Dodd moves on, doesn't understand what 'compromise' means

Some small amount of relief is to be allowed on the financial reform front. After weeks in which it appeared that the Consumer Financial Protection Agency was being weakened, that bad concessions to predatory industries were being made in order to stay buddy buddy with ranking GOP committee members, and disappointing decisions, made in the name of 'bipartisanship', were being made in order to keep letting the finance and banking industries screw us hard and not have to change their behavior after toileting the economy, now it seems that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has said "fuck this shit" and is moving forward with his own bill.

Largely because he seems to realize that the GOP strategy of "pretending to negotiate in good faith in an attempt to stall things, get large concessions for things they want, and then not support the bill", last employed in the health care debate, was wasting time, making the bill worse, not adding GOP support, and in danger of losing him Democratic support. So Dodd will unveil his own bill... and he's promising that it'll have most of the concessions he made to the GOP in it for some reason.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said he will release his version of legislation to overhaul financial rules, signaling that talks on a compromise with Republican Bob Corker have collapsed.
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“I have been fortunate to have a strong partner in Senator Corker and my new proposal will reflect his input and the good work done by many of our colleagues,” Dodd said. “Our talks will continue and it is still our hope to come to agreement on a strong bill all of the Senate can be proud to support.”
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“It has always been my goal to produce a consensus package,” Dodd said in the statement.

The kind of consensus that involves little to no Republican support and will involve the very people you negotiated with calling whatever the bill is some sort of socialist giveaway to banks? So you can't continue on with the negotiations, you have to move forward, you don't think the GOP is on board or will help out in any way (trenchant insight), but yet you're going to keep all of their suggestions that weakened various ways of regulating and governing the industries that just set fire to everyone's money? Makes sense.

So you don't have a consensus, you don't have a compromise... but you'll stick to the comprise negotiated just for the hell of it anyway instead of moving for more stringent, smarter, and better protections and laws? Sounds like a Democrat to me. Now's when you unleash the crazy liberal communist shit in order to drive them back to the table. Someone should tell Dodd how to negotiate. But I guess he does have to think about reelection.... oh that's right, he's retiring. So this all makes complete sense. Good luck with all of that, Chris.

Bipartisanship

Some lament the current tone in Washington and how the legislative process has been dominated by so much political bickering that it seems impossible to pass even the most simple bills. Filibusters are invoked, cloture votes forced, and harsh 60 vote thresholds that have to be met with strict party line votes are required for bills that often finally pass with near universal support of both parties. Just look at health care, or the jobs bills, or economic packages, or anything really.

But there is hope. There is one area of action where our elected betters come together to pass bills with true bipartisan support, warming our hearts with their commitment to bettering this country: when the legislation involves stripping Americans of privacy protections and giving the government greater surveillance powers. That's right, the Patriot Act!

Democrats have retreated from adding new privacy protections to the primary U.S counterterrorism law, stymied by Senate Republicans who argued the changes would weaken terror investigations.

The proposed protections were cast aside when Senate Democrats lacked the necessary 60-vote supermajority to pass them. Dashing the hopes of liberals, the Senate Wednesday night instead passed — by voice vote without debate — a one-year extension of key parts of the USA Patriot Act that would have expired on Sunday.

Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

That's right, we can't pass an extension to unemployment insurance and transportation funding by a voice vote because of Jim Bunning, but the Patriot Act? No problem. And forget all those little thingy dingies about improving privacy protections and curbing the numerous stories of abuse we've heard about the Patriot Act provisions that were able to get through committee with bipartisan support. No, as Pat Leahy said "some Republican senators objected to passing the carefully crafted national security, oversight and judicial review provisions in this legislation." So, best not try it or force a public fight over something like rights.

So let's recap. If a bill can be marginally seen as to benefit a section of the American public: filibustered to death, partisan gridlock. If a bill gives our lawmakers a freedom boner and allows them to think of themselves as macho manly men waging the war on terror in a manly way: no need to even press a button to vote for it, we'll just pass it based off the loudness of grunts and then move on to post-vote drinks in the coat room. Ain't this country great?

