"Major Power Brokers On The Left"

Last night, Rachel Maddow tells me broke some news.

We can report exclusively tonight that two major power brokers on the left have told MSNBC that they are encouraging a Senate strategy now in which the leadership would revoke chairmanships and other leadership positions from any Democrat who sides with a Republican filibuster to block a vote on health reform. Regardless of how individual senators would vote ultimately on the bill, committee chairmen or subcommittee chairmen who allowed Republicans to force a 60-vote requirement for passing health care...under this type of strategy would be in danger of losing their chairmanships.

I don't know what that means. "Two power brokers on the left"? Who? Senators? Fundraisers? People who want health reform? I'm encouraging this, am I one of the power brokers? If it's Senators, this isn't really news, as Tom Harkin said this about Max Baucus back in July, even before the vote. Jay Rockefeller has intimated it as well, with respect to having a vote on leadership and chairmanships instead of using seniority. And with Rockefeller and Baucus not even speaking to each other before this critical vote, I'm assuming that hasn't changed.

Mind you, I'd LOVE for this to be the strategy. It wouldn't take effect until 2011, and I don't know if it can filter down to subcommittees - Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu don't chair any committee, for example - but it's one of the tools in the shed for the Senate caucus leadership. I hope they use it. This report doesn't convince me they will, however.

Tracking The Public Option Through The Senate

Those who have been paying attention understand that today was actually a pretty good day for the public option. We learned that Sens. Wyden, Carper and Nelson (FL) support it in some form, and that there are at least 51 votes for it in the Senate. However, yesterday Chuck Schumer did acknowledge that there aren't 60 votes at this time. Ezra Klein asks the right questions:

There are two questions here. The first is "60 votes for what?" Do they not have 60 votes in favor of a health-care plan that includes a public option? Or do they not have 60 votes against a filibuster of a health-care plan that includes a public option? If it's the former, that's okay: You only need 51. If it's the latter, that's a bigger problem. But I'd be interested to hear which Democrats will publicly commit to filibustering Barack Obama's health-care reform bill. If that's such a popular position back home, why aren't more Democrats voicing it loudly?

Second, why give up the public option now? If these moderates want to kill the measure, let them get full credit for doing so on the floor. They can sponsor an amendment to strip it out of the final legislation and go home to their districts having played a clear and undeniable role in the elimination of the public option.

The former is really the question. There are definitely 51 votes for a public option. It's unclear whether there are 60 for a final bill with a public option. And more specific than that, are there 60 to allow a vote on a final bill with a public option?

Mary Landrieu has come the closest to saying that she would filibuster a bill with a public option. Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman are probably right with her. But I'd sure like to see them try to defy the President and doom a health care bill 40 years in the making over one provision. Reconciliation is always an option, given that you would only need 51 votes, but it's highly unlikely to get a public option that way. The main reason is that the Budget Committee would control the process, and Kent Conrad just voted against public option amendments yesterday, and would be highly unlikely to allow one to go through a 51-vote process. Heck, he doesn't want reconciliation at all. So Chris Bowers surmises that Harry Reid and the White House are the real pivot points right now, when the Senate merges the bill from their two committees:

The next step in the process does not actually involve Kent Conrad's Budget Committee, as I had previously reported (the Budget Commitee only comes into play with reconciliation). Instead, a source on the Hill confirms to me the Senate HELP and Senate Finance committees will be merged by an informal, behind the scenes process involving the four major players in the Senate: Tom Harkin (Chair of HELP), Max Baucus (Chair of Finance), Harry Reid (Majority Leader), and the White House. Together, these four will meet and decide what sort of bill to send to the Senate floor for debate and amendments.

During this process, we can guarantee that Harkin will push for a HELP or Schumer-like public option to be sent the floor, while Baucus will push for no public option to be in the bill at all. Given his recent statements, the best bet is that Reid will probably push against a public option too, and instead favor either triggers (which he has called a good idea) or co-ops (which seems to be the sort of public option he likes best). With two against and one in favor, this means that the only way a public option ends up in the bill that is sent to the Senate floor will be if the fourth major player, the White House, demands it.
It is all up to the White House now. If it pushes for a public option to be included in the health care bill sent to the Senate floor, then a public option will pass as part of health care reform (at that point, all we would need are 60 votes for cloture, and from what I hear we have 57 already). However, if it allows a health care bill to go to the floor without a public option, it is pretty unlikely that a public option will pass as part of health care reform.

