With summer nearly over, the nation's college campuses are bustling once again.
For many students however, the rites of passage associated with higher education won't be rushing a sorority, winning the big game or planning a spring break trip to Florida.
No, looking back, a growing number of students will regale their children with horror stories about being ripped off by a for-profit college.
Of late, the U.S. Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee has beeninvestigating the booming multi-billion dollar for-profit college industry -- think Kaplan University or DeVry for example. What it has found thus far is not pretty.
Update--Cloture vote will fail: Cloture is about to fail. Collins and Snowe voted for cloture, while Feingold and Cantwell voted against it. Specter and Begich did not vote. So, even when Specter and Begich come back, Dems will need to find one more vote. Hopefully, that will be accomplished by getting Cantwell a vote on her amendment to reinstate Glass-Steagal.
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Wall Street reform legislation continues to unfold in the Senate, with several dramatic developments over the past 24 hours. Here are where things stand at 2:55 pm:
1. Cloture vote delayed The cloture vote on the overall bill had originally been set for 2:00 p.m. today, but is now delayed indefinitely. Senate Democrats are caucusing to figure out what to do next.
2. Susan Collins and Ben Nelson on board, but progressives blocking passage Republican Susan Collins, and uber-ConservaDem Ben Nelson came out in favor of cloture today.
If all other Democrats held together, this would mean there are enough votes for cloture to succeed. However, many progressives--Cantwell (reinstating Glass--Steagal), Dorgan (ending naked credit default swaps), Harkin (capping ATM fees at $0.50), Merkley (reinstating Volcker rule), Levin (same as Merkley) and others--remain angry that their strengthening amendments have not received votes, and as such are not promising to support cloture. In fact, Cantwell just said she does not support cloture, as of right now.
Progressive anger over this turned into chaos--or as close as the Senate ever gets to chaos--on the floor last night. Tom Harkin openly angry at Harry Reid, Senators huddled every which way to strategize, strange procedural moves were employed (see bullet point below for the prime example), and more. Ryan Grim and David Dayen have good rundowns of the events.
3. Big strengthening amendment attacked to big weakening amendment Jeff Merkley and Carl Levin are two of the progressive Senators pissed that their amendment (to reinstate the Volcker rule) did not receive votes. Republicans had been objecting to holding a vote on the Merkley-Levin amendment (unanimous consent is required for amendment votes), and the amendment was also not deemed germane by the parliamentarian for a post-cloture amendment vote. Basically, there was no way to get a vote on their amendment.
So, to "solve" this problem, Merkley and Levin attached their amendment to a horrendous weakening amendment, filed by Republicans, which has been deemed germane for a post-cloture amendment vote. That amendment, filed by Sam Brownback, exempts auto dealers from new consumer protection laws, even though auto loans are the biggest instances of financial malfeasance against consumers, especially military personnel.
Now, to prevent a vote on Merkley-Levin, Republicans would have to also block a vote on the Brownback amendment. From a statement by Senator Merkley:
The Merkley-Levin amendment must now be voted on before the entire Wall Street reform bill receives a final vote. For the Merkley-Levin amendment to ultimately be included in the final Wall Street reform bill, the Merkley-Levin amendment must pass and then the Brownback amendment to which it is attached must pass.
The Merkley-Levin amendment will ban high-risk trading inside our lending and depository institutions to help prevent a future financial crisis and prevent bank capital from being diverted away from loans into trading. The amendment will also end conflicts of interest in cases such as Goldman Sachs and will send a strong message to Wall Street that betting against the best interests of their clients will no longer be allowed.
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but it isn't actually a bad bit of gaming from Merkley and Levin. The best way to approach this is to try and get the votes for Merkley-Levin, and simultaneously work to the Brownback amendment anyway. It is still preferable that the Brownback amendment is defeated, thus defeating both amendments, but at least this way there is no way for the Brownback amendment to pass without a big strengthening amendment simultaneously passing (at a 51-vote threshold, Merkley-Levin should be a sure thing). We can't get the best of both worls-passing Merkley-Levin and defeating Brownback, but at least we won't get the worst of both worlds now.
4. Arkansas Senate primary saves derivatives reform (for now) And here is the most dramatic development of all.
Last night, Chris Dodd (who is managing the Wall Street reform bill), introduced an amendment to gut the derivatives regulation that is at the heart of the bill. The original derivatives language had been written by Agriculture Chair Blanche Lincoln. It was pretty strong, as it required the biggest banks to sell off their derivatives departments. Dodd's proposal would delay implementation of Lincoln's language by two years, and probably forever, by requiring a series of studies led by people opposed to those portions of the bill (such as leading Obama administration figures).
