Paaaaaarty!

Politico's Zach Warmbrodt wrote this week that "American International Group (AIG)-- once one of the most scorned corporations on Capitol Hill for its pivotal role in the financial crisis-- got a Washington birthday bash on Monday night with help from House lawmakers. Little more than a decade after the U.S. government committed $180 billion to avert the collapse of the insurance giant, AIG used the hearing room of the House Ways and Means Committee to host a 'centennial congressional reception' to mark the New York-based company's first century in business. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) presided over the event, which featured AIG CEO Brian Duperreault and other company leaders. 'We believe in the power of relationships to make a better world for everyone,' AIG said in an invitation obtained by Politico."

And it was a bipartisan party-- with crooked congress members from both sides of the aisle. So far this cycle, AIG has spent $1,400,000 lobbying Congress and has handed out $109,763 in legalistic bribes disguised as campaign contributions (including $2,500 to Chairman Neal). Last cycle they handed out $344,502 in these legalistic bribes-- $107,682 to Democrats and $70,820 to Republicans. These are their top dozen recipients serving in the House today:

• Kevin Brady, then chair of Ways and Means (R-TX)- $5,000
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $5,000
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $5,000
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)- $5,000
• Antonio Delgado (D-NY)- $3,625
• John Larson (D-CT)- $3,625
• Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $3,500
• Jason Crow (New Dem-CO)- $2,720
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- $1,938
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem (MI)- $1,753
• Mike Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- $1,656
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $1,500

There were senior members from both the Democrats and the Republicans at the festivities-- along with finance industry lobbyists. Members of Ways and Means and the Financial Services Committee who were partying with AIG included Brad Sherman (D-CA), Bill Foster (D-IL), Steve Stivers (R-OH), Dan Kildee (D-MI) and Gwen Moore (D-WI).

The celebration is the latest sign that memories of the 2008 market meltdown have faded in Washington. A display at the event outlining milestones in the company's history jumped from 1999 to 2015 — omitting the financial crisis and taxpayer-backed rescue.

AIG was the focus of widespread public outrage over the massive bailout the company got to stay afloat after it was nearly brought down by risky derivatives trades. At the time, lawmakers demanded that AIG employees renounce their bonuses.

"AIG will live forever in history as the poster child for greed, recklessness and incompetent if not delusional management," said Dennis Kelleher, who advocates for stricter Wall Street regulation as president and CEO of the group Better Markets.

But things have returned to normal for the storied insurer in recent years, as the company shrank itself and paid back the bailout funds. AIG has ramped up lobbying and restarted spending by its political action committee.

In 2017, AIG was successful in convincing federal regulators to undo the company's designation as a "systemically important financial institution"-- a label imposed on the insurer after the Wall Street meltdown that carried with it stricter government oversight.

...AIG has disclosed lobbying on retirement savings legislation under the Ways and Means Committee's jurisdiction. The company's PAC and employees have given more to Ways and Means Committee members in this election cycle than members of other committees, according to committee totals compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

"It comes as little surprise that these lawmakers would host a party for AIG, but it is deeply troubling that Congress would celebrate such a negligent and self-serving financial behemoth," said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen.

Meanwhile, progressive congressional candidates went on the attack over the party with AIG. Kara Voght, reporting for Mother Jones, wrote that "For progressives waging primary challenges against entrenched House Democrats, Monday’s event was a perfect example of what they see as the inappropriate coziness between centrist incumbents and the corporate interests they are supposed to keep in check."

“A lack of [government] involvement in allowing corporate giants to do what they please, set the rules for themselves, is what led to the [2008] collapse,” Alex Morse, who’s running against Neal, tells me. “A decade later, nothing has changed. There’s an open door policy between members of Congress and executives working at these firms, and it’s a slap in the face to the people affected by the financial crisis.” Neal, it should be noted, recently accepted a $2,500 campaign contribution from AIG’s political action committee.

Rachel Ventura-- who is running against Rep. Bill Foster, a Financial Services member who attended the AIG event-- described the gathering as “disturbing.” In a statement, she said that Foster’s presence was “not surprising” and called for an ethics investigation into how the party came to be.

For the last several months, progressive challengers have waged their primary battles on multiple fronts. Support for prized liberal initiatives, such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and promises to curtail corporate influence have been the bedrock of their campaigns. But so was a sharp rebuke of centrist incumbents who did not share progressive activists’ urgency in impeaching President Donald Trump. Morse had hammered Neal over his lack of support for an impeachment inquiry back in July. “I can’t purport to know the congressman’s strategy, but people are angry and scared,” he told me then. “Our democracy is dying right before us, and we need members of Congress that are there to uphold the Constitution.”