Bowers doesn't think any floor amendment would need less than 60 votes, and while there are conflicting reports on that, he's probably right. He also doesn't think conference committee is an option, but I'm not sure I agree there. The House will almost certainly pass a bill with a public option. So it would depend on the White House umpiring that argument in committee. And that will almost certainly be decided by what they think can pass. If the Progressive Block in the House holds firm, and looks like a higher mountain to climb than getting 3 Democrats just to flip on cloture, the White House could go the other way at any step of this process.

Igor Volsky thinks we may see a new compromise floated:

Instead, the very same Democrats who defeated the national program during mark-up, will likely resurrect a discarded idea floated by the New America Foundation and momentarily embraced by the White House. That compromise will create a network of public options modeled on state employee benefit plans. The proposal could be triggered by Snowe’s amendment if reform did not meet a low affordability measure, but any state-based proposal would lack the market clout to lower overall health care spending, reform health care delivery, or hold private health insurers accountable.

Today may have been the death of the public option and the birth of state-based public options.

State-based plans won't have the economies of scale to really pressure insurers, but neither would Schumer's "level playing field" public option. Therefore, given that we're going to have to improve whatever inevitably comes out of the legislation, I'm inclined to say this is better than nothing. Apparently Tom Carper has started floating this behind the scenes.

I'm not as optimistic as Robert Creamer, but I do think that the public option still has a chance to survive in some form, and can be improved after the fact.

The Nelson/Landrieu Conundrum

A recent AARP poll shows 79% support for a public option competing with private insurance companies, although the poll question is kind of odd and doesn't reflect what's on offer. Nevertheless, other polls that accurately depict the public option show support in that range. However, that is not equally spread throughout the country. For instance, in a conservative state like Nebraska, more people don't support a public option (by a plurality) in health care reform, for whatever reason, and Democrat Ben Nelson gets 56% support for his handling of health care thus far. We don't have hard data on Louisiana, but Mary Landrieu, who has actually more strongly opposed a public insurance option than Nelson, may also be more in line with the interests of her state than some realize.

Speaking before what was described as a friendly crowd at the Monroe Chamber of Commerce yesterday, Sen. Mary Landrieu said she was opposed to much of the Democrats' legislative agenda.

Asked under what circumstances she would support a public option, Landrieu responded, "[v]ery few, if any. I'd prefer a private market-based approach to any health care reform that would extend coverage," according to the Monroe News Star.

"I'd like to cover everyone -- that would be the moral thing to do -- but it would be immoral to bankrupt the country while doing so," Landrieu said. The public option as currently conceived is expected to be a deficit reducer.

Dishonest? Absolutely. But out of step? Perhaps not.

What can we realistically expect from Democrats like this in red states? Obviously, under a "split the bill" scenario, they could signal support for the more broadly popular elements of reform, like insurance regulations, while opting out of the more controversial elements that only require a 60-vote standard. Or, they could simply opt to allow cloture, the wish of the majority of their caucus, while voting against the final bill. Markos polled this in the case of Nelson:

If Ben Nelson joined Republican Senators in filibustering and killing a final health care bill because it had a public health insurance option would that make you more or less likely to vote for him or would it have no real effect on your vote?

	More	Less
All	21	15
Dem	7	24
GOP	31	9
Ind	19	15

We can assume Nelson will vote against any bill with a robust public option. The big question is whether he will join Republicans in filibustering such a bill. Nebraska Republicans would sure love that, but at the end of the day, they'll vote for a real Republican in a contested election. Nelson would gain a small sliver from Independents, per this poll, but his real danger is among Democrats -- where he would lose a full 17 points of support [...]

If Nelson was to play this properly, he'd vote against any robust public option (and be justified doing so, given his constituency), but allow an up-or-down vote on the bill. Given the political realities of his state, that's the best we could hope for.

