Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pledged on Wednesday to take a serious look at revising the filibuster rules at the beginning of the next Congress, calling the current level of obstruction in the Senate unacceptable.
And in a reflection of the party's commitment to changing the parliamentary rules, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) followed the majority leader by saying that his committee would address the topic soon.
"The rules committee is going to start holding hearings on how to undo the filibuster rule," said Schumer, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee. The New York Democrat told the Huffington Post after the speech that the hearings would take place two or three weeks from now.
I was invited to this summit, but I didn't go because I had too much work and was out of energy. I wanted to talk filibuster reform with Senators, and get an idea of who was on board, but it looks like I wasn't needed for that.
With Schumer and Reid on board, all three Senators who might be Democratic Majority leader in 2011 are now on record favoring filibuster reform. Dick Durbin came out in favor last month. Combine it with the White House being open to the idea, and this effort now officially has leadership weight behind it.
Expect more Senators to start going on record for filibuster reform, both today and in two or three weeks when the hearings start. The dam is breaking wide open. This is no longer a quixotic campaign--it is very winnable.
Here is the current filibuster reform whip count:
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Filibuster Reform Whip Count Among relevant current and potential Senators, there are at least 21, and as many as 26, supporters of reform
50 Senators who are currently safe bets for being in Senate in 2011
Since 1948, when Congress defeated one of the best chances had at a universal health care bill, the issue has not diminished in its importance to the country or its influence in all aspects of our economy. Right now we are facing what I think is best opportunity of my lifetime to reshape the health care system to insure the uninsured, control costs, and remove health care coverage from its linkage to employment.
ACORN, through its partnership with Health Care for America Now (HCAN), is heavily involved in pushing out elected representatives to take advantage of this moment and enacting lasting, comprehensive health care reform. While we may not end up with the perfect system, from a progressive point of view, whatever we do get will be a vast improvement over what we have now. Today, in a direct shot at the insurance industry fighting the changes, HCAN and its partners, including ACORN, released a study on the consolidation of the industry and its near monopolistic practices in many states. Below I've written more about this, through the prism of Tamecka Pierce, one of Florida ACORN's strongest leaders. We can win real health care reform this year. But we need to fight for it. --Bertha
When Florida ACORN member Tamecka Pierce first got her employer-provided health insurance, she was ecstatic. No more dealing with the limitations and bureaucracy of the Medicaid system, which had been her sole option as an unemployed single mother with three children.
That joy was short lived. Just after she was accepted into the Blue Cross/Blue Shield program, she was diagnosed with lupus, an auto-immune disease in which the body slowly eats away at itself. The treatment is complex, ever-shifting, and life-long as there is no cure.
Predictably, Blue Cross/Blue Shield spent months fighting not to cover Tamecka. When she finally won, her problems didn't end. As the sole breadwinner, money is always an issue. On a monthly basis, Tamecka found herself choosing between medications and visits to specialist, or between health care and other bills.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Follow me on the flip to find out how.
More updates, this time on the stimulus, from my visit to the Senate today.
First, at a Senate progressive media summit today, Senator Charles Schumer said that he was unhappy about the amount of stimulus money set aside for mass transit and rail. He indicated that several other Senators from highly urbanized states were also unhappy about this portion of the stimulus, and that when the legislation reached the Senate, they would be jointly pushing for an increase in money set aside for mass transit and rail. The current amount for mass transit and rail in the stimulus bill is only $10 billion.
Second, I had a chance to speak to Senator Amy Klobuchar, who sits on the Environment and Public Works committee. I asked her about the $6 billion set aside for high-speed Internet expansion currently provided in the draft of the stimulus bill. She indicated that, in her opinion, $6 billion was not enough. Further, she said that she had spoken with the Appropriations chair on this matter (Senator Daniel Inouye), and was hopeful that broadband funding in the stimulus would be increased.
Also, I asked Senator Klobuchar whether the grants for high-speed Interent access in the stimulus would primarily be given to state and local governments, or to telecommunications companies. I am concerned that if the money was given to telecommunications companies, that broadband access would not be increased. After all, if those companies were not serving rural and other low-access areas in the past, why would they do so during an economic downturn? The Senators response was that she hoped the grants would be given to public / private partnerships of the sort that she thought were previously successful in Minnesota, and also to smaller, rural telecoms through the universal service fund. More on this later on.
So, in two key underfunded areas in the stimulus, mass transit / high speed rail and high speed internet, there appears to be significant support in the Senate for increasing funding. Again, this is good news, and a story that I will continue to follow.
Last weekend, I did a couple of diaries about how Democrats could challenge the customary rules of the game without becoming "just like them." This was part of the longer series constrasting the policy ineptitude and political prowess of conservatives with the policy prowess and political ineptitude of liberals. I did this under the rubris of "'Breaking The Rules' To Fix The System." The first one used the example of Thoreau's civil disobedience (going to jail rather than helping to finance the Mexican-American War) as a touchstone, and considered how it might have been applied in response to the lawlessness of Bush v. Gore. The second one, looked at how impeachment could have been used to delegitimize Bush-and conservatism more generally-if removing Bush from office had been set aside from the beginning.
This weekend, I'm taking a doubly-related tack-talking about conventional wisdom. First, this is directly related to what I was suggesting should have been the primary purpose of impeachment proceeding, to delegitimate Bush and conservative rule. Second, I want to discuss how conventional wisdom functions as part of the Level 3 infrastructure that liberals and Democrats allow themselves to be trapped and defined by. The irony here is particularly deep, since the term "conventional wisdom" was originally coined by John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the great liberal public intellectuals of the last half of the 20th Century. He first recognized and articulated the concept, but over time it increasingly became a tool of conservative power. So we'll start with a brief look at some of Galbraith's ideas, and how they've been messed with, then we'll take a look at what it means today.
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