Rachel Ventura, who has been endorsed by Blue America, told her supporters that her New Dem opponent, Bill Foster "voted for the 2008/2009 bailout and he was one of the 33 Democrats who recently voted with Republicans to roll back Dodd-Frank in 2018, relaxing protections for financial consumers and exempting some institutions from stress tests; ultimately opening up the doors to another financial crisis. As a member of the Financial Services Committee, Bill Foster has accepted over $1.4 Million in campaign contributions from commercial banks and hedge fund managers. If you ask me, that’s a conflict of interest. As a US Congresswoman, I will go in the opposite direction. My entire political journey has used the slogan, 'no strings attached.' It is even on my campaign T-shirts. In my congressional campaign I have remained consistent, rejecting all corporate PAC money and super PACs influences. The American people are sick and tired of a congress that is bought and paid for. Bill Foster is no exception. He has tossed aside his lab coat and is just another politician who is more interested in listening to his donors than being a voice for the people."

Wednesday's Michael Cohen Hearing-- Trump's Hidden Tax Returns

Cohen's testimony was riveting. But I was shocked to hear an obviously deranged old woman who slipped by the NPR call filter last night. She was unable to complete a single thought and was either severely drug addicted and/or so intellectually impaired that dialing the phone must have been her biggest accomplishment of the month. All she could say is that Trump is her president and Cohen should be sent to jail. The host took her seriously and questioned her as though she had an IQ above 70, which she clearly didn't. He couldn't get anything out of her before he realized the whole call was a mess. I'm guess she accurately represents 99.9% of the Trump base. The rest are the billionaires.

Late Wednesday, Issie Lapowsky, writing for Wired noted that the efficacy of Cohen's testimony was...in the eye of the beholder. And there are a lot of really dumb beholders in our anti-science/anti-education country. "Cohen," wrote Lapowsky, "is a flawed man with nothing left to lose, charting a path to redemption by finally coming clean about crimes and misdeeds allegedly committed by the president of the United States. Either that, or he’s a cheat and a crook who can’t be trusted, who’s already pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and isn’t above doing it again if it’ll help him land a book deal. These are the two interpretations of Cohen’s hearing before the House Oversight Committee that manifested online Wednesday. As they’ve done so many times before-- during the Benghazi investigation, during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings-- the internet’s tribal factions retreated to their corners over the course of the day to tell utterly opposite stories about the much-anticipated hearings and what they revealed about Cohen and Trump.

On social media and on partisan sites, the conversation split into like-minded echo chambers, with each side parroting the talking points of their party’s members who were sitting in the hearing room. What emerged was a sort of cacophonous bizarro world that would have seemed implausible just a year ago: Conservative pundits and political operatives, including Trump’s own children, worked overtime to discredit a man who spent 10 years as a close confidante to Trump, and until last June, served as deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee. Liberals, meanwhile, spent their 240 characters sticking up for and even applauding the humility of a man who’ll head to prison in May for, among other things, lying to Congress to defend Trump and making hush money payments on his behalf.

In a world of divergent media diets and carefully curated filter bubbles, just which story you heard depends mostly on your timeline.

Liberal Twitter woke up Wednesday to an avalanche of stories about Cohen’s core arguments. In his opening testimony, which was reported by several media outlets before the hearing began, Cohen called Trump “a racist,” “a con man,” and “a cheat” who knew as early as July of 2016 that Wikileaks was planning “a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” Cohen stated that, while serving as president, Trump personally signed a check to reimburse Cohen for hush money payments he made to women who said they’d had affairs with Trump, and that Trump once challenged Cohen to name a single country run by a black person that isn’t a “shithole.” In his remarks, Cohen painted Trump as a petty tyrant, who had Cohen threaten a high school to prevent it from leaking the future president's grades and SAT scores and who once enlisted a bidder to buy a portrait of Trump at an auction, only to repay the bidder out of his charity’s funds.



Both voices on the left and mainstream outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and Wired seized on these accusations as the focal point of the day. This was, after all, the evidence that Cohen had been called on to present. And, as WIRED contributor Garrett Graff pointed out, despite Cohen’s history of lies, he had come to Congress armed with receipts in the form of checks and other documentation that backed up much of his testimony.

