The "world's greatest deliberative body" has just returned Dawn Johnsen's nomination to President Obama without ever holding a vote on it (h/t to The Big Hurt in Quick Hits).
Johnsen's appointment to head the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel has been languishing since March, when the Senate Judiciary Committee reported her nomination to the floor favourably.
Think Progress reports that her nomination was blocked by Ben Nelson and Arlen Specter, plus, one assumes, all Republicans. Specter re-iterated his opposition to Johnsen after joining the Democratic caucus, and Nelson objected to her bizarrely on the (probably contrived) grounds of her views on Abortion (as OLC isn't exactly a major battleground on abortion policy).
It's worth writing about this to make them pay some price for doing this in the ultimate news void time of year, and also to point out that the Senate's many glaring and egregious flaws go deeper than the filibuster. Johnsen was returned along with 5 other Obama nominees, none of whom even got a cloture vote, never mind a floor vote.
If you think Ben Nelson is just about an attempt to add language to the Senate bill that would send reproductive rights and women's health care backward, think again. Here is a partial list of concessions to Ben Nelson that don't have anything to do with reproductive rights:
Joe Lieberman is not the only right-wing member of the Democratic caucus demanding further concessions from all other 59 members of the group. Ben Nelson has joined the fray:
Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson - the moderate Democrat whose opposition is holding up the Senate's health care bill - says new language on abortion doesn't satisfy his concerns.(...)
Nelson says without further changes the compromise isn't sufficient.(...)
But Nelson said abortion wasn't his only concern and he didn't see how the Christmas deadline could be met.
I wonder if another order will come down from the White House for everyone else in the Senate Democratic caucus to cave to Ben Nelson:
Granted, Nelson has not said that he will filibuster, which puts his threat in the same, vague, gray area as the Sanders and Burris threats. More clarification when it comes.
Update--Nelson will vote no on cloture: Here is the clarification:
"If it's not at the point where I think it needs to be with the improvements that I'm pushing -- and they've made a lot of them -- then I will not vote for cloture on the motion to end debate," Nelson said in an interview on KLIN radio in Nebraska.
Even if Nelson stays firm in this position, and even if no changes are made to the bill, it is still possible the bill could pass without his support. As noted earlier today, Olympia Snowe is signaling she might vote yes.
Update 2--Will Ben Nelson be attacked by the White House now?Good question from Jed Lewison. I am sure the strong pushback against Ben Nelson from the White House will begin in 3, 2, 1...
There is rightly a lot of focus on how Joe Lieberman is acting in bad faith on the health care bill. He apparently had told Reid he was open to the deal, and he supported a Medicare buy-in only three months ago. However, it is wroth noting that he isn't the only one. Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson haven't exactly been consistent and forthcoming in their dealings on the public option, either.
Mary Landrieu. Landrieu has said she is a no vote on the public option for for quite some time, instead demanding a trigger:
Count Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) as a "no" vote on the public insurance option.
"I am not open to a public option, however I will remain open to a compromise - a full compromise," Landrieu told reporters Tuesday. "A public option is not something I support i don't think its the right way to go."
However, not long before she said that she opposed the public option, she said that she supported it. Landrieu signed a statement with Health Care for America Now, celaring the following:
Our government's responsibility is to guarantee quality affordable health care for everyone in America and it must play a central role in regulating, financing, and providing health coverage by establishing...
A choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it, or a public insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.
But hey, what do promises like that mean to Mary Landrieu, given that she is not up for re-election again until 2014?
Blanche Lincoln. On November 21st, Blanche Lincoln declared on the floor of the Senate that she would filibuster any bill with a public option:
I have already alerted the Leader, and I am promising my colleagues that I am prepared to vote against moving to the next stage of consideration as long as a government-run public option is included.
Another with Landrieu, Lincoln also signed the HCAN statement supporting a public option.
Ben Nelson: Last week, Ben Nelson was one of the ten Senate Democrats tasked by Harry Reid with developing a compromise solution on the public option. Their eventual deal included a Medicare buy-in.
And yet, as Greg Sargent notes, Ben Nelson is still raising red flags about the Medicare buy-in on national television:
"I am concerned that it's the forerunner of single payer, the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option," he said.
This is even though Nelson himself was one of a very small group of Senators who actually developed the Medicare buy-in compromise. Nice. If you are going to strike a deal, then defend that deal.
All four of these Senators have acted on bad faith in the public option. If they were consistent, at the very least we should have 60 votes for a Medicare buy-in for the Senate bill. They all recently supported such a buy-in.
I didn't know the woman from a hole in the ground until I saw this FDL piece today.
