Blue Dogs Learned Nothing From The Ass-Kicking They Got In November-- North Dakota

Prairie populists needed... badly

Long time Blue Dog Earl Pomeroy, first elected to North Dakota's sole House seat in 1992, was decisively defeated in November. Pomeroy got 106,371 votes (45%) while state Rep Rick Berg took 129,586 votes (55%). In 2004 Pomeroy won with 185,130 votes (60%). In the 2006 midterm he won with a much increased share (66%) and 142,121 votes. In 2008, with Obama only taking 45% of the vote (141,278) to McCain's 53% (168,601), Pomeroy significantly outperformed them both, with 194,577 votes (62%). But look how his votes fell off this last November. Close to half his voters from 2008 just didn't come to the polls, while Republican votes actually increased. Pomeroy was swept away in the Republican tide that swept the country.

He outspent Berg handily-- $3,671,790 to $2,023,838. Although he voted far more conservatively than most Democrats, he wasn't an extreme right Blue Dog in a league with virtual Republicans like Bobby Bright, Travis Childers and Gene Taylor. He did support, for example, passage of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. But when it came to standing behind the populist values and principles that distinguish the Democratic Party from the Republicans, he fell down badly.

Yesterday Senator Kent Conrad announced he would not be running for reelection next year-- as Byron Dorgan had done last year. Democrats didn't even bother seriously contesting the seat, which went to Governor John Hoeven 181,409 (76%) to 52,854 (22%) against sacrificial lamb state Senator Tracy Potter. With Democrats in serious danger of losing control of the Senate, they can't afford to just give away seats again.

Mr. Conrad's departure after next year will make it harder for Democrats to hold his seat in what could be a tough election season for the party. Democrats will defend 23 Senate seats, many of them in conservative or swing states such as North Dakota, Missouri and Nebraska. Republicans are defending only 10 Senate seats in 2012.

So far, the only Republican to announce retirement plans is Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, whose seat is considered easy for the GOP to retain. The GOP picked up six Senate seats in November, leaving Democrats with 53 seats, to 47 for the Republicans.

...The state has become an emblem of Democrats' weakened position in the upper Midwest. North Dakota's three-person delegation had been held entirely by Democrats since 1992. Like South Dakota and Montana, the state has often displayed a kind of prairie populism and a centrist streak in its social attitudes that has allowed Democrats to win congressional seats even while voters favored Republicans in presidential elections.

Republicans welcomed Mr. Conrad's announcement. "Senate Republicans fully expected North Dakota to be a major battleground in 2012, but Sen. Conrad's retirement dramatically reshapes this race in the Republicans' favor,'' said Brian Walsh, communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "We believe this race represents one of the strongest pickup opportunities for Senate Republicans this cycle and will invest whatever resources are necessary to win next year."

Democrats may now look for a centrist candidate to stay competitive in the race to succeed Mr. Conrad. Names offered include Mr. Pomeroy, former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp and her brother Joel Heitkamp, a former state senator, local activist and radio personality, among others.

"There are a number of potential Democratic candidates who could make this race competitive, while we expect to see a contentious primary battle on the Republican side," the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said in a statement.

Hoping for a contentious Republican primary is the main Democratic strategy for winning in both North Dakota and in Texas, where Kay Bailey Hutchinson's retirement will create another open seat in another deeply red state where Democrats have forgotten how to campaign as Democrats. Pomeroy, who will probably be handed the nomination, is not just a Blue Dog, but a K Street lobbyist. He and his chief of staff, Bob Siggins, went to work for Alston and Bird's health policy group, a lobbying division of the big-time DC law firm.

Democrat Earl Pomeroy's vote for the health care bill may have cost him his seat in Congress, but it also earned him a job on K Street.

Last week, on the last day of Pomeroy's 18-year stint as North Dakota's at-large congressman, K Street giant Alston & Bird announced that he was joining the firm's health care lobbying division.

