What Democrats Failed to Do on January 3

Yes. I, for one, think of this daily.

by Gaius Publius

It's widely understood, even in Republican circles, that a Supreme Court nomination that should have fallen to a Democratic president was stolen from him by Senate Republicans and will be handed instead to a Republican president, Donald Trump. (In Republican circles, it's not just understood, it's celebrated.)

Democratic Party leadership have four ways they can respond — Not at all, Weakly, Strongly, or Very strongly. "Responding not at all" is not an option, since Senate Democrats (and frankly, institutional Democrats in general) must at least appear to have "seen the Sanders light" and started to stand up for the people — and more frankly, themselves — in this newborn Age of Trump.

Responding with words and not deeds would qualify as "responding weakly." Some actions in opposition and retaliation could be considered "responding strongly," depending on the action, though when you consider that Trump's SCOTUS nominee will serve for life, even the strongest of oppositions — save the full Mitch McConnell response ("oppose everything all the time") — still seems not strong enough by comparison.

Any "very strong" response would necessarily be one that actually "resteals" the nomination back into Democratic Party control and prevents the Trump nomination entirely. Happily, there is such a response — or was. The clock on that response started on January 3 at the very open of the new session of Congress, and ran out just a few minutes after that.

Yet that response would have worked, which is why I'm presenting it to you now. This is your first example of Senate Democrats not choosing a "very strong response" to Republican and Trumpian provocation. For the details, read on.

David Waldman's Plan to Steal Back the Obama's SCOTUS Nomination

This piece was written in December, and it distills thinking by David Waldman (KagroX as was) on how the Democrats can use (manipulate) Senate rules to deny Trump the right to nominate his own candidate for the Supreme Court in place of Merrick Garland. This plan, in other words, puts Merrick Garland on the bench.

I know from personal experience that Waldman knows his Senate rules; he's my goto person when I have questions myself, and I'm not alone in relying on him this way.

From Karoli Kuns at Crooks and Liars, here's the distillation of Waldman's plan (emphasis in original):

Senate Democrats Have One Shot At Saving SCOTUS - Will They?

It is now time for Senate Democrats to take their shot at saving this country from fascists assuming the reins of power in January. It can be done, but it will require them to be courageous and aggressive.

David Waldman (KagroX on Twitter) has outlined how they can confirm Judge Merrick Garland on January 3rd for the few minutes that they will be the majority in the Senate. Waldman is a long-standing expert on Senate procedure and political plays. He was one of the first to call for passage of the ACA via reconciliation in the Senate after Scott Brown was elected.

Here it is, in a nutshell.

On January 3, 2017, Democrats will hold the majority in the Senate for a few minutes, until the newly-elected Senators are sworn in. Biden could convene the Senate in those few minutes and call for a vote. The majority could then suspend the rules and vote in Merrick Garland.

The key here is that VP Biden would have to be willing to convene the Senate and recognize Senator Dick Durbin instead of Mitch McConnell. Durbin moves to re-nominate Garland, and Senate Democrats then vote to confirm him. They will have a quorum for those few minutes.

Kuns appropriately adds:

It's bold. Garland would be confirmed by 34 Democrats and no Republicans. It will certainly enrage Republicans, but they're already enraged and full of hubris about how they're going to screw Democrats anyway, so what do they really have to lose?

Not much. It takes courage. It takes a resolve to do what's right for this country, to reclaim the Supreme Court nomination Republicans think they stole from us. It takes backbone.

Here's where the rubber meets the road. We're not talking about "comity" anymore. We're talking about conviction and confirmation.

Is this a legitimate use of Senate rules? Yes. Using the rules within the rules is legitimate (legal) by definition. Would the Republicans pitch a total fit if this happened? Of course, but they do that anytime they lose and some times even when they win.

Should Democrats care about Republican objections? No. But are they bold enough to do this? Of course not. We know that because they didn't do this.

I kind of hate to say this as early as I'm saying it, but "Ladies and gentlemen, these are your Senate Democrats in action." Or inaction, as the case may be. This counts as responding "not at all." Get ready for weak, but ineffective, responses later to show they have a pulse.

Why This Matters

This matters for two reasons, not just one. First, it's a fairly damning, in my opinion, indication of what to look for from the rump Clinton-Obama leadership team in the Senate. Will they act boldly in the Age of Trump, or just appear to? Jury's out, but it doesn't look promising.