How can we position this so that Nelson comes around to this reality? I would look at how Republicans are pressuring Chuck Grassley. Grassley has something only the caucus can give him - the ranking membership of the Senate Judiciary Committee or the Budget Committee. And so he feels the pull from his members to not join in any bipartisan deal. Nelson and Landrieu both have pretty low seniority at the moment, although there's been a near-historic amount of turnover in the Senate recently. But if they have any designs on better committee assignments, or eventual chairmanships, the caucus should inform them of how they would do best to stay in their good graces. This pressure, by the way, should theoretically be much stronger on a Max Baucus or Kent Conrad, who already have that seniority. In addition, Landrieu and Nelson should be asked, pointedly, if they want to go down in history as having stopped access to health care for all Americans for a generation.

Everyone's Leaving Their Options Open

Lynn Woolsey let Rahm Emanuel have it yesterday over his comments on a trigger for the public option. I get the sense that Rahm still craves capitulating to the insurance companies on this one, but he's being invited to recognize the contours of the debate, and the fact that there aren't enough votes for a health care bill without a public insurance option.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reassured House Democrats on Tuesday night that President Barack Obama strongly backs a government-run health insurance plan, seeking to quell a firestorm among liberals upset at Emanuel’s comments in the Wall Street Journal that suggested such a plan could be delayed.

Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) warned Emanuel that he would lose the caucus’ votes if the White House compromised on the issue and included a “trigger” that could delay a public insurance plan indefinitely. The trigger idea is backed by conservative Democrats but is anathema to liberals.

“We have compromised enough, and we are not going to compromise on any kind of trigger game,” Woolsey said she told Emanuel. “People clapped all over the place. We mean it, and not just progressives.”

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was reassured by Emanuel. “He doesn’t stand by that trigger,” Waxman said. “He said the president and his administration and he are for a public plan as one of the options.”

Of course, Emanuel stands by the public plan as "one of the options." They have no line in the sand drawn on that, and everything's open to negotiation. Still, if the Progressive Block holds, even a weasel like Emanuel can figure out the math. They cannot take progressive votes on this for granted, and that's a good message to push.

The other message getting pushed over in the Senate by Harry Reid and the leadership is a variation on Bernie Sanders' suggestion, that all Democrats in the caucus should agree not to join Republican filibusters as a matter of course and out of respect for the majority's agenda. The most conservative Democrats don't agree, incidentally.

Landrieu:

However, she flatly refused to rule out filibustering any bill, including health care and climate change legislation. “I’m going to keep an open mind, but I am not committing to any procedural straitjackets one way or another,” she said.

Nelson:

“I’m not a closed mind on cloture, but if it’s an abuse of procedure, if it’s somebody trying to put a poison pill into a bill, or if it’s something that would be pre-emptive of Nebraska law, or something that rises to extraordinary circumstances, then I’ve always reserved the right to vote against cloture,” Nelson said.

Reid's next step should be to remind his colleagues of the tools available to him as Majority Leader. Namely - not approving any bills of individual Senators for floor votes; throwing members off of prized committees in the next session; refusing to contribute to members' re-election campaigns through the DSCC; not respecting members' holds on legislation; using manager's amendments to simply rewrite bills coming out of members' committees; and on and on. These were some of the tools of persuasion used in the 1950s and 1960s, under far more preocedural hurdles, to pass progressive legislation:

I recently read a book called "The Liberal Hour" about the Great Society. And the authors there made the point that one of the important underlying factors to Johnson's ability to move Civil Rights legislation and Medicare and Medicaid was a change House Speaker Sam Rayburn made to the Rules Committee when John F. Kennedy was president. He expanded it to give it a more liberal majority. And there have been a couple moments like this where legislative change is preceded by procedural change.

One of the things that brings up is that it's interesting how central the filibuster has become to not only how the Senate operates, but also how the House operates, as much of the legislating is done in recognition that it'll have to pass the Senate. As political scientists will tell you, of course, this centrality of the filibuster is actually a relatively recent innovation. So I'm curious how much you think it's actually possible to achieve these changes under the current system. Even with a popular new president and a large House majority and 60 Democrats in the Senate, it seems unlikely we'll actually solve these underlying problems. We might get legislation. But it's not likely to avert the existence-level fiscal threat from health-care reform or the existence level environmental threat from climate change. But if not now, then when? And if Congress can't respond to challenges of that magnitude, doesn't it suggest that something is quite wrong?