She's Obama's nom for Chief of Office of Legal Counsel - and has been since Feb 11.
She seems like an OK person and excellent teacher, which is good, but also thoroughly competent - in case one doubted this, she also has the experience of having done the job for a coupla years under Clinton.
As a job candidate, you struggle to get better than this.
But she's never had a floor vote. Ben Nelson and Specter oppose the nom, but so far as I can tell, haven't said that they would filibuster (a suggestion that Nelson wouldn't - from May!).
Specter has a quibble about her paperwork; with Nelson. it may be hostage-taking, as well as the usual.
The Mainers haven't tipped their hand, according to Wiki; Lugar is supporting the home-state gal.
As of May 15, it seemed that, on cloture, Johnsen had 58 votes, with the Mainers, Specter and Nelson unknowns (though the piece says that Nelson rarely denies cloture to noms he opposes).
A month later, no movement.
Since then, we've had Franken come on board, and six months for Harry to try and snag that extra vote to get to 60.
Given the importance of the OLC honcho as the Prez's own legal eagle, WH inaction on the nom is obviously explicable only by facts of which the Great Unwashed are currently unaware.
So far as I call tell, Johnsen hasn't exactly got her hopes up (she has her family and job back in Bloomington). But it would, at the very least, be courtesy from the WH either to move her nom to the floor or to withdraw it and try again.
But they obviously see some merit in squatting in no-man's land.
Me neither.
More
My interest remains piqued.
According to this from October 30, Harry's problem is not so much that he hasn't the votes for cloture, but
Republicans' insistence on 30 hours of debate before the Senate can actually vote on the nomination has made it difficult for Reid to put the vote on the calendar.
I don't think the count has changed since Franken arrived - loads of no-pressure legislative days to get Johnsen through. Of course Nov/Dec isn't a good time!
(Also, this piece.)
DoJ noms were also brought into the Rahmbo case against Greg Craig, apparently. (I'm sure Johnsen was delighted to be able to serve her President in at least one capacity!)
People (including righty lawyers) saying nice things about Johnsen here and here.
So - where are we right now?
Johnsen, very sensibly, is back in Bloomington getting on with her real life with, I'm assuming, zero expectations of WH work.
Both the WH and Harry have had other priorities for a long time, and couldn't press for the nom anytime soon even if they sufferred a Damascene conversion.
And the role of OLC honcho is being performed (in case you were wondering) by David Barron, a Harvard prof not important enough for Mr Wiki to give him an entry of his own.
It now seems quite likely that the Senate has the 60 votes necessary to force cloture on the motion to proceed with the health care bill. The final three votes Senate majority leader Harry Reid needed were Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu, but all three now appear to be ready to vote "aye." Here is a rundown of all three:
Ben Nelson has stated that he will vote for cloture:
"This weekend, I will vote for the motion to proceed to bring that debate onto the Senate floor," Nelson says. "The Senate should start trying to fix a health care system that costs too much and delivers too little for Nebraskans."
Nelson indicates that this does not mean he is ready to support cloture to pass the bill, but he is willing to let debate go forward.
Earlier today, Senate #2 Dick Durbin stated that Blanche Lincoln has told Harry Reid she would vote yes. Durbin is now walking back that statement, but really, the gig is up for Lincoln.
Anyway, what was Lincoln going to do--oppose even letting the debate go forward and then ask Democrats to vote for her in 2010? Not bloody likely, especially with a prominent figure in Arkansas still considering a primary challenge. Lincoln is highly likely to be a yes.
The last remaining holdout, Mary Landrieu, appears to have secured $100 million in Medicare funding for Louisiana in exchange for her vote.
Right-wingers are in an uproar over this, but really--I am shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling going on in this casino! A member of Congress holding out on a key vote in order to secure funding for her home state or district!? I bet that has never happened before. This is really breaking new ground on Capitol Hill!
Further, while they don't seem to realize it, the right-wing uproar over Landrieu's deal actually makes it virtually impossible for her to vote against cloture now. Due to right-wing publicity, now everyone knows Landrieu is bringing $100 million home by holding out. As such, what is Landrieu going to do--issue a statement that preventing a floor debate on health care is more important than $100 million for Louisiana? Only 9% of Louisianans think she should block the debate. I bet a lot more than that want the $100 million, especially now that everyone has heard about the $100 million.
So, it looks like Democrats have the 60 needed to move forward on debate. The truth is that Reid probably secured the 60 votes before filing the cloture motion. It is a rare day when the leadership doesn't know the outcome of a vote before scheduling it.
