Yesterday, I reported that Progressive caucus co-chair Lynne Woolsey is holding a fundraiser for Blue Dog Jane Harman, who is facing a primary challenge from Progressive Marcy Winograd.
Now, at FDL, David Dayen reports that powerful Progressive Caucus member Henry Waxman sent out a fundraising letter earlier this week. Apparently, Dayen himself was asked to co-chair the Woolsey-Harman fundraiser. The Harman campaign is trying to hard burnish its progressive credentials through progressive surrogates.
Waxman apparently doesn't like Winograd because of her views on Israel and Palestine. That is really lame. In the House, power is rarely wielded by individual members, and instead comes in networks. Even if Winograd were in Congress, she wouldn't be able to change American I/P policy one iota.
What Winograd wold do, however, is be the first Progressive member of Congress who defeated a Blue Dog incumbent in a primary challenge. Instead, Waxman--through Harman--is strengthening a network that in 2009 successfully weakened education reform, health care reform, new financial regulations, climate change legislation, and the budget.
Harman wants to use progressive surrogates to boost her progressive credentials. That is nothing more than symbolism. If Harman really wants to prove she is progressive, then she publicly renounce her membership in the network of right-wing Democrats that have successfully weakened every single major piece of Democratic legislation over the past year. It is the same network that helped George W. Bush pass his agenda through a Democratic Congress.
We need to weaken this network. They are helping to deny our generational opportunity for change. Unfortunately, along with her Progressive surrogates, Jane Harman is strengthening it.
So over the long holiday I finally finished reading The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works, an autobiography by Rep. Henry Waxman of Los Angeles, with Joshua Green of the Atlantic magazine. Waxman, of course, was deemed "The Moustache of Justice" by Jon Stewart, and now chairs the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. It's really an interesting work that enlightened me on both legislative procedure, and things a member who is not a powerful full committee chairman or even in the majority can do to achieve a great deal, contrary to what many of us were taught.
I recall after Democrats took back the House in 2006, many Republicans (18 in all) started retiring. The prevailing opinion was that they did not see a point of being in the minority, especially after many of them, like Sherwood Boehlert of New York, were full committee or Appropriations subcommittee chairmen. Waxman's experience actually runs counter to that opinion. After Republican Dan Burton took over the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 1997 and refused to hold hearings on really anything except any minor Clinton affair, Waxman and his staff started investigating the rising prices of prescription drugs on uninsured seniors. They authored reports (hence The Waxman Report) demonstrating outrageous prices in certain districts, especially those near the foreign border where seniors went to Canada. It generated a lot of momentum on the issue, which led to Clinton including it in the 1999 State of the Union, and helped start the movement to create a Medicare prescription drug benefit just a few years later. It was a simple effort that led to a massive change, all from a member of the minority. Before Republicans took over, Waxman sought legislation to overhaul laws that allowed serious pesticide content into food and drink (known as the Delaney Clause). After they won, rather than give up on the issue and retire after 20 years in Congress, many as a subcommittee chairman, Waxman convened secret meetings with key players on the bill, seeking to avoid press that would cause a ton of lobbyist/interest group pressure. He found a silver bullet that became the Food Quality Protection Act, which created a requirement that foods carry a one-in-a-million chance of causing an illness like cancer- something that there was a ton of public pressure on at the time (obviously people didn't like getting cancer from their food). It was owed, Waxman wrote, partly to a strong relationship with one member- the chairman, Tom Bliley- as well as tactics- secret meetings at which everyone was empowered to make decisions, and a lot of momentum generated by previous hearings and other work before the Republicans took over.