However, you wouldn’t find stories about any of this evidence if you scoured social media circles on the right; you wouldn’t find any questions from Republican committee members about these issues either. Instead, conservative outlets pumped out stories casting doubt on Cohen’s credibility. “Cohen Admits He Can’t Corroborate his Allegations Against Trump,” read one headline in the Daily Caller. “Republican Congratulates Cohen For Being First Witness to Testify Before Congress After Being Convicted of Lying to Congress,” read another. Breitbart’s homepage, meanwhile, led with a story about Debra Messing, John Cusack, and other celebrities exploding with “hot takes” about the hearing. They also ran stories like “Michael Cohen Won’t Deny Plans for Book, Movie Deal Under Oath” and “Trump Campaign Dismisses ‘Convicted Perjurer’ Michael Cohen Testimony.”

Ken White noted for Atlantic readers that the committee's Republican neanderthals failed to destroy Cohen's credibility, committing the classic cross-examination blunder. "House Republicans needed a trial lawyer-- or even a moderately bright junior-high mock-trial participant-- to tell them how to do anything," wrote White. Cross-examination is hard. It’s not just barking at the witness. It takes meticulous planning and patience. Republicans could have marshaled Cohen’s many sins of the past to undermine his statements today. Instead, they returned repeatedly to lies and misdeeds he’s already admitted, wallowed in silly trivialities such as the 'Women for Cohen' Twitter account, and yelled. The effect was to make an unsympathetic man modestly more sympathetic. Republicans committed the classic cross-examination blunder: They gave the witness the opportunity to further explain his harmful direct testimony. They provided Cohen with one slow pitch up the middle after another, letting him repeat the cooperating witness’s go-to explanation like a mantra: I did these bad things so often and so long because that’s what it took to work for your guy. I have seldom seen a cross-examination go worse.

Charlie Pierce went further. To his ears, the committee Republicans, "products of the conservative bubble," so completely and utterly disgraced themselves so badly that they "made a career hoodlum look good." In fact, Cohen "gave as good as he got, and it was easy to forget for a moment what a bought-and-paid-for hoodlum he'd always been. He did the contrition dance deftly and, by and large, managed to stay cool under Meadows's provocation and Jordan's idiocies. He even did a better job debunking some of the alleged Trump misdeeds-- love-children, the mysterious meeting in Prague-- than the Republicans on the commitee bothered to do. There was something about him that yearned for the old days when he was sitting around Trump Tower with the boss, paying off porn stars and threatening high-school records offices. It would have been poignant if it wasn't all as sordid as the worst brothel on the Singapore docks."



Anyone who watched the first half of the questioning has to agree with White's assessment, basically that "this was an opportunity to build the outline of a case against Trump. Democrats didn’t. Instead, they triumphantly repeated Cohen’s more salacious accusations, speechified, and uncritically embraced Cohen’s I-am-a-sinner-seeking-redemption narrative." Once they got back from their voting for gun control break, though, the questioning abruptly changed. The tired old lawyers with all the seniority and dulled chops, like the useless Debbie Wasserman Schultz, were replaced by fiery, younger members who were out for blood and weren't interested in bragging about themselves. Ro Khanna (D-CA) led the way, along with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), all potential MVPs who had the innate understanding of what they needed to get out of Cohen that the sleepy senior members seem to have lost long, long ago.

Perhaps the most significant testimony came while AOC was questioning Cohen. Watch:



The Democrats haven't subpoenaed Trump's taxes yet. Why not. People tend to blame House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-MA), which is fine-- except he's not alone in his clear dereliction of duty. What about House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY)? House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA)? Or, very obviously, House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD). They all have something in common-- Pelosi. She decides something that big, not them. Recently CREDO Action and several other groups sent Pelosi a note complaining about Neal's reticence. They sent it to the right place.

We are writing you as organizations who believe that fairness and equity in both the writing and implementation of tax law is of critical importance. Our commitment to fairness is why we urge you to take every available step to ensure that the House Ways and Means Committee fulfills its Constitutional obligation to provide stringent oversight.

Congress’ oversight authority is broad, encompassing investigation designed to hold both government and corporations accountable. Zealous oversight is how lawmakers learn what laws must be tweaked and what new laws must be drafted. And in the field of tax, the need for reform could not be clearer.

Yet despite the exigency of strong oversight of tax collection, we have watched with growing concern as the Ways and Means Committee has been conspicuously slow to investigate the critical departments and agencies within its jurisdiction. Trump’s Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service are charged with not only the difficult task of fighting “run of the mill” tax avoidance and tax evasion, but also to implement a sweeping new tax law written in considerable haste in late 2017.

