Not The Staffing, But The Mindset

Tim Geithner is headed up to Capitol Hill tonight, maybe to offer House Democrats the same deal that Will Forte did on SNL - $420 billion dollars to whoever comes up with a plan to fix the banking system.



Geithner is taking his lumps, and in many ways deservedly so, but I think focusing on personnel, or the lack thereof, at Treasury is probably the wrong criticism. Over the weekend President Obama nominated three individuals for high-level Treasury posts, and it is clear that they were all working there, in what amounts to their current jobs, already. They were working as "counselors" instead of assistant Secretaries. They have offices and staffs. So I wouldn't get hung up on the personnel issue. What is far more concerning is the fact that Treasury has immense challenges right now, challenges they haven't been able ti handle. Geithner seems in thrall to the banksters and unwilling to cut them off or at least get some taxpayer upside in the bargain. There are also political constraints.

Administration officials say they are postponing their plan to produce a detailed road map for overhauling the nation’s financial regulatory system by April, in time for the Group of 20 meeting in London. Though officials say they will still develop basic principles in time for the meeting, the plan will not include much detail.

Treasury officials are also still scrambling to decide details of their plan to buy up as much as $1 trillion in toxic assets from the nation’s banks, one month after being widely criticized for presenting a plan that lacked any specifics on how it would work [...]

Many financial experts estimate that the nation’s banks are holding as much as $2 trillion in troubled assets, most of it tied to mortgages. By contrast, the Treasury has less than $300 billion left in the financial rescue plan that Congress reluctantly approved last year.

To avoid asking Congress for more money, Mr. Geithner has been trying to stretch government money by working with private investors, the Federal Reserve and government-controlled companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants. But that has introduced other tough policy issues, many of which remain unresolved.

“Their huge problem is that the American public is not willing to accept large losses for large financial institutions,” said Vincent Reinhart, a former Fed official and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research and lobbying organization. “Everything they are doing is about having the smallest possible footprint on the federal budget. They don’t want to engage the Congress and they don’t want to engage the American people in that discussion.”

I'm not certain that the people aren't willing to accept losses; they aren't willing to accept giveaways. And that's the path Geithner apparently wants to take. It's that, more than the strain on a depleted staff, that we can rightly criticize.

It Had To Be Something

I was musing over the curious case of Ron Kirk last week and wondering why there's been no movement on his confirmation in well over two months. Turns out that, yes, there's a tax problem.

(WASHINGTON) Ron Kirk, nominated as U.S. Trade Representative in the Obama administration, owes an estimated $10,000 in back taxes from earlier in the decade and has agreed to make his payments, the Senate Finance Committee said Monday.

The committee said the taxes arise from Kirk's handling of speaking fees that he donated to his alma mater, and for his deduction of the full cost of season tickets to the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team.

So he donated speaking fees directly to Austin College instead of listing them as income and deducting them as a charitable donation. That saved him about $6,000. Then there are the Mavs tickets, which were deducted as a business expense, I'm guessing? He'll pay another $2,000 in tax.

I think we can take away two things from this - wealthy people underpay their taxes, and the tax code is extremely complex and bound to trip up almost everyone.

Sebelius Is Go

Well, so much for that Senate seat in Kansas, although the next year and a half is going to be such a tough time to be a Governor that I think Obama is in some ways throwing Sebelius and Napolitano a lifeline. Anyone who is Health and Human Services Secretary when the system is reformed is going to get a massive amount of popularity. Sebelius herself might be looking to a higher office in 2016. And there's the Mel Martinez model of a cabinet secretary who moved into elected office after the first term. If Sebelius can manage the office, I think it's a good choice.

The Curious Case Of Ron Kirk

Congressional Quarterly has a tracker of Obama's cabinet nominees. With the confirmation of Hilda Solis last night, there are only three unfilled positions. Gary Locke was announced today as the latest nominee for Commerce Secretary, and the Health and Human Services Secretary is to be determined after the withdrawal of Tom Daschle.

And then there's Ron Kirk, the former Mayor of Dallas. He was announced as the choice for US trade representative on December 19.

Since then, he has not been confirmed.

He has not been scheduled for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee.

He has not been scheduled for a HEARING in that committee.

Did everyone forget about him? Is he the Sixteen Candles nominee?

FINALLY, yesterday, committee chair Max Baucus signaled that Kirk's hearing should happen soon, perhaps next week. This is 2 1/2 months after his nomination.