Dodd had planned this course of action all along, but had waited on doing so to prevent embarrassing Blanche Lincoln, who faced a left-wing primary challenge from Bill Halter. If Democrats were to strip Lincoln's populist legislation from Wall Street reform, it would cause her real trouble, as Halter is challenging her from a populist and progressive angle. Lincoln can't afford to look ineffective, like a suck-up to Wall Street, or like someone who only wrote the legislation to get elected.
However, now that Bill Halter not only forced Lincoln into a June 8th runoff, but only polled 2% behind her overall, Lincoln is still in real danger of being defeated in the primary. As such, Dodd withdrew his proposal to gut derivatives regulations.
This is a remarkable example of both good timing, and bow primary campaigns are an effective means of changing Democratic behavior in Congress. Without the progressive pressure on Lincoln specifically, and on Senate Democrats more generally, the derivatives portion of the bill would already be gutted.
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More developments as they come in. Everything is up in the air right now.
One of the Senate's leading advocates for the public option sounded pretty negative last night. From Salon (emphasis mine):
"I hate to say it, but I am not certain we're going to be able to get a public option in this bill," Harkin said with a sigh, in an interview on the eve of President Obama's bipartisan healthcare summit. That phrasing may sound relatively optimistic, but the way Harkin discussed the public option made it clear he didn't see much hope for the plan for now. "That doesn't mean we stop trying... I keep reminding people that this bill is not written in stone, like the Ten Commandments, for ever and ever. This is a law, it's a bill, we change laws all the time around here -- that's what we do."(...)
But Harkin did say he expected the public option to come back before Congress another time, possibly before any healthcare legislation even takes effect; most of the provisions in the bills under consideration don't kick in until 2014. "At some point, we're going to revisit the public option, I can assure you of that," he said. "It may not be this year, it may be the next year or the year after. We have a couple, three years in between there to start thinking about having a public option... Every poll shows that it has vast support. That's only going to grow."
Saying that he is "not certain" about getting a public option doesn't sound bad. However, saying that "at some point, we're going to revisit the public option," sounds like waving the white flag for the public option on this round of reform.
No matter what happens, Harkin is absolutely right that it is important to keep pushing for the public option. To strengthen your negotiating position, and to prepare for future fights, it is important to round up as much support as possible.
As I have long said, there is more than one way to get an expansion of public health insurance. In addition to a new public option program to be sold on the proposed insurance exchanges, expansions of Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP--all of which are public options, and currently have more than 100,000,000 enrollees combined--would also be public option victories.
"I have polled senators, and the vast majority of Democrats - maybe approaching 50 - support a public option," Harkin said told the liberal "Bill Press Radio Show." "So why shouldn't we have a public option? We have the votes.
"I believe we'll have the 60 votes, now that we have the new senator from Massachusetts, to at least get it on the Senate floor," Harkin later added. "But once we cross that hurdle, we only need 51 votes for the public option. And I believe there are, comfortably, 51 votes for a public option."
As of Friday afternoon, Democrats finally achieved 60 active, voting members in the Senate. Further, through your tireless activism on the Senate whip count, we have also achieved 51+ votes in the Senate on health care reform with a public option.
So, the remaining hurdles to passing a public option are making sure that the Senate Budget Committee keeps a public option in the health care bill sent to the Senate floor, and then getting 60 Democrats to not join a Republican filibuster of that bill. This path is, as I argued yesterday, the only procedural option available in the short-term.
Even as the Senate Finance Committee continue to debate, and eventually defeat, a public option today, it is a big victory to get to this point and we still have a viable path to overall victory on the public option. We are not going to win in the Senate Finance Committee--which would have virtually assured victory in the public option fight overall--but we are still alive and kicking.
I have written several times of the media's fixation with the bill that comes out of the Senate Finance Committee on health care. It's finally starting to move now, creaking its way up the track like a half-dead carcass. Traditional media will act like whatever is in the Senate Finance bill will be the bill, that the deal is done. Not even close, folks.
Here's why the Senate Finance markup that will come out next week is nowhere close to what will be in the final legislation:
1. Finance chair Max Baucus has already messed up by not consulting with a half-dozen of the more progressive members of the committee. I am hearing numerous reports, some of which have surfaced publicly, that some of them are rebelling at the awful piece of mangled legislation being thrust in front of them. Given that Snowe is the only Republican that there is even a ghost of a chance of voting for the bill, Baucus has to get all or at least most of the Democrats on board, and I believe if the committee progressives work together, they can force some changes for the better.
2. The bill that makes it out of Finance will be so convoluted, contradictory, distorted, held-together-with-duct-tape because of all the compromises Baucus is making that Democrats will have to remake it in later stages even if they don't want to- and a great many of them want to.
