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.
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.
I'm very down about Ed Markey recently. He was championed as a real leader for progressives in Congress on telecom issues like net neutrality, but he's done nothing on it since the Democrats took Congress. This is intentional, since he doesn't want to pick a fight with Dingell when he's already engaged in a fight with Dingell over conflict between Energy and Commerce and his new Select Committee on Global Warming. That new committee, mind you, is entirely communications oriented with no legislative authority whatsoever. I figured I'd cut Markey some slack on net neutrality, since global warming is very important.
I'll be posting a few entries here detailing the most significant ground Markey's hearing covered. But the nickel version is that, though everybody from the governor of Wyoming to the wonks at the Center for American Progress think a cap-and-trade program is inevitable, they also think that many, many billions of dollars in subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration technology will be crucial to any greenhouse-gas reduction strategy.
Carbon capture is a completely mythical technology. It doesn't exist and is cover for a mult-billion dollar subsidy to the coal industry, the single worst industry in America when it comes to greenhouse gases.
This is coming, not from Dingell, but from Ed Markey's committee whose entire purpose is putting pressure on Congress to take a more liberal stance on global warming. I can't believe this. I really just can't. Sometimes I feel like we literally have no allies anywhere.
Last Monday, I wrote that there were two big fights in Congress to look out for, the reauthorization of poor children's health insurance and an increase in fuel efficiency standards. Both are cake. Easy. Progressive stuff. Popular. One looks like it will pass and one looks like it won't. Children will get insured, but we aren't near dealing with global warming. It's a pretty standard brew, actually, with Steny Hoyer and other conservative Democrats all in favor of spending money.
Last week, Bush threatened to veto Santa Claus, saying he'll block a bill that expands health care to poor kids, a program known as SCHIP.
President Bush yesterday rejected entreaties by his Republican allies that he compromise with Democrats on legislation to renew a popular program that provides health coverage to poor children, saying that expanding the program would enlarge the role of the federal government at the expense of private insurance.
The president said he objects on philosophical grounds to a bipartisan Senate proposal to boost the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. Bush has proposed $5 billion in increased funding and has threatened to veto the Senate compromise and a more costly expansion being contemplated in the House.
The House will pay for SCHIP with tobacco taxes, but also by gutting private oversubsidized Medicare plans known as 'Medicare Advantage', which are in the slow process of privatizing and strangling Medicare. SCHIP has bipartisan support, but that won't stop Bush from vetoing extra money for sick kids. Next Bush is going to launch a $500M PR campaign to let kids know that there is no Santa Claus.
A few unions and some internet groups are working on this one. Rahm Emanuel and Dick Durbin have this a priority.
The one measure most likely to pass Congress this year is some increase in fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, despite opposition from the auto industry. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many House Democrats will push for the 35 mpg standard adopted by the Senate, and there's a chance they could take it up before the August recess.
This pits Dingell against Pelosi/Markey, and about 20-40 members are watching on the sidelines to see who comes out on top. It's a test vote. Pelosi may not want to risk going up against Dingell, so she may pull the vote. Dingell says he's going to come up with a comprehensive global warming bill later this fall, where 'every industry will have to tithe'. So this one's going to continue.
Anyway, that's what I'm seeing as the major policy initiatives and conflicts in Congress right now.
STATE BLOGS