I guess trade isn't much of a priority.

Hilda Solis Confirmed As Labor Secretary - Race for CA-32 Begins

Minutes ago, the US Senate confirmed Hilda Solis by an 80-17 vote to be the Secretary of Labor. This is a big victory for progressives to fight conservative obstructionism and get a real friend to the labor movement in a top position in Barack Obama's cabinet. It was an unnecessarily long fight, but this is a great resolution. In addition, with Solis having authored the Green Jobs Act, she will undoubtedly be a force for making sure jobs in the alternative energy sector are good union jobs that pay a living wage.

This also means that there will shortly, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, be a vacancy in the 32nd District seat. There are three main candidates for the seat thus far, all of whom have already begun campaigning.

Judy Chu is currently on the Board of Equalization. While a Chinese-American running for a seat that is majority Latino, Chu has the support of the California Federation of Labor, which typically cleans up in these kinds of special elections. That alone makes her the favorite IMO.

Gil Cedillo is a State Senator in the adjoining district, and so he represents very few of these constituents. He has been strong on issues around immigration in particular, and will certainly be formidable in this race.

Emanuel Pleitez worked in the Obama transition team on the Treasury Department. The fact that Treasury has practically no senior officers staffing it save for Tim Geithner, over a month after the inauguration, doesn't really speak well to Pleitez' transition capabilities. But he apparently has the most robust campaign apparatus in the district thus far (with 17 volunteer full-time staff members), and he was born and raised in the district.

The most likely scenario is that either the primary or the general election gets folded into the May 19 special election. Gov. Schwarzenegger has 14 calendar days to set the schedule.

Senate Two-Fer

Good news from the world's most deliberative body. First, Hilda Solis will be confirmed tonight, after unanimous consent was achieved to proceed to a full vote without the need for cloture. This is a great progressive victory for President Obama's cabinet. It will be a new day to have a Secretary of Labor who cares about Labor again.

Also, the Senate advanced the DC Voting Rights Act, which would add two seats to the House of Representatives, one for DC (which has more residents than Wyoming and no representation) and one (for now) for Utah, which just missed out on an extra seat after the last Census. These things are commonly done by compromise, but getting DC residents a voting member is crucially important. There could be a final vote as early as tonight.

Harry Reid gets a pat on the head.

It's A Locke

Gary Locke was the Governor of Washington State who was considered something of a rising star in the Democratic Party until he gave the worst Democratic response to a State of the Union in recent memory (perhaps eclipsed by almost every other Democrat in the Bush era - for some reason we kept giving these to boring speakers). Not much was heard from him again until today, when he was announced as Barack Obama's (third) pick for Secretary of Commerce.

Judging from the reaction by progressive Washingtonians, I'd say this pick is fine and should have been made in the first place. Ultimately, the Commerce Department, which provides needed economic statistics (which could be done other Treasury), runs the NOAA (which could be done under Interior or EPA) and the Census (which could be done under practically any other agency as it makes no sense under Commerce) and little else that I can discover, should be reconfigured or even eliminated. Obama could mark that under "streamlining government" and give Pete Peterson a big smile.

WATB

Shorter Judd Gregg, per MSNBC: "They took away my Census!"

"...I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately, we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy."

Actually, YOU didn't focus on those concerns, Judd.

Good to know that the Obama Administration has a different set of views from Judd Gregg. It always seemed like a poor fit. Gregg is not just a Northeastern Republican, he's quite wingnutty. And Paul Hodes can beat him in New Hampshire in 2010. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't run at all - clearly he wanted out of the Senate.

And I think at this point we need to seriously consider selling off the Commerce Department for parts.

...and as I predicted - Gregg's not running for re-election.

... great statement by Robert Gibbs:

"Senator Gregg reached out to the President and offered his name for Secretary of Commerce. He was very clear throughout the interviewing process that despite past disagreements about policies, he would support, embrace, and move forward with the President's agenda. Once it became clear after his nomination that Senator Gregg was not going to be supporting some of President Obama's key economic priorities, it became necessary for Senator Gregg and the Obama administration to part ways. We regret that he has had a change of heart".

Their story is Gregg reached out. As I said, there could never be any mysery from Gregg's perspective about Obama's intentions.