I think we need to be open-minded and think about the possibility in changes of process as well as policies. We shouldn't be so burdened by the past that we can't face the future. The seniority system in the House was traditionally dictated by members who didn't like the speaker having so much power over the committees. But when I came to Congress, if you were the senior member, you became chairman no matter how competent you were, no matter how in sync you were with the majority caucus. That was enormously advantageous for many of the Dixiecrats who remained Democrat for that reason, to take advantage of the seniority, but who aligned themselves on policy with the Republicans, and created a situation where even when Democrats had large margins, there was this sort of Southern Democrat-Republican coalition that ruled.

The fight by Sam Rayburn to allow the Rules Committee to be controlled by the leadership was an enormous and brutal fight, but a necessary one. The chairman before that time was Judge Smith from Virginia, who wouldn't let civil rights legislation go to the House floor because he was a segregationist himself. That meant that even when the Judiciary Committee proposed a bill for civil rights, members of the House couldn't vote on it.

There are anti-democratic rules that need to be changed. In some ways, the filibuster is an issue we might want to look at more closely. It is a two-edged sword. But I come from California, where to pass a budget you need a two-thirds vote. And they've been unable to pass a budget for years now able to deal with the fiscal problems. And it has thrown the state into chaos because they can't get the two-thirds vote.

The filibuster used to be a two-thirds requirement, and it wasn't until 1975 that they changed it to 60 votes. Well, that was a move in the right direction. For sure.

This speaks more to the ability to recognize the ability for procedural change, but the other story of the 1950s and 1960s was how the Master of the Senate, Lyndon Johnson, used everything at his disposal to break 2/3 majorities, unlock the strangehold from Dixiecrats over major committees, and generally pass his agenda, as Majority Leader and then as President. Political leaders have more power than most people think they realize today. So while Mary Landrieu and Rahm Emanuel and Ben Nelson and Max Baucus think they can have their way in the Senate, it's simply untrue. This begs the question as to whether the leadership WANTS to hold their conservative flank accountable. It's the question of what their priorities are.

...Evan Bayh, too.

The (Blue Dog) Owls Are Not What They Seem

You have to be something of a Kremlinologist to decipher the true meaning of Senate Democratic statements these days. In all of these matters it helps to focus on actions. For example, Kent Conrad (D-ND). As the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, he has been the most vocal about the widening deficit, the new CBO scoring showing that deficit widening even further, and how President Obama's plans are simply too ambitious for words. Sounds like the old fiscal responsibility thing, right? Well, the actual budget summary from Conrad is entitled "Laying Foundation for Long-Term Economic Security With Investments in Energy, Education, and Health Care," and the proposals do track the President's major long-term goals. And the supposed "cost-savings" in his budget plan are mainly derived from a bunch of gimmicks.

...someone who was genuinely alarmed by the fact that the CBO scored Obama’s plans as leading to large deficits in the final years of his ten year budget would not have “solved” this problem by abandoning Obama’s ten-year budget window switching to a five-year window. Similarly, re-inserting the “let’s pretend will use the AMT to raise taxes on the upper-middle class and then not actually do that” approach to budgeting, though now a time-honored trick of the Bush years, is not an actual deficit reduction measure.

Long story short, Senator Conrad cares about the deficit and is taking some action to make it smaller. But he also cares a great deal about being seen as a deficit hawk, the kind of guy who’s not afraid to take an axe to the president’s proposals. And in this instance the administration rather smartly eschewed a lot of this kind of pain free “virtual” deficit reduction, thus making it possible for interested Senators to deploy favored accounting patches on their own initiative and take credit for more reduction than they actually produced.

The White House seems to have no problem with the changes made, because the changes for the most part are made of air. And in some sense, Conrad actually enhanced the prospect of health care reform, by offering revenue-neutral space for a reform fund and allowing that particular budget item to be scored on a 10-year timeline, so that the savings in the later years can allow for an up-front deficit. And while Conrad deleted reconciliation for health care and energy proposals, because they exist (at least for health care) in the House version, they can be imported at a later date, meaning the threat can still be held over the heads of Republicans.

So Conrad appears to me to be someone who wants to appear like a centrist while facilitating the needs of a progressive budget, in direct contrast to Evan Bayh, Tom Carper and Blanche Lincoln, who want to appear like supporters of the President while obstructing and hacking up his agenda:

We formed our working group because we recognize both the difficulty and the urgency of accomplishing a huge and ambitious agenda. We must act quickly and decisively to repair our financial markets and start to turn the economy around. In addition, we believe that President Obama is correct when he says that we cannot afford to wait any longer to fix health care and transition to a clean-energy economy.