The vote will take place tomorrow night, at 8 p.m. eastern, following an all-day debate. Notably, in exchange for the all-day debate, Senator Coburn has dropped his demand that the entire bill be read out loud, which means there will be less droning on C-SPAN2 during Monday and Tuesday of next week.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America recently began airing ads in Nebraska holding Ben Nelson accountable for undermining the public option.
Immediately after these ads were announced, The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reported that Nelson called the small-business owner featured in the ad and defensively tried to get him to stop speaking out. Then Nelson called Howard Dean, founder of Democracy for America.
Today, Nelson continued scrambling -- airing an ad of his own in Nebraska on health care.
Nelson is obviously feeling the heat. Airing statewide ads is a highly unusual move for someone not up for re-election until 2012. Hopefully for him, he didn't spend too much money producing the ad because it's, well, quite boring.
As Greg Sargent points out, it didn't address the public option at all. And for good reason -- Nelson's efforts to undermine the public option are out of step with 76% of Americans, 71% of rural Americans, and even 50% of Republicans.
Today, the PCCC and DFA are putting the ad featuring the small-business owner holding Nelson accountable up for another week -- and will keep airing it as long as small dollar donors keep chipping in to air it.
I want to tell you about a Nebraska blogger named Kyle Michaelis who pretends to be "the state's premiere source of progressive online political commentary" but is actually an apologist for Ben Nelson.
But first, the background details, some of which Paul mentioned earlier...
On Friday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America launched a new TV ad in DC and Nebraska holding Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) accountable for stalling health care reform while taking millions from health and insurance interests.
The ad features a super-compelling Nebraskan small businessman. It's accompanied by an open letter now signed by over 30,000 people calling out Nelson and telling the full Senate to keep working until health care reform is passed.
Ben Nelson immediately responded. The full statement is here, but the two most relevant sentences were:
Nebraskans don't need outside special interest groups telling them what to think...
If this is an indication of the politics going into August, then health care reform may be dead by the end of August.
The first sentence is absurd because the ad features a Nebraskan telling his personal story and demanding his senator represent people like him. (It's also absurd because, as Public Campaign points out, 83% of Nelson's millions from health and insurance interests comes from out of state!)
The second sentence...well, these headlines sum up the outrageousness:
Talking Points Memo: Nelson: If Reformers Keep Attacking Me, Health Care May Be Dead By End Of August
Huffington Post: Ben Nelson On Ads Run Against Him: They Could Kill Health Care Reform
Ben Nelson loves money from out of state... unless it's being used to help give voice to in-state frustration with his people-hating ways.
One way you make real change is you get rid of "allies" who consistently stab you in the back. Nelson's Progressive Punch "tilt", measuring this his voting record against his state's partisan makeup, is -26.47 for crucial votes this year, compared to is -2.77 for Evan Bayh, is -7.87 for Blanche Lincoln, and is -9.02 for for Max Baucus, so yes, he really is that much more odious than the other odious ones. Why the outrage right now? Nelson says that if ads are run criticizing his corporate whorish ways, he will single-handedly destroy health care reform.
Someone's not just scared. They're mean and evil, too. If politics is too hard for poor Ben, then fuck him. He can go get honest work. Robbing banks or something.
From Sam Stein at HuffPo:
Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) lashed out Friday at the ads being run against his position on health care reform in his home state, saying they would backfire -- and might even derail the entire reform process.
In a statement issued late in the afternoon by Nelson's office, spokesman Jake Thompson warned that if the new series of ads calling out the Senator's "stalling" on reform were "an indication of the politics going into August, then health care reform may be dead by the end of August."
"Nebraskans don't need outside special interest groups telling them what to think. Senator Nelson has nothing but praise for Nebraska groups working toward health care reform. Unfortunately, he says, these outside groups undermine the sincere and dedicated efforts of people in our state," Thompson wrote. "Recently, similar ads have run in Nebraska. Those ads by other special interests prompted hundreds of Nebraskans to call our offices, with 9 to 1 urging Senator Nelson to do exactly the opposite of what the special interest group wanted. In short, the ads backfired."
But, if they really backfired, then how come he's so angry? That's really lame lying!
Here's where Nelson gets his campaign funds, according to OpenSecrets.org:
I'm sure he's going to be returning all that out-of-state money--37% of the itemized total on that list--by the start of business on Monday. Aren't you?
The internal debate on health care strategy for Democrats can be boiled down to this: do we choose the approach whose specifics are more popular with the public and will almost certainly work better in practice once it gets passed, or do we want to go with something that has some bipartisan support and may avoid an all out war with the insurance industry?