Solis Approved In Committee - Goes To The Full Senate

It was a long struggle with a somewhat anti-climactic resolution, but Hilda Solis was approved by the Senate HELP Committee (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) on a voice vote. Today over 20,000 petition signatures were delivered to the leaders of the HELP Committee by SEIU, UFW, UFCW, Change to Win and the Courage Campaign, and those voices were heard.

Now the confirmation moves to the full Senate for a vote, where it will hopefully be approved in short order. Sometimes we win one.

Bredesen Down But Not Out

Phil Bredesen is telling people in Tennessee he's out as HHS Secretary.

Gov. Phil Bredesen told top legislative leaders this morning that he doesn’t think President Obama will nominate him for the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary position, lawmakers said.

House Democratic Leader Gary Odom of Nashville confirmed that Gov. Bredesen, a Democrat, made the remarks during his weekly meeting with House and Senate leaders.

“It came up during breakfast,” Rep. Odom said. “He basically said he’s expecting to remain governor of the state of Tennessee.”

On top of everything else wrong with Bredesen, it would leave a Republican to succeed him as Governor of Tennessee. So on politics and policy, his appointment would make no sense.

Nice work so far by progressives to make themselves heard on this one. It's good that he's saying he's out, but I'll wait until I see the official announcement. Until then, the pressure must be kept - no Bredesen, no deal.

Cannibalizing

The Obama Administration is floating Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to replace Tom Daschle as the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was very near the top of President Barack Obama's list of candidates to head the Health and Human Services Department, a senior administration official said Saturday.

The source, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private administration deliberations, said no decision was imminent. But the official added the former Kansas insurance commissioner was rising as Obama considers prospective candidates [...]

Advocacy groups like the consumer watchdog role 60-year-old Sebelius played as insurance commissioner for eight years before she became governor.

This is all well and good (though being a watchdog to insurers isn't the same as promoting any kind of health care policy agenda, which I haven't seen), and Sebelius is certainly a better choice than Phil Bredesen, who would be a disaster. However, just this week a poll commissioned by Daily Kos showed Sebelius way ahead in the race for the open Senate seat in Kansas being vacated by Sam Brownback. A Democrat hasn't won this seat in Kansas since 1932, and there's nobody but Sebelius who would have a chance. We've seen just this week with the stimulus debate that having less Republican rubber stamps in the Senate would probably be a good idea, and based on her performance in Kansas, I think Sebelius would be slightly less wankerrific than her red-state Democratic counterparts. Similarly, before she was picked for Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano looked to be a threat to send John McCain into an unwanted retirement in Arizona.

We need capable cabinet secretaries, of course, but this week showed the importance of the Senate. Maybe the Administration shouldn't be cherry-picking the best candidates to win Republican seats.

...the flip side of this is that Governors aren't going to be popular the next couple years with the economic meltdown and all the budget cuts, so Obama may just be saving the reputations of some of these red-state governors.

Labor Finally Goes To The Mattresses For Solis

After waiting and waiting, labor groups are finally demanding that Hilda Solis be confirmed as the Secretary of Labor. Andy Stern of the SEIU made a short video:



Their action page has a petition.

And this is just the beginning:

"Enough is enough, the gloves are coming off on Friday," said one official with the AFL-CIO, outraged over the delays. "Labor, women's groups, Hispanic groups are opening fire. We worked with Republicans in good faith. Hilda Solis has answered all their questions but they continue to oppose her for partisan ideological reasons."

With Solis's nomination stalled again on Thursday after revelations that her husband had just settled $6,400 in tax leins against his business, unions are no longer willing to hold their breath for the sake of fewer dramatics.

"Our full efforts are being mobilized to fight back," the union official said. "Earned media and field campaign to generate calls, letters, and emails coming tomorrow. Depending on how things move paid media will be added on top of these efforts."

Good to see. Progressive groups like MoveOn should get Hilda's back, too.

UPDATE: Our old friend Hans von Spakovsky, vote suppressor extraordinaire, is writing anti-Solis screeds in places like The Weekly Standard.

UPDATE II: MoveOn jumps in with a letter to the editor tool.

Harkin (Hearts) Dean

When I saw the boomlet for Howard Dean as HHS Secretary, I didn't think it was plausible. I certainly didn't think a high-profile Senator would come out and back him.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who endorsed Dean's presidential campaign in 2004 and is rumored to be in the HHS running himself, applauded the idea of the former DNC header taking over the cabinet post vacated by Tom Daschle.