And second, as Clinton, Obama and every institutional Democrat with a voice and a microphone reminded us constantly during the campaign — The Supreme Court Matters. But enough to do anything about, or or anything effective? Apparently not, despite the campaign season hysterics.

Remember the rule: The role of money in politics is to neuter Democrats and enable Republicans. I'm afraid we're about to see a string of examples of this, starting with the one just cited.

GP
 

Can Powerful, Avaricious Multimillionaires & Billionaires Be Forced To Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxes Again?

The White House has been releasing a series of ghastly trial balloons about what el presidente plans to say today. From cutting back on COLAs to raising the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare, they've been shot down one by one by panic-stricken Democrats who have to face the voters in 2012 and by Democratic support groups... not to mention the increasingly angry folks in the video above.

Then, on Saturday, there was-- seemingly out of nowhere-- a good trial balloon. Though it's not a renewed push for Medicare-for-all or even a public option, it's still a trial balloon worthy of someone who did, after all, get elected as Democrat, promising Hope and Change. Republicans are already aiming every bit of artillery they possess skyward but apparently the president intends to announce a minimum tax on people making over a million dollars a year, as part of a $3 trillion deficit reduction package.

Mr. Obama will call for $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy, through a combination of closing loopholes and limiting the amount that high earners can deduct. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. Administration officials said that the Medicare cuts would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.

Senior administration officials who briefed reporters on some of the details of Mr. Obama’s proposal said that the plan also counts a savings of $1.1 trillion from the ending of the American combat mission in Iraq and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

In laying out his proposal, aides said, Mr. Obama will expressly promise to veto any legislation that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include revenue increases in the form of tax increases on the wealthy.

Allow me a tangent. I grew up in a family with modest means. I got through a subsidized state university with loans, by working and by living close to the bone. I never really had any idea I was poor, although by the time I was in college I started to notice that some of my schoolmates were rich. Eventually I built a small business, but I never actually connected it to getting rich... just to building a business and succeeding at the task at hand. The task at hand was never really self-enrichment... it was breaking records and developing artists. CBS bought the company. I put my share of the money in the bank and it didn't alter my lifestyle in the slightest. I lived in a "dangerous ghetto" and drove an ancient Mercury Comet. Then I wound up at Warner Bros, as an executive. My starting salary was $90,000 (+ perks). It was more money than I had ever made and more money than my father had ever made. I felt rich.

My two best friends at the company had been there much longer and one was making over a million a year and the other around a quarter million. Million dollar man was my direct supervisor and he was one miserable, dissatisfied multimillionaire, who felt he had been dealt a bad hand. I don't know exactly what he was worth at the time-- $30 million, $50 million?-- but he had worked hard for it and he was lucky and he "deserved" what he had. He always compared himself to much richer colleagues, like David Geffen, and was always unhappy and over-spending and broke and cheating. He used to borrow money from me. Quarter million dollar man, who was closer in age to me and less out of his mind, said to me, "One day we're going to break out of this cycle of poverty." I realized that by moving down to Los Angeles, or at least into "The Business" in Los Angeles, I had entered a mad house and had to be very careful or I'd catch what was afflicting so many of them.

I was lucky too and I was made president of the company one day. And that brings us to President Obama's proposal for those making over a million dollars a year. I was and I never begrudged paying my taxes, which, unlike the 1,400 millionaires last year who paid zero income taxes, were hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. My attitude was always, "Wow, I'm so blessed to be making so much money, I'm lucky to be paying this much in taxes." It's certainly not a Republican perspective.

Co-opting the rhetoric of the labor movement to describe America's corporations-- which are currently experiencing record profits-- Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) accused US government policies of forcing "job creators" to go "on strike."

Striking, meaning to refuse to work, is a tool used by labor activists in fights with business owners, and sometimes exercised across whole industries or even nationally, to coerce concessions from capitalists and the governments which support them.

A "strike by capital" was also how Republicans and their Big Business allies greeted President Roosevelt's New Deal-- that and the attempted coup financed by the DuPonts and some of the biggest names in American plutocracy. This weekend Boehner, Ryan and Romney were already running hither and thither claiming the wealthy already pay too much. I can't wait to see if Obama actually goes through with it today and what hideous caveats and loopholes we find in it if he does.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

...The Obama proposal has little chance of becoming law unless Republican lawmakers bend. But by focusing on the wealthiest Americans, the president is sharpening the contrast between Republicans and Democrats with a theme he can carry into his bid for re-election in 2012.

