There are two major benefits that would come from the Merkley-Udall Senate Rule reform proposal:
Filibuster reform.Biggest thing here is to shift the onus to maintain a filibuster onto the 41+ minority and away from the model of requiring 60 affirmative cloture votes to limit debate. But also very significant here would be making the motion to proceed non-debatable and ending secret holds. Much has been written about this, I think these are positive improvements and while I would rather just see the Senate move to actual overt majority rule, this is a significant improvement and would have led to a much better 2008-2010 for progressives.
Majority changing the rules at all. Like FDL, I think it would be very important for the Senate to pass changes to the Senate rules on a straight majority on the first day of the new Congress. It remains one of the most baffling self-delusions that the Senate and most Americans accept the fiction that it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster or 67 to change the rules. I have tried to make the point that the 2005 "nuclear option" fiasco proves that the majority can in fact rule the Senate if they so choose, but it is a tough slog. Changing the rules on a straight majority would be a big step forward in forcing everyone to dispel this cherished fable of the "cooling saucer."
Last week, in part one of our two-part series on filibuster reform, we examined the Constitutional Option to allow majority approval of rules changes. This week, in the 15th and final episode of Season 1,we look at the most prominent package of rules changes discussed to date. Roughly a month ago, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) circulated a "dear colleague" memo outlining a series of changes that are being strongly considered within current Democratic Caucus deliberations.
Enjoy this first season's finale. It's been a fun season for us and we'll be back in January with a whole slate of brand new bills and other policy proposals to summarize!
*Full disclosure: David Waldman, our Public Affairs Director, is an active advisor to the Fix the Senate Now coalition.
We're nearing the end of our first season and to finish it off we are providing a couple summaries relating to changing the filibuster. Today we look at what is called the "Constitutional Option," which applies only to the first day of a new session of Congress. This is expected to come up at the beginning of the 112th session.
Undue corporate influence over U.S. elections has been a serious problem in American politics for decades, but this year's Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission made things worse. Worst of all, we may never know the extent of the damage.
Citizens United freed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money backing specific political candidates, and without congressional action, those expenditures can be completely anonymous. Major corporations are already capitalizing on the new legal landscape by the millions, and the public doesn't really know who is buying what influence or why.
That's why The Media Consortium will be carefully watching the effects of this ruling in the run up to this year's midterm elections. Every day through Nov. 4, we'll bring you some of the best independent reporting on the effects of corporate spending in an attempt to measure just how widespread the effect of Citizens United will be on this-and the next-election. Keep your eye on "Campaign Cash" as we follow this issue in the coming weeks. If you want to tweet about it, use the hashtag #campaign$.
The impact of Citizens United
As Harvard University Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig explains in an interview with The Nation's Christopher Hayes, the Citizens Unitedv. FEC decision represents one of many ways that corporations buy political favors.
Prior to the ruling, companies couldn't spend money to directly advocate the election of a particular political candidate during election season. They could form Political Action Committees (PACs) to support or attack specific candidates, but those PACs had to be funded by individuals who worked for the company and couldn't be funded from the corporation's treasury directly. The executives of Goldman Sachs, for instance, could band together to form GoldmanPAC and spend their money on whatever candidates they wished-and many corporate employees exercised that right and spent freely on elections through their corporate PACs.
Now corporations can spend as much as they want and actual corporate funds-not just organized individuals-can also be deployed, making massive amounts of corporate cash eligible for political purchasing.
But the scariest part of Citizens United, as Lessig emphasizes, is the money that isn't spent. That is, if a firm makes it known that they are willing spend millions of dollars to fight any politician who opposes them on a particular policy issue, representatives and senators might begin changing their voting behavior in Congress before the company actually has to put up the cash.
And ultimately, Citizens United didn't just legalize unlimited corporate expenses on elections. It also allows those expenses to be anonymous. If companies launder their political cash through a front group, that third-party spender doesn't have to disclose who its donors are.
