The Violence Of The Right

I had another appearance on NPR's Tell Me More with Michel Martin this morning. Could have went better (sorry, GONE better). I didn't get out that my opponent on the program, Vin Weber, is a lobbyist for the health care industry, though I did mention that his group Empower America was bought out by Freedom Works, who is orchestrating a lot of the teabagging protests you're seeing at town halls around the country. I got him to admit that the "Kill Grandma" euthanasia conspiracy theory is a complete falsehood, which was good.

Before my segment, Rep. Lloyd Doggett appeared on the show, and talked about the hooligans who descended on his town hall in Austin, Texas last weekend. He said that their extended sloganeering and disruption "symbolizes what the conservative movement is all about," and while there are also efforts ongoing in favor of health care reform, the "commercial media handmaidens" refuse to give them an equal amount of attention. And that's certainly true to an extent. I got an email from Organizing for America yesterday that touted 1 million people participating in some of their health care actions and discussed 5 concrete actions taken by people that were noteworthy:

• The newspaper in Exeter, NH is reporting that local supporters are canvassing everywhere to build support for reform: door-to-door, at farmers' markets, and at state fairs. The article quotes volunteer Dave Munsey as saying that 2008 "was probably the most important election of my lifetime. This is just an extension of that."

• Supporters in Florida held simultaneous press conferences outside of nine local Senate offices with doctors, small-business owners, and others, all telling their personal health care stories about why reform is so important to them.

• After a huge event in Wisconsin, hundreds of the participants headed to a nearby town hall event hosted by Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner to share their stories and urge him to stand with voters in support of reform.

• A host in Minnesota organized a barbeque for supporters to hear from speakers and write letters to their members of Congress. 1200 people joined in!

• Volunteer community organizers have participated in trainings in more than 13 states -- and 17 more are scheduled for the upcoming weeks.

Needless to say, none of these five events appeared on Hardball because nobody was shouting while wearing a bumper sticker on their head. And even people on the left wonder "Where is OFA? Where is HCAN?" Now, I think those groups should ditch the outside events and just work these same town halls, but the fact of the matter is that Republicans have always been, and for the near future always will be, skillful in getting their crap spun through the right-wing puke funnel and inserted into the media. We are good at responding most of the time - and finding smoking guns showing this to be lobbyist-coordinated astroturfing will help - but cable news producers will cover the conflict every time. Ultimately, nothing will stop Chris Matthews from airing a bunch of knuckleheads bused into a town hall meeting yelling while holding pitchforks, or whatever, and going on at length about how "it's like Tehran" and how this shows the passion on the right. And that perception will drive reality.

And so you have Michel Martin, after hearing Rep. Doggett talk about the corporate lobbyist-directed groups coming in and disrupting his town hall meetings, saying that they are "tapping into an ongoing anxiety" in the country. You have the New York Times, writing about these events, mentioning Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity without mentioning their founders (Congressman turned lobbyist Dick Armey, for example) and funders.

However, these may be organized attempts, but there's substantial opportunity for them to go way off the reservation. Doggett reports:

“If you look at the YouTube video, you can barely see in the edge of that a beautiful marble tombstone with my name on it,” Doggett) said. “People that worked so hard to get their signs in full-color did not come to dialogue. They came to be destructive.” Video of protesters confronting Mr. Specter and Ms. Sebelius in Philadelphia was also quickly posted to YouTube.

In this YouTube video of the Doggett riot you can see a sign with Nazi-style "SS" lettering on it.

It's ridiculous to suggest that this is some new-found passion on the right just bursting to the fore in reaction to a piece of legislation. These are the same people who crawled out from rocks and into Sarah Palin rallies last year, screaming that Obama was a terrorist and a Muslim. They are the Ron Paul supporters who chased Sean Hannity down the street when their candidate wasn't allowed in Fox News debates. They are the young conservatives who yelled "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go" back in 2005. They are that same set of anti-government, anti-social, anti-Obama types who have struck out with fury and not a little bit of menacing implied violence. They hung a Democratic congressman in effigy last week. They harass Republican representatives about the President's birth certificate. They are angry extremists, and it's fair to ask Republican leaders whether they support hanging Democrats, imagery of tombstones, birther fantasies, and the rest. This is not about policy. It's about incitement to violence.

