Under The Wire

The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed out their health care bill by a bare margin, 31-28, as the Blue Dog deal held and the set of amended amendments that progressives demanded return to the bill got put in place as well.

In an unusual move before the final vote, Waxman halted the markup to have a closed-door meeting with Democrats on his panel – presumably to make sure he had the votes to pass the bill.

The final vote was 31-28, with five Democrats opposing the measure. Democrats who voted no were Reps. Rick Boucher (Va.), Bart Stupak (Mich.), Jim Matheson (Utah), John Barrow (Ga.) and Charles Melancon (La.). All Republicans rejected the bill [...]

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated on Friday that some of the most hard-fought provisions of the healthcare bill -- including parts meant to appease conservative Democrats -- could change by the time the final measure reaches the House floor.

"I have three chairmen to deal with," Pelosi said. "We have three committees that have to look at it."

As it turns out, the committee has about 60 or so amendments left to deal with, but they couldn't eat one day into their summer break, so they'll clean that up when they get back, apparently. How the Speaker can merge the bills together while 60 amendments sit in one committee before a vote is tricky, but fortunately nobody understands the details of this stuff anyway. The best practice would actually be for one large committee, perhaps an ad hoc committee, to deal with legislation of this type, even if it's big.

Anyway, it looks like progress, and I have no doubts that the House will vote on a decent enough bill when they get back from the recess. The success of it will be determined by the resolve of the Democratic caucus and the success of efforts to convince lawmakers when they are home in their districts.

...Amendments and roll call votes available here.

Hold Everything

Progressives on the Energy and Commerce Committee shut down the markup scheduled for this afternoon while they look at the compromise made.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) postponed the health bill markup that he planned to hold Wednesday afternoon amid a backlash from liberals to the deal that he cut earlier with four conservative Blue Dog Democrats.

Waxman told reporters that he intended to keep meeting with committee Democrats on Wednesday night, resume the markup Thursday and still finish the bill Friday.

“[Energy and Commerce Democrats] have a lot of questions about the legislation, and I think it’s more important that we sit in the Democratic Caucus and let people ask questions, get answers, hear each other out,” Waxman said.

Good. As long as we're slowing down the bill, at least progressives can force some changes to it instead of going along with whatever compromise gets hashed out by the Blue Dogs. They should also inform their counterparts, many of whom come from rural areas, that they'll never vote for their farm subsidies if they sabotage this bill. They won't vote for their pork barrel projects and will join with Republicans to take them out of appropriations. They will simply make it difficult for Blue Dogs to bring home the bacon in the way they currently do. The Blue Dogs exist through power in numbers. The Progressive Caucus has MORE numbers, and they can use them.

Always Darkest Sausage-Making Before The Dawn

Ezra gives the 10,000-foot view of today's health care crackup in the House, and Henry Waxman's dicey choice on how to resolve it:

The central issue here is simple enough: The Blue Dogs want Waxman to make concessions he doesn't want to make. The sticking points, according to sources close to the process, are the public plan -- Blue Dogs still want a trigger option -- and the administration's proposal, which the Blue Dogs support, to create an independent commission able to set Medicare payment rates and make reforms. Waxman and others worry that a Republican administration and Congress could use this panel to undermine the Medicare program.

You can take Waxman's statements one of a couple ways. His willingness to bring the bill directly to the floor undermines the bargaining power of the Blue Dogs: It means they don't have veto power over the bill. This could, in other words, be a negotiating tactic on Waxman's part to soften the Blue Dogs' position. But if that doesn't work, it could also mean exactly what it says: That he's going to push the bill straight to the floor.

That would ensure some bad headlines, and an angry Blue Dog caucus. But versions of this bill have passed two other committees. Energy and Commerce isn't strictly necessary. Waxman's threat to bring the bill to the floor means that Pelosi and Waxman think they have the votes whether or not Energy and Commerce approves the legislation. And that may not be such a bad outcome, either for the Democrats or the Blue Dogs.

But Blue Dogs might balk, because they don't want to walk the plank on a bill if the Senate Finance Committee won't walk it either. We're basically seeing a game of chicken, between Waxman and the Blue Dogs as well as between the House and the Senate. Nobody wants to take the tough vote first. But somebody has to, in order to get the ball rolling.