Hanging over these complex issues of interpretation and policymaking is the fact that the President and his family have not divested themselves of a sprawling business empire. Additionally, many of the key figures in his administration, such as Jared Kushner, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, retain vast and complex portfolios either personally or within their families.

In other words-- even if the Trump Administration were an ordinary presidency, the decaying ability of the IRS to collect revenue owed by the richest individuals and corporations would demand serious attention. And the nature of the Trump tax law and the conflicts of interest which envelop Trump Administration’s senior personnel only serves to deepen the urgency.

Chairman Richard Neal’s term heading the Ways and Means Committee has not commenced in a manner that gives us confidence that under his Chairmanship the Committee is poised to provide the timely and stringent oversight America’s rule-abiding taxpayers deserve. Doing that requires both focusing the work of the entire committee as well as unleashing the Oversight Subcommittee chaired by Congressman John Lewis-- including ensuring that the Oversight Subcommittee has adequate resources for vigorous and wide-ranging oversight work.

Because we believe that the Trump Administration’s implementation of its tax collection and tax law interpretation responsibilities cries out for energetic oversight, we ask for you and your leadership team to work with Chairman Neal and the Ways and Means Committee to make sure that the 116th Congress fulfills its Constitutional responsibilities.

A month ago Eleanor Eagan and Jeff Hauser, writing for the Center for Economic and Policy Center's blog, also tried pressuring Neal, reminding him that Democrats ran and won on an anti-corruption platform and that they now needed to "fulfill their promises to bring accountability to Trump, his powerful allies, and corporate bad actors. Oversight is an incredibly powerful tool that can shine a light on overlooked issues, unearth answers about clandestine misbehavior, and generate consensus around reforms.

"Unfortunately," they continued, "Richard Neal (D-MA), the Chairman of the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means, has already retreated from his earlier promise to request Trump’s tax returns expeditiously. Since Neal’s alarming decision became clear, we have worked diligently to make the case that his aversion to conflict with Trump and powerful corporate interests is wrong and that his hesitancy to conduct stringent oversight is of broad public concern," who they accused of being-- provably-- a corrupted corporate Democrat from a bright blue district who has spent way too much time in DC to be an even remotely effective agent of change.

Forget Richard Neal. Look what AOC did in her question time (in the PBS video above). By asking Cohen about how Trump cheated the IRS-- with questions like "Do you think we need to review his financial statements and his tax returns in order to compare them?" and about how he reduced his real estate tax bills by deflating the reported value of his assets-- she absolutely gave Cummings a casus belli to request the returns. "Would it help for the committee to obtain," she asked Cohen, "federal and state tax returns from the president and his company to address that discrepancy? Cohen, the in the straight man role he relishes: "I believe so."

Committee Assignments Announced... Pelosi Finally Unveiled

That's part of a press release Pelosi's office sent me Wednesday evening. It also has the new appointees for Ways and Means:

• Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia
• Congressman Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania
• Congressman Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania
• Congressman Steven Horsford of Nevada
• Congressman Dan Kildee of Michigan
• Congresswoman Gwen Moore of Wisconsin
• Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy of Florida
• Congressman Jimmy Panetta of California
• Congressman Brad Schneider of Illinois
• Congressman Tom Suozzi of New York

The Congressional Progressive Caucus made a deal with Pelosi. One crucial component was that she would guarantee the CPC 40% of the seats on crucial committees like the 3 above. Last week I mentioned that there was a potential problem with the deal. Not everyone in the Congressional Progressive Caucus is actually progressive. CPC co-chair, Mark Pocan, has made membership a farce by selling ($5,000 annual dues) them to "moderate" congressmembers who need cover-- protection from progressive activists-- back in home. I immediately guessed that Pelosi would appoint all the rubbish in the caucus to the committees and say, "see I upheld my end of the bargain." There are at least 13 members of the CPC who are also New Dems (Wall Street shills-- and unless you want to define "progressive" as, basically, being pro-choice, not racist and not homophobic these are not progressives.