The Guns Of August

Now that Mad Max Baucus has dropped his pile of dung into the health care debate, it's an open question whether allowing the August recess to happen may be the only hope for the bill at all. The story of conservatives bird-dogging their representatives and striking the fear of God into them so that they never think about passing health care reform again is only one side of the story. Sure, the RNC will spend money on the air in certain Congressional districts, but so will the DNC, and key allies like MoveOn and Americans United for Change. And the ground efforts by teabaggers and right-wing front groups can certainly be matched throughout the country by heavy hitters like OFA. Robert Reich may be despondent but this could be the part where the game gets fun. However, the principles we're fighting for need to be delineated, and that's where things might break down. Calling for vague "reform" will get you vague reform, and also probably health insurance choices that are benefit-poor, unaffordable and too few in number. Everyone's idiosyncratic, but I think that Reich's options are a decent place to start:

First, the House must enact a bill before August recess even if the Senate is unable to -- and the House bill should include the four key elements that have already emerged from House committees: (1) a public plan option, (2) a mandate on all but the smallest employers to provide their employees with health insurance or else pay a tax or fee (so-called "pay or play"), (3) a requirement that every individual and family buy health insurance, coupled with subsidies for families up to 300 or 400 times the poverty level in order to make sure it's affordable to them; and (4) a small surtax on the top 1 percent of earners or families to help pay for this subsidy ("tax the wealthy so all Americans can stay healthy.")

If a tax on insurance company policies (which would really just incentivize them to offer less expensive ones, getting the federal government off the hook for the giant employer deduction) sells easier and raises as much money as a surtax on the wealthy, so be it. I think America is worth paying for, but YMMV, and you have to actually make the argument about progressive taxation to lay the groundwork. The public plan option, IMO, must be available to as many people as possible by breaking the firewall and allowing people with employer coverage to opt into it. It also needs a provider network. And the subsidies have to be at 400% FPL on a sliding scale.

The trouble is that nobody's working off the same script. What's most likely to happen, if successful, is that Congresscritters become terrified at the prospect of passing nothing, but pass something inadequate. That could have very negative consequences, or actually positive ones, considering there's four years until full implementation to rework what's bad and make it good.

Misdirected Activism

Am I the only one who didn't really see a line in the sand from the President in yesterday's health care YouTube address?

That’s why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family. And that’s why we’ll put an end to the worst practices of the insurance industry: no more yearly caps or lifetime caps; no more denying people care because of pre-existing conditions; and no more dropping people from a plan when they get too sick. No longer will you be without health insurance, even if you lose your job or change jobs.

The emphasis of the must is on the insurance exchange, which is actually a very important policy to break regional monopolies in the insurance market. The public option is wedged in there, but mostly Obama demands an insurance exchange so that individuals and small businesses have the ability to choose from a wide variety of plans.

But what this shows to me is that the public option is yesterday's debate. I think we'll get it, if we get a bill. But it's not holding up the process any more. It's too popular to kill the bill over. There are other elements that can sink the bill, most of them to do with cost. The DNC push against recalcitrant House and Senate Democrats just references some horror stories from citizens and states "it's time" for health care reform. No policy is forwarded, certainly not the public option.

The groups pushing back against reform aren't simply opposed to the public option, they're opposed to reform in general. And they see the cost controls and how to pay for the bill as the best way to attack it. Unfortunately, not a lot of people on the progressive side are defending wealth surtaxes or increasing the authority of MedPAC, for example.

Forget Bipartisanship

The Senate HELP committee held four weeks of markup hearings on their health care bill. They accepted 160 Republican amendments. They allowed virtually every amendment, every concern of Republicans to a free and open vote. And in the end, the bill split entirely along party lines.

A Senate committee became the first congressional panel to advance healthcare reform legislation this year, marking a significant step toward the achievement of President Obama's foremost domestic initiative.

On a party-line, 13-10 tally, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted to move its portion of the upper chamber's healthcare reform legislation to the floor [...]

HELP Committee ranking member Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) slammed the bill and the partisan nature of the panel's proceedings. "The bill lays the groundwork for a government takeover of healthcare," Enzi said.

I don't know how many times you have to say this. Republicans will not vote for health care reform. If so much as one of them does, I would be stunned. And it appears that the political staff in the White House understands this as well.

Both Axelrod and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said taking a partisan route to enacting major health-care legislation isn’t the president’s preferred choice. Yet in separate interviews, each man left that option open.

“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.” [...]

Emanuel, making a theoretical case for a party-line vote, offered a definition of bipartisanship based not on roll-call votes but on whether Democrats have accepted Republican ideas during the process of negotiations.

He said Democrats already have passed that test, pointing to Republican amendments that the Democratic-controlled Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has adopted.

“That’s a test of bipartisanship -- whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”

Now Republicans will stick out their pinkies and rattle their teacups about the shocking partisanship on display, and whine about how they've been shut out of the process. But they would always say that, and predictably, it's not true.