Brian Beutler discerns tension and chaos on the Hill, but I've heard different. I heard Waxman and Mike Ross have stated that talks are ongoing and that a markup could be held as early as Tuesday. And that Steny Hoyer said publicly at a press conference that votes could happen next week. So we don't really know what's going on quite yet. It's hard not to despair just as a reflex, but I wouldn't just yet.

The End Around The Blue Dogs

One of my co-guests on NPR today was Henry Cuellar, a Blue Dog. And 30 minutes goes fast with three guests, so I didn't get to confront him and his arguments as much as I wanted. For instance, McAllen, TX, is in his district, and that was the subject of the widely touted Atul Gawande piece in The New Yorker about disparities in health care delivery and effectiveness. But Cuellar pretty much harped on costs, costs, costs as an impediment to getting something done. I countered that cost control and expanding access, in many cases, are complementary. This makes the Blue Dog argument incoherent. They want to cut costs, but they are reluctant to enact the reforms that actually would do it. Not to mention the fact that they talk of fiscal responsibility while trying to carve out funding for rural health care, for example, which is the exact opposite of cost-cutting. And Steven Pearlstein picks up on this today.

The challenge for the Blue Dogs is that they want an America where everyone has insurance but are reluctant to force workers to buy it or employers to help pay for it.

They understand that achieving universal coverage will require subsidies for low-income workers and small businesses, but they insist that none of those changes add to the federal deficit or raise anyone's taxes.

They want to introduce more competition into the private insurance market, but not if it comes from a government-run insurance plan.

They complain constantly about the need to rein in runaway Medicare costs while at the same time demanding higher Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals in rural areas.

You see what I mean about mushy centrism?

Yes. Yes I do.

The truth is that the Blue Dogs are slaves to entrenched power, serving the interests of powerful lobbies rather than the middle-income voters in their districts. Cutting subsidies to 300% of poverty level from 400% would make health care less affordable to working people - and it's only being considered in the House because Blue Dogs want to protect those making half a million a year from a surtax.

Henry Waxman refuses to let the Blue Dogs make chicken salad out of the House plan. He's talking about bypassing his committee entirely and bringing the bill already voted out of two other committees to the floor.

Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) says there is "no alternative" but to have healthcare legislation bypass his Energy and Commerce Committee if Blue Dog Democrats don't accept a deal worked out Friday.

Waxman is now playing a game of legislative chicken with the Blue Dogs. He's hoping the inclusion of a study on Medicare reimbursement rates in the healthcare overhaul will be enough to placate the centrist Democrats, who say the government program short-changes hospitals and physicians in their rural districts.

If that’s not, the seven Blue Dogs could join with the committee's Republicans to "eviscerate" healthcare reform, and that’s something Waxman will not tolerate.

"I won't allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans," Waxman told reporters.

Just like that, this morning, word leaked that Democrats in the House have agreed to include President Obama's "MedPAC on steroids" proposal to assemble a team of health care policy experts to make annual recommendations about Medicare, including reimbursement rates and delivery changes, that would face an up or down vote in Congress. This deal was the result of late night negotiations between Rahm Emanuel and the Blue Dogs. But they do not seem to have fully satisfied them.

At some point, I think you do have to pull the trigger. Matt Yglesias makes the moral case, that good legislation matters more than good process.

Something a lot of progressive legislative leaders seem to have forgotten until this Congress actually got under way is that historically congressional procedure is a challenge to be surmounted when you want big change to happen. It’s not actually a fixed feature of the landscape that people “have to” accommodate themselves to. For years you couldn’t get a decent Civil Rights bill because segregationists controlled the Judiciary Committee that had jurisdiction. This problem was “solved” by just deciding to bypass the Judiciary Committee. When you decide you want to get things done, you find a way to get them done. Even the allegedly sacrosanct filibuster rule has been changed repeatedly over the years. The law is the law and the constitution is the constitution, but the rules of congressional procedure are not law. They’re internally made rules, they’re subject to change, and the criteria for a good set of rules is that you want rules that produce good legislation and good governance.

