As Jon Lovitz Once Said, "I Can't Believe I'm Losing To This Guy."

Michael Steele goes to a black college and insults a woman whose mother died of cancer because she said that everyone should have good health care.

So people go out to town halls, they go to the community, and they’re like this. (SHAKES ARMS) It makes for great TV. You’ll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it.

First, there's the insanity of the head of the RNC criticizing anyone for disrupting a town hall meeting. Second, you have a woman whose mother died, ostensibly because of a lack of insurance, basically being insulted for daring to try to call attention to herself.

And this is not the only example. I can think of a dozen instances of Republican officials dismissing people trying to explain how the current system is broken. There was Tom Coburn telling the crying woman whose insurance refused to cover her husband that she should go to her neighbors for help. There was "Great White Hope" Republican Lynn Jenkins telling an uninsured constituent to be a grown-up and get insurance. The callousness on display at these things is palpable. And it could easily be turned into a powerful force for change.

That is, if there was one Democratic strategist interested in making a moral case anymore instead of a bunch of functionaries squandering a progressive agenda in favor of pleasing elites and talking about "bending the cost curve."

There's Something Happening Here

Quietly, almost imperceptibly, the voices of those giving testimony to the essential immorality of the broken health care system have become prominent, and the desires of the defenders of the status quo exposed.

Witness the changing tenor of town hall meetings, which changed from meeting spaces for teabaggers and Larouchies to venues for powerful expression. See this video of a woman desperate for help in a nightmare system, where her husband's insurance company has denied him coverage for a traumatic brain injury, and Rep. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) incredible response, that her neighbors (who I guess are all speech pathologists) can help her. This is made all the more insane when you know that Coburn is a doctor:



And we're starting to see real emotion and anger on the side of reform, too, like at this John McCain town hall:

Why don’t I have the health insurance you’ve got! Because I’m paying for it! And I’m paying for the President of the United States’ health insurance and Congress’ health insurance. Why don’t I have that! I’m your employer! I’m your employer! You work for me, and you’ve got a better health insurance plan than I’ve got!

McCain later evicted an angry woman who wouldn't let McCain get started. And she was indicative of many in the crowd, some who yelled about how much money McCain pocketed from insurance companies over the past year.

But I'm more interested in the series of personal stories popping up in the media, as individuals share their own crises navigating the broken health care system. Here's Cynthia Tucker in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Having just relocated to Washington, I have to find a new pediatrician for my infant daughter. I sought recommendations from several acquaintances, and the same name came up repeatedly. (I’ll just call her Dr. Amy.)

I called Dr. Amy’s office and was given an immediate appointment. But I was also told she is “out-of-network” for Aetna.

Called Aetna. They explained I would pay several hundred dollars a year extra for the privilege of taking my baby girl to Dr. Amy.

So, I called another pediatrician who is “in-network.” She said she could see my baby at the end of October.

I have a choice to make: Pay through the nose for a highly recommended doctor who can see my baby immediately. Or, go to the doctor my insurance will pay for, which would mean my child would run months behind on her vaccination schedule. This isn’t a disaster, but it is certainly frustrating.

That's a minor inconvenience compared to this expose on the Remote Area Medical tent in Los Angeles last week:

The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.

In the first two days, more than 1,500 men, women and children received free treatments worth $503,000 (£304,000). Thirty dentists pulled 471 teeth; 320 people were given standard issue spectacles; 80 had mammograms; dozens more had acupuncture, or saw kidney specialists. By the time the makeshift medical centre leaves town on Tuesday, staff expect to have dispensed $2m worth of treatments to 10,000 patients [...]

Along the hall, Liz Cruise was one of scores of people waiting for a free eye exam. She works for a major supermarket chain but can't afford the $200 a month that would be deducted from her salary for insurance. "It's a simple choice: pay my rent, or pay my healthcare. What am I supposed to do?" she asked. "I'm one of the working poor: people who do work but can't afford healthcare and are ineligible for any free healthcare or assistance. I can't remember the last time I saw a doctor."

