QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
“But what donations did buy, every politician acknowledged was access. That access meant that every senator and representative was listening primarily to the concerns and ideas of the super rich, of the political donor class. At the same time the forces arrayed on the other side -- unions, consumer advocates and social service charities -- had little to give….These forces were so enfeebled that Congress often behaved as a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America, enabling the super rich to use their access to lawmakers to assert that what was good for them was good for the rest of America.”
--David Cay Johnston
Author of Perfectly Legal (quote from p. 44)
SENSE AND NONSENSE – A PRICE TOO HIGH?
From the editor: The central political message promoted by corporate media in the last few weeks of the “lame duck Congress” was a victory for President Obama. He and Congress were praised in the media for getting so much done: repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT); extension of middle class tax cuts for two years; extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months; food safety; ratification of the START Treaty; and relief for 9/11 first responders. Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act and the omnibus spending bill, opting instead for a “continuing resolution” that funds the government through March.
The February, 2009, issue (vol. vi, no. 2) of The Compass refers to the three most important resources in combating the conservative agenda: 1) Context; 2) Cause and Effect; and 3) Cost-Benefit Analysis.
Propagandists depend upon the corporate media and the voting public being very poor at using any of these resources. The so-called “successes” of President Obama and the lame-duck Congress illustrate just how poor we are at recognizing the underlying context, causes, and cost of the deal that the Obama administration made with Republicans.
One of the more memorable Obama quotes was “I’ve said before that I’ve felt that the middle class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts. I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers unless the hostage gets harmed, then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed.”
A quick application of the three resources above reveals the following picture of what just happened:
CONTEXT: President Obama conveniently omitted two very important facts when he talked about hostage-taking on Dec. 8, 2010. FACT NUMBER ONE: Obama would have risked not getting elected in 2012 by calling the bluff of the hostage taker (i.e., Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell). FACT NUMBER TWO: Obama leaves “the American people” much more vulnerable to “hostage taking” by awarding McConnell and his Republican hostage takers their “holy grail” of tax cuts for the richest Americans.
CAUSE: The cause or the creation of the box in which President Obama found himself remains complicated and multi-faceted. It ranges from a serious lack of strategic thinking by the Obama administration to a broken Senate chamber which endowed minority Republicans with power to block legislation any time a single Republican senator anonymously threatened a filibuster. In the last four years, Republicans have brought 275 filibusters that Democrats have been forced to break. The filibuster was used more in 2009 alone than in the 1950s and the 1960s combined.
COST: According to The Christian Science Monitor, using current law as the budget baseline, the tax cuts for everyone will cost the government up to $300 billion in 2011. Extending tax cuts for those families making $250,000 or less would have cost one-tenth of that amount or $32 billion. The 10-year cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone will be $3.9 trillion.
If an analysis of CONTEXT, CAUSE, and COST had been applied long before and during the last weeks of the lame duck congress, the mid-term elections might have been less disastrous for Democrats, and President Obama might have been able to define and communicate just what HIS “holy grail” actually might be.
In other words, he might have anticipated that tax cuts for the middle class and unemployment benefits would be held hostage by Republicans and he might have effectively called the bluff of Republicans Mitch McConnell and John Kyl.
The words of the new Speaker of the House John Boehner still ring in my ears. Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” in September, Boehner said, “If the only option I have is to vote for some of those tax reductions, I’ll vote for it. If the only option I have is to vote for those at 250 and below, of course I’m going to do that.”
By early December, Boehner was calling middle class tax cuts “chicken crap” and “nonsense.” Simultaneously, Obama was telegraphing his willingness to extend tax cuts for the richest Americans in private negotiations with Mitch McConnell.
And “the American people” were screwed again. As one among more than 300 million Americans, I’m really tired of that. I suspect I am not alone.
Maynard Chapman, Editor
The Compass Newsletter
THE FILIBUSTER FIASCO
From the editor: Even though Democrats have outnumbered Republicans in the United States Senate ever since the election of 2006 tipped the balance toward Democratic control, the sheer numbers of Democratic senators have never seemed like an advantage. The primary reason for the gap between numbers and political advantage has been the ability of Senate Republicans to use the filibuster to block anything that would advance a progressive agenda.