This isn't your local Chamber of Commerce
As Harry Hanbury details for GRITtv, this laundering scheme is essentially the business model for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-- a lobbying powerhouse in the nation's capital. Don't be fooled by its name-the U.S. Chamber has almost nothing to do with the local small business coalitions who help strengthen local economies.
As Hanbury notes, 40 percent of the U.S. Chamber's 2008 funding came from just 26 corporations. The group represents many of the nation's largest and most irresponsible corporations, from those responsible for the financial meltdown on Wall Street to BP, the company that spilled millions of barrels worth of oil in the Gulf this summer. The Chamber's branding allows them to disguise their political as a coalition of local businesses while it does dirty work for corporate titans.
When BP was publicly promising to do everything in its power to fix the massive oil disaster it created in the Gulf of Mexico, it was also funneling money to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And what was the Chamber up to? It was lobbying furiously to protect BP from new rules that would force the company to pay for oil disaster clean-up. The Wall Street banks did the same thing as financial reform legislation moved through Congress, and companies never have to disclose these expenditures to the public.
So it's no surprise that the Chamber responded to Citizens United by immediately announcing a 40 percent boost in its political spending operations. So much corporate money then flowed into the Chamber that the group chose to boost this budget again by 50 percent, allocating $75 million for its 2010 war chest. So far, the Chamber's ads have favored Republican's 93 percent of the time. No entity spends more on politics than the Chamber-not even the political parties themselves.
Corporations top the list of big election spenders
But while the future of corporate spending in campaigns looks bleak after Citizens United, corporations are still barred from contributing directly to political campaigns. A company might take out a television ad attacking Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), but it can't make unlimited contributions directly to Grayson's challenger, Republican Dan Webster.
Nevertheless, corporate employees and company PACs have already been spending lavishly on elections for decades. In a feature for Mother Jones, Dave Gilson compiles the 75 biggest political spenders, both companies and trade groups, from 1989 through 2010, and breaks them down by industry. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are all among the top 20 most extravagant political spenders-but the American Bankers Association, a trade group that all four belong to, is also in the top 10. If you're wondering how Wall Street was able to secure its massive taxpayer bailout in the face of widespread voter outrage, this is your answer.
To soften the Citizens United blow, Congress has been debating the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, which would require companies to disclose all of their political expenditures as well as requiring front-groups like the Chamber to list the identities and amounts of its donors. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), cleared the House this summer but was stymied by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
Undoing the damage dealt by Citizens United through something like the DISCLOSE Act will help, but it won't make our democracy totally safe from corporate abuse. As Lessig notes, the day before the decision was handed down, U.S. election financing was already encouraging rampant corruption and in need of serious reform.
Lessig suggests banning political expenditures by corporations altogether, and placing a hard cap on the amount that individuals can contribute. By limiting individual donations to $100, the ability of corporate PACs to funnel cash into the political process would be thwarted.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
On the 19th, the AP's Jim Abrams published a piece on efforts to limit or reform the filibuster. There's some decent information in there on efforts by McCaskill, Bennet and Udall each of whom have their own particular reform effort going. In what I attribute to an attempt at balance, the piece includes a skeptical quote from the Senate Historian, Dave Ritchie (and I have to ask, should he be allowing himself to be quoted in a way that appears to take sides in Senate matters?) and this far more irksome bit:
Supporters of the 60-vote supermajority say it helped prevent Democrats from attaching a government-run public option - an idea unpopular with many Americans - to the health care law. And growing national sentiment that Congress should quit adding to federal deficits was reflected when Democrats needing Republican votes to reach the 60-vote threshold were forced to cut future food stamp benefits and an energy program to pay for a $26 billion jobs bill this month.
Aside from the view-from-nowhwere "supporters say" construction here (Which ones?) the big problem is the vague and misleading statement "an idea unpopular with many Americans" about the Public Option. This is technically true, "many" Americans did disapprove but the implication is that a public option was net unpopular. I'm not aware of any poll which found the public option negatively popular. Quite the reverseactually. The consensus of numerous polls was that it was popular, in some cases strongly and under other formulations with only a plurality in favour.