The congressman is merely the latest lucky winner in the Great Health Care Cash-out, a tawdry spectacle that further sullies Washington's lobbying culture, and also demolishes President Obama's insistent claims that his health care push was a battle against the special interests. In truth, the bill's subsidies and mandates are a boondoggle for the powerful drug industry and were received warmly by hospitals and the doctors lobby.

Congressmen rarely return to their home districts after leaving office, and with Pomeroy there was never a doubt he was headed to K Street. One of the biggest benefactors-- and beneficiaries-- of Pomeroy's congressional career was the life insurance industry, and sure enough, the American Council of Life Insurers twice (in 2003 and in early 2010) considered hiring Pomeroy as president, according to reports by the Associated Press and Roll Call.

One reason Pomeroy was considering retirement in his recent term was the health care debate. He knew the measure would be a loser in North Dakota, and a yea vote could sink him. Sure enough, his opponent, Rick Berg, hammered him for twice backing Obamacare. While Pomeroy knew Dakotans wouldn't like his vote, he also knew that it would play well with powerful special interests. Responding to Berg, a Pomeroy ad name-checked the lobbies backing him: AARP, the North Dakota Hospital Association, the American Nurses Association, and the North Dakota Public Health Association. Which constituency was he appealing to?

Pomeroy's No. 3 source of funds in the campaign was the American Medical Association. America's Health Insurance Plans-- the lobby for health insurers-- gave the maximum $10,000 to Pomeroy, most of that coming after his vote for the health care bill. The political action committees for Aetna, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-Aventis and WellPoint all funded Pomeroy's run.

Pomeroy will still get checks from these companies, but rather than deposit them in his campaign coffers, he'll deposit them in his personal bank account. Alston & Bird's health care clients include the Massachusetts Hospital Association, Aetna and HealthSouth.

Ethics law prohibits Pomeroy from lobbying the House for two years, but he can get started by lobbying the Senate and executive-branch agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services. You can imagine the phone call, "Secretary Sebelius, we haven't spoken since you asked me to support your health care bill, but I was hoping you had time to hear Merck's perspective on the bill's implementation."

Blue Dogs... Ugghhh

Today 3 of the slimiest and most corporate-oriented, anti-family Blue Dogs-- Dixiecrats Mike Ross (AR), Mike McIntyre (NC) and Dan Boren (OK)-- joined with all the Republicans in voting to repeal the health care bill, further muddying the waters and confusing the voters. Look how quickly Republicans jumped on this to try to persuade voters that it isn't only their party working against ordinary working families:

Unlike Bayh And Conrad, Not Every Democrat Thinks The Message From Last Tuesday Is To Surrender To The GOP & Dismantle Social Security

Republican reactionaries and Democratic conservatives should keep in mind what happened to her and her ilk when they pushed people too far

I'm pretty sure that the very first Senate candidate ever endorsed by Blue America was then-Congressman Ben Cardin in 2005 when he was running for the Maryland seat Paul Sarbanes was retiring from. Cardin struck me as a levelheaded and committed progressive and 738 Blue America supporters donated a modest $8,128 towards his 2006 election. At the time, I wrote:

If you read Ben Cardin's record as a congressman you'll understand how important it is to get a guy like this into the U.S. Senate. But it was really meeting Ben in person and seeing what he was like as a human being that inspired me to start an Act Blue page for him. The Republicans are targeting Maryland as a place where they can make an inroad. I think they're barking up the wrong tree. If Ben has the money to get his message out, he'll be sworn in as a U.S. Senator next January, where he'll be a voice of conscience in a time when Bush/DeLay/Frist/Abramoff ethics and Robertson/Falwell/Dobson/Phelps morals have replaced genuine American values.

And Cardin hasn't been a disappointment. In the current Congress, his ProgressivePunch score has been a robust 96.72, even more progressive than Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley or Barbara Boxer!