And then this must-read from David Goldhill in The Atlantic, hardly a left-wing rag:

ALMOST TWO YEARS ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy [...]

I’m a businessman, and in no sense a health-care expert. But the persistence of bad industry practices—from long lines at the doctor’s office to ever-rising prices to astonishing numbers of preventable deaths—seems beyond all normal logic, and must have an underlying cause. There needs to be a business reason why an industry, year in and year out, would be able to get away with poor customer service, unaffordable prices, and uneven results—a reason my father and so many others are unnecessarily killed.

As Goldhill comes to realize, the system is rife with distortions, where every stakeholder's economic interests clash with the public interest of quality and affordable care for all. And what's more, everybody knows it, even if only intuitively.

As August fades, people are starting to see the forces of the status quo as nothing more than a sham, and starting to reconnect with their own struggles in the health care system, struggles which suggest that it needs fundamental change. The question is whether Congress will listen.

The Opening On Tom Coburn

Other than it being a breach of ethics, I don't care about the mini-Peyton Place going on with John Ensign and the Hampton family who worked for him, including Cindy, with whom he had an adulterous affair. I guess Ensign paid the family, but he didn't actually do it, his mother did. Adulterer, conservative, hypocrite, got it.

What does interest me is the role of Tom Coburn (R-OK) in all of this. Hampton's husband Doug suggested that Coburn came up with the idea to pay off the family. Now remember, Coburn is the guy who goes on and on in the Senate about fiscal responsibility and debt and how we can't afford anything. The hundred-grand to clear up your wandering willie problem, I guess, is OK. But here's the kicker.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Thursday said he would not testify in court or before the Ethics Committee about any advice he gave Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) on how to handle his affair with a former staffer, citing constitutional protections for communications during religious counseling, as well as the patient confidentiality privilege.

“I was counseling him as a physician and as an ordained deacon. ... That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody. Not to the Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody,” Coburn said.

First of all, Coburn is an Ob/Gyn. Unless Ensign was trying to grow a womb, I don't know what the medical nature of their conversations would be. Second, I don't think any of this rises to the level of criminality or even a breach of Senate rules. But it's sublime to see Coburn, the self-styled pillar of moral rectitude in the Senate, arrogantly deny any view into his own behavior at the Ethics Committee. Smart Democrats would throw this right in his face every time he tries to derail a bill by talking about the cost or the possibility of corruption. They could make his life miserable. After a few months of it, I'll bet the WATB would decide not to run for re-election. He's only happy being a thorn in the sides of others, after all.

...now, if this was federal campaign money being tracked through Ensign's parents, then we have some kind of hush money deal. But I think he structured it with just enough plausible deniability to get away with it.

The Little Ensign That Could

This John Ensign story just gets worse and worse for him. As it turns out, he wasn't being blackmailed by a cuckold; he was pre-empting a potential disclosure on Fox News, and a lot of people had prior knowledge about the affair, including the network and key Senators, while it was happening.

The unethical behavior and immoral choice of Senator Ensign has been confronted by me and others on a number of occasions over this past year. In fact one of the confrontations took place in February 2008 at his home in Washington DC (sic) with a group of his peers. One of the attendee’s (sic) was Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma as well as several other men who are close to the Senator. Senator Ensign’s conduct and relentless pursuit of my wife led to our dismissal in April of 2008. I would like to say he stopped his heinous conduct and pursuit upon our leaving, but that was not the case and his actions did not subside until August of 2008.

No wonder the Republicans don't really want to talk about this--they've known about it for over a year. Here's what Coburn had to say:

Reporters mobbed Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who shares an apartment with Ensign on Capitol Hill. "I'm not answering any Ensign questions," he announced. "You can ask all you want."

"You don't have any thoughts?"

"I don't have any thoughts."

"Have you had a chance to talk about it?"

"I'm just not going to comment."

Finally, Coburn was badgered into making a defense. "He is a bright young man," the senator said of his 51-year-old colleague. "Lots of people make mistakes."