3. Harry Reid still needs to marry the Finance bill and the HELP committee bill. Tom Harkin, who took over the chairmanship of the HELP Committee after Ted Kennedy passed away, is from what I hear bound and determined to make a major push to have the language of the HELP bill be a major part of the package that goes to the floor, including on the big issues like the public option and affordability for the middle class. He is being supported not only by the Democratic members of his committee but by outside progressive forces.
4. The floor fight will be wild and wooly, but I suspect that progressive forces may have an advantage in adding positive amendments to the mix in the light of day in a floor fight. The Republicans will offer all kinds of goofy amendments designed to mess up the bill, but they have two problems: they only have 40 votes, and the public polling on the GOP's actual health care proposals are very bad. Given that, Republican efforts to worsen the bill have little chance to succeed. Progressives, on the other hand, want to improve the bill by doing things that are actually popular: the public option (consistently polls in the 60s and 70s); taxing the wealthy instead of middle class workers with good insurance plans; making health insurance more affordable to the middle class. All of these are going to be pretty hard to vote against on the Senate floor.
5. Finally, to return to a theme I have been rather repetitive about in recent months, it is abundantly clear that House progressives, if they stay strong and stay together, have the negotiating power to block a bad bill. If they don't wilt, if they don't let themselves get picked off one by one, they can negotiate for a good health care bill, one that has a public option, one that is affordable for the middle class, one that forces insurers and providers to do real cost containment.
The traditional media will fall all over themselves to pronounce whatever Senate Finance does to be chiseled in stone. But progressives, if they work together and negotiate tough, can write a bill that will work, a bill on comprehensive health reform that we can all look back on as one of the greatest accomplishments of the era.
Paul Kane at the WaPo is reporting that Dodd has chosen to stay at Banking rather than take EMK's chairmanship at HELP. This is far better than Tim Johnson (D-Banking Lobby) taking over.
Tom Harkin will take over the helm at HELP, and Blanche Lincoln will take Harkin's Agriculture gavel.
All considered, even with Lincoln taking a gavel, I think this is good news.
There are conventions, customs, and words, thought to be complementary. Consider; Fat and jolly. Short and sweet. Tax-and-spend-liberal. These words, while often far from tantamount, are in the minds of many, inexorably tied.
I was fat. However, I did not feel jolly during those days, months, and years. I am short. Sweet? I am not especially so; nor am I sour. Balanced might better describe me, which takes me to the next paired, or triad of adjectives. I like my taxes progressive, my spending minimal, and I am a liberal.
However, I do not support the oft-titled tax-and-spend-liberal Democratic President's appointment, Timothy F. Geithner. Perhaps, some would say, I do not appreciate the need for an economic expert. This duo of descriptive qualifiers, I believe, can be an oxymoron, just as the others might be. It seems those farthest "Left" on the political aisle may concur.
Russell Feingold [Wisconsin Democrat], Thomas Harkin [Iowa Democrat,] and Democratic Socialist, Bernard Sanders [Vermont Independent] voted nay when asked to approve Timothy Geithner for Secretary of Treasury.
Democratic senators are still emerging from their closed-door briefing with Obama economic adviser Larry Summers ... but a senior Democratic senator, Iowa progressive Tom Harkin, just gave me a dire buzzword: trickle-down.
"There's only one thing we've got to do in this stimulus, and that's create jobs," Harkin told me. "I'm a little concerned by the way Mr. Summers and others are going on this ... it still looks a little more to me like trickle-down."
In this post, I am not going to discuss the validity of the tax cuts themselves. I consider them worrying just as Harkin, Conrad and Kerry do, but there is another pattern emerging today that I find just as worrying: progressive concerns being intentionally ignored and / or snubbed by the transition. Here is the last line in the TPM article (more in the extended entry):
We are 25 days from an election. At the Jefferson-Jackson dinner you talked about how important this election is, and how we need to send Becky Greenwald and Rob Hubler to Congress, and return Bruce Braley (IA-1), Dave Loebsack (IA-2),and Leonard Boswell (IA-3). In your own race, nobody has ever heard of your hapless opponent, he has no money, and he is going to lose big. So I have to ask, why are you sitting on a campaign warchest of more than $4 million? Why aren't you doing everything you can to turn Iowa blue?
On Saturday a fundraising solicitation arrived in the mail from Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. It asked me to confirm delivery of the enclosed "supporter card" within ten days, and also to "help keep my 2008 re-election campaign on the road to victory" with a special contribution.
Funny, I wasn't aware that Harkin needed any extra help. Everyone in the election forecasting business has labeled this seat safe for him. The available polling shows Harkin with a comfortable lead.
In terms of testing a candidate's organization, I'm told that the Harkin steak fry is a prelude to JJ dinner and the caucuses. Iowa Independent has live coverage here.
You can also watch it live on UStream, when the channel kicks in.
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