Yesterday Senator Cardin publicly ruminated about the meaning he was drawing about the message from last week's electoral drubbing his party took at the polls (though, basically, not in his state, where normal Democrats were all successful and -- at least federally-- the only casualty was an especially bad Blue Dog, Frank Kratovil, one of the extremely conservative members of that caucus who voted with the Republicans far more than with the Democrats on contentious, substantive issues). Cardin's conclusions are at odds with the conclusions of many conservatives in the media, in the Senate, in his own party.

"Now that we’ve had a little time to digest the results of Tuesday’s mid-term elections," he began, "its story is glaringly clear: American voters are angry and frustrated. Too many Americans are still out of work; too many American families are still losing their homes; and too many small businesses are struggling to survive in this tough economy. Voters are angry that we have not done more to help working families keep faith in the American Dream." Exactly right. Too many Democrats have strayed in the direction of Frank Kratovil and the Blue Dogs. The tragedy isn't that Kratovil and 29 other Blue Dogs were obliterated-- they earned that-- but that because they managed to muddy (and sully) the Democratic brand in the mind of so many voters, several Democrats who have been champions of working families-- Members like Carol Shea-Porter, Mary Jo Kilroy, John Hall, Phil Hare and, more than anyone, Alan Grayson-- were also swept away with the garbage like Bobby Bright, Travis Childers, Gene Taylor, Walt Minnick, Glenn Nye, etc.

The election is now over and we all have a responsibility to govern together. As a public servant in the Maryland General Assembly, U.S. House of Representatives, and now the U.S. Senate, I have experience crossing party lines in order to do what is right for Maryland and America.  At the same time, I will stand up for what I believe in and disagree when necessary.

Apparently Senators Conrad and Bayh, two far more conservative and corporately-inclined members of the Democratic caucus, didn't take away the same message as Senator Cardin. Bayh and Conrad see the drubbing the exact same way Republicans do-- as an opportunity to further concentrate the nation's wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. They both see an opportunity to begin the process of dismantling Social Security. This what happens when Big Business owns all of one party and a substantial piece-- the Bayh-Conrad piece-- of the other. Sam Stein tackled the thorny-- or electrifying-- question Tuesday evening at HuffPo:

In what may be the first major move of the forthcoming Social Security debate, the Peterson Foundation launched on Tuesday a $20 million TV ad campaign to promote the need for a major discussion on debt and deficit reduction.

...Perhaps the most frightening part of the unveiling, however, is that Peterson-- long a scourge of progressives for having earned hundreds of millions in the hedge fund business while preaching financial sacrifice for others-- has prominent Democrats backing his latest campaign. Appearing alongside him at the Newsuem on Tuesday morning was outgoing Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Budget Committee Chair Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

"People on the left who don't want to touch entitlements, that is just unrealistic," said Conrad. "I would say to my friends on the left it is unrealistic, Medicare and Social Security are headed for insolvency. The idea that nothing has to be done is divorced from reality. On the right, those who say no new revenue, I believe, are also in denial."

"The election a week ago today would have been a lot more edifying if we had more commercials like that then the ones running out there in the various states," Bayh said of the ad campaign. "Very impressive."

If you're a corporate shill dedicated to destroying the middle class. Bayh is thankfully leaving the Senate in January, although I fear he (and his lobbyist wife) won't be disappearing from the political firmament. Conrad, a member of the Cat Food Commission, will still be around tugging the Democrats into more and more Republican Party directions, directions fatal for the Democratic Party, which needs to jettison these conservative ideas and take stock in what their big tent is supposed to actually represent. Along those lines one of the country's most respected economists, Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, sent Conrad a letter which he gave me permission to reprint:

November 9, 2010

The Honorable Kent Conrad
702 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Conrad:

You were quoted as saying at a press conference today:

“People on the left who don't want to touch entitlements, that is just unrealistic. … I would say to my friends on the left it is unrealistic, Medicare and Social Security are headed for insolvency. The idea that nothing has to be done is divorced from reality.”