There are 26 members named to these 3 key committees. The only freshmen were former members Ed Case, one of the most conservative members of Congress, Ann Kirkpatrick, another right-of-center member, and Steven Horsford, a garden variety Democrat. Let's start by showing each member's ProgressivePunch score. The bolded named are CPC members:

Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog, just switched to New Dem-IL)- F
Ed Case (Blue Dog-HI)- F
Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)- F
Lois Frankel (FL)- C
Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)- F
Brenda Lawrence (New Dem-MI)- B
Norma Torres (New Dem-CA)- F
Bonnie Watson-Coleman (NJ)- A

Nanette Barragán (CA)- B
Lisa Blunt Rochester (New Dem-DE)- F
Robin Kelly (IL)- B
Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)- F
Donald McEachin (New Dem-VA)- D
Tom O’Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- F
Darren Soto (New Dem-FL)- F
Marc Veasey (New Dem-TX)- F

Don Beyer (New Dem-VA)- D
Brendan Boyle (New Dem-PA)- F
Dwight Evans (PA)- B
Steven Horsford (NV)- F
Dan Kildee (MI)- A
Gwen Moore (WI)- A
Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)- F
Jimmy Panetta (CA)- F
Brad Schneider (Blue Dog-IL)- F
Tom Suozzi (New Dem-NY)- F

Just over a month ago, in a post called The Battle For Plum Committee Positions Begins-- Alexandria Ocasio v Tom Suozzi, we mentioned that progressives Ro Khanna and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were trying to get appointed to the House Ways and Means Committee, "whose jurisdiction over taxes and revenue puts most of the economy within its mandate." By tradition, one seat is guaranteed to New York and in the last Congress that was Joe Crowley's. Although Ocasio-Cortez defeated Crowley, the committee seat went to the far more conservative Long Islander, Tom Suozzi. As Ryan From wrote for The Intercept, "Any major piece of legislation-- whether it’s Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, or free public college-- would involve some level of revenue, putting it squarely in the domain of Ways and Means, which makes it a key spot for a legislator looking to have an impact. Ocasio-Cortez is routinely asked how she plans to pay for her aggressive economic agenda, and the first answer begins with securing a spot on the House’s key tax-writing committee."

Traditionally, the seat is sought after for its fundraising potential, as every industry in the country is concerned with federal tax policy, meaning that members of the committee are more likely to get their fundraising calls returned. That makes the decision of who to give the seat to a tricky one for incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has the final say on committee assignments. Placing a lawmaker who refuses corporate PAC contributions on the Ways and Means Committee could be seen by some elements of the party as leaving money on the table.

But giving it to the other New York applicant presents its own problems. Ocasio-Cortez is competing with Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represents the North Shore of Long Island, a district not far from Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx and Queens-- but a world away in terms of wealth and privilege. He would no doubt make efficient fundraising use of the seat, but he also took part in a recent assault on Pelosi’s power as speaker.

The contrast between how Ocasio-Cortez and Suozzi have approached the incoming Congress has been stark. Ocasio-Cortez began by joining a sit-in at Pelosi’s office to demand an empowered select committee to focus on legislating a Green New Deal. It was a risky move, but one that ended with Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez praising one another, and the issue of climate change was elevated on the agenda. Ocasio-Cortez then threw her support behind an embattled Pelosi for speaker of the House.

Pelosi’s bid for speakership was threatened by the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of lawmakers funded by the dark-money group No Labels, which threatened to withhold voting for Pelosi unless she agreed to a suite of rule changes that would largely empower Republicans. Suozzi was one of the nine signatories on that letter. Pelosi ultimately ceded to some of their demands.

Suozzi is a vice chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, as well as a member of the New Democrat Coalition, a bloc of Wall Street-friendly Democrats that dramatically expanded its membership with the 2018 elections.

...Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to go after a spot on the Ways and Means Committee is part of a broader strategy to grow progressive power in the coming Congress. It began with Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state extracting a major concession from Pelosi, that in exchange for CPC votes, she would give the caucus proportional representation-- which amounts to 40 percent-- on the most powerful committees, which includes Ways and Means.

So... long story short: this is the worst I ever saw Pelosi screw progressives-- not Pocan's transactional definition, but actual progressives... in her entire congressional tenure. Anyone who ever doubted which side she's on can now set those doubts to rest for all time. Let me a dd a caveat; the deal, apparently, was that 40% of the entire membership of each committee would be from the CPC. So, technically, the deal wasn't broken. But that still, for example, leaves the Appropriations Committee with 11 actual economic progressives,  13 anti-progressives and 6 floating in the middle. The committee can easily be swayed in whatever they want to do by arch bankster-buddies Debbie Wasserman Schultz ($2,485,907), Henry Cuellar ($1,499,463), Ann Kirkpatrick ($1,615,753), Norma Torres ($177,560), Cheri Bustos ($1,097,471), Pete Aguilar ($965,965), Mike Quigley ($1,019,844), Sanford Bishop ($1,223,847), Ed Case ($539,917), Charlie Crist ($3,165,972) and Pete Visclosky ($704,795). I might add that committee chair, Nita Lowey has taken $5,244,643 from the Finance Sector.