The details in the letter are pretty juicy. I would say Ensign's in some trouble and this won't go away. But the best take I've seen is from David Kurtz:

While Norm Coleman was battling for his political life in 2008 in a race he ultimately lost to Al Franken by a mere 312 votes, his colleague John Ensign -- whose job as chairman of the NRSC was helping GOP senators like Norm get re-elected -- was off having an affair and finding jobs for his mistress' family.

Hilarious

Slaves To The Clock

So the revised credit card reform bill passed the House overwhelmingly today, after overwhelmingly passing the Senate, and the President will sign it probably within a couple days. Most of the rules in the bill would have already been instituted by the Federal Reserve, but this sped up the timeline, as they will take effect immediately instead of in July 2010. Very little else is new here, save for some slight strengthening from the Senate.

And in exchange for that acceleration, gun owners will be allowed to carry loaded weapons into national parks.

To the frustration and discouragement of many Democrats, House and Senate lawmakers and aides say it now appears likely that President Obama will this week sign into law a provision allowing visitors to national parks and refuges to carry loaded and concealed weapons.

The White House is lukewarm at best on the gun provision, which was added to a popular measure imposing new rules on credit card companies. But the Democrats who now control both Congress and the White House appear ready to allow it to survive rather than derail a consumer-friendly credit card measure that Mr. Obama is eager to sign as Congress heads off for a Memorial Day recess.

“Timing is everything in politics,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and the champion of the gun proposal [...]

“It is a shame,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. “But you have to come to a realization around here that at this point in time, the N.R.A. gets the votes,” she said referring to the National Rifle Association.

“Either you are going to bring down the whole Senate and never do anything or you or going to swallow hard and say, ‘I will just vote my conscience on those amendments and speak out until people get a hold of their senses,’ ” Mrs. Boxer said.

Far be it from me to contradict Sen. Boxer, but I don't know what the hell she's talking about. Here's how my Civics 101 book tells me how legislation works: the House passes a version, the Senate passes a version, the differences are reconciled in conference, and both Houses then vote on the final version. That's not what happened here. The House passed a version, the Senate passed a version with an unrelated gun rider, and then the House just shrugged and passed the Senate version. Why? With Democrats controlling the conference, the rider could have easily been tossed out. And if Boxer is telling me that 40 US Senators would be able to go back to their districts and explain they voted with the credit card companies, I just don't believe her.

There was absolutely a remedy here, and no need for this measure, which does not have majority support among Democrats, to be included. But there's the matter of the clock. The President wanted a bill on his desk by Memorial Day. And the House passing the Senate's bill was the best way for that to happen. The gun measure stays because Congress wanted to facilitate the President's schedule.

Because if there's one thing Congress is known for, it's punctuality.

It's amazing how Democrats learned the worst lessons from Republicans while forgetting the simple lessons, like how to screw the opposition in conference committee.

Credit Card Reform Takes Shape

The President held a town hall meeting today in New Mexico, and they got "populist Obama," the one looking out for consumers and concerned about credit card companies jacking up their interest rates.

You should not have to worry that when you sign up for a credit card, you're signing away all your rights. You shouldn't need a magnifying glass or a law degree to read the fine print that sometimes don't even appear to be written in English -- or Spanish. (Applause.) And frankly, when you're trying to navigate your way through this economy, you shouldn't feel like you're getting ripped off by "any time, any reason" rate hikes, and payment deadlines that seem to move around every month. That happen to anybody? You think you're supposed to pay it this day, and suddenly -- and it's never on the end of the month where you're paying all the rest of your bills, right? It's like on the 19th. (Laughter.) All kinds of harsh penalties and fees that you never knew about.

Enough is enough. It's time for strong, reliable protections for our consumers. It's time for reform -- (applause) -- it's time for reform that's built on transparency and accountability and mutual responsibility -- values fundamental to the new foundation we seek to build for our economy.

I actually think, judging from the support in Congress and the outcry from consumers, that some form of this actually gets done on the President's timetable, with a law signed by Memorial Day. Tom Coburn tossed in what he thought would be a poison pill about carrying concealed weapons in national parks, but since the NRA has essentially silenced gun control advocates in Washington that pill tastes like a blueberry pie, even to Democrats. And I don't know if it'll make it through conference. Interest rates won't be capped, and some of the provisions will be a bit weaker than the initial bill, but basically something along the guidelines of the Federal Reserve will pass. And that's because the credit card companies are just the most contemptible companies in America, and they pushed it too far.