He also did a great deal as a subcommittee chairman using interesting tactics. An interesting story- Waxman used to chair the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. His staffer received a phone call from a constituent whose son suffered from Tourette's Syndrome, which at the time had no treatment available in the United States. It was an unknown issue that he and allies cleverly worked up into a frenzy, with a little luck. It of course started with a hearing with the son testifying. The LA Times covered it because the boy was a constituent, the article for which was read by Hollywood producer for the hit television drama Quincy M.E., who made an episode raising awareness on the topic. That generated tons of calls and letters on the issue, including from people who suffered from extremely rare disorders. That led to an invitation to Jack Klugman, the Quincy M.E. TV star himself, to testify (at the time, few Hollywood stars went to Capitol Hill to do so), which generated a packed hearing room and a front page story with the NYTimes. Now there was momentum. The problem was one of numbers- only 9,000 people suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, for example. Not enough for the pharmaceuticals to spend a lot of money creating, testing, and marketing a drug; not enough for the FDA to meet its standards for drug trials to even get a drug approved. The bill was written to allow limited collaboration around trials between the pharmaceutical company and the FDA, as well as (eventually) a 50% tax credit and 50% tax deduction for companies willing to create drugs to treat the illnesses. After Sens. Hatch and Dole held up the bill, Waxman convinced the show producer to write another episode, this time featuring a heartless Senator holding up the bill, with 500 extras with rare diseases outside his office rallying for the bill, which caused another outpouring of public pressure and the Republicans relenting. The eventual Orphan Drug Act led to development of drugs like AZT, one of the earliest effective treatments for HIV/AIDS.
Another story, this time in efforts to defeat a bill rather than pass it. During debate over the 1981-82 renewal of the Clean Air Act, while chairing the same subcommittee and facing the legendary John Dingell of Michigan (whom he would later beat in a close vote for full E&C Chairman this year), he was faced with Dingell seeking to rewrite and gut the Clean Air Act, allied by a newly elected President Reagan. Rather than get steamrolled, Waxman held a subcommittee hearing and brought in respected pollster Lou Harris of the Harris poll, who told his subcommittee hearing, "clean air happens to be one of the sacred cows of the American people." That made everyone in Congress a tad nervous about backing Dingell's bill. Then he introduced nearly sixty amendments designed to weaken the bill against pressure, each of which were defeated, usually by a 12-8 vote (all the Republicans and Dingell plus two Midwestern Dems). Then he insisted on tactics to slow things to a crawl, like reading the bill aloud. Then, after it passed 13-7 out of his committee and beyond his tighter control, he invoked the "Five-Minute Rule" on the floor of the House, in which unanimous consent was required to allow committees to meet. Waxman would show up, object, then go to the full E&C mtg chaired by Dingell and introduce a point of order that they didn't have consent to meet (this rule was later repealed by the new 1995 Republican majority, it is said because of fear of the minority using Waxman's tactics). Then he and a coalition of Democrats and Republicans introduced amendments designed to break apart the industry coalition on the bill, causing one key player backing the bill to withdraw its support and the whole thing unraveled successfully.
Anyway, I found the entire book fascinating, especially for those interested in legislative procedure and tactics.
(This is the latest in a series as part of Brave New Films' Sick For Profit campaign. Follow us on Facebook.)
This week, the insurance industry let a bit of their guard down, as they ramped up their efforts to attack anything meaningful in health care reform. As the Los Angeles Times reported that negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee were turning the bill into a "bonanza" for insurers, the industry tried to cement those gains by using fake grassroots tactics to portray an imagined outcry against real reforms like the public option.
UnitedHealth Group, subject of a scathing profile by Keith Olbermann this week, admitted it was turning its employees into lobbyists by distributing anti-public option talking points to them, and encouraging them to engage in anti-reform protests.
The New York Times published a very nice press release from the desk of Humana, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies. The reporter interviewed a bunch of employees at Humana, all of whom were horrified to see themselves depicted as "villains" in the health care debate. I agree with Yves Smith, this is an absurd angle for a story, an extreme example of selection bias. The people who work at Humana probably have a sense that their employer, um, pays their salary, and thusly, what's good for the employer is probably good for them. Similarly, most people hold a favorable opinion of themselves just as a matter of getting through the day. Not to mention the fact that their understanding of the functioning of Humana is limited to their job description. It is not possible to gain much of a perspective on the health care debate or industry practices by asking a midlevel manager "Do you think you're the worst person alive?"
On Thursday, July 30th, the Progressive Caucus held a press conference to draw a line in the sand when it comes to the inclusion of a strong public option in the health care bill.
... Young people, however, seem to have a special role to play. In many ways, to borrow a phrase from a fellow activist Ken Ward, we may be "the last generation."