The Battle For Plum Committee Positions Begins-- Alexandria Ocasio v Tom Suozzi

Alexandria by Nancy Ohanian

Currently there are 40 members of the House Ways and Means Committee-- 24 Republicans and 16 Democrats. 9 Republicans and 2 Democrats [Joe Crowley and Sandy Levin] will not be returning to the House in January. I imagine democrats will name a good 8 new members. Members want to ben that committee because it leads to a lot of campaign contributions bribes. Crowley used his seat on the powerful committee to leverage immense bribes he collected from the industries-- nearly all-- impacted by Ways and Means Committee legislative deliberations. Here are a few that showered him with cash:

• Securites and Investment- $2,061,284
• Lawyers and Lobbyists- $1,950,325
• Unions- $1,809,780
• Insurance- $1,775,865
• Real Estate- $1,826,431
• Commercial Banks- $714,223
• Drug Manufacturers- $429,860
• Finance and Credit Companies- $294,300
• Armaments- $254,439
• Entertainment Industry- $252,949
• Business Services- $249,143

Now that she defeated him, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants that seat-- but for very different reasons than what Crowley was using it for. "It's a panel," wrote Ryan Grim at The Intercept yesterday "whose jurisdiction over taxes and revenue puts most of the economy within its mandate. For that reason, freshmen are almost never given spots on the panel, but the midterm elections upset the balance of power in the House. Sixty-three new representatives have joined the Democratic caucus, and some 43 Republicans either lost their seats or retired-- so there is an unusually large number of vacancies to fill. By custom, New York City effectively has at least one reserved seat on Ways and Means, and Ocasio-Cortez is looking to claim it."

Any major piece of legislation-- whether it’s “Medicare for All,” a “Green New Deal,” or free public college-- would involve some level of revenue, putting it squarely in the domain of Ways and Means, which makes it a key spot for a legislator looking to have an impact. Ocasio-Cortez is routinely asked how she plans to pay for her aggressive economic agenda, and the first answer begins with securing a spot on the House’s key tax-writing committee.

Traditionally, the seat is sought after for its fundraising potential, as every industry in the country is concerned with federal tax policy, meaning that members of the committee are more likely to get their fundraising calls returned. That makes the decision of who to give the seat to a tricky one for incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has the final say on committee assignments. Placing a lawmaker who refuses corporate PAC contributions on the Ways and Means Committee could be seen by some elements of the party as leaving money on the table.

But giving it to the other New York applicant presents its own problems. Ocasio-Cortez is competing with Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represents the North Shore of Long Island, a district not far from Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx and Queens-- but a world away in terms of wealth and privilege. He would no doubt make efficient fundraising use of the seat, but he also took part in a recent assault on Pelosi’s power as speaker.

The contrast between how Ocasio-Cortez and Suozzi have approached the incoming Congress has been stark. Ocasio-Cortez began by joining a sit-in at Pelosi’s office to demand an empowered select committee to focus on legislating a Green New Deal. It was a risky move, but one that ended with Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez praising one another, and the issue of climate change was elevated on the agenda. Ocasio-Cortez then threw her support behind an embattled Pelosi for speaker of the House.

Pelosi’s bid for speakership was threatened by the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of lawmakers funded by the dark-money group No Labels, which threatened to withhold voting for Pelosi unless she agreed to a suite of rule changes that would largely empower Republicans. Suozzi was one of the nine signatories on that letter. Pelosi ultimately ceded to some of their demands.

Suozzi is a vice chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, as well as a member of the New Democrat Coalition, a bloc of Wall Street-friendly Democrats that dramatically expanded its membership with the 2018 elections.

Suozzi said that he had no interest in Ways and Means as a tool for fundraising, but argued that his training as a certified public accountant and attorney made him ideally suited for it. He also represents, he noted, a district that was hit very hard by the GOP tax bill, which tightened the state and local tax deduction. Because he represents part of Queens, he qualifies for the New York City spot.

“I’m not interested in this seat for fundraising purposes,” he told The Intercept, noting that he was first elected as mayor 25 years ago. “I don’t need a committee to raise money.”

Asked about the political contrast between him and Ocasio-Cortez, he acknowledged some differences, but said there was also common ground. “I’m very progressive on a lot of different issues, in support of the Green New Deal, immigration, both those issues, as well as on issues related to poverty,” he said. “Am I fiscally conservative? Yes, I’m fiscally conservative.”