This struck me as a very peculiar statement for two reasons. First, I literally cannot identify a single person on the left who working on Social Security who has not suggested many ways to close the projected long-term shortfall. The list of items they have put forward has included raising or eliminating the payroll cap, applying estate tax revenue to financing Social Security, and applying the revenue from a financial speculation tax to Social Security.

Many have also suggested phasing in modest increases in payroll taxes at a gradual pace, which would still allow after-tax wage growth to substantially outpace the rate of inflation. As I’m sure you know, polls have consistently shown that payroll tax increases are unpopular, but nonetheless preferred to benefit cuts.

I mention this list of ways to deal with the shortfall because it is simply not honest to claim that people on the left have not put forward suggestions for dealing with the shortfall. You may not
consider these suggestions to be good ones, but that doesn’t mean that they do not exist.

The second reason that your statement is peculiar is that it is quite literally wrong in the case of Social Security. None of us know the future, but if we rely on the Social Security trustees projections the program will be fully solvent until the year 2037. (The Congressional Budget Office projects that it will be fully solvent until 2039.) This means that we certainly can wait before taking any action on the program.

For example, if we waited until 2020, and then implemented a fix comparable in size to the Greenspan Commission’s proposals, then the program would be fully solvent through the rest of the century. In fact, this would be true even if we waited until 2030 to implement the fix.


In short, it is simply not true to claim that we cannot wait to address the program’s projected shortfall. There are reasons why you may think it is better to move quickly, but the reality is that the
projections show that we have the option to wait.

I would be happy to discuss this issue with you further if it would be helpful.

Regards,

Dean Baker
Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Meanwhile, over on the House side, the crap that's left of the Blue Dog Caucus, is running around chasing it's collective tail trying to wreak revenge on Pelosi for... not being Republican enough or something. According to Roll Call the reactionary corporate wing of the House Democratic caucus feels it can best serve its masters by some of these proposals its considering:

• Holding Blue Dog meetings at the same time as Democratic Caucus meetings, under the logic that if Pelosi isn’t going to listen to them, they don’t need to listen to her.

• Taking down a rule during the lame-duck session to express their displeasure with the Speaker and embarrass her on the floor.

• Pushing to make the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee an elected position to weaken the Democratic leader’s power.

• Getting members to sign letters expressing their displeasure at the Speaker and threatening not to run for re-election if she remains.

• Making a push to enforce term limits against Reps. George Miller (Calif.) and Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Pelosi’s closest allies, in their roles as co-chairmen of the Steering and Policy Committee.

• Opening formal negotiations with Republicans on budget cuts or other issues and cutting Pelosi out of the talks.

Please keep in mind that this past cycle, Blue America TV and radio ads were responsible for ridding Congress of the single most reprehensible Blue Dog, Bobby Bright (AL). Our Blue Dog page is still open for business and we promise to work on getting rid of more Blue Dogs in the primary season next year. Please consider giving us a hand.

UPDATE: Finally A Democrat Who Isn't On The Board Of MorganStanley Praises The Cat Food Commission-- Conrad, Of Course

Though not for lack of trying, Erskine Bowles has never been elected to anything, not by real people. But the shameless corporate hack-- Obama's second worst pick for his Cat Food Commission-- was selected for a very lucrative position on the Board of Wall Street financial predators MorganStanley. That Board is his constituency and he is representing their interests with his viciously anti-family proposals. One of the most corporate-oriented Democrats on the commission other than Bowles, is North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad-- and he thinks Democrats should sacrifice their political careers on the alter of concentrating more of the nation's wealth in the hands of his campaign donors. This garbage will wind up on history's trash pile in two years, when his corporate donors abandon him for a teabagger and Democratic voters decide there's no reason to bother to go to the polls.

How Bad An Idea Is Baucus' And Conrad's Substitution Of Coops For A Public Option? And What You Can To About It TODAY!