One more go around

As the baby Jesus plans to bury most of the mid-Atlantic in another ice age (is it bad when the daily forecast icon is a laughing Satan wielding a dagger made of ice?), our elected betters have decided to make one last stab at health reform before our world is encased in another 20 feet of snow, permanently freezing our society for study by future alien archaeologists.

Is that plan actually passing a bill? No. God no. The plan is one more bullshit "bipartisanship" summit where the President hopes to take televised questions from the GOP and Democrats in order to negotiate a supposed way forward. .....Great. Can someone remind me again how that all worked out last time? Ah yes, numerous Republicans involved themselves in the process, slowed things down dramatically, got hundreds of amendments and concessions made, comprised half the group of six that essentially wrote the Senate bill, and then unanimously opposed it as they spent months completely lying about the content of the bill while spinning horror stories of death panels, socialism, government takeovers, and Bolshevik plots. I'm sure their plans and contributions will be equally constructive this time.

Eric Cantor’s office responds to Obama’s announcement of a bipartisan summit on health care with the most explicit and direct assertion I’ve seen yet that the only way Dems can win bipartisan cooperation is to fully embrace the GOP health care plan and nothing more:

After going it alone on health care reform for nearly a year, President Obama has decided he wants to bring Republicans into the conversation. Here’s the problem: unless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about.

Completely scrap health care and do what we want. Sounds great. Of course that's even if they bother to show up for all the "bipartisanship", as they're already complaining about being expected to negotiate in good faith.

I know Democrats think that if they just ask "pretty please" enough and reserve the right to add "sugar on top" at a later date that the GOP, contra to the last two decade's of worth of examples, will finally make an attempt to govern without naked political calculations in mind. Here's a helpful hint: Republicans don't want a health care reform bill, nothing you say will get them to contribute constructively as their goal is to completely kill what you are trying to do.

So, can you at least get that point through your thick Democrat skulls and just move forward, the House passing the Senate bill and then the Senate passing the conference committee changes through reconciliation, before we're all frozen to death? Not for the sake of this country. No, as I've said: most of us will be encased in ice by tomorrow. I'd just prefer it if the aliens that will be defrosting us in a thousand years won't be observing us at the pinnacle of our circle jerk government failing us yet again. It's probably probably too late to avoid that, but I'd like for us to try. Just so the aliens aren't totally embarrassed for us.

Health care: run away!

It should be of little surprise, really. It was expected. I don't know why I thought that this time might be different. Health care reform is effectively dead for a while, which might just mean it is effectively dead. Why? Because Democrats have decided to assume their familiar position, one of grabbed ankles, pants around ankles, and a look that says "don't harm the plumbing too much back there." The Senate feels the health care issue, namely putting through reconciliation measures they were already going to vote for, to be too extreme a measure. Why? Because they can apparently see a future where not passing health care reform was a great idea.

So instead, because they can't do more than one thing at a time and literally every Senator is going to be working on this new priority, they've decided to pivot from health care to anything that anyone will throw at them in order to plausibly provide them with an excuse to get them away from health care. That thing is jobs, which they've decided is kind of important now after a year of not doing anything about it.

The White House on Thursday signaled the outlines of its strategy for breaking the partisan logjam holding up President Obama’s agenda, saying Democrats would move quickly to underline their commitment to fixing the broken economy and to build an election-year case against Republicans if they do not cooperate.

With Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul stalled on Capitol Hill, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Democrats would try to act first on job creation, reducing the deficit and imposing tighter regulation on banks before returning to the health measure, the president’s top priority from last year.

Yes yes, sure sure, good good. I'm sure the Republicans will hop on board to help you with an important priority. If there's one thing we've learned about the GOP it's that they certainly aren't interested in yanking the country down on itself if there's a slight chance it'll benefit them politically. Gee I wonder how the first attempt at this this year, where you tried to pass a measure the GOP supported, namely pay-as-you-go rules for the budget? What, they opposed in en masse? Including several GOP Senators who explicitly expressed support for the measure? Shocking.