"I think that would be a very good move," Harkin told the Huffington Post. "He brings all the background and experience. He's very strong on prevention and wellness, which I'm very strong on. I think he'd make an outstanding secretary of HHS."

Asked if he had spoken to White House on the matter, Harkin demurred: "I'm not going to get into that," he said after a pause.

The thousands on Facebook, I expected, but not this. Color me surprised, and good for Tom Harkin.

By the way, here's a short list of Vermont's health care picture after Dean's leadership. As a small state Vermont has different issues than the rest of the country, but this is an indication of what Dean has done and can do.

Under Governor Dean's leadership, Vermont developed one of the best health care systems in the country.

• 96% of Vermont children have health insurance and 99% are eligible for coverage under Governor Dean's Dr. Dynasaur program.

• More than a third of Medicare recipients in Vermont receive state help in paying for prescription drugs.

• Vermont was ranked the "Healthiest State" in the U.S. in 2001, 2002 and 2003 by the Morgan Quinto Press.

• In 1997, Governor Dean signed a law requiring insurance companies in Vermont to provide the same coverage for mental illness and substance-abuse treatment that they provide for physical conditions.

• As a result of early intervention programs established by Governor Dean, 89% of pregnant Vermont women enter prenatal care in their first trimester and 91% of families with newborns receive a voluntary home visit.

• Vermont has the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in the country – teen pregnancies decreased 49% during Governor Dean's tenure.

• Child abuse dropped 45% under Governor Dean. Vermont was the first state to institute a statewide protocol for abuse investigations.

• Vermont ranks second in the nation in child immunizations -- 81% of children are fully immunized by age 2 and 97% are immunized before kindergarten.

Now Husband's Tax Issues Are Fair Game

Hilda Solis's confirmation in the Senate HELP Committee was abruptly cancelled today after a report surfaced about her husband paying $6,400 to remove a tax lien on his business.

The report, by USA Today, came just before the Senate's Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee was slated to meet to consider Solis's nomination, which had been delayed by questions over her role on the board of the pro-labor organization American Rights at Work. A source said that committee members did not learn about the tax issue until today.

"Today's executive session was postponed to allow members additional time to review the documentation submitted in support of Representative Solis's nomination to serve in the important position of Labor Secretary," read a joint statement issued by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the panel's chairman, and Mike Enzi (Wyoming), the committee's ranking Republican. "There are no holds on her nomination and members on both sides of the aisle remain committed to giving her nomination the fair and thorough consideration that she deserves. We will continue to work together to move this nomination forward as soon as possible."

No new date has been set for the hearing. The disclosure about Solis's husband comes after tax problems caused trouble for three of Obama's top appointees, leading two of them -- HHS-nominee Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer, who was to be chief performance officer -- to withdraw.

Senate Republicans have been slow-walking this nomination for weeks, and this revelation gave them another reason to do so. To be clear, we're talking about her husband's business. Given that she's in Congress and is in Washington most of the time, I doubt very highly that she has anything to do with it. In addition, by paying the taxes, Solis and her entire family are adhering to Obama's ethical standards, not subverting them.

So this is the latest in a months-long obstructionism. The LA Times reported today that some GOP members were trying to put a gag order on Solis:

Underscoring the bitter debate over a proposal to make it easier for workers to form unions, Republican senators are suggesting that President Obama's pick for Labor secretary must recuse herself from lobbying for the bill's passage.

In a written exchange with Solis, Republican senators indicated they are wary of her ties to a tax-exempt group dedicated to helping workers unionize [...]

Solis' Cabinet nomination is in the crossfire. She was a co-sponsor of the bill in 2007 and has served for the last four years on the board of American Rights at Work. Solis receives no salary as a board member or treasurer [...]

In their questionnaire, the senators noted that American Rights at Work has lobbied for passage of the bill. They asked Solis whether she would seek a waiver from the Obama administration or avoid any role in passing the legislation.

Solis replied that she does not need a waiver and has no intention of stepping back. She said she was only a member of Congress exercising her powers.

"I am not a registered lobbyist, nor do I in any way meet the statutory requirements for registration as a lobbyist," she wrote.

The American Rights at Work thing is a complete red herring. She was a representative figure for those who supported Employee Free Choice in Congress. She is not a lobbyist. She supported a bill. And so denying her free-speech rights seems ridiculous to the extreme.