Well, to start, it isn't really their idea; it's an idea being pushed by the Medical-Industrial Complex, and Baucus and Conrad have been paid a great deal of money to champion the concept, respectively $4,087,094 and $2,200,650. But in case that isn't enough information for you, a nonpartisan analysis by Lewis Krauskopf for Reuters yesterday should fill in plenty of blanks. He starts out by reminding his readers that the "large health insurance companies need not worry about the would-be competition as proposed" in Baucus' Insurance Industry-penned bill since the puny regional coops Baucus, Conrad and their generous donors want "would likely lack the leverage in negotiating rates to strongly compete against established players... [and] they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country."

"If you want do something about the cost problem and you really want to change the competitive nature of the insurance market, you need a public plan," said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that advocates for better healthcare.

Co-ops that are run by their members have long been established in areas of agriculture, electricity and banking. Health co-ops emerged earlier this year as an alternative, and President Barack Obama has signaled an openness to co-ops if Congress cannot agree to back the government option.

..."The question ultimately is whether these co-ops are given strategic and competitive advantage by virtue of government power," [Dan Mendelson, ceo of Avalere Health, a research and strategic advisory firm] said. "I don't think that a local co-op that does not have special pricing power poses a terrible threat to an efficient, well-run health plan."

Baucus' $6 billion in start-up capital could let a plan offer coverage with rock-bottom premiums, posing a serious threat to insurers, said Leerink Swann analyst Jason Gurda.

"If that had gone toward a single plan, that's a decent amount of capital to get a good-sized, competitive company up and running," Gurda said. "But if it's going to be available as grants for a large number of companies around the country, how much is any one existing company going to get? Obviously going to be much, much less."

Gurda echoed several stock analysts in saying the co-ops appeared to pose "very little competitive threat" to publicly traded companies, which include WellPoint (WLP.N), Aetna (AET.N) and Cigna (CI.N).

Today progressive activists all over the country are taking to the streets to demonstrate on behalf of meaningful health care reform in a series of "Sick of It" rallies. The targets: big Insurance companies and the Medical-Industrial Complex who have together spent billions of dollars lobbying and bribing members of Congress to defeat real reform. Here in Los Angeles, people are meeting at 11 AM in front of Anthem Blue Cross, at 801 S. Figueroa Street. There is also a rally at 11:30 AM at Anthem Blue Cross in Pomona, which is at 3179 W. Temple Avenue. The other L.A.-area rally is in Woodland Hills, at a virtual ground zero for the country's biggest medical insurance companies. Within one block are the headquarter offices for BC/BS, Anthem, WellPoint, and Health Net. People will be gathering at 11AM at the intersection of Oxnard and Ownesmouth.

You can search for the rally nearest you at the MoveOn website. Closer to the center of the country there's a rally (11:30AM) in front of CIGNA at 7400 W 110th Street, Overland Park, Kansas. And in Little Rock, where Blanche Lincoln is doing so much to damage the chance for health care reform, a determined crew of activists will meet at noon at the State Capitol Complex, 1401 Capitol Street. They will be visiting United Health Care and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Is It Too Late To Rescue Health Insurance Reform From The Corporate Shills In Washington?

Listen to Obama being applauded when he was running for office; it can't be denied that the prolonged applause wasn't sparked by his charisma and charm but by his words: "I happen to be a supporter of single player universal health care." Perhaps he believes that his cult of personality is bigger than the ideas that propelled his popularity. If he does, he's in for quite the shock.

It was lovely when Bill Clinton rescued those two American journalists from the clutches of North Korea and when last week 4 European and 2 Kenyan hostages were released after 9 miserable months in Somalia, but the insurance companies have been holding health care hostage for decades, not months. And it was nice when President Obama seemed to promise a crowd in Montana a couple days ago that he intends to rescue the long-held hostage and succeed where Democratic presidents since FDR and Harry Truman have failed.