This is the right approach, and now the President needs to collect the votes necessary for passage. Organizing for America released an ad today that will air in key states, targeting moderate Democrats and a few moderate Republicans, and imploring them to get health care done. It has no specifics, but collects a series of health care horror stories and shows the broken nature of the current system.



This will be the toughest lift of the Obama Presidency, but if he really wants it, he can get it done.

...Here's the acting chair of the HELP Committee, Chris Dodd, offering to accept 64 amendments by unanimous consent, but the Republican leader refuses to allow it in an effort to drag out the process. This is the minority's entire raison d'etre on this bill.

The Role Of Grassroots Action In Policy Debates

I've seen a lot of buzzing about this story from Harold Meyerson, about the faltering of Barack Obama's online army when it comes to health care:

Organizing for America (formerly Obama for America), which maintains that list within the confines of the Democratic National Committee, has asked those 13 million Obamaites to "create a conversation within their communities," in the words of one DNC official. Specifically, the DNC has asked them to collect health insurance horror stories and put them online, to support a set of broad health-care principles, and to go door-to-door among independent voters in their neighborhood and talk to them about those principles. On June 27, some activists participated in what the DNC termed a "day of service," working in blood banks, volunteering at health clinics, raising money for medical research.

All very commendable, and about as likely to affect the outcome of the health-care deliberations as the phases of the moon. "What made the presidential campaign so potent were clear goals and a strategy that made sense to people," says Marshall Ganz, one of liberal America's foremost organizing geniuses (who led training sessions for Obama campaign staffers and volunteers last year). Such goals and strategies are hard to discern today, and the participation of Obama volunteers has declined accordingly.

Even when the battle for health care finally comes down to a single bill, the plans to activate Obama supporters are conceptually modest. "We can't target individual members of Congress," says one DNC official. "To tell people to target certain Democrats puts the party in a weird position." Not even 13 million supporters, apparently, can instill party discipline into a political culture that scarcely knows the meaning of the term.

Meyerson thinks we need a mass movement strategy to win the day on health care. Well, that can never possibly come from inside the party machinery. In a 60-vote environment, Republicans have no part in the debate. It will rise or fall based on the actions of conservative Democrats. And a DNC-based organization, as the official says, won't go after Democrats, at least not in public.

Now, Organizing for America has built a large list of health care horror stories that activists can use. And their architecture of calling and canvassing tools is more than available to anyone to start their own independent push toward particular legislators. In fact, I know that some grassroots groups have already done so, whether OFA likes it or not. And they are really in a capacity-building phase right now, and there's going to be a learning curve. Things are happening that columnists in Washington might not see.

As for the efforts by outside groups to push recalcitrant lawmakers, Meyerson thinks they are pursuing a legislative strategy and not a movement-building strategy. Well, that's not entirely true. There are health care rallies at Congressional offices tomorrow. Health Care for America Now put 10,000 people in Washington for a rally. I don't really know what he wants. Meyerson hints that single-payer advocates are actually building a movement, one I believe will endure no matter what reform bill passes, but it currently lacks critical mass.

Even if we grant Meyerson these points, I'll say this. Health care is a maddeningly complex topic. Everyone's for fixing this broken system but they have about 100 different ways to do so. If Meyerson thinks that ordinary Americans can actually impact that debate at the granular level, I'd love to see his blueprint. When elements of reform - like single-payer, like a public insurance option - have been used to stand in for reform, it has moved a couple legislative mountains. I believe in movement politics, but on health care reform that movement, unlike with "civil rights now" (the 1960s) or "We're in a Depression" (the New Deal era) there's just no bumper sticker for health care reform that's going to turn it into a mass movement. You're seeing the best digital-age equivalent of it - online organizing, grassroots ads, etc. - but it doesn't throw people into the streets.

I don't totally disagree that OFA isn't a great model, it being situated inside a party infrastructure. But I really fail to see a vision of a million people on the Washington Mall shouting "national health insurance exchanges with subsidies up to 400% of the poverty level now!" And, activism circa 2009 is different than activism circa 1963.

Obama's Role In The Health Care Debate

Michael Tomasky says it's time for Obama to knock skulls over health care reform, and he's right. Congress will find this issue difficult to steer unless the President uses some of his political capital, because of the peculiarities of that institution.

Simply put, legislators are rarely courageous. They're not leaders. They're followers. They don't like doing risky things. They like doing things they know are popular.

Think about it. When a case emerges that puts a new twist on, say, child molestation, legislators rush forward with new laws meant to address the problem. The public will back them, and child molesters don't have a lobby.

But changing the country's healthcare system? That's big, and terrifying. It requires taking chances, doing things a new way. Legislators hate that.