It could also reassure Democrats who have feared that Mr. Obama would agree to changes in programs like Medicare without forcing Republicans to compromise on taxes.

The administration wants such a tax to replace the alternative minimum tax, which was created decades ago to make sure the richest taxpayers with plentiful deductions and credits did not avoid income taxes, but which now hits millions of Americans who are considered upper middle class. Mr. Obama has said that many average Americans could see a tax cut if the system is overhauled, since ending many tax breaks would allow for lower rates while raising more revenues from the wealthiest.

The millionaires’ tax is among several changes Mr. Obama will propose in urging Congress to overhaul the federal income tax code next year, both to raise revenues for reducing deficits and to make the tax system simpler and fairer, said the administration officials, who agreed to speak in advance of the president’s announcement on the condition of anonymity.

The millionaires’ rate would affect only 0.3 percent of taxpayers, they said. That would be fewer than 450,000; 144 million returns were filed for 2010.

Mr. Obama’s proposal comes a month after Mr. Buffett began reviving his longstanding objection that he and “my megarich friends” pay a significantly lower percentage of their income in federal taxes-- income and payroll taxes-- than everyone else, thanks to the tax code’s favoritism toward the rich, and especially toward investors like him.

“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress,” he wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times, a complaint he has repeated in talks and media interviews since. “It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

Mr. Obama has been citing Mr. Buffett as he promotes his $447 billion job-creation plan. He proposes to offset the cost of that plan and reduce future budget deficits through higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations after 2013, when the economy will presumably be healthier.

Mr. Obama’s proposed Buffett Rule puts a new spin on that pitch, as he tries to put Republicans in Congress and in the presidential race on the defensive for their rigid stand against higher taxes.

And speaking of the Buffett rule, this video ad from Patriotic Millionaires just came in as we were about the publish this morning. It singles out a handful of reactionary millionaires in Congress who are die-hard fanatics against raising taxes on millionaires-- Paul Ryan (R-WI), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) John Boehner (R-OH), Eric Cantor (R-VA), John McCain (R-AZ), Ron Paul (R-TX)... “Millionaire Politicians who want to GIVE THEMSELVES A TAX CUT are hardly trust-worthy stewards of our country’s future. Their continued support of policies that advance their own economic self-interests is un-American,” said Erica Payne, spokesman for the Patriotic Millionaires and founder of the Agenda Project.

“Republicans call this modest proposal "class warfare"? It's never been more clear that they are in thrall to their wealthy patrons and have sold working people down the river," said David DesJardins, former Google engineer and Patriotic Millionaire.

“The Republican Party's absolute refusal to raise taxes is, in effect, a refusal to govern. Taxation has been a fundamental instrument of government virtually from the beginning of history, and to say you can't or won't use it is like refusing to use the army. It disqualifies you from holding high office,” Henry Bean, Producer and Patriotic Millionaire.

“It's time for millionaires-- LIKE ME AND THE ONES IN CONGRESS-- to step up to the plate and start paying their fair share, " said Guy Saperstein, lawyer and Patriotic Millionaire.

“I find it immoral that we can ask our soldiers especially our national guard members to help defend our country over and over and yet the republicans refuse to believe our country can't ask our wealthiest citizens to help get people jobs and pay for these wars rather than give the bill to our grandchildren. The idea that asking our wealthiest citizens to help will negatively affect the economy is ridiculous and unfair to our brave soldiers some of whom have sacrificed their lives for this country,” says Jeff Gural, Chairman, Newmark Knight and Patriotic Millionaire.

Blue America Welcomes... Kagro X

This morning's Blue America guest at Crooks and Liars isn't a candidate for office. It's Kagro X, one of the foremost legislative minds in the blogosphere. Blue America is joining with CREDO and Progressive Congress to create a fellowship program that will allow him to continue helping progressives on the Hill figure out how to reform the filibuster. Kagro will be over at C&L at 11am (PT/2pm ET) answering questions and blogging about the filibuster. Please join us. Meanwhile, I want to ask you to sign the CREDO petition, which will be going to Chuck Schumer and Robert Bennett, the chairman and the ranking Republican on the Senate Rules Committee. Kagro explains why signing it is so important below.