There was a lot to recommend Rick Perlstein's piece in today's Washington Post, In America, Crazy Is A Preexisting Condition about birthers, town hall hecklers and the return of right-wing rage. But one section that has really stood out in my mind implies a comparison between Obama and his compromised administration and an earlier Democratic president who faced mobs of hysterical white conservatives and racists screeching-- and fully believing their own screeches-- how passing Civil Rights legislation would lead to the enslavement of the white race: "Good thing our leaders weren't so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill-- because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites... The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now, it's being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest."

That and lots of suckers eating up the Fox/Hate Talk Radio disseminated Insurance Industry distortions and then running wild with them. Even the fake "Christians" have an angle.

When Obama passed over credible health care reform advocate Howard Dean and picked a suspiciously conservative Democrat, Kathleen Sebelius, to be his Health Secretary-- after his first choice, a blatant corporate shill tainted by years of K Street connections, was proven to be too corrupt for confirmation-- many people realized the game was being thrown. This morning Ms. Sebelius confirmed that they were correct in an interview on CNN's State of the Union.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says Obama still believes there should be "choice and competition" in the health insurance market-- but that a public option is "not the essential element."

Obama has been pressing for the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation's nearly 50 million uninsured. But he had not seen a not-for-profit co-op as sufficient to offer consumers choice and competition that would bring down the costs of private insurance.

With half the teabaggers claiming they've personally lived in Canada or the U.K. and can absolutely attest to the horrors of health care in those downtrodden countries, today's Independent weighed in from the UK. They recognize that the teabaggers aren't about debate but about shilling and psychosis.

Although the Americans spend more on medicine than any nation on earth, there are an estimated 50 million with no health insurance at all. Many of those who have jobs can't afford coverage, and even those with standard policies often find it doesn't cover commonplace procedures. California's unemployed-- who rely on Medicaid-- had their dental care axed last month.

...President Obama's healthcare plans had been a central plank of his first-term programme, but his reform package has taken a battering at the hands of Republican opponents in recent weeks. As the Democrats have failed to coalesce around a single, straightforward proposal, their rivals have seized on public hesitancy over "socialised medicine" and now the chance of far-reaching reform is in doubt.

Most damaging of all has been the tide of vociferous right-wing opponents whipping up scepticism at town hall meetings that were supposed to soothe doubts. In Pennsylvania this week, Senator Arlen Specter was greeted by a crowd of 1,000 at a venue designed to accommodate only 250, and of the 30 selected speakers at the event, almost all were hostile.

Healthcare compared

Health spending as a share of GDP
US 16%
UK 8.4%

Public spending on healthcare (% of total spending on healthcare)
US 45%
UK 82%

Health spending per head
US $7,290
UK $2,992

Practising physicians (per 1,000 people)
US 2.4
UK 2.5

Nurses (per 1,000 people)
US 10.6
UK 10.0

Acute care hospital beds (per 1,000 people)
US 2.7
UK 2.6

Life expectancy:
US 78
UK 80

Infant mortality (per 1,000 live births)
US 6.7
UK 4.8

Meanwhile over at the Republican Party propaganda station, Kent Conrad (DLC-ND), a notorious insurance industry whore ($828,787) further bashed the public option, using lobbyist-prepared GOP talking points. “Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the U.S. Senate for the public option, there never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit is, I think, a wasted effort.”

Not all Democrats have given in yet, though. Democrats more concerned with ordinary working families than with the viability of the utterly useless and no-value-added insurance companies have taken a pledge to vote against any health care bill Insurance Business "allies" try shoving down Congress' throat. With sleazy ex-congressional wheeler dealers Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, and Bill Tauzin, now head of Big Pharma's lobby, working together with some of the insurance CEOs to do a Bush-like deal to enrich the insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants at the expense of the public, it will be the ultimate act of political courage for the Progressive Caucus to stand up and just say no. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) says progressives aren't about to give in to Emanuel's threats. "We signed a pledge to reject any plan that doesn't include a robust public option, and this plan doesn't have a robust public option."