These are titanic and complicated tasks, and we believe that many worthwhile policy solutions can be found in the practical center -- ideas that also have the benefit of appealing to vast segments of the American electorate. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership has basically decided to stay on the sidelines to let the Democrats carry the load of reform alone.

As moderate leaders, it is not our intent to water down the president's agenda. We intend to strengthen and sustain it. Moderation is not a mathematical process of finding the center for its own sake. Practical solutions are practical because they offer our best chance to make a difference in people's lives today without forcing our children to pick up the tab tomorrow.

The stakes are too high for Democrats to fear a policy debate. Such debates produce better legislation. On nearly all important votes, a supermajority of 60 senators will be needed to pass legislation. Without Democratic moderates working to find common ground with reasonable Republicans, the president's agenda could well be filibustered into oblivion.

It's really not possible to take these people seriously. The whole "practical solutions are great because they are practical" part really gives you the sense of who you're dealing with here. They live in a magical pony and fairy land where they, only they, can bring the nation together, despite all evidence to the contrary, by just clicking their heels and magically finding those "reasonable" Republican votes for anything but the most watered-down policy. They are also very worried that if Obama passes the agenda on which he ran, moderates who voted for him will be very upset and will throw Democrats out of office in 2010. That's really their response. And none of them, just like their partner in crime Susan Collins can actually name anything they'd cut, or explain why a 51-vote majority is undemocratic:

"I'm very concerned that the levels of debt that the president's budget would entail are simply unsustainable and would pose a significant threat to the health of our economy," said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who plays a pivotal role in Senate negotiations. "I've had conversations with several centrist Democrats who have exactly the same concerns I do."

Well, what would you cut? "One of the areas I would look at are the huge agricultural subsidies," she said. Those farm payments are one of the few cuts Obama has already proposed, which Collins added was "to his credit."

Anything else? "I thought I did pretty well coming up with one right off the top of my head," she said [...]

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said she leans no on Obama's budget because of its size but is open to being convinced. She's not looking forward to cutting it, however. "That's always the problem. How to cut back and what to cut back," she said.

Yet the main change that Landrieu would like to see highlights the political contradiction at work. Tax hikes on independent oil and gas producers, many of whom operate in the Gulf, she said, are a "non-starter." Removing that tax hike, though, increases the deficit [...]

"Reconciliation should not be used to impose a major policy change. It's unfair to those who hold a minority view," Collins added.

Isn't that undemocratic? Collins was asked why she and a handful of senators should wield so much power over the nation's policy.

"I don't really think I have all that much power but I'm glad you think so," she said, laughing.

"I don't think it has anything to do with the power structure of moderates," she added. "People want to see healthcare reform, want to see us deal with major issues, but not in an undemocratic fashion. I think people want to see fuller debate and deliberation and more involvement by the minority."

But isn't the need for 60 votes undemocratic? Didn't the nation have a full debate, followed by an election in which people voted for major change?

"I disagree totally with that," said Collins. "I do not believe the American people voted to short circuit debate and prevent people with a minority view on both sides of the aisle from having the ability to amend a bill."

Behold the reasonable, responsible moderates who will save us from this crisis and return America to glory again.

Pardon me while I go throw myself in the ocean.

Employee Free Choice Showdown Begins

The debate over "card check," which is the name Republicans and Politico would like to use for the Employee Free Choice Act because it has some coded language that doesn't poll well, I guess, begins tomorrow with the bill's introduction in the House and Senate.

Tomorrow, Democrats in both houses of Congress plan to introduce a union-organizing bill that is labor’s top priority for the year, Democratic officials said.

The result could be a high-decibel, high-stakes brawl between business and labor, which strongly supported President Barack Obama. Unions have been getting impatient for attention to the issue, and the push to introduce legislation is a way to ratchet up pressure on Congress.

President Obama, who has said he recognizes that “the business community … considers this to be the devil incarnate,” said in January that he would like to bring the sides together.