In the last two sessions of Congress (the 110th and 111th sessions, 2007-2010), the major legislative successes have all been engineered, written, and amended by corporate lobbyists.
As Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, wrote for The Washington Post on December 28, “We got a Recovery Act, but a filibuster prevented it from being sufficiently large. We got healthcare reform, but a filibuster killed the public option. We got Wall Street reform, but a filibuster killed provisions to break up the big banks. We got an extension of unemployment benefits, a payroll tax cut and more, but the threat of the filibuster killed our chances to do that without giving handouts to the wealthy.”
President Obama underscored the power of the mere threat of a filibuster in remarks he made during his Dec. 8 press conference. A reporter asked, “Was there a failure either on the part of the Democratic leadership on the Hill or here that you couldn’t preclude these wealthier cuts from going forward?”
Obama responded, “Well, let me say that on the Republican side, this is their holy grail, these tax cuts for the wealthy. This is…seems to be their central economic doctrine. And so, unless we had 60 votes in the Senate at any given time, it would be very hard for us to move this forward.”
Republicans have three powerful tools in their effort to camouflage the fact they are shills for corporate America. To counter the three problem-solving resources discussed in the “Sense and Nonsense” column, Republicans rely upon: 1) the filibuster; 2) a highly coordinated and effective message machine largely generated by propagandist Frank Luntz; and 3) the “Big Lie” to advance their corporate interests.
Democratic Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Tom Udall of New Mexico, and Tom Harkin of Iowa have co-sponsored amendments to the filibuster rule. As of this writing, the Senate is holding open the window for adopting the changes. The opportunity to amend the rules may extend for several weeks. The proposed changes are helpful, but they will not alter the ability of the minority Republicans to filibuster in any significant way. The amendments would change Senate Rules VIII and XXII in the following ways:
SECTION 1. DEBATE ON MOTIONS TO PROCEED - Rule VIII, paragraph 2, is amended to read “2. Debate on a motion to proceed to the consideration of any matter…shall be limited to not more than two hours…”
SECTION 2. ELIMINATING SECRET HOLDS - Rule VIII, paragraph 3, is amended to read “3. No senator may object on behalf of another senator without disclosing the name of that senator.”
SECTION 3. RIGHT TO OFFER AMENDMENTS - Rule XXII, paragraph 2, is amended to read “2. After debate has concluded under this paragraph but prior to final disposition of the pending matter, the majority leader and the minority leaders may each offer not to exceed three amendments…”
SECTION 4. EXTENDED DEBATE - Rule XXII, paragraph 2, is amended to read “Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?” If the answer to that question is affirmative, then cloture still requires 60 votes. If the answer to that question is negative, then the Senate enters into a period of continuous debate as long as the subject of the cloture vote is the pending business. “If during a period of continuous debate no senator seeks recognition, then the presiding officer shall note that the period of continuous debate has ended and cloture shall be considered invoked.”
SECTION 5. POST CLOTURE DEBATE ON NOMINATIONS. - Rule XXII, paragraph 2, is amended to read “If the matter on which cloture is invoked is a nomination, the period of time for debate shall be 2 hours.”
Summarizing these provisions, the amendments would largely prevent anonymously invoked filibusters (Rule VIII, paragraph 3) and would limit debate on nominations to 2 hours (Rule XXII, paragraph 2). Also the changes would limit amendments to three by each party (Rule XXII, paragraph 3). As long as any senator or group of senators can maintain continuous debate “on pending business,” cloture cannot be invoked with less than 60 votes.
Senator McConnell’s opening remarks of the 112th Congress on Jan. 5 focus almost exclusively upon the possibility of changing the filibuster rules. His remarks contain two targeted threats against the Democrats. He says, “First, it’s stating the obvious that anything that passes in the Senate with a narrower majority than 60 is going nowhere in a newly-Republican led House of Representative. Second, a change in the rules aimed at benefiting Democrats today could just as easily be used to benefit Republicans tomorrow.”
The softball changes to the filibuster rules offered by the Democrats appear to take McConnell’s threats to heart. The fact that McConnell feels empowered to offer threats at all simply illustrates where the center of power actually resides in the Senate.
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