Today in America there is a big and under-reported issue. There are actually people out there, some of them unbelievably in Congress, crazy enough to challenge that great American institution, the military industrial complex. Who doesn't love Halliburton? Or Dick Cheney? Or the Iraq War? Or useless projects that do nothing more than enrich and empower an already powerful and rich elite?
I'll tell you who. 65 good for nothin' Congresspeople. They're the ones who today voted against a symbolic resolution to get our troops out of Afghanistan.
Now, cutting the snark, so many of the other 356 don't even have the gall to vote against a symbolic resolution to end a war! I understand that some people honestly support it, but when less than half of the country supports the war in Afghanistan, it's a bad sign that all of these Congresspeople still do:
In this post earlier today, I wondered how many people are actually represented by the senators voting for and against health care reform. Well, I did some research and calculations, and came to the following conclusion regarding the party-line vote for cloture on the Manager's Amendment early Monday morning: not only did it enjoy support of 60 of the 100 senators, but those senators were elected by the votes of almost twice as many Americans as the senators who opposed cloture. About 80.1 million voters elected senators in the Democratic caucus, while only about 43.8 million voted for senators in the Republican caucus. I explain my method and show my work on the flip.
This project was inspired by the insipid yearning for "broad bipartisan support" expressed by DC insider fogeys like Broder, Gergen, and their ilk. The most powerful answer to their mewling, I think, is this: health care reform obviously enjoys broad-based support, since the senators who oppose it, all of them Republicans, were elected by half as many voters as the senators who support it. Of course, the same retort will work for any party-line vote in this Congress, but I think it might be useful to be able to point to the actual numbers.
Another strong answer to the same argument, of course, is that the Democratic caucus includes not only Democrats, but also Independents. Since one of those Independents (Moldy Joe Lieberman) wields more leverage over the content of legislation than the majority of the Democratic party, I think any legislation that gets his vote should be considered "bipartisan."
Anyway, the complete Senate vote table is on the flip.
I just finished reading this Digby post on the Versailles fetish for "bipartisan" solutions, and I had an idea for framing an argument that may be useful in this and other ongoing political fights regarding the Senate. The data we need, which I'm sure is publicly available, is this: how many votes did each senator receive when winning his/her Senate seat?
"Centrists" like Broder, Gergen, etc., get off on wringing their hands over how a lack of bipartisan Congressional support shows that a piece of legislation doesn't have genuine, broad-based public support. When (if) the Senate passes its version of health care reform, I'd like to see a study that reveals how many Americans actually voted for the senators who supported the bill, compared with how many Americans voted for the senators who opposed it. That would give us a number to offer in opposition to that idea.
If, say, supporters of the bill represent 60 million American voters while opponents represent only 40 million, that should serve as a pretty powerful piece of evidence that the measure has broad-based support. Given the population differences between red and blue states, the number should be even more lopsided than that. (Maybe for appointed senators, we'd substitute the number of votes received by the governor who appointed the senator).
Based on what I've read here, it seems to me that someone in the OpenLeft community has a lot of this data already gathered together, so this is partly a bleg to find out if that's true. If nobody has it, I'll see if I can assemble it from online sources. Such a table of data could be useful on any vote, given that progressive priorities tend to be supported by senators from more populous states.
UPDATE: O.K., I did the work. By my calculations, senators in the Democratic Congress were elected by almost twice as many American voters as senators in the Republican Caucus - 80.1 million to 43.8 million. More detail here.
The New York State Senate and Assembly, too often a model of corruption and dysfunctionality, rose above petty politics last week to pass forward-thinking legislation on climate and energy, setting a precedent for bipartisanship and a sensible cap and trade system. The State Senate passed the groundbreaking Green Job/Green New York Act, with strong support from Republicans, Democrats, and the Working Families Party, which spearheaded the legislation. The bill -- expected to be signed into law this week by Gov. David Patterson leverages $112m in revenue from the Northeasts's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) into $5 billion of private investment to finance home weatherization, energy efficiency projects, and green jobs creation.