The measure — widely known as card check and formally as the Employee Free Choice Act — would allow a union to form after enough workers in a shop sign cards, or petitions, rather than voting by secret ballot.

“The fact that the bill is being introduced so early in the session is an indication of it being a priority and of confidence in the vote count,” said a Democratic official involved in the negotiations.

Warren Buffett, an independent businessman who the Obama campaign for some reason exalted during the fall because of his endorsement, came out sharply against Employee Free Choice using the typical coded language of the right.

"I think the secret ballot's pretty important in the country," said the Oracle from Omaha. "I'm against card check to make a perfectly flat statement."

The Employee Free Choice Act has nothing to do with the secret ballot. It has to do with real punishment for illegal worker intimidation and firings on the part of management, and the decision for who gets to set a union election process. Under current law, management gets to make that decision and then game the system through union-busting. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers make the decision either to use majority sign-up or a general election. And a minority of workers, as low as 30%, get to overrule the majority if they want a ballot. Buffett doesn't want you to know that because it's easier to demonize unions by saying "they want to take your secret ballot away."

Of course, the real problem with passage of the bill is not Warren Buffett but a small sliver of Senators whose support is wavering.

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). This conservative-leaning Dem is up for re-election in 2010, and she has signaled since December that she might not back EFCA this year, although she voted to break a GOP filibuster when it came up in 2007. The Arkansas News reported last week that Lincoln's campaign staff was telling business donors "not to worry" about her vote on the bill.

Arlen Specter (R-PA). Perhaps the most closely watched vote on Employee Free Choice, he is reportedly facing a strong challenge from conservative former Rep. Pat Toomey, who has been rapping Specter's past support for EFCA for months now. Will Toomey's entry into the race be the EFCA "epiphany" that GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently wished on Specter? Labor advocates have to hope not.

Mary Landrieu (D-LA). After co-sponsoring Employee Free Choice and voting with her party to break a filibuster in 2007, Landrieu is now up in the air on this year's vote, according to the Shreveport Times in her state.

Mark Pryor (D-AR). In its report on Lincoln, the Arkansas News also quotes Pryor as declining to become a co-sponsor of the bill this year and pinning his hopes on a compromise between business and labor. For now, Pryor remains decidedly in the fence-sitters' camp.

Any final vote is dependent on Al Franken reaching the Senate chamber, because Specter is probably the only gettable vote on the Republican side. But the above doesn't really look good. Particularly when anti-worker groups are already putting up ads in vulnerable states.

Anyway, these are the crucial votes. Economic recovery is going to require a lot of factors, but certainly one of them is wage increases for a broader middle class. Inequality has led to a perverse and unsustainable economic structure. Historically rises in union membership are closely tied to rises in overall wages. The Employee Free Choice Act is not just a matter of basic fairness, but an economic imperative.

The Strange Death Of Republican America

The campaign arm of Senate Republicans just pulled out of Louisiana to focus on saving their seats in Georgia and Kentucky. Louisiana, where Karl Rove personally recruited a former Democrat to face Mary Landrieu, was the only Democratic-held seat where Senate Democrats were playing in 2008.

This guarantees not only that Democrats will keep the Senate, but that Republicans won't pick up one single solitary seat for the second campaign cycle in a row.

Meanwhile, some of the very Southern states where Republicans picked up their last seats, way back in 2004, are holding competitive races in 2008. The money is pouring into Georgia, where progressive Democrat Jim Martin is trying to unseat Saxby Chambliss. The early voting there has been so huge, with such a high black turnout, that Martin has an excellent chance. In North Carolina, listless Liddy Dole is in big trouble.

As economic turmoil has driven down support for Republican candidates in recent weeks, several polls have suggested that Mrs. Dole’s opponent, Kay R. Hagan, a relatively unknown state senator from Greensboro, has closed Mrs. Dole’s double-digit lead or even pulled ahead, and many analysts are now calling the race a tossup.

Ms. Hagan is a crucial part of the effort by Democrats to gain a 60-seat majority in the Senate, a margin that could limit Republican filibusters. From Nov. 16, 2007, to Oct. 5, the Democratic senatorial committee spent more than $4 million on advertising in North Carolina, more than in any other Senate race, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, a political data firm in Arlington, Va. The Democrats have reserved television time worth millions more.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has less money, has also spent more in North Carolina than in any other state, $1.7 million. That disparity between parties is reversed when it comes to the candidates’ own treasuries. By the end of September, Mrs. Dole had raised $12.9 million, and Ms. Hagan, $4.8 million.