In the healthcare case, we can add an ideological element to this. Democratic legislators currently in Congress now have served almost their entire careers during an age of conservative dominance. They've been trained over the course of two or three decades to hear and respond to certain dog whistles.

Lower taxes. Breathe out. Good. More regulation. Tense up. Risky. Free market. Smile. Good. Government. Clench teeth. Scary.

I'm telling you, legislators "reason" in those flash-card sequences. Then, the next thing they think of is their district or state, and they rarely think about the new votes a courageous stand might win them. Instead, they focus nervously on where they might lose votes (and local political, financial and editorial support) as a result of doing something out of the ordinary.

Third, they think of their Washington donor base, and exactly how much money taking an unorthodox position will cost them. Most of them know down to the dollar.

I don't think it's quite as bad as Bill Maher puts it, but yes, it's pretty bad. So Obama clearly has to get involved. And he's starting to do that, with a press conference coming up today, the ABC town hall (although that may come at the issue from the right), and generally a longer shadow cast over the debate. Whether he takes charge now or later, clearly he's edging in to take charge at some appointed moment.

For now, the White House should have as little to do as possible with the various legislative products. Let the committees absorb the blows of the bad weeks. Let the early coalitions present themselves. Let the Republicans show their strategy in the mark-up sessions. Let the CBO score all the different options. Let the legislature familiarize itself with different revenue options. Wait. Wait and wait and wait. Wait until Congress has pushed this as far upfield as it's able.

Then open up the White House. Then have Obama on TV. Then have Rahm on the phone with legislators. Then take Olympia Snowe for a ride on Marine One. The White House can exert explosive force on a piece of legislation, but it can only do so effectively for a short period of time. That was the mistake Clinton White House made in 1994. By the time their legislation was near reality, administration officials were so deeply involved that they couldn't add external momentum. It is not a mistake that Rahm Emmanuel, who watched it all happen firsthand, means to repeat.

But what form will this take? I don't see him as the guy saying "I will veto any bill that doesn't include X," which is what's needed at some point. I think this is a very innovative way to drive the debate, with thousands of horror stories that can be deployed to rebut conservatives or inform the press.

In a major new effort to throw Obama’s campaign apparatus into the push for health care reform, the White House’s political operation is set to launch a massive new online data bank of thousands of health care stories, which will be spread around the country via Obama’s extensive email list, officials familiar with the project tell me.

The new “health care story bank” — as it’s dubbed by Organizing for America, Obama’s reconfigured political and campaign operation run out of the DNC — is perhaps the most ambitious test case yet determining whether the technological apparatus that fueled Obama’s campaign can succeed in driving Obama’s governing agenda [...]

These stories, which OFA had been collecting on its Web site but had not released, will be disseminated to the massive OFA email list, in hopes that campaign-style organizers around the country will use powerful first-hand anecdotes to argue the case for reform — and to push back on opponents’ talking points. There will also be a tool that allow users to flag particular stories as deserving of more attention.

If you collect enough anecdotes, maybe the plural will in FACT be data.

As much as Obama can drive the health care debate, so can a Progressive Block. Conservative Democrats get so much purchase in Washington partially because the town is wired for conservatives, but also because they have the numbers and the will to stop legislation or allow it to move forward. Progressives also have those numbers, but not the will. Until Progressives align themselves, and say forcefully that no legislation will move without their satisfaction, nothing will change on the dynamic in Congress. Conservatives will hijack the debate and force concessions that water down the President's campaign agenda, one which the public voted for in record numbers

Time and time again, conservative Democrats representing between 10% and 25% of their chamber's Democratic caucus have formed a block, joined with Republicans, and successfully weakened, severely threatened, or entirely blocked key elements of the progressive legislative agenda. They were successful in every case despite the ostensible, public support for that agenda by the Obama administration [...]

Instead of 60 votes in the Senate, what progressives need is Democratic control of both branches of Congress, control of the White House, and a progressive block of at least 13 Senators and 45 House members that will vote against Democratic legislation unless their demands are met. What we need is our own version of the Blue Dogs and Evan Bayh's "conservodem" Senate group that is large enough, and staunch enough, to be able to block Democratic legislation by joining with Republicans.

We need this group to draw hard lines in the sand for the two biggest legislative priorities of 2009: health care and climate change. The group needs to make it clear that, if their demands are not met, then no climate change or health care legislation of any sort will be passed. Demands like:

Health care: A public health insurance option that is immediately available to all Americans.
Climate change: Restoring the EPA's ability to regulate carbon and renewable energy targets that surpass those put in place by China..

We actually have this in health care; the Progressive Caucus has vowed to vote against anything that doesn't have a strong public option. So I question the President-centric view of how health care can work. Progressives in the House can drive this as well.