And it isn't just Nadler who's standing up against the Insurance Industry, Big Pharma and the corrupt wheeler dealers who would sacrifice the HOPE of the millions of Americans who believed in Barack Obama when he was running for president. 57 dedicated progressives signed a letter to Nancy Pelosi pledging to oppose any health care legislation that doesn't include a robust public option now being bad-mouthed by Emanuel's team inside and outside the administration. 18 members have also signed onto the FDL pledge to only support a bill that includes a public option. This afternoon Jane explained the strategy of how this could work to prevent the Insurance Industry from running away with the reform package. These are the heroes of American families who refuse to be cowed by corporate America or by the political hacks who enable corporate America (phone numbers are included so you can call and say thanks; they deserve a thanks):

First, the members who signed the letter to Speaker Pelosi:

Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)- 202-225-4811
Corrine Brown (D-FL)- 202-225-0123
Michael Capuano (D-MA)- 202-225-5111
André Carson (D-IN)- 202-225-4011
Judy Chu (D-CA)- 202-225-5467
Yvette Clarke (D-NY)- 202-225-6231
William “Lacy” Clay (D-MO)- 202-225-2406
John Conyers (D-MI)- 202-225-5126
Elijah Cummings (D-MD)- 202-225-4741
Bill Delahunt (D-MA)- 202-225-3111
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)- 202-225- 4865
Donna Edwards (D-MD)- 202-225-8699
Keith Ellison (D-MN)- 202-225-4755
Sam Farr (D-CA)- 202-225-2861
Chaka Fattah (D-PA)- 202-225-4001
Bob Filner (D-CA)- 202-225-8045
Marcia Fudge (D-OH1)- 202-225-7032
Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ)- 202-225-2435
Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)- 202-225-8203
Phil Hare (D-IL)- 202-225-5905
Alcee Hastings (D-FL)- 202-225-1313
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)- 202-225-6335
Mazie Hirono (D-HI)- 202-225-4906
Michael Honda (D-CA)- 202-225-2631
Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)- 202-225-3816
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)- 202-225-8885
Hank Johnson (D-GA)- 202-225-1605
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)- 202-225-4146
Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI)- 202-225-2261
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)- 202-225-5871
Barbara Lee (D-CA)- 202-225-2661
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)- 202-225-3816
Eric Massa (D-NY)- 202-225-3161
Jim McDermott (D-WA)- 202-225-3106
James McGovern (D-MA)- 202-225-6101
Gwen Moore (D-WI)- 202-225-4572
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)- 202-225-5635
Grace Napolitano (D-CA)- 202-225-5256
John Olver (D-MA)- 202-225-5335
Bill Pascrell (D-NJ)- 202-225-5751
Donald Payne (D-NJ)- 202-225-3436
Chellie Pingree (D-ME)- 202-225-6116
Laura Richarson (D-CA)- 202-225-7924
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)- 202-225-1766
Linda Sánchez (D-CA)- 202-225-6676
José Serrano (D-NY)- 202-225-4361
Albio Sires (D-NJ)- 202-225-7919
Jackie Speier (D-CA)- 202-225-3531
Pete Stark (D-CA)- 202-225-5065
Bennie Thompson (D-MS)- 202-225-5876
John Tierney (D-MA)- 202-225-8020
Ed Towns (D-NY)- 202-225-5936
Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)- 202-225-2361
Maxine Waters (D-CA)- 202-225-2201
Diane Watson (D-CA)- 202-225-7084
Mel Watt (D-NC)- 202-225-1510
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)- 202-225-5161

And these are the members who are credibly onboard with the FDL Pledge:

Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)- 202-225-4535
Pete DeFazio (D-OR)- 202-225-6416
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)- 202-225- 4865
Donna Edwards (D-MD)- 202-225-8699
Keith Ellison (D-MN)- 202-225-4755
Bob Filner (D-CA)- 202-225-8045
Barney Frank (D-MA)- 202-225-5931
Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ)- 202-225-2435
Phil Hare (D-IL)- 202-225-5905
Rush Holt (D-NJ)- 202-225-5801
Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- 202-225-7944
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)- 202-225-5635
Chellie Pingree (D-ME)- 202-225-6116
Maxine Waters (D-CA)- 202-225-2201
Robert Wexler (D-FL)-202-225-3001
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)- 202-225-5161
John Yarmuth (D-KY)- 202-225-5401

Another way to say thanks might be to stop by a brand new ActBlue page: Standing Up For The Public Option and leaving a little something for the members you want to thank.