If Republicans need to pull out all the stops to win in Georgia and North Carolina, they're in worse shape than I thought. And it's not simply the economy, IMO; these are BAD lawmakers. Liddy Dole never spends a second in her home state and has no accomplishments. Saxby Chambliss is arguably worse. They were in the majority for four years and did nothing to distinguish themselves. When you are a robotic rubber stamp, there's no way to show leadership - you're spending all your time following. And I think people understand this.

Straight Talk (Really) on Energy and Gas

So the Senate offered kind of a retread package of bills on energy and gas prices. They're all fine - cut oil company tax breaks and invest in renewables, investigate price gouging and speculation, a windfall profits tax for Big Oil - but nobody's expecting George Bush to sign this or for many Republicans to sign on. Mary Landrieu didn't support cutting the tax breaks the last time around, so the problem is not with the policy but the politics. Still, it's depressing that these ideas aren't a little bit more innovative. For example, something building on Tom Carper's discussion of transit and land use would have been a nice addition to this package of bills.

I ride the train back and forth most days. I live in Delaware, and I go back and forth. As my colleague, the Presiding Officer, knows, I go back and forth almost every night to Delaware. A strange thing is going on with respect to passenger rail ridership in this country.

I used to serve on the Amtrak board when I was Governor of Delaware, and every year we would see ridership go up by a couple of percentage points. We would struggle, try to raise money out of the fare box to pay for the system and the expansion of the system. Well, the first quarter of this fiscal year, ridership at Amtrak is up 15 percent. Revenues are up by 15 percent. People are starting to realize that maybe it makes sense to get out of our cars, trucks, and vans and take the train or take transit. Transit ridership is up again this fiscal year more dramatically than it has been in some time [...]

Americans are beginning to literally buy homes in places that are closer to opportunities for transit -- for rail, for bus, for subways, for the metro systems. As we have seen the drop in home prices across the country -- in some cases, very dramatic -- among the surprises, at least for me, is to see housing prices stable and in some cases actually going up in places where people can buy a home and live and get to work or wherever they need to go to shop without driving to get there [...]

Before I close, there are a lot of good ideas for things we ought to do. I mentioned, tongue in cheek, that we ought to provide more R&D investment for a new generation of lithium batteries for plug-in hybrid vehicles. I say, tongue in cheek, we ought to use the Government purchasing power to commercialize advanced technology vehicles. We are doing that. I said with tongue in cheek we ought to provide tax credits to encourage people to buy highly efficient hybrid vehicles and very low diesel-powered vehicles that are efficient. We are doing that.

There other things we need to do too. We need to invest in rail service. We can send from Washington, DC, to Boston, MA, a ton of freight by rail on 1 gallon of diesel fuel. I will say that again. We could send from Washington, DC, to Boston, MA, a ton of freight by rail on 1 gallon of diesel fuel. But we as a government choose not to invest in freight rail and, frankly, to invest very modestly in passenger rail. It is a highly energy-efficient way to move people and goods.

Carper is the very model of a modern major backbencher and not particularly progressive, but on this issue he's absolutely right. And as Barack Obama has shown, offering short-term gimmick fixes do nothing but insult the public. Obama has actually talked about mass transit a little bit as well recently, so I'm hoping this could be a real initiative of his Administration. Maybe Carper could be the legislative point person.

Renewable Energy Vote Sails Through House

The House of Representatives did something good today, moving on another key part of their agenda from the 2006 elections. Don't let the headline "House OKs New Taxes on Big Oil Companies" fool you - they eliminated subsidies for the oil industry and put the money into encouraging renewable and sustainable energy technologies. This is clearly the right thing to do. Oil companies, which collectively made $123 billion dollars in revenue last year, don't really need additional subsidies and tax breaks for taking our natural resources out of the ground. The Republican spin is astounding; they say that the bill "unfairly targets companies that already pay more taxes than U.S. manufacturers." Yeah, that because it makes about 10 times the money as most US manufacturers. You can see the roll call on this bill here. This should be a roll call vote that Democratic challengers go back to again and again in the fall. In California, practically every House Republican, including Brian Bilbray, David Dreier, Mary Bono Mack, Jerry Lewis, Ken Calvert, and Gary Miller, voted "No," while Dan Lungren wisely didn't vote. When gas hits $4 a gallon in the spring, this vote will have even more resonance. The Senate came 1 vote short, actually Mary Landrieu's vote, of passing this last year. They need to make sure that Landrieu understands that her vote is the price for supporting her in a tough re-election battle.