If the internal rules are in place you should work to change them if they obstruct a change both the majority of Americans and the majority of the Congress clearly want.

...by the way, I agree with Pearlstein that Medicare might not be the best program to use for reforming the system:

The problem with using Medicare to serve as the leading edge of reform, however, is that it relies on a patient population, the elderly, that is least able and willing to embrace change. A better vehicle would be the new government-run insurance option that has become a political must-have for House leaders and President Obama. In return for dropping their opposition to such a "public option," the Blue Dogs could have insisted that it not be structured as a fee-for-service plan along the lines of Medicare but rather offer services through a network of high-quality, lower-cost hospitals and clinics that use teams of salaried doctors to provide coordinated care, along the lines of the Mayo and Cleveland clinics that Obama is always touting. In a competitive market, the success of such a government-run plan would force other insurers to follow suit.

...so the Blue Dogs claim that talks broke down today to resolve differences with Waxman, and I have to say he appears to be full of it. He says that Waxman took things off the table that, an hour before, Waxman was hailing in public as part of a breakthrough agreement? Doesn't pass the smell test. Someone's lying.

Transfer Of Power

The remaining House committee to finish work on the health care bill, the Energy and Commerce Committee, has repeatedly delayed their markup sessions this week, as Henry Waxman negotiated with the several Blue Dogs on the committee over changes to the bill. Talks seemed to reach a breakthrough when Waxman agreed to add expanded power for MedPAC, an independent board that could make recommendations on public medical spending and face an up or down vote in Congress. But despite that, there's been delay.

And that's because the Blue Dogs want to sequence the votes. They want the Senate to go first with whatever comes out of the Finance Committee over there rather than take a vote on something that won't be part of the final bill. Nancy Pelosi said as much yesterday:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been pretty adamant: She would prefer to pass a health care bill by early August, and would be willing to hold the House in session past a scheduled recess to get there. But she's also unwilling to move unless the Senate does...something.

'[I]f we're done, and they're not done and they're gone, what is the point?" Pelosi said in a meeting with reporters yesterday. "It's interesting to me that people are saying, 'Don't leave until it's done.' I don't know how much more we can do if the Senate is not going to move."

This reflects a general frustration with the holdup in the Finance Committee, particularly the secrecy of them and how long they have played out. As far back as February, Max Baucus talked about a markup session in June. And he consistently agreed to that throughout the next several months. Now he hasn't only help up the process, but he doesn't even plan to run it by the Democratic caucus once he introduces it:

However, the level of consultation with Democrats stands in contrast with how Republican negotiators are briefing their Members. Senators said Enzi, who is the ranking member on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, briefs leaders every day on the talks. And all three of the GOP negotiators have agreed to brief the entire GOP Conference before they sign on to any deal with Baucus.

But Democrats said Baucus is unlikely to run any deal by his caucus before he shakes hands on an agreement with Republicans.

On the stimulus bill, we had Presidents Nelson and Collins dictating the size and scope of the bill. Now there's been a transfer of power. Presidents Baucus and Grassley are large and in charge. And virtually nobody in the Democratic leadership has challenged this hijacking of the process, outside of off-the-record grumbles. In particular, nobody has mentioned that they've gone well outside the confines of their mandate:

I would have thought that the role of the Senate Finance Committee was to figure out how to finance necessary health care reforms in a responsible fashion. It wasn't their job to make the major "policy" calls about what reform entails. That's the job of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committtee, and the respective House Committees, and they've already defined what they want and are in basic agreement.

No, Finance's job was to look at the range of financing options -- some from Tax A, some from Tax B, a bit from Tax C, plus Savings X, Savings Y, etc. -- and then choose. Put together a package that's fair and that does the job. But apparently, the entire Congressional leadership is waiting for President Baucus and President Grassley to tell them what the substance of reform will be.

So, what have the two Co-Presidents produced so far? Zero. Nada. Zilch. Unless you count delay.

Did you know that last November, you all voted for Max Baucus and Charles Grassley to become Presidents of the United States of Health Care?