I don't know if a family member's tax issue is enough to sink this nomination (like the last Labor Secretary's spouse, one Mitch McConnell, has no ethical issues to speak of), but I for one think Solis should be confirmed. And as for the Employee Free Choice Act, the battle for a fair workplace goes on. Thousands of people are marching in the streets of Los Angeles today in support of free choice.

Daschle Post-Mortem

There's a pretty amusing old Tom Daschle ad going around, with him driving to work at the Capitol in his old Pontiac instead of "BMWs and limos," with the final line:

"It's too bad that the rest of Washington doesn't understand that a penny saved is a penny earned."

What's that old adage about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely?

Eventually, no matter the rhetoric to win votes in South Dakota, Tom Daschle became a DC insider. And because President Obama relied on DC insiders to implement an agenda of change, he got burned. The case is a textbook example of how Beltway privilege - which is also class privilege - is inevitably corrupting and ethically corrosive.

A classic rule of Washington's political culture -- that public service can lead to personal riches -- seemed to collide yesterday with the presidential promise that the time has come for a break with the past.

Former senator Thomas A. Daschle, whom President Obama once called "the original no-drama guy," suddenly was forced to step aside as the president's nominee for secretary of health and human services because of problematic ties to wealthy private interests.

It was a jarring twist to Daschle's 30-year career in Washington, one built on a reputation of integrity and decency. After losing his Senate seat while serving as that body's most powerful Democrat in 2004, he swiftly signed on as a special policy adviser to a 900-member law firm and pulled in a multimillion-dollar salary. It is a well-worn path, trod by dozens of ex-lawmakers in the past decade.

But some observing the debacle wondered if the capital's ways were changing. The story of how he fell in with the monied elite and out with the popular mood involves a longtime Democratic financier, Leo Hindery Jr., and his keen interest in currying influence with powerful politicians. The outcome caught many in Washington off guard.

"I think it's possible this is some sort of bridge between an old Washington and the new Washington," David Arkush of Congress Watch said of the initial backing of Daschle and the sudden reversal.

Somehow this is being spun as a consequence of Obama holding Daschle to too high of a standard with all this talk of ethics during the campaign, and not the fact that Daschle really is ethically compromised, as is his business partner Bob Dole. Not that Daschle's the worst offender, but he's just a symbol of a failed status quo that has pushed this country to the point of ruin:

Dole said the Democrat would be a valuable asset to the firm even though Congress is run by the GOP these days. "He's got a lot of friends in the Senate, and I've got a lot of friends in the Senate, and, combined, who knows -- we might have 51," Dole joked. "It's going to work fine. You need some flexibility and diversity. I don't think any successful firm is all Democrat or all Republican."

That about covers how Washington works: driven by sleazy, bipartisan influence-peddling. And it is, in particular, how the Senate works: members do nice favors for their "friends," who are lavishly paid for asking for those favors (and who ensure that their "friends" still in the Senate are rewarded for granting those favors), and the outcome is our set of laws.

In a way, Obama picked Daschle not in spite of this sleaze, but BECAUSE of it. The thinking was that health care reform could only be accomplished with someone of stature coordinating White House maneuvering, someone who can go get the votes. He wanted someone from the Washington favor factory that would do whatever necessary to get health care reform passed. It would be a turd of a bill, filled with giveaways, but Daschle could do it, and Obama could put a pretty bow on it, and everyone would shout "huzzah."

The buzzsaw that Daschle ran into was a public increasingly given to agree with the populism expressed on the campaign trail, something Washington never saw coming.

So what happened? My guess is that official Washington underestimated the public's pique at what appeared to be the old ways of Washington. Hill staffers tell me that many offices have been inundated with telephone calls, emails, letters and faxes expressing concern (to put it mildly) about Daschle -- not only his failure to pay back taxes but his relationships with major players in the health care industry and rich consulting contracts with the private sector since leaving the Senate, and even the fact that he was given a car and driver by one of them [...]

Typical Americans are hurting very badly right now. They resent people who appear to be living high off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections. They've become increasingly suspicious of the conflicts of interest, cozy relationships, and payoffs that seem to pervade not only official Washington but our biggest banks and corporations. In short, many Americans who have worked hard, saved as much as they can, bought a home, obeyed the law, and paid every cent of taxes that were due are beginning to feel like chumps. Their jobs are disappearing, their savings are disappearing, their homes are worth far less than they thought they were, their tax bills are as high as ever if not higher.