The first approach is currently being championed by President Obama (although not always by his Chief of Staff), Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, and 4 of the 5 committee chairs responsible for bringing the legislation to the floor. The second approach is strongly favored by Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, Tennessee Rep.(and co-killer of health care reform in the Clinton years) Jim Cooper, and a few conservative Democrats in the Senate.
Seems like a damn easy choice to me.
The first thing to understand in all this is the consequences for the Democrats for the next generation and probably longer if they pass some convoluted, complicated, unworkable compromise that doesn't change the abusive patterns in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and doesn't begin to control health care costs. If they pass a compromise that doesn't meet regular people's needs, folks will figure it out very quickly, as most people deal with the health care system all the time. If the Democrats twist up this bill to make insurance companies and their Republican allies happy, it is end of story for this generation of Democrats - our party will not recover from screwing up health care.
The second thing to understand is that wealthy, powerful elements of the health care industry, along with the entire right-wing message machine, will oppose any health care reform bill. Democrats trying to avoid a fight should just get over it: they will get one no matter what.
Here's the other thing: having a clear, clean fight - Obama and the Democrats take on the insurance companies - is an easier message to win with than the mushy "we're all in this together, we're all partners in solving this problem" thing Obama has been doing so far. Having enemies helps define this fight in Obama's favor, especially when the enemies are as unpopular as the insurance companies.
So face your fear, Max Baucus. Tell you health industry allies no, Jim Cooper. Work through your fear of commitment, Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu. Let's put together a bill that actually works and move forward sometime soon, in our lifetimes preferably. It's time to get this done.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Friday that he will oppose legislation that would give people the option of a public health insurance plan. The move puts him on the opposite side of two-thirds of Americans.
A poll released this week by Consumer Reports National Research Center showed that 66 percent of Americans back the creation of a public health plan that would compete with private plans. Nelson, in comments made to CQ, joins the 16 percent of poll respondents who said they oppose the plan.
Nelson's problem, he told CQ, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. "At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game," Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a "deal breaker."
It's not just health care, of course. Nelson's been on quite a tear the last couple of weeks. But before I get into that, let's let dday finish the setup, and he explains it's not just the money from the health care and insurance industries:
While the bank lobby continues to hold significant clout in Congress, President Barack Obama entered the fray on behalf of consumers Thursday, demanding that lenders put an end to abusive fees and predatory interest rates.
In the grown up world, honorable and reasonable people may initially disagree but eventually compromise upon a collective review of empirical evidence. It was in this spirit, that the nascent Obama administration reached out to Republicans with respect to their proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which finally passed both houses of congress yesterday.
Nelson even is willing to remove popular Pell Grant increases, saving them for annual spending bills later in the year.
So, let me get this straight:
Nelson supports spending money on Pell Grants
Nelson supports spending money in the stimulus
Nelson does not want to pass Pell Grants in the stimulus.
Hmmm. Maybe Ben Nelson is operating under some higher logic than I can muster. However, I am pretty sure that if the government is going to fund both X and Y, it will cost the same amount of money no matter if X and Y are in the same bill, or in two different bills. This is because 2 + 2 is not less than 4.
Using Republican talking points is bad enough, but assuming people are as dumb as Republicans assume they are is even worse. In this case, Nelson is doing both.
Well, there is no need. Today, Senator Schumer announced that he would mirror the amendment. So, it looks like the amendment that we pushed for will pass as part of the stimulus package. Hurray!
Also of note, Senators Patty Murray, Diane Feinstein and Ben Nelson are apparently crafting another amendment that will increase infrastructure spending in the stimulus:
One item that likely will be discussed is an amendment that would add billions of dollars to infrastructure projects. Nelson is crafting that measure with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, both on the Appropriations Committee.
Although Nelson's support for this amendment comes with a catch:
And Nelson doesn't want to stop there. He wants to pluck out what he says are extraneous projects in the stimulus bill to pay for the amendment. Providing hundreds of millions of dollars for prevention of smoking and sexually-transmitted disease -- though they may be worthy causes -- does not create jobs. Nelson even is willing to remove popular Pell Grant increases, saving them for annual spending bills later in the year.
Nelson's position on this makes no sense. He wants to spend money to prevent smoking, STDs, and to support Pell Grants, but he doesn't want those expenditures in this specific bill? My question is, if you are going to support both spending on X and spending on Y this year, why do you care about the name of the bills used to pass X an Y? That is just pointless labeling. If you are going to support them both, then it really doesn't matter which bills they are passed under. Unless, of course, you don't actually intend on supporting X or Y later on.
Anyway, I am thinking that we should push for the Murray-Feinstein-Nelson amendment for increased infrastructure spending, just as we did the Nadler rail amendment. Of course, we won't do it if it comes with the strings that Nelson wants to attach to it. What say you?