UPDATE: Jane reports that a deal is coming from the Finance Committee shortly, and that it'll use John Kerry's suggestion to tax insurance companies for their most expensive plans, and that it won't have a public plan. As Scarecrow said, since when does the Finance Committee dictate policy provisions?

Jane believes that the Senate bill could come together quickly, and that when Harry Reid reconciles the Finance bill with the HELP Committee bill, that he will drop the public plan. I would say that, since it's completely at Reid's discretion, the pressure is on him to include that in the merged package or not. Either way there will be an amendment to either strip it or add it back in. If Reid includes it, that amendment may need a 60-vote threshold to strip it, and if he doesn't, it may need 60 votes to put it back in. So Reid has every opportunity to advance the prospects of a public option. Jane also says:

Anyway, as was always going to be the case, the only hope for the public plan is coming out of the House. And the only hope of forcing the Senate's hand is if there is a roadblock in the House that can't pass a health care bill without one. It puts them in the position of tanking health care because they petulantly insist on refusing to give in on something that 76% of Americans want, and the public pressure becomes enormous.

So please tell members of the House to stick around and fight, because with 50 million people in this country uninsured, it isn't All About Them.

The best way to stop the delay tactics from the Finance Committee is to refuse them an out by putting passage of a bill ahead of the August recess.

...and Harry Reid abdicates his responsibility as a leader of the caucus...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today that the Senate would not attempt to pass sweeping health care reform until after returning from the August recess.

“It’s better to get a product that’s based on quality and thoughtfulness than on trying to just get something through,” Reid told reporters.

Reid said the Senate would try to complete a package in the fall.

The article makes it sound like Republicans asked for a delay, and Reid AGREED to it.

Should we just let Mitch McConnell be Majority Leader at this point?

...I should mention that I haven't seen reports of that Baucus/Finance Committee/public option deal anywhere else. Things are very fluid and I still feel that most stakeholders in the debate are resigned to something called "public option" in the final bill. Whether it's good or not remains to be seen. But conceding the recess and allowing the Finance Committee to delay and dictate the terms is unconscionable.

Waxman-Markey Clears Energy And Commerce Committee

At long last, the House Energy and Commerce Committee blew through the hundreds of Republican amendments and passed the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill out of committee. While the bill is certainly not as good as it could be, it does represent a step in the right direction, and given the wrangling in Congress there are months upon months to get it right. Left to their own devices, members of Congress will only hurt the bill, in all likelihood, which is why movement pressure must be brought to bear on the politicians. President Obama has clearly sequenced health care first in the queue, but his voice will be needed in this debate.

The other lever in this debate could actually be China. Their demands for the upcoming Copenhagen conference will include targets that are much deeper than what Waxman-Markey now provides, and without those targets, I assume China will reject any move to cap their own emissions. Apparently China and the US are holding secret talks on how to deal with climate change and have reached some kind of preliminary understanding, and if Congress can be made to comply with this kind of leverage, maybe the bill can get strengthened.

The real end point is the global summit in Copenhagen in December, so perhaps that can be used like a vice to force the bill through. At any rate, we'll need to be on top of this.

...more from the Sierra Club. Wow, Republican Mary Bono Mack (CA-45) ended up voting for the bill. That's significant. Apparently we only lost 4 Dems, all Blue Dogs: Ross, Melancon, Matheson, and Barrow.

Still Time To Strengthen Waxman-Markey

Henry Waxman will suffer the endless string of GOP amendments to his climate and energy bill only until today, before he puts the hammer down and moves the bill out of committee. He's even hired a speedreader in case the GOP wants to delay the bill some more by having the whole 900-page behemoth read in full. Waxman wants the bill out of committee rather than being held up by procedural silliness and self-serving amendments. You can watch this thing drag on over at C-SPAN 3.

But of course, once the bill leaves committee, that's not the end of the story. While the Chairman believes he has the votes, and the Energy and Commerce committee is generally more conservative than the House as a whole, the bill has plenty of other hurdles. Charlie Rangel and the Ways and Means Committee wants his hands on it, and he will prioritize health care well before this bill. Collin Peterson over at Agriculture wants a piece of it as well. And Waxman wouldn't commit yesterday to this bill even reaching the House floor before August.