The exploration into cardholders’ minds hit a breakthrough in 2002, when J. P. Martin, a math-loving executive at Canadian Tire, decided to analyze almost every piece of information his company had collected from credit-card transactions the previous year. Canadian Tire’s stores sold electronics, sporting equipment, kitchen supplies and automotive goods and issued a credit card that could be used almost anywhere. Martin could often see precisely what cardholders were purchasing, and he discovered that the brands we buy are the windows into our souls — or at least into our willingness to make good on our debts. His data indicated, for instance, that people who bought cheap, generic automotive oil were much more likely to miss a credit-card payment than someone who got the expensive, name-brand stuff. People who bought carbon-monoxide monitors for their homes or those little felt pads that stop chair legs from scratching the floor almost never missed payments. Anyone who purchased a chrome-skull car accessory or a “Mega Thruster Exhaust System” was pretty likely to miss paying his bill eventually.

....Testing indicated that Martin’s predictions, when paired with other commonly used data like cardholders’ credit histories and incomes, were often much more precise than what the industry traditionally used to forecast cardholder riskiness....Data-driven psychologists are now in high demand, and the industry is using them not only to screen out risky debtors but also to determine which cardholders need a phone call to persuade them to mail in a check. Most of the major credit-card companies have set up systems to comb through cardholders’ data for signs that someone is going to stop making payments. Are cardholders suddenly logging in at 1 in the morning? It might signal sleeplessness due to anxiety. Are they using their cards for groceries? It might mean they are trying to conserve their cash.

Unbelievable.

Whaddya Know, A Functional Congress

For all the heartburn Harry Reid and company gave me about Roland Burris, the stakes were fairly low. A loss meant that Burris gets seated, which I believe is happening today. In 2010 it is unlikely, if he runs, that Burris will take the nomination, IMO. And two-plus years is a long time to play the Blagojevich card, so the electoral damage nationally will be minimal.

On more substantive matters, Reid is actually off to a decent start. First he defied one of the bigger nuisances from the 110th Congress, Tom Coburn, and got an omnibus land reform bill passed by moving the vote to Sunday. The expanded majorities enable gambits like this, and the measure drew 12 Republican votes as well. Then, in setting up committee assignments for the next Congress, despite not having Al Franken or Burris in the chamber, Reid managed to earn majorities reflecting a 59-41 split, as if they were both seated, which they will be soon enough.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have reached a tentative agreement that would give Democrats a three-seat advantage on most committees during the 111th Congress [...]

Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, head of the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee, said Democrats negotiated a larger, four-seat advantage on the Appropriations and Armed Services committees. By statute, Democrats will have only a one-seat edge on the Intelligence Committee and a two-seat advantage on the Joint Economic Committee. On all other committees — except the Ethics panel, which always includes three members of each party — there will be three more Democrats than Republicans, Stabenow said.

Reid did this by simply waiting the Republicans out. They could have filibustered the rules package and demanded a lower majority, but then the seats would have reverted back to what they were in the 110th, minus all the Republicans who lost. Reid recognized this was a worse deal for Republicans and let them twist until they gave in.

Another key test will be when the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act and SCHIP come up for vote in the Senate. If they can skate through without a filibuster, we may just have something with this Senate.

Dr. No Lives

So today the Senate tried to ruin Tom Coburn's day by packaging over 30 bills that he has held up despite overwhelming bipartisan majorities into one "Tomnibus" bill.

Engineered by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, the bill includes 35 of the most irresistible-sounding measures stuck on the docket, including the Mothers Act and the Protect Our Children Act.

There are items to commemorate “The Star-Spangled Banner” and to try to curb pornography, cut drug use and help victims of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Officially known as the Advancing America’s Priorities Act, the catchall legislation includes a measure to improve life for victims of paralysis, which Mr. Reid calls the Superman bill in tribute to the late Christopher Reeve.