I used to laugh when the 1990s right-wing Clinton scandalmongers would send their pseudo-journalists and private eyes to Arkansas to look for Clinton's connections to all the nefarious characters the right-wing media machine reported about. They were effective at spinning these tales to traditional big media reporters anxious to play "gotcha", but the simple fact known to anybody who has ever done politics in a small state is that everyone is connected in one way or another to everybody else. Every time I go back home I am reminded of this connectedness.
Take me in the two states I've lived in before moving to D.C. It's been 15 years since I've lived in Iowa, but I still know the governor, lt. governor, secretary of state, attorney general, secretary of agriculture and the House and Senate majority leaders. Most of them are personal friends.
Or go back even further. It's been almost 25 years since I moved from Nebraska at the age of 22. In spite of this, I still know a ton of people in politics back home. The current mayor of Lincoln, who I've known since before I left, is the son-in-law of two of my mom's best friends. The previous mayor, who I've known since I was born, goes to the church I grew up attending. The mayor before that has been one of my best friends for almost 30 years. My wife used to run in 10K races and marathons with Bob Kerrey before he ever ran for governor the first time, and another close friend of my mom's worked for his dad. Ben Nelson's chief of staff was a friend of mine in high school. Even on the Republican side, I have personal connections. Former Governor Mike Johanns used to be a liberal Democrat, and I worked on his first race for county commissioner. And current Attorney General Jon Bruning is the son of one of my wife's best friends, and one of his top aides was my best friend in elementary school.
So what's my point in listing all these connections? I think we need to understand that the politics and language in small states has a different feel and rhetoric than the politics of big states and cities. Sometimes all those personal ties can make the political jousting really ugly and petty, like all the Clinton-era Arkansas attacks. But more often, when you know people on such a personal basis, it doesn't generally feel right to hammer them as hard as we do in national politics. I would love to know what bloggers and the OpenLeft.com community members who live in small states think about this and how it affects their political work and their writing.
I know for me, being from a small state has changed the way I do politics even though I've lived in D.C. for so long. I still try to get along with a wide variety of folks, and I still try to see the point of view of my opponents even when I think they are fundamentally wrong. Although I've given up entirely on the Bush and DeLay-style politicians who have taken over the Republican Party, because I think they are mean-spirited to the core, I still try to assume the best about most other people in politics until they prove me wrong.
I'm not at all saying, by the way, that folks from big cities or states are less likely to be like what I've described above. And God knows there is nothing idyllic about these states- there are plenty of bullies and cheats and liars in the small states I described, too.
I'm just saying that growing up in a small state has driven these kinds of attitudes that I described deep into me.
So I'm curious what folks think, especially those of you from small states, since we have to win plenty of Senate races in these small states to have a majority in the U.S. Senate- how does the kind of connectedness dynamic make the strategies for winning politically in small states different than in bigger states or cities?
Call their offices and urge them to vote YES on S. 1762, and NO on the Nelson-Burr Amendment. The Capitol Switchboard can be reached at (202) 224-3121.
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Last week, most student organizations rejoiced as the Democrats shepherded the Cost of College Reduction Act through the House of Representatives. The Bill represented the largest increase in student aid since the G.I. Bill. It accomplished this in part by cutting excess government subsidies to corporate lenders, who were fattening their wallets on the backs of debt-ridden students. Republicans tried unsuccessfully to kill the bill in the House. The Gavel had an excellent post about that fight and the bill's passage.
The Senate version of the bill - The Higher Education Access Act of 2007 - is set to provide $17 billion in student aid to college students and recent graduates, among other provisions to further protect students. But Ben Nelson (D-NE), whose home state is also home to Nelnet, one of the biggest corporate lenders, is trying to weaken the Senate version of the bill and return $3 billion of that to the lending industry so they can continue to line their pockets on with corporate welfare.
What I'm hearing is that the cloture votes on Iraq and the DOD reauthorization are going to fail, and the Higher Education Access Act of 2007 will be brought to the floor instead, with voting to be scheduled for today or tomorrow. Right now, Republicans supposedly have 3-6 Democrats willing to side with lenders on the Amendment, so they are likely to see it pass.
Here's what you can do:
Call your Senator and urge them to vote YES on S. 1762, and NO on the Nelson-Burr Amendment. The Capitol Switchboard can be reached at (202) 224-3121, and the operators can tell you both who your Senators are and connect you.
Also ask which way your Senator plans on voting. If we can find out who those 3-6 Democrats are that are supporting lender subsidies over students we can ratchet up the pressure on them.
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