Meanwhile, people at the top seem to be living far different lives in a different universe. They're the executives and traders on Wall Street who have lived like kings for years off a bubble of their own making while ripping off small investors, the financial louts who are now taking hundreds of billions of taxpayer bailout money while awarding themselves huge bonuses and throwing lavish parties, the corporate CEOs who are earning seven figures while laying off thousands of workers, the billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity managers who are paying a marginal tax rate of 15 percent on what they say are capital gains while people who earn a fraction of that are paying a higher rate, and, not the least, the Washington insiders who have served on the Hill or in an administration and then gone on to pocket millions as lobbyists for the same companies they once regulated or subsidized. To the American who's outside the power centers -- the places of entitlement and I'll-scratch-your-back-while-you-scratch-mine deal making -- the entire system seems rotten.

I'm sorry Tom Daschle won't be in the Obama administration. He would have served the public well and with distinction. But the public wants change, real change, big change. There's no tolerance any longer for the way things used to be done.

There is a hope in all of this, in the fact that Obama acknowledged the mistake, and more important the disconnect between one set of rules for public officials and another for the man on the street. That's a big step early in an Administration, to take blame and admit it. Now the action has to follow the words.

Ezra Klein has more.

Can The Gregg Appointment Get Worse?

Srsly, WTF?

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the president’s pick for Commerce Secretary, just revealed during an interview with CNBC that he would recuse himself from congressional votes while his nomination is being considered by his former Senate colleagues.

As Brian Beutler notes, this means that Gregg, who is about to be in the position of spending recovery money, can't help overcome filibusters for it, leaving Democrats still needing two Republican votes, as it stands now, to pass anything. So Obama picked a Republican for a cabinet-level position and got less than nothing in return. Not even a vote on the most important legislation of the year.

That said, the Democrats have moves here. They could vote to confirm Gregg for Commerce tomorrow, taking him out of the Senate. And if Bonnie Newman, the handpicked successor, is sent up to be seated, refuse to seat her until Al Franken is seated as well. Either way, with 98 Senators or 100, the Dems would need only one crossover vote to pass. Some of this is moot because useful idiots like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu and Kent Conrad love to stab their party in the back. But there are options, if they want to play hardball. However, neither the Democratic Senate or the President seems to want to do so, and while today's developments have been mildly encouraging, the meat of Krugman's post is correct.

When it came to stimulus legislation, when Obama finally introduced his economic plan he immediately began negotiating with himself, preemptively offering concessions to the GOP, which voted against the plan anyway. (And Obama appears, in the name of bipartisanship, to have thrown away a Senate vote he may well need.)

As a wise man recently said, failure to act effectively risks turning this slump into a catastrophe. Yet there’s a sense, watching the process so far, of low energy. What’s going on?

Daschle Withdraws

Link here. And scalps are collected and there's much rejoicing in Republican-land.

Question: Daschle was also given the title of "health policy czar" or something, with a White House office and responsibility for coordinating health care policy. Is that out, too? Anyone?

On balance, this is good for health care reform in that progressives will now be more likely to get on board. This is really bad for Obama, a chink in the armor that Republicans can point to and repeat incessantly. Daschle is now in that litany of Kimba Wood and Zoe Baird and all the Clinton appointees who were denied. Nancy Killefer is in there now, too.

This is also indicative of the rot in the Democratic Beltway establishment. Daschle and Bill Richardson were always considered stalwarts and sure bets for any cabinet right up to the moment when they had disqualifying parts of their records. We need new blood in the party, which is what Obama's Presidency was expected to deliver, yet in most cases he fell back on the same compromised figures. Experience is a double-edged sword.

...The NYT is dead right in this editorial, and hopefully the greater media can apply this broadly among both parties:

Mr. Daschle’s financial ties to major players in the health care industry may prove to be even more troublesome as health reform efforts proceed. Like many former power players in Washington, Mr. Daschle cashed in on his political savvy and influence to earn $5 million in recent years, including more than $2 million from Alston & Bird, a law and lobbying firm; more than $2 million from the private equity firm, InterMedia Advisors, which provided the car and driver; and hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches to interest groups, including those representing health insurance plans, medical equipment distributors and pharmacy boards.

Although Mr. Daschle was not a registered lobbyist, he offered policy advice to the UnitedHealth Group, a huge insurance conglomerate. He was also a trustee of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, on whose behalf he voiced opposition to a federal loan for a freight rail line near the clinic’s headquarters in Rochester, Minn. The loan was subsequently denied by the Federal Railroad Administration.