The obvious intent is to apply a little legislative Kryptonite and embarrass Mr. Coburn into dropping his procedural objections to the measures while highlighting his willingness to put roadblocks in front of bills that have support from all corners — a textbook case of what Democrats view as extreme Republican obstructionism.

A lot of these bills have Republican sponsors, and all of them have overwhelming support. Kagro X, writing for Daily Kos, put it this way: "here's the question going into the vote: Will Senate Republicans flip on their own legislation, just to back up the paranoid theories of a crazy doofus whose main concern in life (besides crossword puzzles) appears to be the growing menace of teenage bathroom lesbians?"

But Senate Republicans, nothing if not a loyal group, decided to go crashing down with the Coburn ship, backing up the wackadoo from Oklahoma just enough to stop the bill in its tracks. The final cloture vote was 50-35, with 10 Republicans shrinking from their duty and not voting.

"Holds" like this hold up because Republicans have more loyalty to each other and their party than they do to the country. A hold like Chris Dodd trying to stop the march of the surveillance state and expansive executive power failed because Democrats have no such fealty.

...Just to update, this was a good move by Reid. We now have Senators like Susan Collins on the record as voting against treatment for stroke victims, stopping child predators, victims of paralysis, homeless youth, and about 20 other popular programs.

Fighting Obstructionism

It looks like the series of popular bills that Tom Coburn (R-Lesbians in the Bathrooms) has put holds on are going to be combined into a Coburn omnibus that should get a final vote next week. Sen. Reid's office is calling it the Advancing America's Priorities Act. They are a series of health care provisions, environmental provisions, scientific provisions, and homeland security provisions, all of them with broad bipartisan support. The Congressional Budget Office has debunked Coburn's ridiculous spin that these measures would increase the deficit; these aren't appropriations, but provisions to direct spending, so they don't add a dime to the total fiscal cost.

This bill will put Republican Senators in a bind:

Here, in no particular order, is a list of such Senators, and the legislation they partnered on:

Senator Thad Cochran - introduced - Stroke Treatment and Ongoing Prevention Act (S. 999/HR 477)
Sen. Christopher S. Bond - introduced - Vision Care for Kids Act (HR 507/S. 1117)
Sen. Sam Brownback- introduced- Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act (S. 1810/HR 3112)
Sen Domenici, Pete V - introduced - Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act (S. 2304/HR 3992)
Sen Vitter, David - introduced - Enhancing the Effective Prosecution of Child Pornography (S. 2869/HR 4136)
Sen Lugar, Richard G. - introduced - Reconstruction and Stabilization Civilian Management Act (HR 1084/S. 613)
Sen Coleman, Norm - introduced - Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization Act (HR 1678/S. 840)
Sen Stevens, Ted - introduced - Ocean Exploration, Mapping & Research (HR 1834/HR 2400/S. 39)
Sen Snowe, Olympia J. - introduced - Integrated Coastal and Ocean Observation System Act (S. 950/HR 2342)
Sen Voinovich, George V. - introduced - Appalachian Regional Development Act Amendments of 2008 (S. 496)

Coburn blocked every one of those bills - and every one of them will be in Reid's package next week.

Republicans in the Senate played politics with their power as long as they could. But now they're very, very unpopular, and their party's brand is in the gutter. Putting politics over substance by standing with Coburn may have been possible for this bunch even a year ago.

But now?

I never put it past Republicans to hang together to the bitter end, but on this one it seems like they'll either see the light, or be ushered out the door. There's a reason, incidentally, that a bunch of them don't even want to be seen at their own party's convention. They'd rip the word "Republican" off the ballot if they could get away with it.

Holding Pattern

Well, it looks like enough people pushed and pushed to get the FISA bill delayed through the recess on the 4th.

The Senate hit impasses over legislation aimed at helping struggling homeowners and a rewrite of spying laws, forcing Democratic leaders to push back consideration of those measures until next month.

Leaders had hoped to finish both measures this week, in addition to an emergency war-spending bill and a Medicare bill, before lawmakers return home by week's end. Both bills have wide support, but in each case, individual senators have refused to let the measures speed through the chamber. As a result, they were forced to lower the bar for this week's action.