Then there is next sentence about how the filibuster is working to limit the deficit. It might be worth mentioning that the CBO scored at least one version of the public option as deficit reducing to to the order of about $53B by 2019. So this is the best that AP's unnamed "supporters" can say in defence of the filibuster: It saved America from a deficit reducing, popular legislative proposal and took food out of the mouths of the hungry. Hooray!
The saddest part about this attempt for balance, is that it predictably failed to impress the right as Newsbusters shows in its flailing and bizarre attempt to claim that a factual article about 3 Senators' reform ideas is "praise" of the effort to eliminate the filibuster. Abrams went out of his way to find some scintilla of good policy outcome that could be credited to the filibuster, straining credulity to do so, and it wasn't enough. We know this is because organizations like Newsbusters and the Media Research Center only exist to work the ref, but still AP strives to appease the unappeasable.
Watching Chris Bowers' Daily Kos postings on filibuster reform, it is depressing and sad seeing how many are still opposed to ending the filibuster. Broadly speaking, the netroots has watched four years of pervasive and systemic minority obstruction in the Senate which has served to significantly weaken any progressive governance. There has been a large amount of analysis in the netroots on this, with a broad consensus that the price for minority obstructionism is going to be paid for the majority whom the country blames for any and all failures to address their problems. A number of polls confirm the public neither knows nor cares about Senate rules, and are only dimly and occasionally aware of Republican tactics in this regard.
The most frequent progressive refrain to defend the filibuster is the old standby: "Well what if the Republicans take over? Won't it be nice to be able to stop them privatizing Social Security/reinstituting slavery/eating kittens?" My sense is that this viewpoint is on the upswing compared roughly and unscientifically to how often I would see this view in an anti-filibuster piece from 2008 or 2009. That's somewhat understandable. With Democratic fortunes on the downswing, it is natural to fear what Republicans would do if they got the governing triple-crown. They are dominated by awful people with frightening agendas. It's sensible to want to cling to anything which might avert the worst of this.
The filibuster will not achieve that aim. The filibuster is unlikely to serve any useful purpose in preventing anything substantial the Republicans might attempt. This isn't for the "Democrats are too weak to use the filibuster" reason (thought that is a problem), the deeper issue here is that the "Nuclear Option" fracas of 2005 proved that the filibuster is Tinkerbell; a fairtale. It only lives so long as 51 Senators keep clapping for it. The reason to get rid of the filibuster is that the Republicans will not hesitate to eliminate it if and when it suits them from the majority, so relying on it to stop anything really bad from happening is deluded wishful thinking. Besides, the way to head off those Republican majorities is to govern better and that cannot happen with the filibuster.
As the federal legislative session slowly whimpers to an end, the campaign to reform Senate rules will only heat up. As such, today, I have a new Senate rules reform whip count.
For the first time, the whip count lists every potential and returning Senator for 2011 (see definitions of potential and returning in the note at the end of this post). This includes Senators for whom I have not found any statements on filibuster reform during 2009-2010.
I need your help to flesh out this whip count as much as possible. Which Senators with unknown positions can you find statements for? Which Senators who have made statements can you find more clarity on? If we are going to get anywhere in this campaign, we need an accurate picture of where every returning and potential Senator stands.
Please, post whatever additions or edits you can find in the extended entry. There is going to be a lot more on this during the rest of August, and the rest of the year. Any information you can provide will be helpful to that effort.
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Senate Rules Reform Whip Count, August 5th Among Returning Senators (48 plus Biden)
Note: "Returning Senators" includes incoming Senators currently pegged with a 100% chance of victory, according to the latest Senate Forecast. "Potential Senators" is a category restricted to Senators with between a 1% and 99% of being in the Senate next year, according to the latest Senate forecast.