My point in bringing this up is that there are months to go before the final bill takes shape. Various fiefdoms in the Congress want to put their fingerprints on it, and nothing will happen quickly. This is important, because there's substantial debate over whether this bill represents a true compromise that everyone can live with, or a flawed bill that would not have the kind of impact that makes it worth the many giveaways involved. Brad Plumer at TNR highlights the biggest, but by no means the only, compromise.

One of Waxman's biggest compromises, the one attracting the most attention, was that roughly 85 percent of the pollution permits under the bill's carbon cap-and-trade system will be given out to companies for free, rather than auctioned off by the government [...]

If Congress auctioned off all or most of the pollution permits under a cap-and-trade system, companies would have to pay more for the allowances, and the U.S. government would raise more revenue. That'd be money Congress could then rebate directly back to consumers to soften the blow of higher energy prices; or it could spend some of the money on clean-energy research or efficiency projects (many of which won't necessarily come about just because there's a price on carbon). Right now, there's less money in Waxman-Markey for both of those things.

Ultimately, Plumer believes that, while the bill is flawed, it would still represent a step forward and progressives ought to support it. The Economist appears to disagree, noting the looser cap on emissions (now 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 instead of 20%). Adam Siegel calls it a coal subsidy bill because it subsidizing the fossil fuel industry far more than renewables. The bill is so large and includes so many competing measures that it's impossible to really divine what it would do at this point. But there are many months left to make that determination and find the points where it can be improved.

Progressives will either have to eat these compromises or reject anything this mushy, depending on the political movement that grows up around the issue, and right now, that movement is relatively silent.

There are two ways to overcome the political hurdle. Either cut deals with the coal, oil, auto and utility industries that weaken (but hopefully don't completely undermine) the legislation. Or convince voters in those areas that their interests are not the same as those of fossil fuel CEOs, motivating them to take action and putting public pressure on key congresspeople to back stronger climate protection legislation.

Cutting deals can be handled behind closed doors in the halls Congress. Generating public pressure requires major grassroots mobilizing.

The political reality Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey had to face is there has been no major grassroots mobilizing in the broader progressive movement. While poll numbers show strong support for strong legislation, there has been no grassroots intensity to back that up, to convince skittish politicians that the public is demanding action immediately, and will hold politicians accountable if they don't follow through.

...broad, deep, relentless and coordinated grassroots mobilization is the only thing that can put a wedge between special interest lobbying and Congress. If we aren't present in the halls and offices of Congress, you better believe every day corporate lobbyists are.

Bill Scher is absolutely right. But there's a larger question about political capacity here. All these problems hitting at once really dilutes the energy that can be put to any one topic. We have a couple wars, a financial meltdown, major health care legislation and about 100 other things going on. The President prioritized health care and that's what has gotten much of the activism. The enviro groups haven't done their job of building a movement outside of throwing a couple ads on the air. But I wonder what they really could have done. And I also wonder if there won't be possibilities for movement pressure down the road. We're at the beginning, not the end, of this fight.

...Just to be clear, I think the bill should be improved. Giving away pollution credits will put the burden of transforming the energy sector on the poor and not save anyone on their electric bills. The renewable energy standard ought to be strengthened up to at least 25%. My point is we have a lot of time to do this, but the enviro groups have to take the lead.

Getting Involved

President Obama, seeing support for his preferred climate policies slipping away, will meet with the House Energy and Commerce Committee tomorrow to discuss the bill.

The session comes at a critical juncture for Obama's energy and environmental agenda. Democratic leaders last week postponed plans for a markup because they did not have enough votes to pass the legislation out of subcommittee, and closed-door talks since then with about a dozen conservative and moderate Democrats from districts with strong ties to industry have yet to yield an agreement.

Like this year's successfully enacted stimulus package and budget resolution, Obama has not given specific legislative language to the Congress to meet his goals on climate change and energy. Instead, he has left the details for lawmakers to work out among themselves.

One key Energy and Commerce Committee Democrat said he expect no major departure in the administration's legislation strategy as he heads this week to meet with Obama at the White House.

"I think what he's going to do is say, 'Please, don't vote no. Let's see what we can work out,'" said Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas), who will also visit today with Obama during a White House event to celebrate Cinco de Mayo -- a day earlier than the actual holiday.