Ed. note: The Weekly Pulse is becoming the Daily Pulse for September. Every weekday, we'll bring you highlights from the health care reform debate, including exclusive video interviews with leading experts and independent journalists each Friday. Even better, you can be a part of the conversation. Stay tuned to find out more!
A power shift is underway in Washington. Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick announced on Monday that a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy would not take place until January 19, 2010. With Kennedy's seat empty, the Democrats no longer have the 60 votes they need to break a filibuster in the Senate. Up until this point, the White House was hoping for a compromise bill that the entire Democratic caucus, and maybe even a few Republicans, could agree on.
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly notes that the Gang of Six has made itself irrelevant. These powerful members of the Senate Finance Committee were in charge of hammering out a bipartisan health care bill. They forgot that they were only powerful if people believed a bipartisan compromise was attainable.
Talking Points Memo reports that the White House has given up on Republican gangster Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY). They finally got the hint when Enzi told a radio listeners that Democrats wanted to kill the elderly with comparative efficacy research. The White House should have cut its losses two weeks ago when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) repeated the "death panel" meme at a town hall meeting. Grassley has also been raising money campaigning against "Obama-care."
It's looking more and more like the Democrats will have to look to budget reconciliation, a special parliamentary procedure that could sidestep a filibuster and pass a healthcare bill by a simple majority vote.
America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's top lobby group, dispatched 50,000 employees to town halls to fight the public option. Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones took a cue from Michael Moore in Sicko. She asks AHIP what kind of insurance their top lobbyist has. Mencimer says AHIP was so standoffish you'd think she had a preexisting condition.
In Mother Jones, Ben Buchwalter and Nikki Gloudeman take a closer look at the corporate megabucks behind the town hall brawls. Corporate enemies of healthcare reform are using front groups like FreedomWorks to organize angry mobs at town hall meetings. Zach Roth of TPM Muckraker reports that "legendary GOP bamboozler" Howard Kaloogian has launched a tea party bus tour to protest healthcare reform.
Speaking of frauds, you've probably heard about so-called crisis pregnancy centers that pose as abortion clinics in order to cajole women into having babies. Ever wonder what happens to those babies? In the Nation, Kathryn Joyce goes inside the world of high-pressure Christian adoption agencies that support desperate women, as long as they promise to give up their babies.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on health care affordability, health care laws, and health care controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Reading the front page stories about Ted Kennedy in newspapers from around the country reminds me vividly of the nature of true bipartisanship. Ted always stated his case. Not a half way compromise either. Yes, Republican politicians found his often eloquent and always vociferous case sometimes a game changer but never a game ender.
Ted Kennedy sought common ground, real common ground, as much as any politician in America. He found partners at times from an unlikely assortment of Republicans ranging from Ronald Regan to Orin Hatch and George W. Bush. Only Bush was really false to him. Shame on him. Ted did not let W fool him again. No shame on Ted.
One of the results is that Ted left strong friendships on both sides of the aisle without compromising his ideals. In a world where politicians fled the label liberal, as the Washington Post said, Ted claimed the mantle of liberal proudly.
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire blogger
Despite a lofty launch last week, the good ship Bipartisan is sunk, at least so far as the economic stimulus is concerned. President Barack Obama and House Democrats bent over backwards to appease the GOP by including several tax breaks and excluding a major anti-foreclosure measure from the package, but when it came time to vote, zero House Republican backed the bill. Lawmakers who actually care about the fate of the U.S. economy are furious. Every day spent haggling with obstinate Republicans means heavier economic damage. What's more, many of the tax breaks the GOP insisted on are simply terrible policies, whatever the economic climate.
We're all tired of capitulation. We all think offshore drilling is pretty darn evil. But are we willing to give up a crack at something we need for the hubris of those reasons?
Let's talk about the New Energy Reform Act of 2008. If you haven't been paying attention, that's the name of the proposed energy bill sponsored by the "Group of 10" Senators in order to address all those concerns everyone has about energy. There are certainly a good bushel of bad apple policies in the bill, but some pretty awesome oranges in there too that might make the bill worthwhile. Let's take a look at both, plus some context, in the extended entry.
STATE BLOGS