Before he leaves the Senate, Chris Dodd is waging a rearguard effort to try and prevent Democrats from changing the cloture vote threshold next year. Ryan Grim:
Chris Dodd gathered with the Democratic Senate freshman class on Tuesday night at a dinner organized by Mark Warner to persuade them to back off their push to change Senate rules when the chamber returns in January, the first opportunity there will be to do so.
Dodd, who is giving up his Connecticut Senate seat following a 36-year congressional career, argued that those who have yet to serve in the minority should be careful tampering with the rules.
First, if Dodd is making speeches in favor of keeping the cloture vote threshold at 60, that shows there is a lot of momentum for lowering the threshold. Second, his argument in favor of keeping the threshold at 60 is nonsensical:
"I made a case last night to about ten freshman senators, you know, you want to turn this into a unicameral body? What's the point of having a Senate? If the vote margins are the same as in the House, you might as well close the doors," Dodd told reporters in the Capitol.
Ridiculous. Just nonsense. You don't need different vote thresholds to have a bicameral system. Consider:
The 60-vote threshold is not in the Constitution. It just isn't. That was never a requirement for a bicameral legislature.
If anything, the 60-vote threshold has created a unicameral system where the Senate has rendered the House irrelevant. Getting rid of the 60-vote threshold would give the two legislative bodies more equitable power.
Frustrating as argument like Dodd's are, expect a lot more of it over the next five months. Also, expect more articles, such as the one in The Hill last week, where a few Democratic Senators express opposition to lowering the threshold, and thus effort is thus declared DOA.
We are going to have to work to change the narrative on this fight. If, for example, we could get four of five Democratic Senators to favor lowering the cloture threshold even if Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House, then perhaps the narrative would become about when the threshold would be lowered, and not if. Also, if we do a better job focusing on the wider range of proposed rule changes--such as making unanimous consent non-debatable, requiring the filibuster to be a real talkathon where Senators have to stay on the floor (as Senator Lautenberg has proposed), or switching the burden of the cloture threshold on the opposition (for example, 45 votes to continue a filibuster, rather than 60 to break it, as Senator Bennet has proposed)-then the interest and momentum for reform could increase as people debate a wider range of possible reforms.
Senate rules are not going to stay the same forever. The rules have changed in the past, and will change again in the future. The question is not if the rules will change, but rather when and how.
Chris Bowers asks "Does anyone here think that working to stop GOP from destroying the filibuster in 2005 was still a good idea?"
The first problem with this question is that the GOP did not try to destroy the filibuster - they tried to destroy the judicial filibuster, arguing that it violated the Constitution. They would not have touched the legislative filibuster.
Point! Which many have noted in the comments.
However:
The second problem with this question is Bowers not imagining what a GOP President and GOP Congress would have achieved with the elimination of the filibuster. You thought the actual Bush tax cuts were bad? They would be TWICE as bad without the filibuster.
Um, no. Both the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts under Bush were passed using budget reconciliation, not under normal order. In 2001, the final vote was 58-33. In 2003, the vote was 51-50, with Dick Cheney casting the tiebreaking.
Given that both of his major tax packages had 51 votes, hard to see how they would have been twice as bad if they only needed 51 votes.
Conservatives can get tax cuts through budget reconciliation without the filibuster. They can gut regulations by appointing regulators who refuse to enforce the regulations. Further, Dems didn't block any significant number of judges after the Gang of 14 compromise. They didn't even come close to stopping Alito or Roberts.
If the 60-vote threshold is done away with, there will undoubtedly be conservative legislation and nominations that will pass the Senate which otherwise would not have passed. But, that's democracy. And, on balance I do believe progressives will get the better end of the bargain.
The President's failure to make these nominations and secure their confirmation in a timely manner will, in retrospect, prove to have been his biggest mistake.
This is certainly possible. The President's failure to change the culture at the Fed by filling these vacancies earlier may well prove to be his biggest mistake. The dire condition of the economy is by far the top political problem facing the Obama administration.