Democrats also threatened to keep the Senate in session through the weekend if Republicans didn’t agree to move quickly with the Medicare bill.

Objections by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) will push back an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until after lawmakers return in July, Democratic leaders said Thursday. Feingold is strongly opposed to language that would likely give telephone companies that participated in warrantless surveillance retroactive immunity from lawsuits.

"It doesn't look like it," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said of taking up the FISA bill this week. "Sen. Feingold wants additional time and would like to postpone it until after the Fourth of July."

Durbin said: "We can't leave until we finish Medicare and the supplemental."

Looks to me like Jon Ensign and Jim DeMint called Harry Reid's bluff on the housing bill, so he pushed both of them back till after the break. Incidentally, the housing bill would give $15 billion in tax breaks to lenders like Countrywide, and parts of the bill may have actually been written by Bank of America, so I'm not exactly weeping for that delay either.

As I've been saying, it's completely unclear to me whether this is anything but a delay, and if the opportunity is given to pass the FISA bill before the recess, I'm sure the Senate will take it. When you have 80 votes in favor, it's going to be pretty hard to stop it. I would hope that Sen. Feingold and Sen. Dodd could be as annoying as Tom Coburn in holding up a bill, but that seems to only work for conservatives (100 freakin' bills with bipartisan support are being held up by Coburn, but Feingold and Dodd aren't able to stop one).

However, the delay does provide an opportunity to rally support for accountability. The Wall Street Journal today reports on the money-bomb for the Constitution being planned:

Liberal activists and supporters of the Texas Republican and former presidential candidate plan to join forces Thursday and begin a "money bomb" protest of lawmakers who support telecom immunity in the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act. During a "money bomb," grassroots activists donate money during a short period of time -- usually a day -- to create buzz and raise money for their candidate.

The effort is timed to coincide with a planned Senate vote on the bill. Libertarians and liberal activists have blasted Democratic lawmakers, including presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, for supporting the legislation [...]

"There's entrenched power in Washington that protects itself and there are people on both sides who don't feel like they're having their rights protected," says Jane Hamsher, one of the organizers behind the effort and founder of the popular Democratic blog Firedoglake. "It's really about right and left coming together to fight the entrenched power and take their power away."

Damn straight. And I expect a host of angry constituents when the entrenched Senators come back to their states.

UPDATE: Feingold's statement:

"I'm pleased we were able to delay a vote on FISA until after the July 4th holiday instead of having it jammed through. I hope that over the July 4th holiday, Senators will take a closer look at this deeply flawed legislation and understand how it threatens the civil liberties of the American people. It is possible to defend this country from terrorists while also protecting the rights and freedoms that define our nation."

And Dodd:

“I’m pleased that consideration of the FISA Amendments Act has been delayed until after the 4th of July recess. I urge my colleagues to take this time to listen to their constituents and consider the dangerous precedent that would be set by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that may have engaged in President Bush’s illegal wiretapping program.

“When and if FISA does come back to the Senate floor, I will offer my amendment to strip the retroactive immunity provision out of the bill. I implore my colleagues to support the rule of law and join me in voting against retroactive immunity.”

UPDATE II: The contours of this are coming into shape. As emptywheel notes, there's been a unanimous consent agreement to hold votes on all amendments and the final bill on July 8. A UC agreement means no filibuster (UPDATE: Sen. Reid's office is saying that there will be another cloture vote, so there's a slim opportunity to filibuster), so we’d need 51 no votes on the bill to stop it, or 51 yes votes on the amendment to strip immunity.

I'm trying to figure out if any of those other amendments have the likelihood of passing, because that would at least send the bill to a conference committee. And maybe one of the amendments is a poison pill. Apparently Jeff Bingaman has an amendment for a stay on immunity until the Inspector General review about the wiretapping activities is completed. Here he is talking about it:

MP3

Getting from 15 to 51 in 12 days is, in a word, unlikely. But getting to 51 on staying the immunity provision is somewhat more likely; it's at least closer to a compromise. However, the bar has been set to 60 on that amendment.