Mr. Daschle is another in a long line of politicians who move cozily between government and industry. We don’t know that his industry ties would influence his judgments on health issues, but they could potentially throw a cloud over health care reform. Mr. Daschle could clear the atmosphere by withdrawing his name.

New Hampshire Governor FAIL

It's curious that Barack Obama thinks the best man for the position of Commerce Secretary is the guy who voted to abolish the department in the mid-1990s, but I actually pretty much agree with Judd Gregg on that point, so maybe he'll make my favorite Commerce Secretary ever! He's being announced in a few minutes.

As for his replacement, it looks like it'll be Republican Bonnie Newman, Gregg's former chief of staff.

Newman served as assistant secretary of Commerce for economic development in the Reagan administration. She was in charge of administrative operations for the George H.W. Bush White House.

She was chief of staff to Gregg when he was a congressman in the 1980s, and she was one of the first Republicans to publicly endorse Lynch in his 2004 challenge of then-Republican Governor Craig Benson, and co-chaired Republicans for Lynch.

This is just a bad idea on all levels, if you ask me. I don't see why anyone would think that Gregg's chief of staff would vote any differently than Gregg on any substantive issue, no matter who she endorsed in a Governor's race. This is all the more reason why there ought to be special elections for Senators, by the way.

So the only positive I can see from this deal for Democrats is that Gregg won't run for re-election, and Newman probably won't either, making it an open seat. But if you think that's a victory, then you haven't been paying attention to the fate of Northeastern Republican incumbents over the last two campaign cycles. Gregg was DOA anyway. And in exchange, you have a hardcore conservative, Bush's debate prep coach in 2004, running a major federal agency.

Tell me why I'm supposed to be excited?

...It's possible that as a condition for joining the cabinet, Gregg will support the stimulus package. There doesn't seem like any other reason for this. If that's true, it's very short-term and possibly a sign that the bill is in real trouble.

...Russ Feingold:

"But the apparent behind-the-scenes deal-making that went on to determine who will fill Senator Gregg's vacancy is alarmingly undemocratic. Once again, Americans will be represented in the Senate for nearly two years by someone they had no hand in electing. As the number of Senators appointed to their seats continues to rise, it's increasingly clear that we need to fix this constitutional anachronism. It is time to pass a constitutional amendment to end appointments by governors and the political gamesmanship they encourage."

Absolutely. This is patronage at its worst.

Attorney General Holder

So that's done. Great job, Karl Rove, you really nicked Obama on that one!

Howie Klein notes that there's an Obstruction caucus forming in the Senate with the 21 No votes on Holder:

The leader, of course, is Jim DeMint (R-SC) and his followers, the serial obstructionists at the bottom of the GOP barrel are Jim Bunning (R-KY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Tom Coburn (R-OK), David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), James Risch (R-ID), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Richard Burr (R-NC), Michael Crapo (R-ID), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Richard Shelby (R-AL), John Ensign (R-NV), John Thune (R-SD), and John Barrasso (R-WY). The Associated Press naively summarized the vote like this: "A small group of Republicans said they opposed Holder. They argued he was hostile to gun control and doesn't fully support the war on terrorism."

Interestingly enough, they all come from the South and the Interior Western Plains states! How could that be?

Beltway Ethics and Tom Daschle

Tom Daschle is awfully sorry about overlooking his tax burden and wants to get his high-level cabinet post, please.

Fighting to salvage his Cabinet nomination, Tom Daschle pleaded his case Monday evening in a closed meeting with former Senate colleagues after publicly apologizing for failing to pay more than $120,000 in taxes. President Barack Obama said he was "absolutely" sticking with his nominee for health secretary, and a key senator added an important endorsement [...]

Nobody was predicting defeat for Daschle's nomination as secretary of health and human services, but it was proving an unsavory pill to swallow for senators who only last week confirmed Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary despite his separate tax-payment problems. It's an issue that strikes a nerve among lawmakers' constituents who are struggling with their own serious money problems.

Daschle's tax problem is nothing more than an example of the Washington favor factory used by every out-of-work lawmaker. Trent Lott and Bob Dole and J.D. Hayworth and John Breaux and Richard Pombo and about 20 kajillion other lawmaker-turned-lobbyists aren't up for a cabinet position, but if they were you'd hear the same thing.