But really, going back further, not allowing Republicans to destroy the filibuster back in 2005 is the biggest mistake made by not only President Obama, but by the Democratic trifecta as a whole (and, I admit, my biggest mistake too). This would have resulted in a wide swatch of changes, including a larger stimulus, the Employee Free Choice Act, a better health bill (in all likelihood, one with a public option, and completed in December), an actual climate / energy bill, a second stimulus, and more. If Democrats had tacked on other changes to Senate rules that sped up the process, such as doing away with unanimous consent, ending debating time after cloture is achieved on nominations, eliminating the two days between filing for cloture and voting on cloture, and restricting quorum calls, then virtually every judicial and administration vacancy would already be filled, as well.
Playing the "what if" game can be painful, because there is no way to go back in time and change what happened. However, it is also useful in that it gives us a roadmap on how to do better in the future. In this case, that means focusing our efforts on changing Senate rules for the next Congress. Right now, it is hard to imagine any more important effort in order to achieve more effective governance.
Even as Senate rules reform continues to gain supporters, some of the opponents of reform are starting to appear, as well.
The Hill does a valuable service this morning, by naming ten retuning Senators who are either currently opposed, or wary, of the 51-vote Senate (but not necessarily of rules reform in general). They are:
Currently opposed to 51-vote Senate, and possibly all reform (5): Akaka (HI, Feinsteain (CA); Nelson (NE); Pryor (AR); Tester (MT)
Wary or lean opposed to 51-vote Senate, but not necessarily to other reforms (5) Baucus (MT); Feingold (WI); Landrieu (LA); Levin (MI); Rockefeller (WV)
On the positive side, the article sites Robin Carnahan, who is in a competitive race of the open Senate seat in Missouri, as favoring filibuster reform.
Here are some takeaways from this important article:
We already knew we don't have the votes, yet The article is correct that there are not enough votes for a 51-vote Senate, at least yet. But, then again, we already knew that. My latest whip count had only 11 supporters of a 51-vote Senate among returning Senators, and only 2 among top Senate hopefuls. It isn't breaking news that we don't have votes to create a 51-vote Senate, yet.
No substantive proposal has 51 votes There are numerous different proposals right now, and nothing approaching consensus. As such, it is possible to show how any major reform is "doomed" by rounding up ten Democratic Senators who are wary of that approach. Whether you want to eliminate unanimous consent, force a talk-a-thon filibuster, require 41 votes to defeat cloture, or some other major reform, the votes simply are not there right now (ending secret holds has the votes, but it is extremely weak tea).
This is exactly why we need to stay vague Here are four good reasons why we should not be pushing specific reform proposals at this time:
This lack of votes at this time makes it is highly likely that any group that starts rallying behind any specific proposal is going to be forced to backtrack. As such, they will look bad.
Additionally, there isn't anything approaching consensus among the grassroots on what type of reform to pursue, either. So, pushing for any specific proposal will alienate some of your friends.
Further, there are some Senators out there who will oppose progressives for the sake of opposing them, and who want to be the person who forced Democrats to compromise for the sake of forcing Democrats to compromise. Better not to play into their hands.
Worst of all, pushing hard for any specific reform at this point has the danger of shutting down talks on all reform. If this becomes a pitched battle over a specific idea, rather than a discussion where ideas are welcome, everything could shut down.
In short, this article shows we need to stay vague.
The path forward We need to be conscious that there are many different reform proposals being discussed, both in the Senate and by the grassroots. We need to be mindful that right now none of the substantive proposals have anything approaching 51 votes. As such, rather than drawing lines on any specific reform proposal at this time, what we need to do is group all supporters of the various types of substantive reform together, and keep them talking. That keeps the momentum for reform building, whereas coming out for a specific proposal right now kills it.