The Fetishization of Earmarks

So we hear a ton about earmarks. The President had steam coming out of his ears today, saying he's going to have his budget director look at "erasing wasteful spending" (I guess he found a line-item veto in his stocking this year). And Tom Coburn is rightly raising hell about how Don "Road To Nowhere" Young managed to get an earmark into the 2005 highway bill after it was voted on by both houses of Congress.

An Oklahoma senator who has been a strident critic of the "earmark favor factory" has asked for an investigation into how money was earmarked for a study of a highway interchange next to environmentally sensitive land in Florida.

The $10 million earmark was slipped into the 2005 highway spending bill, a $286.4 billion behemoth overseen by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, then chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has asked for an investigative panel with subpoena power to determine who placed the so-called Coconut Road study into the highway bill [...]

The earmark first drew the attention of Florida road planners when they learned they'd received $10 million for the study even though it wasn't one of their transportation priorities. They'd originally sought an earmark that would direct $10 million for the widening of Interstate 75 in Lee County, Fla.

An enrollment clerk changed language in the earmark after Congress had already voted on it, erasing I-75 and adding the words "Coconut Road" as it was being cleaned up to be sent to President Bush for signing.

And again, I agree with Coburn that we must investigate these extra-Constitutional means to add spending into a bill that nobody ever voted on (even though a later bill would fix the glitch and divert the money away from Coconut Road, a bill which Coburn is holding up until he can get an investigative panel). But I highlighted the amount in the bill: ten million dollars. A lot of money, to be sure, but the federal budget is in the trillions. Canceling one improper ten million-dollar earmark isn't going to get us out of our budget mess.

I'll tell you what would: reducing the obscene defense budget.

Last week, both houses of Congress approved the conference report on the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization bill, H.R. 1585. The bill includes $506.9 billion for the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy. The bill also authorizes $189.4 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This funding is NOT counted as part of the $506.9 billion.

Center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation has an itemized description of what's in the budget.

The amount of Cold War lard is truly astonishing, especially given the fact that the military itself is hollering from the hilltops that it can't be responsible for all of our national security needs and that today's problems just don't have military (read "Cold War weapons systems") answers.

Keep in mind, today's defense spending is 14% above the height of the Korean War, 33% above the height of the Vietnam War, 25% above the height of the "Reagan Era" buildup and is 76% above the Cold War average.

And none of it would have stopped 19 men with boxcutters from getting on to commercial aircraft, nor will any of it get the Sunnis and Shiites to reconcile in Iraq, nor will it help lift hundreds of millions out of the crushing poverty that enables many of them to turn to radical Islam.

The defense budget is a joke. Somehow we're demagogued into believing that we must give as much money to defense contractors as possible, lest we be seen as soft on national security. That's a front for massive amounts of corporate welfare which would go a long way to balancing our budget, far longer than the spare earmark for a road.

But you'll never hear any of these so-called "pork-busters" talk about that. They'll rage against all kinds of federal spending, some of it very noble, as long as it's inserted into a bill in a particular way. Defense earmarks, which is where these two pieces of spending come together, totaled $12 billion dollars in 2005. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the total defense budget. Outdated weapons systems, useless missile defense programs, and the like are the way to fiscal responsibility, not Coconut Road.

Some Holds Are Bigger Than Others

I don't know if you watch as much C-SPAN as I do. If you did, and you didn't know anything about the workings of Congress but just watched it like a TV show, you'd think the leader of the Senate was Tom Coburn (R-OK). He's always on the floor, making speeches, sometimes lasting an hour or longer, and he seems to have something to add to every bill that's up for consideration. Most of the time, he doesn't like them. He doesn't like them because they cost money, and Coburn considers deficit spending to be a bigger moral issue than abortion. Listening to his speeches, you'd think they were replays, except for the fact that he sports a salt-and-pepper beard these days. The speech is always about passing debt on to our children and grandchildren, and how this is a moral tragedy, and how Republicans have lost their way on the issue of federal spending, and that we should look to see what current programs are working before spending money on new ones.