[Ummm... Suozzi is a nice guy and I like him but there's virtually nothing progressive about him. ProgressivePunch rates him "F" and there are only 11 Democrats in Congress with worse crucial vote scores than his. As for the Green New Deal, there are 4 New Yorkers who have signed onto the resolution-- Nydia Velazquez, Carolyn Maloney, Alexandria Ocasio and Jose Serrano. Unfortunately not Suozzi, at least not yet.]

Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to go after a spot on the Ways and Means Committee is part of a broader strategy to grow progressive power in the coming Congress. It began with Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state extracting a major concession from Pelosi, that in exchange for CPC votes, she would give the caucus proportional representation-- which amounts to 40 percent-- on the most powerful committees, which includes Ways and Means.

Then, after Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) narrowly lost her bid for caucus chair to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Pelosi named Lee the third co-chair of the Steering and Policy Committee. The steering committee decides on the remaining committee assignments, with Pelosi getting the final vote.

Outside progressive groups plan to mobilize on behalf of Ocasio-Cortez’s effort. Jennifer Epps-Addison, network president and co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy Action, argued that putting her on the committee would bring a valuable new perspective because she “rejects the false scarcity that pits health care against education, jobs against addressing climate change, while spending limitlessly on war and criminalization.”

“Not only does she have the lived experience of Americans struggling to make ends meet in this rigged economy, but she will make sure to bring our voices and concerns to one of the most important decision-making bodies in Congress,” Epps-Addison said. “We strongly support her over Tom Suozzi, who was willing to withhold support for Pelosi to fuel his centrist agenda.”

The Working Families Party endorsed Suozzi this year (as well as several other conservative New York Democrats like Anthony Brindisi, Sean Patrick Maloney and Max Rose) but Joe Dinkins, one of their top leaders, sent out a statement saying that "Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is a powerful voice for the millions of Americans who want to see solutions from our leaders like the Green New Deal-- ones that meet the scale of the crises we’re facing. That voice deserves a seat at the table on Ways and Means. Suozzi has shown he is the wrong choice by his record. He voted to roll back Wall Street reform and allow lenders to charge higher interest to people of color, joined the corporate-friendly New Democratic caucus and sought to make it easier for Republicans to bring legislation to the floor in the name of ‘solving’ a non-existent ‘problem.’” Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, was just as brutal: "Democrats won the House by running on lowering drug prices and expanding Medicare. Now, the party’s leaders must match their campaign rhetoric with action by putting progressive champions on Ways and Means. Corporate Democrats must not be allowed to give Wall Street and Pharma veto power over what comes out of these critical committees."

"Anonymous Industry Sources Control Congress": Matt Stoller targets "industry lobbyists and their incestuous journalistic partners"

"This unaccountable and unelected system, where industry lobbyists and their incestuous journalistic partners directly contradict the power vested by the public in our elected officials, is why the public hates the Beltway and its trappings of power."

-- Matt Stoller, in an OpenLeft post yesterday, "Anonymous Industry Sources Control Congress"

by Ken

Howie did a thorough job yesterday on CongressDaily's takedown of the Democrats next in line to chair the House Ways and Means Committee -- in the event that a replacement is needed for my congressman, Charlie Rangel. "Too liberal" is the hysterical screech about both Pete Stark of Callifornia and Jim McDermott of Washington, with assorted other allegations and innuendos piled on.

As Howie pointed out, such complaints never seem to come up when rabid right-wingers or conniving and/or outright thieving thugs serve as committee chairmanships. There doesn't seem to be such a thing as too conservative, or, where the interests at stake are pro-cooperate, too close to the interests the committee oversees.

I kicked this point around recently while speculating about the possibility of Sen. Russ Feingold taking over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from VP-elect Joe Biden in the event that John Kerry were to get the nod as secretary of state. As we know, that eventuality never eventuated. But, to his credit, Senate Majority Harry Reid put himself on record unequivocally that in the event Senator Feingold's turn came up, he would not be bypassed.

There's another dimension to the CongressDaily story, though, and I have to credit Matt Stoller with not just recognizing it but making a glorious federal case of it on OpenLeft. What set Matt's bullshit detector off is that "reporter" Peter Cohn, in a piece filled with Inside the Beltway opinions, and mighty strong ones at that, used not a single identified source. Bless his heart, Matt actually counted and found that the piece uses no fewer than nine anonymous sources -- among them a strong preponderance of lobbyists, whose interest in the matter is hardly impartial, or apt to be on the side of good government.