Support for reform among Senators is extremely fluid, and growing. The latest count shows 26 returning Senators in favor of some sort of substantive reform. One year ago, there would have been les than five. If we keep the talks going, and welcome all the different ideas, we can keep that momentum growing. As of right now, that is the path forward.
New Supporters Two new supporters of filibuster reform have emerged since I last posted a filibuster reform whip count update on Monday: Kirsten Gillibrand and Alexi Giannoulias. Additionally, there is a good chance more will be revealed before noon today.
Gillibrand, who is up for election this year but is a virtual lock to win, is supportive of some sort of unspecified reform. Todd Beeton, who works for Senator Gillibrand, writes "yes, Sen. Gillibrand supports filibuster reform." Todd adds "there are several proposals in Congress as to how exactly to reform it that she's considering."
Let me be crystal clear: should I be so fortunate as to be elected, on day one in the Senate, I will join the fight to amend the Senate rules and fix our broken filibuster system. I will vote in favor of Senator Udall's proposed motion to consider the rules of the Senate, I will vote in favor of common-sense and fair filibuster reform, and I will work day and night to bring as many of my colleagues on board as possible.
Emphasis in original. Lots and lots of emphasis in the original.
More supporters might come appear today. The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is holding another hearing on filibuster reform, starting at 10 a.m. It will stream live on their website. Five returning, or potentially returning, Democrats on the panel have not yet made their support or opposition to reform known: Inouye (HI), Feinstein (CA), Nelson (NE), Murray (WA), and Pryor (AR). The hearing is worth a watch just to see if any of those five make an announcement. The returning Democrats on the panel who are supportive of reform--Schumer, Durbin, Udall and Warner--might also flesh out their views a bit more.
Answering your questions Before I turn to the nitty-gritty of the whip count (in the extended entry), I want to address questions from the comments in the last whip count post. First, from Gaucho:
Would it make sense to add a negative whip count: Dems who've stated they'd be against rules reform? it could complement the other counts above.
As far as I know, no returning, or potential, Senators in 2011 have stated their opposition to any reform. Some may have stated they are opposed to a 51-vote Senate, but then again 18-months ago every Democratic Senator was opposed to that. The situation is fluid, and opinions are changing.
I'm concerned that some of the people who are considering intermediate options aren't really serious. Remember the incredible shrinking public option.
I understand this concern. However, the public option campaign is also a good example of how staking out a clear position can cause problems, too. The original public option proposal progressives were backing was tied to Medicare rates, and would have been available to the whole country two years after the exchanges were set-up. However, at every stage of the game, when the votes were not there, this resulted in offering a weaker and weaker version of the public option. Among other factors, the repeated backpedalling progressives had to engage in lessened their leverage and worsen the cycle.
Further, at this point, there are several different proposals for reform floating around, and none of them have anything approaching 51 votes. In addition to those pushing for a 51-vote Senate, some people want to lower the threshold to 55 votes. Some people want to make the filibuster an old-fashioned talk-a-thon. Others are more focused on issues like unanimous consent, holds, and the length of the cloture process. There is also lack of consensus within the grassroots on the most desirable path to reform.
I want a 51-vote Senate, and the end of any need for unanimous consent. However, given the variety of proposals currently being discussed, and given that there are a few Senators who would likely oppose a proposal just because the progressive grassroots favor it, right now specifics should remain in the background. If we actually want to reform the rules, rather than just stake out a position, the best move is to get as many returning and incoming Senators as possible in favor of rules reform of some unspecified type. Then, the day after the election, we see where we stand.
It would be a good idea to get organizations such as the NAACP and SEIU on the record as saying that filibuster reform is a priority, if they haven't already.
Absolutely agree. I gotta get working on that.
Whip count Keep your questions coming, along with your sightings of new supporters of reform. Check out the Rules Committee hearing today, too (starts at 10 am, eastern, streaming here). The whip count is in the extended entry.