I wonder what there contribution to the jobs debate will be. How does the New York Times phrase it? "[I]nstant Republican resistance to the jobs plan", a jobs plan which hasn't even been articulated. I'm sure this will go well.

So good job, Democrats. I'm sure that running shrieking from health care to the issue of jobs, because two things at once is hard, is going to work out for you. Hell, I foresee a future where both health care reform and an actual, working jobs bill are passed with enough time to be enacted before the election. The election being your only real concern at this point. This, like all your plans and legislative strategies, will totally work. Why shouldn't people trust you? You're the Democrats! Things things always go well for you and, by extension, the American people.

The beginning of the end

Rest easy America, the Senate Finance Committee has finally gotten through the business every other Senate and House committee got through months ago with the Baucus bill passing by a margin of 14-9. Olympia Snowe was the only GOP'er to vote for it. And so we move on inexorably towards health care reform, but not before another hundred infuriating things happen, dozens of politicians are wished dead, and the whole miserable process drags on so feebly that when it is passed we're all angry, thoroughly disheartened, and completely disillusioned even though the biggest reform of health care since Medicare just passed.

Many commentators have gone out of their way that politicians have been promising to get comprehensive health coverage since Teddy Roosevelt without success, so I'll just point out that literally any of those proposals, from Roosevelt's to Nixon's to Bush I's to Clinton's would have been much more preferable to what we got. But there we are.

If you're interested in such things the Times live blogged the whole Finance Committee failfest. Go through it and see if you can pick out what angers you the most. Whether it's Orrin Hatch bitching that the bill wasn't bipartisan just because his party spent all its time pissing and moaning about grandma murdering, smart people like Wyden and Rockefeller not having their smart ideas listened to, John Ensign complaining about the lack of tax breaks for senators who have healthy, in shape mistresses, Bill Nelson supporting the bill becuase Olympia Snowe supporting the bill made it bipartisan, I'm sure you'll find something to hate about the Senate. Then there was Press Secretary Gibbs prattling on about how today's vote was bipartisan. Who gives a shit? As if one Republican vote makes things bipartisan. As if people care more that the bill is bipartisan than it being a good bill.

Bleh. So we move on tow.....what's that, Joe Liberman? You want to butt in and say something? You want people to hate you with the fire of ten thousand suns?

LIEBERMAN: I’ve been saying for a couple of months now that I’m concerned, that I’m concerned that there’s a danger that we’re trying to do too much here and the president is trying to do two good things. But doing them at once in the middle of a recession may be hard to pull off.
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IMUS: Do you support the Baucus bill?

LIEBERMAN: Not, not, no. I mean, not the way it is now.

Diediediediediediediediedie. Can't even celebrate this mediocre achievement for a day before you interject your sackless warbling, can we? I blame you, Connecticut, you're on fucking notice. I swear if Sean and I ever have robot armies that Minnesota District 6, the headquarters of every cable TV news outlet, Wall Street, and you are going to be taken out in the first wave.

Orrin Hatch is an adult

Since no one yelled out something during a speech or accused anyone of wanting to put the nation's grandmothers into an apple press for "ciderizing" you might be under the impression that our elected betters are returning, if not to the emotional level of adults, at least to the level of less angsty teenagers. Well, you didn't read the list of 534 amendments proposed to Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee health bill. To be fair, neither did I. But I read someone else's summary, and while there are some worthwhile amendments in there, it mostly goes to show how juvenile and childish the Senate is.

Roberts 144: To ensure that if people like the hometown hospital they have, they can keep it.

Did I miss this meme? Was there an "Obama's gon stealz ur hospitalz" movement that came right on the heels of the grandma murder one?

Ensign 409: Transparency in Czars.
Hatch 511: Prohibits authorized or appropriated federal funds under the Mark from being distributed to or used by ACORN.
Ensign 543: Strike the word “fee” everywhere it appears in the bill and replace with the word “tax”.