I wrote last Friday that the climate bill was hanging by a thread, so this is a good time for the White House to make their priorities known. We are starting to see some pushing from outside groups like MoveOn to get lawmakers to sign on, but so far the real trouble comes from conservative Democrats on the panel. As the Times article notes, only Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) has a shot to vote for the bill from the GOP. The undecided moderates and Blue Dogs have competing interests from the corporate polluters they represent, be it coal or oil or whoever.

Repower California has started running TV ads to get Bono Mack and others to support the climate and energy bill. We have an inside/outside effort to counteract the interests of polluters and finally set a national energy policy for the 21st century.

Chairman Waxman

I guess Henry Waxman, a key ally to Nancy Pelosi, wouldn't have made the move to unseat John Dingell if he didn't count the votes.

Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.) has ousted Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (Mich.), as Democratic lawmakers voted 137-122 Thursday morning to hand the gavel of the powerhouse panel to its second-ranking member.

This, more than anything, could be the biggest change in the federal government in 2009 and beyond. Waxman's Safe Climate Act sets the targets needed to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. It now becomes the working document in the House for anti-global warming legislation. And his constituency doesn't include a major polluting industry.

From a policy standpoint, it's a major progressive victory.

And the balance of power in the Congress moves once again to the Left Coast. In fact, right to my doorstep!

Waxman Wins Key Test Vote For Chair Of House Energy Committee

This is a very big deal. Henry Waxman has been nominated by the House's Steering Committee to be the head of the House panel on Energy and Commerce, ahead of longtime chair John Dingell. The implications for such a change would be huge, but it's not over yet.

The House Democratic Steering Committee has nominated Henry A. Waxman to be chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next year — a stinging rebuke of the sitting chairman, John D. Dingell .

Waxman won a 25-22 vote over Dingell in a closed-door meeting Wednesday by the Steering panel. Because Dingell got more than 13 votes in the secret balloting, he can be nominated to run against Waxman at Thursday’s Democratic Caucus meeting, at which all of the Democrats elected to the 111th Congress are eligible to vote.

That means we have one day to whip our Congresspeople on this vote. Waxman, who wrote the Clean Air Act and who has an understanding of what is needed to be done on global warming and the post-carbon future, would make a great chairman, as opposed to the Dingellsaurus, who is still trying to protect the auto industry from moving into the 21st century, even as the verdict on their approach is defined by their trudging to Capitol Hill for a bailout. A majority of the caucus has signed a letter to Nancy Pelosi asking for greater efforts to combat climate change. Waxman at Energy is a key to that happening. We must eliminate this roadblock.

Marc Ambinder sets the scene (this was written before today's vote)

Waxman wants the job for obvious reasons: the committee will be the most powerful in the new Congress, one that'll deal with health care and energy legislation. (Ways and Means? Pleghghgh.) A lot of impatient liberal Democrats want to see Dingell go; he is too old, too blinkered in his thinking and too at odds with the party on energy, they say; just as many, it seems, want him to say, including some influential members of the leadership, even if for reasons of preserving the integrity of the seniority system.

Senior Democratic aides expect that the vote will go to the full caucus; all the loser of the steering committee vote has to do is present a letter with 35 House members. The full vote would be Thursday via secret ballot.

Lots of members of Congress put themselves in the position of someone like Dingell, who earned his chairmanship with seniority, and they don't want to see him pushed out because they wouldn't want it to happen to them. That's the kind of institutional thinking that must be vanquished, as it restricts change. The enviro groups are backing away from this fight because they don't want to feel Dingell's wrath if he wins. There is nobody else left to step in but us. I was skeptical that House Democrats would be pushed in the direction of progress, but with Waxman's former chief of staff, Phil Schiliro, in the Obama White House, some pressure may be coming down from the top. It's in all of our interests to have Henry Waxman atop this committee.

Call Congress and tell them you want to see a committee chair with bold ideas on energy as the head of the Energy Committee. If you want some extra incentive, read the smugness of the Blue Dogs who are fighting for their roadblock:

Dingell’s supporters said they are not worried by the vote of the Steering panel, which they say is stocked with left-leaning members who do not represent the broader makeup of Democratic caucus.