Assaults On The Status Quo

If we're going to get meaningful health care reform in this country, it will be because people talked to their neighbors, rebutted the smears and advocated so loudly that they became impossible to ignore. There are some small stories that can make us hopeful but much work to be done. When Blue Cross of North Carolina started readying Harry and Louise-style attack ads to scaremonger Americans on a public option, the outcry was sufficiently loud that the White House forced the insurer to back down and scrap their plans. When compromisers tried to create a trigger mechanism that would introduce a public option only if insurance companies don't voluntarily reduce costs and expand coverage, health care advocates widely disparaged the idea, arguing that the trigger has already been met, and the talk cooled.

But the forces protecting the status quo won't stop. A brand-new conservative group with links to none other than the teabaggers will launch an ad campaign comparing the US system to (horrors!) Canada's. According to their ad, government bureaucrats in Canada make decisions on coverage and treatment. Good thing we live here in America, where only private insurance bureaucrats get to make those decisions!

And Rick Scott, the corrupt former hospital CEO who paid the largest fine in American history for defrauding the US Government for billions, is planning to run a 30-minute infomercial after "Meet The Press" in Washington, DC designed to influence elite opinion with slanders and lies about health care reform.

Rick Scott will likely continue to mislead viewers about the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, a newly-created entity by the economic recovery package signed into law by President Obama in February. Mr. Scott will likely make a specific claim: "not only could a government board deny your choice in doctors, but it can control life and death for some patients." This statement is demonstrably false. In reality, the powers of this so-called "government board" are clearly defined and cannot do what Mr. Scott claims. The statutory authority of the Council specifically excludes the power "to mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies for any public or private payer." It is worth noting that even under President Bush, the National Institutes of Health already had an annual budget of $355 million to conduct precisely this type of research. Plainly, this has not led to the sort of catastrophic consequences in America that Mr. Scott warns against.

The advertisement will likely deceive viewers by blatantly misrepresenting the positions of two physicians. While the advertisement paints both as opponents of any role for government in health care reform, in reality, just the opposite is true. Both physicians are in fact supporters of universal health care. What they are opposed to is the U.S. ‘two-tiered' system that already rations health care based on the ability to pay. In fact, Mr. Scott misrepresented Dr. Day's comments, and Dr. Day openly mocked the ineffectiveness of the U.S. health care system. What Dr. Day is opposed to is Canada's outdated funding model, not Canada's healthcare system. Dr. Day actually advocates reform of the funding structure to preserve Canada's healthcare system, not dismantle it [...]

If Scott's 30-minute "documentary" contains any falsehoods, NBC will be liable for an FCC violation. Furthermore, Meet the Press needs to know that they're being used by Rick Scott, and will be tarnished by his swiftboating.

Sign the petition, blah blah.

In addition, groups are going after the real source of where any downfall in health care reform will lie, President Nelson and the ConservaDems, who will try their best to please their contributors and friends (Ben Nelson ran an insurance company, incidentally) by stopping anything meaningful.

Centrist Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.) is under attack from an advertising campaign that criticizes his opposition to President Obama’s healthcare plan.

The Web and direct-mail ads specifically take on Nelson for opposing Obama’s proposal to create a public health insurance program consumers could choose instead of private plans. The $10,000 ad campaign is paid for by Change Congress, an advocacy group that is calling for publicly financed elections.

The Change Congress ads charge that Nelson’s opposition to a public health insurance plan is linked to campaign funds he has received from health insurance groups. Citing data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the ads say Nelson has accepted $2 million from health insurance companies over three Senate campaigns.

Taken alone, a $10,000 ad buy, even in Nebraska, won't do much. In combination, only a sustained assault on the status quo from all advocacy groups will get reform of this type done. That's just an historical fact. And while it's welcome that the President will deploy the Organizing for America email list for health care, it's going to take progressives concerned about the policy details to drive the discussion.

...Keep pushing...

Earlier this month, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) declared that he was against including a public option in health care reform, calling it a “deal breaker.” But Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim reports that in a meeting with health care advocates in Nebraska yesterday, Nelson said that he was open to including a public plan:

Nelson, according to two people in the room, told the group that he was open to a public option, the primary Democratic goal of reform and anathema to conservatives.

“The good news for all sides involved is that he’s open mined,” said Barry Rubin, the former Executive Director for the Nebraska Democratic Party, who was in the meeting. “He’s not closed minded about a public option.”

Nelson's afraid of his constituents. Good place for progressives to have him.

What's 3% When The Planet Is Boiling Anyway?