On Saturday, during the Netroots Nation event with Harry Reid, by far the most applause was foor Lt. Dan Choi. A distant, but still significant, second place was when Senator Reid reiterated his support for reforming Senate rules (aka, reforming the filibuster).
With major legislative efforts likely done for 2010, and with the 2010 elections looming, reforming Senate rules is becoming an increasingly prominent priority among progressive activists. This makes perfect sense, as Democrats will be entirely unable to govern if the 60-vote Senate, with its three-day cloture process, is still in place in 2011.
With increasing pressure from activists, more Senators and Senate candidates are signaling their support for reform. Sam Stein and Ryan Grim:
Democratic candidates said that they hear regularly from voters about abuse of the parliamentary tactic, which is likely to come up as the first vote new senators face in 2011. The supermajority requirement in the Senate has become such an obstacle to reform that it infiltrates policy discussions at every step. Last week at the Netroots Nation political conference, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) gathered environmental writers to discuss energy legislation; the first few questions were related to energy, the rest of the conversation was dominated by the filibuster.
"The use of the filibuster and the way it's led to backroom deals has created the impression in the heartland that the Senate is dysfunctional," said Jack Conway, a Democratic candidate facing Republican Rand Paul in Kentucky. "They don't understand why Washington can't address the issues people care about. People in Kentucky wanted people focused on jobs -- 14 months [of the health care debate] laid bare how broken the system was."
Conway was joined in his backing of filibuster reform by the three other Senate candidates who HuffPost interviewed for this story: Paul Hodes of New Hampshire, Elaine Marshall of North Carolina and Roxanne Conlin of Iowa. Sitting Senators Al Franken (D-Minn.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) also said they supported reform.
With news like this, and with the 2010 legislative season winding down, its time to bring back the filibuster reform whip count. You can see it below, but I need your help with it. If there are any Democratic Senate candidates, or returning Democratic Senators, who have stated they favor reform but are not listed below, please let me know. Post a comment or send me an email (christopher_j_bowers at yahoo dot com) with a link to the statement from the returning or prospective Democratic Senator. Let's round-up as much information was we can, and start kicking the campaign for reform into a higher gear.
Senate Rules Reform Whip Count, July 26 At least 25, and as many as 34, supporters
50 Senators who are currently safe bets for being in Senate in 2011(25)
Three developments that I'm aware of coming from Netroots Nation 2010 today:
Reid promises filibuster reform. In the Q&A after his address today, Reid was quite clear that rule reform is needed. He compared the filibuster to the spitball in baseball, which initially wasn't illegal, but was used only sparingly, but once it began to be abused, baseball had to ban it. Interesting metaphor. He didn't give any details of what reform he has in mind though.
Tom Udall promises Senate rule reform. In the filibuster session that followed Reid's remarks, Udall promised to move that the Senate adopt its rules by majority vote on the first day of the 112th Congress next January. He is aiming to have this rule change adopted by simple majority, not two-thirds.
Common Cause planning lawsuit. At the filibuster reform session, someone from Common Cause stood up to announce they will file a federal lawsuit against the filibuster as unconstitutional. Nothing on their site yet, but hopefully soon.
As a reminder on the filibuster front, by my research, 36 State Senates do not allow the possibility of a filibuster. If a supermajority of States don't need the filibuster, why does the national Senate? Table inside.
On July 4th, Americans are supposed to celebrate their independence. We may no longer have to worry about a greedy, distant monarch. But our country is still held in thrall to powerful interests that prize profit over individuals and their freedom-the energy industry comes to mind. As Jason Mark puts it at AlterNet:
"We're in an abusive relationship and unable to leave our abuser. The plight of the people in Louisiana proves the point. Louisianans have been punched in the face by the hand that feeds them, and yet their biggest worry is that the oil and gas industry is going to walk out the door and leave them."
Where's the love?