When I think of things that are absolutely vital to the fight to reform health care, czars and getting pissy about ACORN are the first two things I think about, not to mention making it easier for my colleagues to demonize something as a tax.

But perhaps the childish coup de grâce, after you get though all the amendments prohibiting the government takeover of health care, amendments getting the vapors over rationing, or stripping out anything useful from the bill, was delivered by Orrin Hatch of Utah...Utah....U.....tah:

Hatch 497: add transition relief for the excise tax on high cost insurance plans for any State with a name that begins with the letter ‘U’.

Whew, thank God he's trying to get that one in there. That's got to help, what, 20-30 extra states dodge that tax fee on gold plated policies, right? Glad to see you're taking this seriously Orrin. Now I'm kind of hoping that Rockefeller 612, the amendment that states "any doctor is allowed to beat any person named Orrin with a sack of surgical grade oranges on any day ending with the word 'day'" passes.

Well, at least he's honest

There is one honest man left in Washington. To bad it's the guy with the ethics of a 1900's robber baron. Ben Nelson, a man who strives every day to make everything he touches worse, is opposing any plan to make health care public and universal. Why? Because if that happens, he can't seem to find a way for insurance companies to sensually cover him in honey and then roll him through a pit of non-sequential hundreds. It's about the principle. Whither the poor insurance company?

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."

As he so often does, Nelson said, according to CQ, that he planned to form a "coalition of like-minded centrists opposed to the creation of a public plan, as a counterweight to Democrats pushing for it."

Nice of him to decide that protecting insurance companies is preferable to making health care cheaper and more widely available. We can't have it because it would work too well and cover too many. It's nice to know that he at least admits that any public plan will be massively superior to anything the private sector deigns to put together. Negating your own position and openly stating you're in it for the money, that's Debating 101, tight? Nice that he can also scrounge up a few attention seeking "centrists" (Evan Bayh and Olympia Snowe probably hav eincoherent speeches already written up) to grub for insurance money.

Just wanted to help you identify one of the two brilliant arguments that will undoubtedly kill health care. "But what about those poor private insurers" and "Waaaaaah socialism", possibly with a "This is what those dirty Frenchies do" thrown in for good measure. We are ruled by adults, that is why you can't have decent health care.

Pobody's nerfect

Remember the thoroughly adult stimulus bill debate our elected betters in Congress had? You know the one. Where a bunch of hacks decided that cutting out stimulative sections of the bill because the "numbers sounded high" and knocking good ideas out of the bill in some vain quest to achieve a total dollar sum they picked at random in an attempt to appear bipartisan and look like they were doing something. Remember? Boy I sure hope none of the stuff they knocked out has grossly dangerous implications for battling global flu pandemics.

Indeed, like Rove, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was apparently unwilling to be seen as endorsing such "funny" sounding priorities as flu "preparedness" in an economic recovery package. Perhaps in an attempt to prove her fiscal conservative bona fides, Collins repeatedly insisted that Obey's pandemic preparedness funding did not belong in the bill:

COLLINS: There's funding to help improve our preparedness for a pandemic flu. There is funding to help improve cyber security. What does that have to do with an economic stimulus package? [CNN, 1/31/09]

COLLINS: I think everybody in the room is concerned about a pandemic flu. But does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill? No. We should not. [MSNBC, 2/5/09]

After the funding was stripped, another moderate Republican attempting to appear tough on "unnecessary" spending in the recovery package, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), endorsed Collins' crusade against the pandemic preparedness funding

Whoops! It turns out that chortling at stuff that sounds funny, using it as a basis for governing, listening to Karl Rove, and randomly hacking things out of the stimulus package all didn't seem like such smart things to do in hindsight. And the logic seemed so airtight too. Apparently Collins' "it sounds funny, cut it" is a better argument than David Obey's (who put the provision in) "a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse" argument. And why not, they're both rational arguments made by serious people. Well, one is.