Not the last generation on earth - - no doubt society will keep the babies coming until the very end. But maybe the last generation to see winter in Vermont (as I write, a slow drizzle has replaced the usual December snow), the last U.S. generation to grow up in a time of relative economic prosperity, or the last generation to live in a world not plagued by higher levels of disease. And in the face of all this, we're getting royally screwed by our governments. The Stern Report recently re-emphasized that the impact of global warming on the world economy will be like that of the Great Depression, World War I, and WWI . . . combined. Guess who's going to be paying for all of this out of pocket? ...
For all that Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Ed Markey tried, and of their sincerity I have no doubts, the current Waxman-Markey bill, The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, or ACES, fails this Last Generation.
In opening my case, I yield the floor to Greenpeace USA Deputy Campaigns Director Carroll Muffett, who today said the following:
Few federal agencies are expected to undergo as radical a transformation under President-elect Barack Obama as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, which have been at the epicenter of many of the Bush administration's most intense scientific and environmental controversies....
In June 2007, Obama told reporters in Reno, Nev., that he would not hesitate to reverse many of the environmental policies Bush has enacted by executive order.
"I think the slow chipping away against clean air and clean water has been deeply disturbing," Obama added. "Much of it hasn't gone through Congress. It was done by fiat. That is something that can be changed by an administration, in part by reinvigorating the EPA, which has been demoralized."
But it hardly gets to the heart of the matter: What we have here are not just policy differences, which the Bush Administration dealt with by playing keep-away from Congress and the American people. What we have is a radical break with both past precedent and reality-based sound scientific practice--not to mention the statutory purpose of the agencies involved.
In fact, the proper lens for viewing the Bush legacy at EPA and Interior is the same one laid out by Henry Waxman's staff back in August 2003, in the report Politics and Science in the Bush Administration, which is well worth recalling now, as it says so much about the entirety of the Bush Administration, and the conservative movement more generally. It's not "ideology" that's the problem here--it's ideology that is staunchly opposed to truth, integrity and openness.
Congressional insiders point out that Barack Obama, in a little-noticed move a few days ago, appointed as the top White House liason to Congress one Philip Schiliro, who has spent many of his past 25 years on the Hill working for (you guessed it) Waxman.
In the wake of Waxman's victory, this is significant. It means Waxman will be closer to the center of the action and will have a direct line into the White House. Congressional insiders also point out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is an ally of Waxman -- and hence, of Obama's liason to Congress.
How significant is all of this? It puts progressives firmly in control of the House leadership, and right at the center of Obama's top priorities. Harold Meyerson:
Fundamentally, there are two reasons Waxman would be the better chairman of Energy and Commerce. First, he is probably the House's most accomplished legislator in three issue areas that are high on the agendas of the nation and President-elect Barack Obama: universal health care, global warming and enhanced consumer protections (no small matter with a steadily rising percentage of our food and medication ingredients coming from China). On environmental questions, Waxman offers a sharp contrast to Dingell, who has long been the primary opponent of stricter standards for auto emissions and fuel efficiency.
Meyerson then provides a long list of Waxman's legislative accomplishments in the pre-1994 U.S. House, and they are indeed impressive. He is not just progressive, he is also highly effective.
The House is alright. We done good in that branch of Congress. It looks very likely that progressives will have a major voice at the table for all of Obama's legislative priorities.
Now, if we can just get good picks for Defense, State and Treasury, we will be doing alright when it comes to Obama's administrative priorities.
Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.) has ousted Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (Mich.), as Democratic lawmakers voted 137-122 Thursday morning to hand the gavel of the powerhouse panel to its second-ranking member.
The vote marks a stunning rebuke of the seniority system Democrats have honored for decades. It also constitutes a win, of sorts, for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is ideologically aligned with Waxman and has clashed repeatedly with Dingell.
That's a big deal. Looks like we could be heading for a progressive Congress. Cue conservative whining.
But one of his supporters, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), said Waxman would do just fine in building coalitions if he's elected chairman. "You always try and scare people about progressives," he said. "It's bulls---."