Democratic leaders on the Energy and Commerce Committee and coal-state holdouts reached a deal on energy and climate legislation that lowered the threshold for the carbon cap to a level where I'm trying to determine its value.

House Democratic leaders are scaling back plans to curb global warming and make the transition to cleaner energy in the hopes that they can get a bill passed this year.

"We have resolved a good number of the issues," said (Henry) Waxman, who chairs the panel and has set a Memorial Day deadline for it to clear the committee. "I believe we will have the votes for passage of this bill next week." [...]

Initially, the bill called for electricity producers to generate 25% of their power from renewable sources like wind and solar by 2025. That target has been lowered to 15% by 2020, with as much as 5% coming from improvements in energy efficiency.

The deal also makes more modest cuts in greenhouse gases. The draft unveiled in March called for a 20% reduction by 2020 in the emissions blamed for global warming. The version that will be unveiled later this week will call for a 17% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020.

While that early pollution goal goes further than the president has called for, it still falls short of what other countries are calling on the United States to commit to by December, when a new international agreement to reduce global warming pollution will be negotiated in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Other details of the bill still need to be worked out, such as how the allowances to emit greenhouse gases will be distributed. Obama has called for a 100% auction and would use the billions in revenue to help fund renewable energy technologies and to offset higher energy prices for middle-class households.

Waxman said Tuesday that the Democrats on the committee had agreed to give 35% of the allowances away for free to local electricity distribution companies to help ease costs. Allowances will also be doled out to auto manufacturers to help them develop cleaner cars.

As expected, the original Waxman-Markey bill represented the most leftward option, and that already was pre-compromised a bit. Now we have a smaller cap, a smaller renewable mandate, and a greater amount of carbon credits handed to polluters. And that's just to get it out of committee in the House. To clear the full House might take another dent or two, and then to clear the Senate will require a whole other set of compromises.

I think by the end, the bill will require Al Gore to fly less and that's about it.

I'm wondering where the vaunted Obama organization is in all of this. They have started to ramp up an effort to pass Obama's health care bill, but only based on his "principles" and not on any specific language or hard issue, like a public option. On energy, supposedly just as key a pillar in the Obama agenda, they have been silent. Bills get constructed now, not at the end of the process when it turns to an up or down vote on the floor. Surely the details matter, unless the goal here is simply to get anything done that can be called "reform" in a moderately credible way. I fully recognize the "art of the compromise" rhetoric about politics, and as long as these bills are seen as beginnings and not endings, we can live with them. But a little volume at the BEGINNING of the process rather than a rush at the end would help, Mr. President. Unless you see these bills at data points on your re-election resume instead of deadly serious legislation that affects all of our lives.

Stop Picking On Us, We Don't Stand For Anything

Interesting move here by Evan Bayh, to deflect criticism from his role as chief obstructionist to the Obama agenda: claim that you don't have a single core principle:

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) is also unhappy with the friendly fire. Bayh…found himself targeted by an ad accusing him of “standing in the way of President Obama’s reforms.” “We literally have no agenda,” Bayh shot back. “How can they be threatened by a group that has taken no policy positions?”

Bayh’s claim that his group has no agenda is hard to believe. Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal explained yesterday, the group’s “stated goal is to…protect business interests.” Even before the group was officially formed, their efforts dampened a number of progressive policy proposals and they clearly have aspirations to expand their portfolio:

• Shrinking Economic Recovery: The group’s first significant “success” was “paring down the more than $900 billion economic stimulus bill to $787 billion,” reducing the government’s ability to spur economic recovery quickly. [Roll Call, 3/12/2009]

• Preserving The Bush Tax Cuts: Regarding Obama’s plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, Bayh said, “I do think that before we raise revenue, we first should look to see if there are ways we can cut back on spending.” [Politico, 3/3/2009]

• Delaying Cap-and-Trade: Bayh coaltion member, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), explained that the group might “push for a more lenient phase-in period for a cap-and-trade system and revenue-raising offsets to pay for expensive mandates.” [CQ Politics, 3/9/2009]

• Weakening Bankruptcy Protection: Centrist Democrats “forced changes to a House bill that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages, ensuring that the legislation better reflected the concerns of the financial-services industry.” [WSJ, 3/25/09]

If Bayh wants to disclaim all those "successes," maybe he can stop going on talk shows and receiving High Broderist love from his media fans. After all, he has literally no agenda.

Maybe Bayh can tell his own constituents that he has no agenda. Organizing for America is rounding up people to make calls to residents inside Indiana and other states to dog these Blue Dogs. Campaign for America's Future is doing the same thing. Bayh and his pals can play their inside game but they'll get some outside pressure, too.