It's clear that BP, for instance, isn't playing carefully with our country or its resources. At Mother Jones, David Corn relates the latest example of the company's callousness. Its recovery plan had no stipulations about handling even a small storm like the one that stopped clean-up this week. It did, however, include plans to save sea life that hasn't lived in the Gulf for millions of years. As Corn put it, the company was "prepared for walruses, not prepared for hurricanes."
The biggest problem, of course, is that BP wasn't prepared to handle a blow-out to begin with. The leak has gone on for so long that governmental officials are now taking unprecedented measures to protect the wildlife most vulnerable to its effects. Beth Buczynski reports at Care2 that official are going to dig up about 700 sea turtle nests on Alabama and Florida beaches that are at risk from the oil.
"Once the eggs have hatched, the young turtles will be released in darkness on Florida's Atlantic beaches into oil-free water," she writes. "Translocation of nests on this scale has never been attempted before."
Halliburton
No matter how badly these companies treat us, it seems we can't get rid of them. Take Halliburton. The company has latched its talons into the country and will not let go. It is second only to BP in shouldering responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon spill. As Jason Mark reports for the Earth Island Journal, just before the oil spill, Halliburton took over Boots & Coots, a company that deals with oil-well blowouts; that company now has a contract with BP to help with the relief well.
"Halliburton is essentially making money from causing the accident and then helping to repair it," Mark writes. "Halliburton's many-fingered tentacles is just the latest illustration of how powerful the company is."
Wimpy Washington
Washington isn't strong enough to fight back against that sort of corporate power. Over the past year, energy interests have whittled down the climate change legislation to a tepid half-step. Right now it looks most likely that a bill that passes will regulate only the utilities sector.
"We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further," Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told Politico this week after a White House meeting on the bill.
"If you're looking for the sorry state of American energy politics distilled into one line, there it is," writes Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. "Kerry fights harder for clean energy than just about any national politician."
Still, if anything passes the Senate, Washington will celebrate. As Aaron Wiener explains at the Washington Independent, "For all the disappointment among environmentalists over the repeated compromises Democrats have made on climate legislation to win over moderates, some argue that a utilities-only cap would achieve most of the goals of an economy-wide carbon pricing scheme. The question now is whether Democratic leaders in the Senate can muster 60 votes for even a weakened bill to overcome a Republican filibuster."
Our friends abroad
On an international level, our governing bodies might be doing a better job, but not by much. Inter Press Service reports that the countries at the meeting promised to scale back taxpayer subsidies of fossil fuels. Even that promise is limited, however. "Countries agree to phase out "inefficient fossil fuel subsidies" but each country decides what those are," IPS reports. "Some countries like Japan, Australia, Italy and others have already said they don't have any."
Johnson spoke to Kim Carstensen, who leads the World Wildlife Fund's Global Climate Initiative, who compared this meeting's report to that of the last G20 summit and found that climate issues had dropped off the radar. "There were eight references to clean energy in the final report from Pittsburgh (the last G20 Summit) and they have been completely vacuum cleaned," he said. "That is kind of scary."
Fight back
In situations like this, it takes massive pressure from outside to move the political apparatus forward. At AlterNet, Heetan Kalan has some ideas about how to progress-reach beyond the environmental community; enlist "doctors, nurses, public health officials and patients speaking out about the connection between consumers of coal energy and their immediate health concerns." Kalan writes:
"After all, climate change is not solely an environmental problem - it is a human/planetary problem. If we are going to rely on a small base of environmentalists to carry us through this crisis, we are in trouble. Our spokespeople on this issue have to come from a wide spectrum of citizens and leaders."
"Lawmakers aren't facing much in the way of public pressure," he writes. "The polls look encouraging, suggesting the public is inclined to back the Democratic proposals, but that support hasn't translated into aggressive advocacy - phone calls to lawmakers' offices, letter-writing campaigns, district meetings, sizable rallies, etc....If engaged constituents want more, Congress will have to feel considerably more heat than they are now."
In other words, if America wants to be free of coal, oil, gas, and the energy industry, we're going to have to fight for it.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
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