By a three-vote margin, the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee today recommended that Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman be given the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee, but a final decision will most likely be made by the full Democratic Caucus Thursday. The Steering Committee voted 25-22 in favor of Waxman to replace Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, according to lawmakers leaving the meeting.
If it's true that the freshmen are breaking heavily for Waxman, and older baron committee chairs are going for Dingell, this adds a lot of firepower to Waxman's case. Dingell is a vindictive guy, so his case rests on the notion that if you don't vote for him you're going to have problems with the person who will naturally be the Chair of Energy and Commerce. Cracking the image of inevitability is key to letting members know it's safe to go against Dingell.
The Lieberman fight was discouraging but quite expected. I'm with Jerome, Ezra, Digby on this one, it's a significant marker in how progressive Congress will be. If we get a Waxman led E&C Chair, an FCC favorable to net neutrality (run by gamers), and a Treasury Secretary who is not Larry Summers, I'll take Lieberman in the Senate. Obama wanted him, he got him, and now Obama can manage him.
Still, this House contest is not a done deal. Given that it's impossible to vote count from the outside and those who try look a bit foolish, I'm not too confident that these results mean what I hope they mean. But it's undeniable that Dingell's claims that he's going to win this one easily are simply wrong, and the notion that this is a more conservative Democratic caucus is being put to a very real test.
... The members of the steering committee are in the comments, and they tilt slightly liberal. So it's going to be close if Waxman gets it.
An informal survey of about two dozen incoming Democrats resulted in 18 saying they support Waxman and just three saying they support Dingell, said one freshman lawmaker who requested not to be identified.
This conflict is quite opaque, even to members themselves. It makes sense though that new members would support Waxman; he's more aligned with them on a whole host of issues and on ways of doing politics. Also, some self-interest is at work here. Seniority is not a persuasive argument to new members of Congress.
I'm surprised, given the amount of attention foisted on the US auto industry at the moment, how few people are actually watching the Dingell versus Waxman dogfight over the Chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. E&C is the policy-making committee that will probably have jurisdiction over a good amount of the rule-making around whatever bailout happens, since it handles CAFE standards, industrial regulation, etc. So whether it goes to the super-green but sensible Henry Waxman or the more traditional John Dingell matters quite a bit.
It's very hard to tell what's going on with the conflict. Since it's secret ballot, certain members are probably promising their vote to both, and others are lying about who they will vote for. What makes it even more difficult to suss out is that Dingell is waging his campaign through the media, and Waxman is not. I know that the big green groups think that Dingell is going to win, and they don't want to get involved in leadership fights because the perception is that they aren't policy-related and the lobbying is member-to-member involving chits and relationships that have nothing to do with policy. This same rationale does not seem to apply to K Street, which is perfectly willing to whip for Dingell.
What makes this tussle even more opaque is that Dingell is a very traditional committee baron who does not always make friends in his dealings, and that has left a lot of raw feelings among people you wouldn't expect. Waxman by contrast is pretty well-liked, though not feared. No one really has any idea how the votes will play out, but I am surprised that the blogs have taken so little interest in this fight. The 2008 freshmen are being absorbed into the House quagmire without any protest from our quarters, or even requests that they actually take a position to help a progressive chair one of the most important committees in Congress, the one that regulates climate change, media policy, net neutrality, and trade.
Given the pixels spilled over pony plans for the carmakers and Lieberman, this is just weird.
Clyburn spokeswoman Kristie Greco disputed a Bloomberg News report circulated by Dingell supporters that the third-ranking House Democrat had endorsed Dingell, who is fighting to keep his post at the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Greco said the report misquoted her, and that Clyburn has not offered an endorsement in the battle between Clyburn and Waxman.
In particular, K Street has sought to convince members of the Blue Dog Coalition, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the New Democrats to back Dingell against Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
"Lobbyists are doing intelligence gathering, talking to lawmakers they are on a first-name relationship basis with," said one lobbyist, who has made calls to drum up support for Dingell...
Since he was first elected in 1955 to fill the seat of his father, Rep. John Dingell Sr. (D-Mich.), the younger Dingell has amassed a formidable K Street presence.
His network spans the health care, energy, manufacturing and telecom industry sectors.
