Cutting Through Ice

Progressives did a great job getting people in office in 2006 who share the same values. But it's going to take decades before we get enough turnover in office where that's going to make a real difference. Sure, the caucus is for the most part right on the Iraq war, but that's a layup. On too many other fronts, we're not seeing a lot of movement on the issues on which Democrats supposedly ran.

The biggest disappointment is that Democrats are stubbornly refusing to sever the ties between government and Big Money interests in the form of lobbyists.

House Democrats are suddenly balking at the tough lobbying reforms they touted to voters last fall as a reason for putting them in charge of Congress.

Now that they are running things, many Democrats want to keep the big campaign donations and lavish parties that lobbyists put together for them. They're also having second thoughts about having to wait an extra year before they can become high-paid lobbyists themselves should they retire or be defeated at the polls.

The growing resistance to several proposed reforms now threatens passage of a bill that once seemed on track to fulfill Democrats' campaign promise of cleaner fundraising and lobbying practices.

"The longer we wait, the weaker the bill seems to get," said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, which has pushed for the changes. "The sense of urgency is fading," he said, in part because scandals such as those involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., have given way to other news.

Lobbying is a protected right in the First Amendment, and I don't want to see it go away any more than I would want a free press to be stopped. But making former lawmakers wait a couple years before crossing over and becoming lobbyists, and making lobbyists disclose details about the big money they scrounge up in contributions, is just sensible good-government stuff. Furthermore, it's terrible politics to rant and rave about a culture of corruption, only to leave the door open for that corruption after the election is over.

Second is this pernicious secret trade deal, the details of which have still yet to be released to the general public or the media. Of course, this didn't stop the traditional media from defending the deal and calling it a grand breakthrough in the spirit of high Broderist bipartisan compromise. The only compromise here is that members on both sides of the aisle have no problem screwing the American worker. Fair-trade Democrats were denied a chance to see the final agreement before the announcement (the US Chamber of Commerce, on the other hand, got a nice long look). Worse, the deal is just a precursor to giving the President fast-track authority, essentially a line-item veto for trade, so that the puny and unenforceable labor and environmental standards that might be in the deal could be legally wiped out with the stroke of a pen. The good news is that the majority of Democrats don't support the deal and will fight its passage, but it's not clear that will be enough.

The story on trade is really about seniority in the leadership and the top Congressional committees means that the majority opinion of the caucus can always be overridden by someone at the top. An additional example is fuel economy. All of the top Presidential candidates want to boost mileage averages, and even the Senate Commerce Committee approved a bill that would raise CAFE standards to 35mpg by 2020. But in the House, the relevant committee chair is John Dingell. Of Michigan. And he's not likely to budge, stiffening at the very hint of criticism.

U.S. Rep. John Dingell said he’s just a simple Polish lawyer from Detroit who is not running for higher office and not trying to make political points.

So he took umbrage today with a speech given last week by U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat who is running for president. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, Obama chastised the auto industry for not working harder to achieve better fuel-efficiency standards.

Dingell used his speech to the same organization to shoot back:

"I admire Sen. Obama’s enthusiasm..… But with all due respect, as the Sopranos would say — I would not travel to Chicago for the purpose of teaching people how to butcher hogs."

They don't butcher hogs in Chicago anymore, incidentally. And if I fucked up the auto industry the way the Big 3 have in the US over the past decade, including having to sell Chrysler for a fraction of what it was purchased for in 1998, I'd welcome any advice I could get. The truth is that fuel economy is the killer app of the 21st century, and the technology is with us today to make cars faster and to go further using less. But stubborn men like John Dingell want to protect the profits of their corporate buddies.

This is a major problem, not atypical, where the status quo bumps up against those who want real change. Progressives want to reduce the corrosive power of money in politics, give American workers a chance to compete without being priced out of the global market, and create a revolution in alternative energy in the name of environmental and national security. These are not controversial issues. But there is a generational political divide that is going to take a long time to breach.