Conservatives in both parties are assailing the president’s budget. Republicans seem virtually united in staking their lot with hoping that Obama fails. Having doubled the national debt under Bush when the economy was growing, they are now railing at Obama for threatening to “bankrupt the country.”

This is like a gambling addict squandering the family fortune in a Las Vegas blowout, and scolding his wife for borrowing money to keep the kids in college.

Now conservaDems are pushing to cut back needed investments, often to protect the same entrenched corporate interests.
It is vital that legislators in both parties hear from their constituents, and not just their contributors, so they get the message loud and clear: We have given the president a mandate for change and we want him to succeed. We expect you to support him or get out of the way.

The President told the nation exactly why Congress must pass his budget: "this budget is inseparable from this recovery, because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity."

Our economy simply cannot recover without President Obama's bold investments in affordable health care, clean energy and quality education.

Click here to call Congress, especially if you're in Indiana. And watch this latest TV ad from Organizing for America. ConservaDems need to hear from the people who elected them.



...MoveOn is also mobilizing.

The Eventual Hard Choice

While I've criticized the President for his handling of the banking crisis, I've praised his budget, which really does move toward a more progressive tax code and a very real investment in important priorities like health care, energy and education. Obama's weekly address makes this case once again. But the operative word, of course, is "move." And Matt Yglesias compellingly argues that, if Obama wants to succeed in those investments, he'll need to increase the tax base:

I seriously doubt that this is the line any members of congress are going to take, but as I read through the CBO analysis of the president’s budget it’s clear that the problem is here—the taxes are too low:

"Under the President’s proposals, revenues would climb from 17.2 percent of GDP in 2011 to 18.8 percent in 2013 and remain near 19.0 percent thereafter (see Figure 1-2 and Table 1-4). That level is slightly above the average of 18.3 percent over the past 40 years and below the baseline projection of 20.3 percent for 2019."

The past 40 years have been the 40 years of conservative backlash politics following the unraveling of the New Deal coalition after the advent of Civil Rights and the Great Society. Barack Obama has, quite rightly, an ambitious progressive agenda. But in budgetary terms you can’t really implement an ambitious progressive agenda and pair it with revenues that are only “slightly above” the average at which they rested during an era of conservative governance. This is not an issue in the short-term, since we’re dealing with a recession, but what you see at the right hand side of these charts is not sustainable. And I think the administration is correct to think that they should not compromise on their main policy pillars. The issue, though nobody wants to say it, is that taxes need to be higher.

I think the Administration will attempt to exhaust other options before raising certain marginal rates or applying a broader tax like a VAT. For instance, closing individual and corporate tax loopholes and increasing enforcement would bring in lots of money even if corporate rates are lowered. Sin taxes on cigarettes and alcohol could rise (although cigarettes are probably at a high level already, since they've just been raised to pay for SCHIP expansion). Maybe sweeteners get a tax. And there's the white elephant defense budget. Nevertheless, at some point, some politician has to be brave enough to make the case that investment in long-term economic growth is worth paying for.

On a separate note, I don't think the national canvass by Organizing for America in support of Obama's budget this weekend had anything to do with the budget and far more to do with capturing better lists for long-term field operations. That's extremely smart, and perhaps will help pass better policy at the margins, but only on the outside edge. Only an organizing effort independent of the institutional apparatus will be able to pressure the policymakers into the leadership needed.

Full Speed Ahead On The Budget

The Administration has obviously sensed discomfort among Blue Dogs and moderate squishes who think the change election of 2008 actually meant that nothing should change. So starting yesterday, we are seeing a full court press on getting his budget proposal passed. This is safe ground for President Obama, where he and the majority of the public are on the same side. And he's employing a multi-pronged attack:

During an appearance on Tuesday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Mr. Obama took a swipe at Republican critics of his $3.6 trillion budget and its agenda for health care, energy, taxes and economic recovery.

“If there are members of Congress who object to specific policies and proposals in this budget, then I ask them to be ready and willing to propose constructive, alternative solutions,” Mr. Obama said. “ ‘Just say no’ is the right advice to give your teenagers about drugs. It is not an acceptable response to whatever economic policy is proposed by the other party.”

The strong words were the latest in a push that has come to resemble elements of the two-year-long presidential campaign. Mr. Obama may hold his second prime-time news conference as president, perhaps as early as next week, to talk up the budget.

On Wednesday and Thursday, he is taking his budget show on the road to California, where he will hold two town-hall-style meetings and will even try to talk about the economy on Thursday on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

Supporters of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign have been receiving a barrage of e-mail urging them to call their Congressional representatives to voice support of Mr. Obama’s economic recovery plans.