So in case you were wondering why, despite years of warning that we're all going to be killed by some superflu pandemic, we haven't spent money on pandemic flu preparations....well, we were, but the name sounded funny. Perhaps if it was called the "Extra Freedomy Way to Protect America First From Mucousy Flu Death Plan For America. Freedom!" plan it might have had a chance. But don't worry, now that the problem is already here, I'm sure they'll get right on it. Because prevention is always a shortsighted waste of money, but shutting the barn door after the animals get out is serious and responsible leadership.

Budgetry

The first Obama budget passed the House and Senate today, meaning we will get to stick China with one last multi-billion IOU before our country collapses in on itself. The House budget is $3.6 trillion and includes a deficit of $1.2 trillion, while the Senate budget is $3.5 trillion with a $1.2 trillion deficit. Crafty Senators, less money, same deficit. That's top notch work, boys. In actuality both deficits are an improvement over this year's deficit of $1.8 trillion. All in all there were many boring platitudes and cheap accusations to be handed out.

"It's going to take a lot of work to clean up the mess we inherited, and passing this budget is a critical step in the right direction," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said. "Staying true to these priorities will help turn around the economy for the many Americans who are underwater right now."

Republicans in both houses accused Democrats of drafting plans that would hurt the recession-ravaged economy in the long run, rather than help it, and saddle future generations with too much debt.

"The administration's budget simply taxes too much, spends too much and borrows too much at a moment when we can least afford it," said the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

What happened with the Republican budget plans that totally didn't cause deficits and diddle the economy with debt? Not much. Apparently the Ryan pamphlet/joke budget they handed out to a incredulous media only garnered 137 Republican votes. John McCain's budget never materialized. I guess he's going to wait until next week to unveil it. All in all no Republicans voted for the budget, just like no Republicans vote for practically anything the White House wants passed.

In other news, two democrat Senators, Ben "That number sounds too high" Nelson and Evan "I lead a group of Senate moderates who ascribe to no unified ethos or even vote together" Bayh, crossed over to vote against the budget. Why? No reason other than the budget was in no danger of failure and you don't get your name in the paper for agreeing with your party. Rest easy, there was enough bipartisan consensus to tack on an amendment to give a tax break to people who inherit more than $7 million. Why not? These people clearly earned that money. This is the bipartisanship we're in danger of losing if Democrats try to pass anything through the reconciliation process. Rest easy. Budget passed, money borrowed, future mortgaged, Paris Hilton's future secured. Time to lean back and put your feet on the desk, the important work is done.

Bipartisanship

"But I invited them over for cookies, what happened? No support?"

So yesterday the House had their vote on the $820 billion stimulus package Obama wanted to get through. He had a hope and vision to get it passed with lots of bipartisan support and possibly bluebirds fluttering around him and a baby deer walking up and eating food out of Nancy Pelosi's hand. He pulled out all the stops, choked down brisket in the presence of Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, invited a dozen GOP moderates up for cookies and soda with Rahm, had about 22 members from the House and Senate up for a White House kegger, and had a sleepover out behind the White House where he told the spookiest ghost story ever and made Eric Cantor wet himself. The result? The bill passed 244-188, with not one single Republican voting for it.

This after he went into the process offering up a watered down version of the bill with increased tax cut proposals his own advisers deemed ineffective in an attempt to win over the support of Republicans. Whoops. This will also get no Republican support in the Senate. Whoops. A word to the wise Mr. Barry, you have the numbers to pass whatever the hell kind of stimulus you want. Republicans are going to oppose it no matter what. They view a stimulus package not solely based around tax cuts as either the abandonment of capitalism or the murder of capitalism or at least the drunken grope of capitalism. So why not try and craft the best bill you and your advisers feel will do the most good and pass that? Because in two years when they hold midterms and in 4 when you're up for re-election, you aren't going to get judged on how hard you tried to work with people, you're going to get judged on the results.

Or try another cookie party......but with bigger cookies!