I'm sure Kagro will also explain this at C&L today but many people think that somehow preserving the filibuster will protect Democrats later. It's baloney. The first thing the Republicans will do if they gain control is jettison Rule 22 so that they can do whatever they want. At this point were just crippling ourselves and its time to move forward. Start by listening to what Barney Frank said is the most important thing progressives have to do to move forward:



Reforming the Filibuster, with the Progressive Congress Action Fund Fellowship Program

-by Kagro X

No one has to tell you at this point that Republican obstructionism in the Senate is probably the biggest impediment to the ability of Congressional Democrats to implement a progressive agenda. And I'm equally sure nobody has to tell you that the filibuster has been the single most frustrating weapon in the arsenal of the Republican obstructionists.
 
So it won't surprise you that when Congressman Barney Frank was asked recently what ought to top the progressive agenda going forward, he replied that it ought to be getting every Democratic Senator to sign on to restricting the filibuster, as you can see in the video above. 

As you know, the filibuster and the need it creates to find 60 votes in the Senate is the reason we don't have a public option in the new health care bill. It's why we haven't addressed climate change.  It's why a significant percentage of appointments to the Obama administration remain vacant, crippling the administration's ability to do its job. 

The clamor for change-- and the American people's frustration with its pace-- is just starting to get traction inside the Capitol, where newer Senators like New Mexico's Tom Udall are pointing out that despite the Constitution clearly giving each house of Congress the right to adopt its own rules of procedure, just a handful of today's Senators have ever had the opportunity to actually vote on whether they want to continue working under the filibuster rule.
 
The opportunity to change that is coming, and momentum for it is growing every day. Senate precedents say that the beginning of each new Congress, the Senate has the opportunity to adopt or amend its rules by a simple majority vote, so January 2011 could be a real turning point. But organizing for such a big change needs to start now. 

That's why I've been pushing for the launch of an organized campaign toward this end, and why I'm so pleased that the Progressive Caucus Action Fund has created a fellowship program to help support efforts like this one and others aimed at bringing the netroots into a working partnership in moving our the progressive agenda forward in Congress. 

Over the years, I've built something of a niche expertise in unraveling the mysteries of Congressional procedure for netroots activists and the wider blog-reading audience. And lately, we've been seeing the positive effects of informing an engaged community about the ins and outs of the rules and other mechanisms that make the Hill tick. The public option, declared dead at least half a dozen times over the past year, survived as a possibility nearly up to the last minute of the health care reform debate because we identified the pressure points that kept it alive. “Citizen whip counts” driven by a new and better understanding of voting dynamics helped apply needed pressure for passage of last year's stimulus package. And when we discussed how the decision on renewing Joe Lieberman's committee gavel would go through the previously obscure Senate Democratic Steering & Outreach Committee, members heard in unprecedented numbers from thousands of you on a process normally conducted entirely behind closed doors. 

We'd all agree that an informed citizenry is an empowered one. It's something we accept as an axiom when it comes to knowledge of the issues. But the same and more goes for Congressional procedure. It's something that's generally been shrouded in mystery for most people (and don't think Members of Congress don't sometimes like it that way), yet its critical not only to understanding why things on the Hill happen the way they do, but also to explaining why high-priced professional lobbyists tend to get their way so much more often than the millions of ordinary citizens who tend to want… something different. Getting what we want means understanding how to get it. Not just in terms of emails and phone calls, but in the mechanical terms of draft legislation, committee markups and floor procedure. There's a good reason why Congressman John Dingell of Michigan-- the longest-serving Member in the history of the House of Representatives-- once said, “Let me control the procedure and I'll never lose.”
 
So that's what this is all about. More than just the filibuster, though that's where we're starting. If you choose, we can make this a long-running project aimed at increasing our leverage in Congress over a broad range of issues. Not just with my help, but potentially with the help of many more dedicated activists who can put their time, energy and expertise to work for all of us. 

What are we asking you to do? For starters, how about joining in our filibuster reform petition effort, sponsored by CREDO Action? By sigining on, you're also signing up to receive CREDO Action's alert e-mails, so you can stay on top of the latest hot topics that need your attention on the Hill and elsewhere in the government. Is it a list-building exercise? You bet it is. But the good news is that for every name we add to that list, CREDO Action makes a generous donation to the fellowship program. 

And if you're in a position to do more and help us with a direct donation, we've got an ActBlue page set up for that, too. We'll try and make this as transparent as we can. 

So if you felt like you were well-served with good procedural information during the health care reform debate, and want to see our ability to build that kind of knowledge continue to grow, think about pitching in with us and making it happen. I'd appreciate it, and I hope you will too!