all US troops from Iraq within a year (by August 2008).

2) The funding bill must instruct US troops to engage in battle only to defend themselves and civilians (no search and destroy missions). Troops are allowed to support reconstruction of civilian infrastructure: water treatment facilities, sewage treatment facilities, schools, hospitals, electricity generation  facilities, roads, and bridges.

3) The funding bill must instruct President to support negotiations among all Iraqi factions and all surrounding countries.

4) The funding bill must bar Bush from launching a war with Iran or any other country in the Middle East (and no bullshit about responding to attacks -- we've already had one phony Gulf of Tokien incident, thank you).

The Right will say that we are cutting off the troops and forcing them into a slow bleed. We need to counter this and let everyone know (including the troops) that it is Bush that is endangering the troops by refusing to withdraw the troops (or even negotiate with Congress about it). Bush is forcing Congress to act in the only way they can by cutting off funds since he has not allowed any other option.

---

by: RandomNonviolence @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 15:51:07 PM CDT