Here is my rendering -- in countdown form -- of Matt's rundown of The Anonymous Nine:

(1) a GOP tax lobbyist, who says that Charlie Rangel is "a long way from going down."

(2) a Democrat close to leadership (and thus presumably an actual member of Congress! the only one we're going to hear from), who says, "The conventional wisdom is [Stark] would have a tough time getting elected chairman."

(3) sources, who say that Stark is prone to gaffes, as when he suggested that our troops were in Iraq dying "for the president's amusement" -- a suggestion that aroused so much quick outrage that no consideration was allowed for the extent to which this catastrophic adventure was made possible by His Chimpiness's desperate, pathetic attempt to prove that he's something other than a worthless shell of a human being. Of course you're not allowed to say that if you're a serious D.C. insider.

(4) an industry lobbyist, who says that Stark "is just not tenable." Apparently the business community would "go nuclear. It would just be open warfare."

(5) industry sources, who describe Richard Neal of Massachusetts as "someone they could work with" (unlike Stark, who's "seen as very much in tune with the labor movement").

(6) sources, who say that Jim McDermott, while "a bit more of a pragmatist than Stark," is "still in the too-liberal category" and "also is a highly partisan figure."

(7) an industry source, who suggests that John Lewis of Georgia, "the well-liked, highly respected former civil rights leader whose selection could smooth over relations with the Congressional Black Caucus if Rangel were to be nudged out."

(8) sources, wo say that Richard Neal "is the favorite of the business community and has labor bona fides as well" and "is seen as a bright, active and relatively young chairman-in-waiting, but as fifth in seniority after Rangel, the time may not yet be ripe to choose him."

(9) another industry source, who "while noting the lack of a smoking gun, referred to the steady drumbeat of allegations as potentially damaging. 'In this town, impression often matters more than fact,' the source said."

Now Matt can be both one of the most lucid, logical writers I know and, when he gets up a head of steam, one of the most eloquent. In his final two paragraphs he demonstrates both modes.

First he explains what's wrong with Cohn's stringing together of these anonymous sources:

Not one single person will go on the record to discuss why the seniority system shouldn't work in the case of Stark, not one policy idea is considered in the article vis-a-vis Stark or anyone else's record, and the reader learns nothing about the tax writing committee from it other than nine anonymous sources in Congress think something. Apparently, the amorphous business community will 'go nuclear', whatever that means, Stark is gaffe-prone, but neither the public, policy, or the shift leftward in Congress as evidenced by Waxman's recent committee victory in the Energy and Commerce tussle are even referenced.

"And this is the point," he says, setting the stage for this:

One of the most insidious aspects of DC is how the conventional wisdom that dominates policy-making is shaped by an interplay between reporters and lobbyists, with ideas and voters entirely cut out. Based on this article, I have no idea if Stark would write good tax law or manage the committee well, I have no idea who the people are that are criticizing him and so the criticisms are entirely devoid of context, and Stark -- Air Force vet, successful businessman, and experienced legislator -- is completely powerless to respond. This unaccountable and unelected system, where industry lobbyists and their incestuous journalistic partners directly contradict the power vested by the public in our elected officials, is why the public hates the Beltway and its trappings of power.

Wow! I'm not even going to try to add anything to that. Maybe we should just listen to that last sentence one last time:

This unaccountable and unelected system, where industry lobbyists and their incestuous journalistic partners directly contradict the power vested by the public in our elected officials, is why the public hates the Beltway and its trappings of power.

POSTSCRIPT: THE NYT'S CLAMPDOWN ON ANONYMOUS SOURCES

Thanks to our colleague John Amato at Crooks and Liars for digging out a June 2008 report by New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt, "Culling the Anonymous Sources," on the paper's serious tightening of its use of anonymous sources in the wake of the Jayson Blair fiasco, including rather surprising results from a study he himself requested from students at Columbia University's Journalism School, which suggest that the paper has indeed reduced the use of anonymous sources by something like half.

In conclusion, Hoyt cites a memo recently sent to NYT news-room staffers by Executive Editor Bill Keller:

[H]e said it was “high-minded foolishness” to suggest that The Times or any newspaper forswear them altogether. “The ability to offer protection to a source is an essential of our craft,” he said. “We cannot bring readers the information they want and need to know without sometimes protecting sources who risk reprisals, firing, legal action or, in some parts of the world, their lives when they confide in us.”

That is why it is so critically important that anonymous sources not be used lazily or out of habit, and why, when they really are necessary, readers need to be told as much as possible about why the sources can’t be identified and how they know what they know.

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