If Democrats can start sounding like Democrats again, they'll have a better shot at holding onto their majority in Congress next November. And if they do keep their majority, they should do two things to turn themselves into a legislative party that can actually do the people's business.
First, scrap the filibuster rule. It isn't written into the Constitution, and in its modern form it only dates to 1975, when the Senate changed the rules to permit a single senator to require a supermajority of 60 votes on a given measure simply by threatening to hold the floor indefinitely, even if the senator couldn't be bothered to show up.
Before that rule change, you actually had to keep talking and tie up the Senate in order to filibuster. Today, you need only to declare your intent to filibuster, and any measure can be made to require 60 votes. As a consequence, the number of filibustered bills every session has risen from around 7 before 1975 to about 100.
And second, dump committee chairmen who are laws unto themselves. One good candidate would be Max Baucus, who just did it again, with a pitiful bipartisan $85 billion "jobs" bill, which is mainly a tax cut bill that will produce scarcely any new jobs. Its proposed $15 billion payroll tax holiday for newly created positions would create precious few new jobs because the incentive is too small. Employers would mainly get a tax break for jobs they planned to fill anyway.
Baucus had asserted his prerogative that the Senate Finance Committee should take the lead in the Senate's response to the House, which narrowly passed a $154 billion jobs bill in December. But so feeble was Baucus's handiwork that last week Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid refused to accept most of it, and turned the project of fashioning an actual jobs bill (as opposed to tax cuts) back to senators Dick Durban and Byron Dorgan.
In the next Congress, unless the Democrats lose their majority, somebody other than Baucus should chair the Finance Committee. And what's in store at the Banking Committee if the usual seniority rules apply is even worse.
There, Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd is retiring. There is a lot to criticize in Dodd's leadership -- in fashioning a financial reform package, he goes back and forth between sounding like a Democrat and trying to work out a bipartisan reform bill with the committee's ranking Republican, Dick Shelby of Alabama, a fool's errand if ever there was one. But Dodd is Franklin Roosevelt compared to his likely successor, Tim Johnson of South Dakota.
Johnson is often known as the senator from Citigroup. That's because his state, back in the late 1970s, relaxed its usury laws in order to attract back-office jobs from large banks, starting with Citi. It was a sweetheart deal made by a Republican governor. Citigroup is now the fourth largest employer in South Dakota, with some 3,200 mostly clerical jobs.
In the Marquette decision of 1978, the Supreme Court held that state anti-usury laws cannot be enforced against banks based in other states. So a bank can sell and service credit cards nationwide, relying on the laws of the state in which it is incorporated and violating the consumer laws of the states where the cardholder resides. South Dakota became to credit card companies what Delaware was to corporations generally. It led the race to the bottom, making sure that it remained the nation's worst when it comes to protecting consumers.
Johnson, in toadying to Citi and other banks, has outdone even the usual South Dakota standard. When Congress passed the rare bipartisan bill to crack down on credit card abuses last May, Johnson was one of just five senators, and the only Democrat, to vote against it. He was also one of 12 Senate Democrats to oppose giving bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of mortgages threatened with foreclosure. He is flatly opposed to even the somewhat weakened Consumer Financial Protection Act which passed the house. If he becomes Banking Committee chairman, forget any serious version of financial reform.
For more detail on Johnson's long record of defending payday lenders, credit card usurers, and rapacious bankers, see Ryan Grim's definitive post from January 2009.
Unlike the more delicate case of Baucus, the Senate Democrats don't need to dump Tim Johnson because he's not chairman yet. The just need to make sure someone else gets the job next January.
But isn't this a little utopian? Not at all. Back in 1975, I was once involved in a similar progressive coup. In those years, racist southern Democratic committee chairmen still dominated House committees. The incoming "Watergate" class of Democrats was committed to small-D democratic process reforms. As part of the coup, I was hired to write a report co-sponsored by Common Cause and Public Citizen scoring how committee chairmen voted on major legislation -- how often they voted against the Democratic majority position. We worked closely with the legendary Dick Conlon, then the director of the Democratic Study Group, which functioned as the progressive caucus in the House in those years.
That year, the Democrats changed the rules to provide that committee chairs should be named by a majority vote of the House Democratic caucus. Armed with the study's results, they promptly dethroned and replaced three of the leading faithless House committee chairs. If the House can elect committee chairs by majority vote, so can the Senate.
House Blue Dogs and pro-Wall Street "New Democrats" in the House, as well as individual turncoats in the Senate like Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, and Tim Johnson, have demonstrated that they can play hardball. Progressive Democrats are actually a majority of the Democratic caucus in both houses. It's time they played a little hardball, too.
Robert Kuttner's forthcoming book on the Obama Administration is A Presidency in Peril (Chelsea Green publishers, March 2010). He is founding co-editor of The American Prospect, and a senior fellow at Demos.
Progressives gave up their spine when they ran away from being call liberals.
signed - a liberal, not progressive, democrat
Read me at: http://TheHarvView.blogspot.com
In reality, people are naturally good, just not necessarily good (Mencius) and go from day to day without the tether of an automatic morality.
Seems to me this might happen often, whether the consequences are intended or coincidental, and effected by someone who is naturally good, or necessarily good.
Agreed!
The only way that this will work is if progressive Democrats keep reminding people over-and-over that they constitute the heart and soul of the PEOPLE's party, doing the PEOPLE's work -- and then ACT exactly that way. This means saying "NO" to corporate lobbyists any time those corporations' interests conflict with the PEOPLE's interests, which will mean more than half the time. No more shady deals. Just straight talk and bold action. It means calling-out GOP and DLC hypocrites every single time they PRETEND to do the people's work but are actually helping-out their rich friends, and AVOIDING being hypocritical themselves. They must be squeaky-clean. EMBARRASSINGLY clean ALL the time.