Dingell has forged strong ties with former senior aides-turned-lobbyists, including John Orlando of CBS Corp., Ryan Modlin at the National Association of Manufacturers, Marda Robillard of Van Scoyoc Associates, and Alan Roth of US Telecom. He's also close to Reid Stuntz of Hogan & Hartson and solo practitioner Michael Barrett...
"It strikes us that Chairman Dingell is more likely coming from Detroit to have a sensitivity to the current economic plight of the country when he looks at the various serious issues before the committee than Mr. Waxman, who is from Beverly Hills," NMA spokesman Luke Popovich said.
The Sportsmen's and Animal Owners' Voting Alliance has also come out in support of Dingell. In an e-mail blast to more than 22,000 members, SAOVA urged its grass-roots network to contact their Member of Congress about what they argue is an important voice of moderation.
"He's a voice of moderation where the large California cabal is scary as hell," said Bob Kane, chairman emeritus of SAOVA.
Hoyer, who is allied with Dingell ideologically but owes Waxman for his Majority leader status is attempting to mediate the dispute. I've spoken with about five or six people close to the dispute, the basic sense I have is that Dingell's got better political skills and Waxman is highly respected. The green groups are staying out of the fight, and one of Dingell's main arguments is that Waxman is an unabashed progressive partisan who can't get anything done whereas Dingell's more practical and can work across the aisle. This is obviously not true, but the contours of the fight are organized around the fears of Capitol Hill insiders, and they dislike liberals.
Regardless, my sense is that Dingell, if he retains the chairmanship, will be forced to move more progressive legislation, so this challenge has been a net positive so far.
The fight over the Energy and Commerce chairmanship is really the fight over the next Congress, and all their forces are gathered to protect John Dingell's slow-walk stance on global warming. The lobbying of the newly elected members if furious, on both sides. Now, you're going to hear a lot of polite talk about how Dingell has a respectable plan on climate change that is less aggressive than the progressive alternative on climate change, but that's DC nonsense borne of a fear of the vindictive Dingell. Dingell's plan doesn't even start capping carbon emissions until 2030. It's a non-starter. It's designed by the coal and auto industry, and its authors even want to preempt existing California mandates on carbon emissions.
But Dingell is good on health care. Well, by good, I mean he has pushed 'single-payer' for literally decades, while preventing action on drug prices and appointing most of the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee that killed Clinton's health care plan, because they were reliable pro-auto industry votes on other issues Dingell prioritized (there aren't a lot of single payer pro-polluting members out there). But health care is all Dingell has, so he's emphasizing his willingness to work on health care with Obama in return for keeping his chairmanship of the enormously powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. Obama has appointed Waxman's former Chief of Staff Phil Schiliro as his Congressional liaison, and his EPA transition chief, Robert Sussman, is on record rejecting Dingell's bill out of hand, even as a starting point. Unlike the Lieberman fight, where Obama is putting his thumb on the scale for Lieberman, it's not clear if Obama will meddle in the House, even though Waxman's take on most E&C issues - including net neutrality and broadband - are far more in sync with the incoming administration than Dingell's.
In terms of personnel moves in the administration, it's a bit opaque as to what's going on. But in terms of committees and Congress, the personnel changes translate directly into policy, which makes the fight between progressive Henry Waxman and the union conservative John Dingell over the Chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce committee so consequential.
The E&C committee is one of the big three committees in the House - the Ways and Means committee, which handles tax issues, and the Appropriations Committee, which handles spending, are the others. E&C regulates health care, the internet and telecom (including net neutrality), trade, media policy, energy, consumer protections, and climate change, and is sort of the honeypot for corporate interests and lobbying. Waxman is making a major play to take the committee leadership away from Dingell because Dingell, who is from Michigan and represents the auto industry, is basically refusing to get serious on climate change legislation.
In a stunning development, a sternly worded letter to a Cabinet Secretary has resulted in a subpoenaed member of the executive branch being made available to comply and testify.
Dr. Kaye Whitley, Director of the DoD's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office had been told by her superiors, including Deputy Defense Undersecretary Michael Dominguez, not to attend an earlier hearing on the endemic sexual assault problem faced by female soldiers.
I'm actually torn between being mildly pleased and disappointed in this development.
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