NRCC Announces Its Top Democratic Targets

According to NRCC political director, Mike Shields, the GOP will once again mostly be targeting Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats who vote with the Republicans so frequently that they can't inspire the Democratic base to turn out. He rattled off "Democrats" Congress would be better off without, from Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA) and Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY) to Heath Shuler and Mike McIntyre (Blue Dogs-NC).

And, by the way, if you haven't been watching this year, all these Blue Dogs have been scoring worse on the big votes since Boehner became Speaker than their own miserable career scores. First number is their ProgressivePunch crucial vote career score and the second measures the same criteria for 2011. All have voted more often with the Republicans than with the Democrats this year. From bad to worse:

Heath Shuler- 40.89... 49.21
Mike McIntyre- 47.65... 34.43
Ben Chandler- 57.96... 31.75
John Barrow- 44.35... 28.57
Jim Matheson- 48.91... 27.87

Good riddance, right? Sure, they all undermine any semblance of a progressive agenda from inside the Democratic caucus. These 5 and a couple dozen like them have a lot to do with the complaints we were looking at earlier of how Democrats wind up with untenable negotiating positions and wind up defending hated conservative ideas as compromises, whether it comes to health care, foreign policy or energy policy. But don't send a check to the NRCC just yet. First of all, with Kochs like David and Charles, spending tens of millions of dollars on Republican shills to advance their selfish, anti-social interests, the GOP doesn't need your money. Secondly, the NRCC also announced another target-- a serious one: Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ).

Last week Raúl announced that he had reintroduced the Right to Rent Act of 2011 (H.R. 1548), an updated version of a bill he introduced in 2009 to allow families facing foreclosure to remain in their homes as renters by paying fair market value each month.

The Right to Rent Act provides a strong incentive for banks or other lenders to modify mortgages to avoid becoming landlords. The bill allows a single-family homeowner who has resided in the home for at least 2 years-- and purchased before 2007 at or below the median home price for that metropolitan area-- to rent the home for up to five years.
 
If a lender chooses to pursue foreclosure, the family has 25 business days to choose to rent and stay in the home as tenants, preventing the social problems, crime and lowered property values that often follow vacancies. This allows children to continue attending school and provides families adequate time to prepare a transition to a more permanent situation.

...“Housing shouldn’t be a politically charged issue-- this is a basic question of fixing a problem we can’t ignore,” Grijalva said. “Democrat, Republican or independent, we’re all here in Congress to represent our constituents and make sure the federal government is acting in their best interests. Right now, we can’t afford to pretend those interests are served by us doing nothing.”

Raúl has the overall third most progressive voting record in the House (96.47), right after Karen Bass (98.39)-- who has basically been in Congress for three months-- and Jan Schakowsky (96.50), who leads him by .03. Raúl is also co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Republicans hit him hard last November as well. Their well-funded campaign of non-stop lies drove his reelection numbers down from 63% in 2008 to 50% last year (his Republican opponent, Ruth McClung, finishing with 44%). Just over 9,000 votes separated them, a number Koch money could find easy to overcome. This week, his People's Budget has been contrasted to the horrifying Ryan Budget and found far superior-- and far more courageous. The conservative Economist:

Ryan's plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus's plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people. Mr Ryan has been fulsomely praised for his courage. The Progressive Caucus has not.

I'm not really sure what "courage" is supposed to mean here, but this seems precisely backwards. For 30 years, certainly since Walter Mondale got creamed by Ronald Reagan, the most dangerous thing a politician can do has been to call for tax hikes. Politicians who call for higher taxes are punished, which is why they don't do it. I'm curious to see what adjectives people would apply to the Progressive Congressional Caucus's budget proposal. But it's hard for me to imagine the media calling a proposal to raise taxes "courageous" and "honest". And my sense is that the disparate treatment here is a structural bias rooted in class.

Earlier today, Krugman analyzed Raúl's budget plan and compared it to Ryan's. "Unlike the Ryan plan," he wrote, "it actually makes sense. The CPC plan essentially balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall mainly on higher incomes, although not just on the top 2%: super-brackets for very high incomes, elimination of deductions, taxation of capital income as ordinary income, and-- the part that would be most controversial-- raising the cap on payroll taxes."

Blue America is steadily getting closer to our fund-raising goal for Raúl's campaign, almost all of it raised by $10 and $20 contributions. Like we saw earlier, Raúl led the fight for the People's Budget, one that not only contrasted with the outrageous Ryan budget that's all about tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and dissolving the social compact that holds our society together but also offered an alternative to the weak tea Chris Van Hollen and the Beltway Democrats offered up. The People's Budget specifically ends the wars and specifically scores against the taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil that Ryan's budget embraced and that Van Hollen's budget moaned about-- but didn't offer to do anything about. Raúl Grijalva is fighting for working families every single day. He earns whatever support we can afford to give him. The DCCC likes to "target" Ryan with harsh-sounding press releases but they have never put any resources into defeating him. He's gotten an easy ride to reelection every single cycle since his first election. The NRCC isn't folling around. They and their allies have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into defeating Raúl for real. Last year-- with your help-- we were part of the effort to beat them back. It worked. Let's make sure it does again in 2012.