Beyond the ramifications for Mr. Daschle’s ascent to the cabinet, the disclosures about Mr. Hindery and the many clients Mr. Daschle advised on public policy offers a new window into how Washington works. It shows how in just four years an influential former senator was able to make $5 million and live a lavish lifestyle by dint of his name, connections and knowledge of the town’s inner workings.

There is no evidence that Mr. Daschle pulled strings for Mr. Hindery. Indeed, Mr. Hindery’s firm appears to have had few interests before the government. But interviews and a review of public documents show that in his work for a Washington law firm, Mr. Daschle did take on an array of clients seeking influence with the government, including concerns involved in Indian gambling, ethanol, health care, telecommunications and federal contracting.

Worse, he accepted multiple speaking fees from health care industry groups, the same ones who he would presumably be trying to derail in reforming the system:

Over the past two years, Daschle has made more than $220,000 giving speeches to health care stakeholders. This includes $40,000 for two speeches to America's Health Insurance Plans, $30,000 for a speech to CSL Behring, $16,000 to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, $15,000 from a talk at the Principal Life Insurance Co. given policy advice to United Health, and much more. These are payments from the parties with a direct interest in the eventual shape of health reform.

I trust that the guy who spends his weekends reading Health Affairs isn't in this for speaking fees. But Daschle can't rely on every American reading his book and picking through his testimony. He needs prima facie credibility. And Daschle is less credible today than he was a week ago.

It will be harder for him to tell single payer advocates that he neutrally considered their views on the worth of the private insurance industry given that AHIP put $40,000 in his pocket. So too with those concerned by the medical device industry. Indeed, the Washington Post reports that "the Health Industry Distributors Association, a trade association representing medical product distributors, wrote to Daschle last week to express concerns about proposed Medicare changes and reminded him of the $14,000 speech he delivered at its conference last year." It may not be the case that these groups actually succeeded in buying sympathy when they paid Daschle to speak. But it was certainly their intent.

This isn't about Daschle conniving to defraud the government of $100K, it's about a culture of Beltway backscratching that treats life the same way as the horse-trading inside the Capitol. It's why he'll be swiftly confirmed, because his former colleagues in the Senate want the SAME kind of treatment when they are cast out into the "real world". Tom Daschle and his wife epitomize Beltway ethics, which thinks nothing of perks and speaking fees and other corrupting activities. Simply put, there is a premium paid to former lawmakers by those who want to influence the system, to buy their knowledge and expertise. Matt Taibbi has much more on all of this.

In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist, whose visit to South Dakota on behalf of John Thune in 2004 was one of the factors in ending Daschle's tenure in the Senate [...]

Regarding Daschle, remember, we're talking about a guy who not only was a consultant for one of the top health-care law firms in the country, but a board member of the Mayo Clinic (a major recipient of NIH grants) and the husband of one of America's biggest defense lobbyists — wife Linda Hall lobbies for Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Does anyone really think that this person is going to come up with a health care proposal that in any way cuts into the profits of the major health care companies?

Daschle is just a symptom of an accountability-free system in Washington and throughout the country among the upper echelons of the elite. They evade taxes like it's their job. They pass favors back and forth to any fellow member of the club. And the working class pays for it. This story is from the UK, but it could just as easily be from the US.

British taxpayers are being left to plug a multibillion-pound hole in the public finances as hundreds of the country's biggest companies increasingly employ complex and secretive tax arrangements to limit the amount they hand over to the exchequer.

An extensive Guardian investigation has examined the accounts of the UK's biggest companies - many of them household names - and discovered a series of sophisticated tax strategies which, critics say, amount to an almost unstoppable tide of perfectly legal corporate tax avoidance.

The veil of confidentiality that covers these tax avoidance schemes is so difficult to penetrate that nobody knows exactly how much tax goes missing each year. But HM Revenue & Customs estimated that the size of the tax gap could be anything between £3.7bn and £13bn. The Commons public accounts committee put it at a possible £8.5bn and the TUC said £12bn.

This is all legally accomplished, through corporate tax laws written by corporate lobbyists, through handshake agreements between those former lawmakers on one side of the revolving door and the others on the insude, and through a general sense of permissiveness and leniency. Practically everyone in Congress is a future recipient of such beneficence, so there's not a lot of effort put into caring. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes floating around out there, maybe enough to put aside this "grand bargain" of fiscal reform and pay for virtually the entire current deficit. This is the poison that keeps the country from progress on significant issues.