These sound like fairly noble ideas on the surface, but in reality, Tom Coburn doesn't want the Senate to spend any money. He would never vote to increase revenues, and he would never vote for new programs. He just wants to drown the government in the bathtub. And so, Coburn has scrupulously put a Senatorial hold on practically every single spending initiative that the Senate has sought to pass.

Coburn, a physician who served in the House before he was elected in 2004, has rankled the collegiality of the Senate by putting roughly 80 holds on bills for new heritage areas. He even placed a hold on a bill designed to close a loophole that allowed Cho Seung-Hui to buy the gun he used in his deadly shooting spree at Virginia Tech this year.

Quizzed about his holds, Coburn reached into his pocket and brought out a card he carries with a printout displaying each of the bills on which he has a hold and its author.

Coburn is very proud of his holds, which according to another account number a hundred. He has a page on his website explaining the hold process and how he uses the unanimous consent rule to block consideration of anything he thinks includes "secret spending." He has put holds on bills like suicide prevention for veterans, naming a post office after Rachel Carson, and perhaps worst, investigating the murder of civli rights leaders like Emmett Till (UPDATE: Emmett Till was a teenage kid from Chicago who was murdered for looking at a white woman. It became a major civil rights cause, but he was not a leader. H/t Brian Pitts):

Legislation to beef up investigations into unsolved murders from the civil rights era looked like it would breeze through Congress.

The House passed it 422-2 last summer. Its Senate sponsors included some of the most senior Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

But the bill has stalled since the House vote in June. Its supporters acknowledge that prospects are slim this year with just days left on the legislative calendar. The breakdown offers a case study in how even the most popular legislation can get caught up in Washington gridlock.

The Senate sponsor of the "Emmett Till Act" is Chris Dodd. Unlike Sen. Coburn, he has placed holds only in those instances where he has considered it absolutely necessary. And unlike Sen. Coburn, his holds are ignored by the Democratic leadership.

Here's Harry Reid's spokesman crying crocodile tears about the Coburn hold:

"It's absolutely outrageous that one senator and one senator only appears to be blocking us from passing this piece of legislation," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Yes, but there's nothing you can do about it, right? I mean, if one Senator wants to block consideration of a bill, I guess he can just do it...

Unless that bill gives amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms.

Harry Reid has no problem respecting the one hundred holds from Tom Coburn on all sorts of legislation, but will ignore Chris Dodd's. That's the bottom line, and given that, you have to conclude that Harry Reid is the one doing the holding.

Chris Dodd is heroically calling for a filibuster, but the real issue here is the issue of ignoring the rules of the Senate. Harry Reid is picking and choosing which Senators he will listen to. The fact that Chris Dodd came within one vote of defeating him for Minority Leader back in 2004 wouldn't have anything to do with this, would it?

Harry Reid has set up two rules for the United States Senate; one under the normal standards of conduct that have held for 200-plus years, and one for bills that he really really has to pass or the President will get mad at him. Earlier this year, Reid ignored a hold placed by Sen. Ron Wyden and confirmed an assistant Secretary of the Interior that Wyden had issues with. Sen. Wyden dropped an important amendment into the flawed Intelligence Committee bill on FISA that the President opposes, which would force the government to get a warrant to spy on Americans overseas. I guess we'll see if Reid strips that amendment out of the bill, and if he holds the same respect for amendments that he does for holds.

The point is that Harry Reid has made Tom Coburn the most important member of the United States Senate. He's made Chris Dodd, a member of his own party, irrelevant. And he's made himself into a joke. We cannot go into 2008 with this laughingstock of a leader in the Senate.

Some Carrot To Go With That Stick

While the Senate simply must lead on Iraq and Iran, I do have to give them a world of credit for overwhelmingly passing a minimum wage increase today. It includes some tax breaks for small business but not nearly as many as the Republicans initially wanted. The working poor just got a major boost today, and they have deserved it for a decade.

Special thanks go out to Ted Kennedy, who worked tirelessly for this for years.

Tom Coburn (R-OK), Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ), on the other hand, hate working people.