In particular, Organizing for America is really taking an active role. They have a call Congress tool with an example script for those calls, and today they released a message from Obama himself urging people to either call Congress or participate in a canvass for the budget this weekend. And the messaging is right - that we cannot use the current crisis as an excuse to ignore the long-term challenge in our economy, that investing in the future will ensure that a crisis like this does not happen again. It's the post-bubble economic strategy.

What Congress really hates is the proposed use of budget reconciliation to evade the filibuster. Republicans like filibusters because they get a piece of the action. Moderate Democrats like filibusters because they hate being held accountable for their votes, and with only 50 needed they have to side with Obama and the people or the anti-progressive forces of obstruction. Peter Orszag makes a good case for reconciliation, which more than anything is a neogtiating tactic.

Orszag said he wouldn't rule it out, however. The legislative tactic is being considered to push through Obama's global warming and health care programs, and perhaps his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy.

"We'd like to avoid it if possible," Orszag told reporters at a luncheon in Washington. "But we're not taking it off the table." [...]

There is plenty of historical precedent of using it by both parties, including Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who used it force through big tax cuts.

"Pretty much every major piece of budget legislation going back to April 1981, April '82, April 1990, April 1993, the 1990 act, the 2001 tax legislation, they were all done through reconciliation. Yet somehow this is being presented as an unusual thing," Orszag said.

"The historical norm as opposed to the exception is for a major piece of budget legislation to move through reconciliation."

Judd Gregg is whining about it, calling it "running over the minority." I would term it more as "giving the people what they want," but YMMV. Of course, Evan Bayh and his new Obstructionist caucus would be hostile to this tactic, but the members of it aren't even willing to admit their membership, so that seems less than cohesive.

I would be more excited about this if it wasn't coming on the same week as the AIG mess that represents a real threat to the Obama agenda. If they manage to take care of that, the White House has a real opportunity here to pummel Senate Democrats into acceptance.

The List Is Coming! The List Is Coming!

The buzzing of excitement at the concept of Barack Obama awakening the sleeping giant of "the list" to help him pass his budget seems like a Washington-centric read of things. First of all, Barack Obama isn't doing anything. Organizing for America has a separate organization, and they are making their determinations separately. Second, this isn't the "first" deployment of the sacred list - there were stimulus meetings last month. Third, the idea that off-cycle organizing is novel and interesting is an example of why Washington consultants shouldn't be trusted to run anybody's campaign. Let's look at what the ask is here:

The campaign, which will be run under the aegis of the Democratic National Committee, will rely heavily on the 13 million-strong e-mail list put together during the campaign and now under the control of Organizing for America (OFA), a group overseen by the DNC. Aides familiar with the plan said it is an unprecedented attempt to transfer the grass-roots energy built during the presidential campaign into an effort to sway Congress [...]

(David) Plouffe, who passed up a formal role in the White House but remains a conduit to the army of Obama volunteers, sent an e-mail to the OFA mailing list over the weekend signaling the ramping up of the campaign for the president's budget. "In the next few weeks we'll be asking you to do some of the same things we asked of you during the campaign -- talking directly to people in your communities about the President's ideas for long-term prosperity," he wrote.

That push begins today with an e-mail asking volunteers to go door to door Saturday to urge their neighbors to sign a pledge in support of Obama's budget plan.

Hey idiots, THAT'S WHAT YOU DO in an off-election year, or at least it's what you should do. Keeping in touch with neighbors and having what amounts to precinct captains in every corner of America is standard political organizing, and it's shameful that it has taken until now to get around to it. A pre-cursor to increasing political engagement nationwide is building up trusted networks in communities, so that individuals know where to go to get information and steps for action. This is not transformational, it's righting a grave wrong. Furthermore, the OFA/DNC effort is being asinine by re-starting this process over again and not retaining the on-the-ground organizers that were already implementing the 50-state strategy under Howard Dean. In addition, there are already email and Web-based campaigns that are very sharp, applying pressure on Democrats and Republicans alike - a good example is the Color of Change action to flood South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford with phone calls today for rejecting stimulus money (this enhances a DNC on-air effort to call out Sanford).

The lack of off-cycle organizing that is targeted on principles and explanations for policy is WHY there are so many wayward corporate Democrats talking about defying the President on his mostly progressive budget. The Party has long lost touch with the people who support it at the ballot. And the other side of this is that people who are energized by being instruments of change in the election are not necessarily going to hop to answer the call on whatever issue some folks in Washington decide is the most important. Here in California, I can tell you there is about four times as much energy and organizing going into marriage equality than there is on national priorities. And that focus is different depending on the regional area.

That OFA is deploying its list should not be a cause for joy; it should be a cause for embarrassment.