“If you look at the makeup of that committee in terms of geography and political leanings, this is not the same dynamic as our whole caucus,” said Jim Matheson , D-Utah, who is part of a team working the phones for Dingell, D-Mich.

In particular, if your member is in the Congressional Black Caucus or the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, both of which are supporting Dingell, ask them if they want their constituents to breathe clean air in the future.

UPDATE: This article in The Hill goes deeper into what I touched on about members' fear of the loss of seniority. It's really what's driving the fact that there's a contest on this at all.

A successful coup against Dingell (D-Mich.), head of the Energy and Commerce panel, could encourage Young Turks to attack the seniority system, which rewards years of service, and send a signal that all top jobs are now fair game.

Dingell, the longest-serving Democrat in the House, is two years into a six-year limited term as chairman. Waxman (D-Calif.), with 20 years’ less seniority but a closer friendship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), is bidding to oust him.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D), an African-American from Missouri and a strong proponent of the seniority system, said Dingell’s ejection would mean “nobody is safe based on seniority, and that is going to cause a high level of disenchantment.”

Personally, I think the seniority system should be abolished in favor of a PERFORMANCE system. If your work aligns with the broad goals of the caucus, you get to keep your job. I don't see David Obey or Ike Skelton having much of a problem because their views are pretty well aligned.

Waxman Fight For Energy Committee Looking Grim

That's if you believe Tim Fernholz, who talked to a couple people in the know.

2. At least two people who would know (blind quotes suck but that's the way of the world) don't expect the Waxman challenge to Dingell at the Energy committee to get anywhere, in part because the last two classes of new representatives are more conservative on the whole than other members and will support the incumbent. The leadership hopes that it won't come to a vote, because Waxman, who is more closely identified with Pelosi (who isn't taking a position on the challenge) will drop out when he realizes he doesn't have the votes.

I want to push back on the idea that the most recent classes of Reps. are all conservative, because while that is ossified conventional wisdom inside the Beltway it's simply not true. Alan Grayson is not conservative. Tom Perriello is not conservative. Larry Kissell is not conservative. In fact, in this cycle the four Democrats who lost Congressional elections were all deeply conservative - Tim Mahoney, Nick Lampson, Don Cazayoux and Nancy Boyda.

This isn't totally about right-left, it's about those in the status quo who want to protect the seniority system in the event that they stick around Congress look enough to secure a plum post. That's why you have liberals in the Congressional Black Caucus like John Lewis pushing for Dingell to stay in his chairmanship. Dingell is trying to sucker new members by saying he is good on health care, but of course that's not totally true.

But Dingell is good on health care. Well, by good, I mean he has pushed 'single-payer' for literally decades, while preventing action on drug prices and appointing most of the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee that killed Clinton's health care plan, because they were reliable pro-auto industry votes on other issues Dingell prioritized (there aren't a lot of single payer pro-polluting members out there). But health care is all Dingell has, so he's emphasizing his willingness to work on health care with Obama in return for keeping his chairmanship of the enormously powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.

With the Senate appearing to take the lead on health care anyway, and Waxman just as solid on the issue, this is an irrelevant argument. What should be far more central to the debate is this:

The California economy loses about $28 billion annually due to premature deaths and illnesses linked to ozone and particulates spewed from hundreds of locations in the South Coast and San Joaquin air basins, according to findings released Wednesday by a Cal State Fullerton research team.

Most of those costs, about $25 billion, are connected to roughly 3,000 smog-related deaths each year, but additional factors include work and school absences, emergency room visits, and asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses, said team leader Jane Hall, a professor of economics and co-director of the university's Institute for Economics and Environment Studies.

The decades of shameless defense of a heavily polluting auto industry should be grounds for Dingell's resignation, not just for booting him from this key committee (especially because it's resulted in the car companies being broke and looking for a government handout). But it's awful hard to impact an insider caucus battle with anything resembling reason.

However, we must keep trying. Call Congress and tell them you'd rather have someone concerned about catastrophic climate change in charge of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, instead of someone who uses it as a pretext to keep his failing auto industry executive buddies happy.