And don't weep for the oil companies; they're about to sweep into Basra, where they'll work side by side with militia members who enjoy shooting at American troops. True patriots, they are.

FISA Cloture Stopped

48-45 and it wasn't even close. Nelson (NE) and Pryor were the only aye votes on the Democratic side, I think. That also bodes well for immunity, as 51 votes could not be mustered. (update: Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu also voted for cloture. See below.)

There was a LOT of action on this from the progressive movement. And Harry Reid actually redeemed himself a bit by being so forceful about the protection of the prerogatives of the Senate. Good for our side. We win a round. Yay.

Now there'll be a vote on a 30-day extension for the existing statute so that time can be given to work out a final bill. More in a minute...

...apparently Mary Landrieu cravenly switched her vote to "aye" after she knew it wouldn't be decisive. What a waste of a Senator.

...I truly wish the Washington Post would put someone who knows something about FISA on the beat to write the story, because wiretapping and spying will NOT expire if the Protect America Act expires. That's just a complete falsehood.

...Cloture on the 30-day extension fails by the same count as the initial vote, 48-45. Where we're at now is anybody's guess.

...Apparently Mitch McConnell hinted at a short extension in his final remarks. That's it for the day.

This is definitely a rebuke of the President, and that's a good thing.

UPDATE: Greenwald:

By blocking an extension, Republicans just basically assured that the PAA -- which they spent the last seven months shrilly insisting was crucial if we are going to be Saved from The Terrorists -- will expire on Friday without any new bill in place. Since the House is going out of session after tomorrow, there is no way to get a new bill in place before Friday. The Republicans, at Bush's behest, just knowingly deprived the intelligence community of a tool they have long claimed is so vital. Is the media going to understand and be able to explain what the Republicans just did? Yes, that's a rhetorical question.

The problem is whether the Democrats will think the public is paying attention, or whether they'll follow up this defense of the Constitution with yet another capitulation.

The Energy Bill

Yes, the Federal Energy bill is a disappointment. But think about how much more of a disappointment it would have been if the House didn't stake out such a bold position. They could have not included the renewable energy standard or the tax plan to eliminate subsidies for Big Oil. Now we know that we have 53 and 59 votes, respectively, in the Senate for these initiatives, and with a new President, those could get through. What eventually will pass includes a 40% increase in fuel efficiency and programs for efficient lighting and buildings. I'm somewhat unhappy about the reliance on ethanol, which is a sop to regional interests, and which costs as much, if not more, in energy to produce as the gas itself. However, a healthy percentage of that ethanol production would be from prairie grass and wood chips and cellulosic sources, so technology could be the killer app here.

Overall, this bill, which is likely to be signed, will not cause too much harm, will take a step in the right direction, and we'll be able to get the other noble elements later.

(This is my "pragmatic" persona. If I didn't have it, I'd be tearing my hair out by now.)

UPDATE: I agree that Mary Landrieu's behavior is disgusting. She was the only Democratic vote to uphold the filibuster of the first stripped-down energy bill, which still had the tax package. There was absolutely no reason for her to vote against the filibuster, she could have pulled a reverse Lieberman, voting to end debate and then voting against the bill. Landrieu is up for re-election in Louisiana, in a tough race and I won't be too sorry to see her go. And the Senate Democrats should have applied more pressure.

But then the bill would have drawn a veto, we can't get to 67, and there's no energy bill.

I sound like an idiot, I know, but while I would agree that you can draw a line in the sand over the truly bad global warming bill, I don't see the need to do that here. The Senate has almost no victories right now. Raising CAFE standards is not a little thing.

UPDATE II: Again, I fully understand that the two parts taken out of the bill were the two best parts. And there are all sorts of things you can do to force those wielding the filibuster out into the open. I would bring those pieces of the bill up again soon, in an election year, to put more pressure on everybody.