Doctor Julia may be right about the Senate having outlived its usefulness. Senators too often have stood in the way of progress. Nothing new, but it's worse now than I've ever seen it.
Some Senate rule changes would fix some of that. The Senate has a slightly progressive majority, but it keeps being blocked by Pachyderms and GOP Lite Democrats. It's time to stop letting the minority call the shots.
And thank God it does.
Then there are Senators who are too timid to explain their stand on affairs, but just resign,afraid to face re election. Re elections were guaranteed one time, when just money alone , did it. But now with the internet and Loud radios, it has become a problem for Senators like Dodd and Bayh. Bayh who wanted to be President I thought had a conscius like his dad, and was more intelligent
I think a bit of color blindness among some of these congressmen will go a long way.
Yes we need a real Democracy, where more people vote, intelligently and not just on their one favorite issue.
Can you believe in this nation often refereed by some talking heads as the greatest DEMOCRACY
many elections are won by a mere 15 or 20 % of the eligible voters!
And such elected Congressmen stop a President and the real majority from doing any good for the average citizen!
Spain and Greece both have large entitlement programs which now are threatening the collapse of their economies which can no longer support their debt. Progressive programs such as Social Security and Medicare here in the United States are going bankrupt. Workers unions, which are progressive organizations, can no longer get enough money from the companies that employ them to pay their benefits without driving those companies into bankruptcy.
Progressive states, such as California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, etc. can no longer financially sustain the massive benefits that they pay their state workers. In New Jersey for instance, the average state worker pays $124,000 into his retirement plan over his working years, and collects 3.8 million in benefits after he retires; all payed for by the taxpayer.
Free market capitalism, (not 'crony capitalism, where government is in bed with corporations,) has always provided the highest standard of living for the vast majority of our citizens, despite occasional market ups and downs. Tax wealth and you get less wealth; subsidize poverty and you get more poverty. That is the simple truth, although it hard for those that believe in huge entitlement programs and think they are entitled to 'other peoples' money to accept.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/12/13/72111/695
As to Spain and Greece, please see Economist Paul Krugman's take on the real problems that created the current situation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/opinion/15krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
No one is ever going to stand up for "the people" truely because they will be squashed in seconds (by big money).
This was the dems big open door and what did they do, NOTHING.
They did NOTHING because that is what they wanted to do.
NOTHING is safest.
Why do we put all this hope into these people.
It is simply a waste of time.
No one cares if the earth is destroyed, as long as it doesn't happen in the next 50 years.
So, say we merely give them points for drama? A good actor is still a good actor.
If you want to call the Republicans mere "enablers," they have to share blame.
Only us people who they deem expendable will either die or suffer greatly trying to survive .
Sounds far fetched to you ? That is exactly what the Bilderburg group is counting on .They figure most people would never believe the horrible truth of what they plan to do to cut down the world population by the ellimination of 500,000,000 people . Guess what they are right ,most people think anyone who believes these things is crazy .The truth is out there to see for yourself yet I know people will still deny it .
Ask yourself why since the Bush administration our government is doing some pretty terrible things right in front of our faces and don't seem to care what the citizens of this country think ? Could it be because they know that soon we will not matter at all ? They robbed us openly and gave our hard earned tax money to the richest people on Wall Street .They have the knowledge that most of us are not privy to ,they are prepared but we are not . But we should be !
Countries like Greece, Iraq, and Afghanistan are the epitome of corruption. It is one thing when major interests dominate elective politicians. When every bureaucrat must be bribed to do their job, the job becomes secondary to the bribe. Aside from the occasional embezzlement to be expected among clerks or the padding of the expense account that may even be legal, our bureaucrats are particularly honest people and most of them are even courteous.
To indiscriminately "throw all the bums out," eliminates some expertise and independence among our elective officials. Career politicians are replaced by people to whom "public service" is merely part of a resume for an career in business, a resume submitted when they first decide to run.
Fees for services or a tax like Social Security that amounts to the premium on a really good deal with our own insurance company are good things that we mostly accept.
Otherwise, taxing the wealthy is the right idea. The point is that when you tax the poor, it becomes necessary to pay the poor more. If we taxed children, for example, parents would have to raise their allowances. This would be a tax on parents for their children. Somewhat the same thing happens when investors, owners and bosses are taxed.
The difference is that a lawyer and a staff can be assigned to each multi million dollar earner and the tax -- actually being spread among those who earn on the wealthy persons behalf -- can manage a certain justice. As opposed to assigning bullies to every school hallway to mug all the kids for their lunch money, there are also huge economies of scale.
Finally, the mass of Americans should be better paid. As it stands they are unable to do their duty as consumers in a sustainable way.
The party of NO must go. Their repeated and obvious hypocrisies should be repeatedly and obviously esposed.
They are now chickening out of the bipartisan health conference they repeatedly called for. They're afraid of having their hypocrisy exposed by the cameras they were previously demanding to cover the process.
President Obama has been appeasing to a fault, but he must not let them undermine the democratic process in flagrante.
Enough is enough! People are suffering with loss of jobs, lack of healthcare, and gouging by financial institutions. Nothing significant has been done to remedy any of these problems to date. Dare we hope for any change? Not if the ODD dysloyal opposition party has anything to say about it. Their sole response is, "NO!"
So expecting them to STAY Democrat once they are in office is a risk, at best - and putting them in charge of a committee is playing with fire.
Citigroup? Who did big favors for Citi?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obama_big_sellout/1
Leadership comes from the top. There isn't any--Blue Dogs or no Blue Dogs.
Robert Kuttner is no slouch either, and his magazine, The American Prospect, really works hard to offer solutions and alternatives.