Anti-Manufacturing

John Dingell, who's an ornery SOB, is throwing around the insults at Henry Waxman for daring to challenge him for his post of chief protector of auto industry fuel economy standards in the Congress.

Dingell, who is in the process of whipping up support from colleagues to retain support of the influential committee, told a Detroit radio show last week that Waxman lacks a concern for the manufacturing industry, particularly the auto industry (workers in which populate Dingell's southeast Michigan district).

"At a time when the auto industry, American manufacturing, American industry needs somebody who understands these things in that particular spot to look after them and see that they are fairly treated," Dingell said, "he wants to put in an anti-manufacturing, left-wing Democrat."

Hmm. Anti-manufacturing? Interesting that the groups that send manufacturers their loans, who have every interest in keeping manufacturing strong, want to cut greenhouse gas emissions by precisely the same number as Waxman does.

A group of large financial institutional investors will on Tuesday call on rich countries to cut their emissions by up to 95 per cent by 2050, in the sector’s strongest demand yet on climate change.

The group of more than 130 investors, with a combined $7,000bn under management, includes Calpers, Calsters, several other US public sector pension funds, and several UK public sector pension funds. The group also includes Blackrock Investment Management, Deutsche Asset Management, HSBC Investments, Schroders and BNP Paribas Asset Management.

Those anti-business businessmen!

By the way, is anybody asking how successful Dingell has been in protecting the auto industry so far? Has he really allowed them to succeed? Is that why they're coming to Congress asking for handouts or they'll have to dissolve their businesses? Was resistance on fuel economy really positive for them? Maybe they need a push.

By the way, I tentatively support help for the auto industry and the saving of millions of factory jobs, as long as in the exchange, Detroit starts making efficient cars that people want to buy. But that might require management with heads dislodged from their ass. That Dingell supports the aid package as well makes me more, not less, dubious.

Post-Election Comings And Goings For LA-Area Lawmakers

A couple weeks ago I wrote about three looming battles that we had to think about after the election. Two of them have already fizzled. The open primary ballot initiative filed with the state has been withdrawn. That's probably because the Governor wanted to present it himself, so we'll see where that goes, and a lot of it might have to do with whether or not Prop. 11 actually passes. Second, Bush Republican and rich developer Rick Caruso decided against running for Mayor of Los Angeles against Antonio Villaraigosa. There is now no credible candidate running against the incumbent. Caruso may figure that Villaraigosa is primed for bigger and better things (he's in Washington today with President-Elect Obama's council of economic advisers), and if Villaraigosa vacates the seat he'd have a better shot of capturing it.

However, there are a couple other looming battles that are out there. First, Jane Harman, Congresswoman from the 36th Congressional District, is in line for a top intelligence post with the Obama Administration, and the odds are extremely likely that she'd take it. Laura Rozen has a profile here. After a tough primary against Marcy Winograd in 2006, Harman has been a moderately better vote in Congress, but this represents a real opportunity to put a progressive in that seat. Winograd has recently moved into the district, and would certainly be my first choice if it comes open (or if it doesn't - Harman voted for the FISA bill this year).

The other major news is that Henry Waxman, my Congressman, is looking to oust John Dingell from his post atop the Energy and Commerce Committee. This is a long time coming, and I don't think Waxman would go for it without the support of the Speaker. The Dingellsaurus, while a decent liberal on most issues (and also a former representative of mine in Ann Arbor, MI), has blocked progress on climate change and modernizing the auto industry for years. We were finally able to get a modest increase in CAFE standards last year, but Waxman, who wrote the Clean Air Act of 1990, would obviously be a major step up. And with the auto industry on life support and asking for handouts as a result of the old ways of doing business, it's clearly time for a Democratic committee chair who isn't protecting their interests at the expense of the planet. Waxman's "Safe Climate Act" introduced last year would mandate a cut in greenhouse gases of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. That's exactly the right attitude from the committee chair, and with energy issues obviously so crucial in an Obama Administration, we need someone in that post who recognizes the scope of the problem. It should also be clear that the committee has likely jurisdiction over health care reform.

Grist has a lot more on this story.