Insurance Industry Still Holding Health Care Reform Hostage

But Jim Webb (D-VA) persuaded the Myanmar dictatorship to free John Yettaw, an American being held there. Something tells me FDR and a more robust kind of Democrat would have freed health care reform by now as well. Obama's a big disappointment. "Better than Bush or McCain" isn't enough, not even close.

Democrats Indicate A Pulse-- Some Will Not Be Rubber Stamps For Obama When He Leans Too Far Towards Bad Republican Ideas

Obama and Conrad

With extreme right wing loons demanding that "their" congressional delegates adopt their own 100% obstruct-obstruct-obstruct posture towards Obama, Limbaugh and other Republican propaganda agents are already claiming the impending Bush-GOP Depression is Obama's fault-- just as they always claimed that FDR caused the Great Depression. The latest from the Bush Economic Miracle: a 7.2% unemployment rate (highest in 16 years), spiraling out of control as the effects of Republican economic policies settle in. Another 524,000 jobs were lost in December, a number likely to be revised to over 600,000 in a few weeks. Total job losses for 2008 is 2.6 million. That's conservative economic and financial policy in action.

Now today's Obamacrats are apparently going to try and Hooverize President Bush in an effort to shield themselves from the potential political fallout of a prolonged recession. It will take years to fix the American economy, Obama says, and years of trillion-dollar budget deficits to do it. And everyday it seems that Team Obama tries to lower economic expectations, such as bearishly predicting that unemployment would hit double-digits.

The not-so-subtle message in the middle of all these pessimistic prognostications: When ya'll go to vote in 2010 and 2012 and a) unemployment is still as high as it's been in decades, b) income growth is sluggish at best, c) the budget deficit is running at a trillion bucks a year, and d) stock prices remain stubbornly low-- hey, don't blame us, you can't rebuild Rome in a day or even in a first term. Remember, Bush really left us a mess.

Sounds reasonable, right? Not to the dogmatic right. They're already brainwashing the easily brainwashed and brain-dead who make up what's left of the Republican Party base. Crackpot wingnut James Pethokoukis asks "how can Obama avoid taking responsibility when he will be so actively meddling in the economy? It will be his decision to forego deep and permanent new tax cuts, his decision to not extend the Bush tax cuts, his decision on how to spend the remaining $350 billion in TARP money, his decision to quasi-nationalize healthcare, his decision to push a cap-and-trade carbon emission program and his decision to spend hundreds of billions on a 'green' industrial policy. It might even be his decision to try and reunionize the American laborforce. Obama will 'own' the battered economy, perhaps almost literally, given Uncle Sam's bailout binge."

The Republican Party has proven, once again, what their sick, selfish ideology does when given a free rein. Eight years of Bush and even more years of GOP domination of Congress has driven the country to the brink of disaster. As Ken pointed out so eloquently yesterday, it's time for the grownups to take over and for wingnut obstructionists to shut the hell up.

I fear that Obama's obsession with compromise is the wrong way to proceed. In the name of some kind of unattainable bipartisan consensus he is rolling over of virtually everything that comes up. Fortunately we are starting to hear rumblings from the committed defenders of working families that Obama show some backbone in dealing with the Republican obstructionists. Today, for example, Speaker Pelosi urged him to repeal Bush's economy-crippling tax cuts for the wealthy.

Pelosi supports Obama's push to include $300 billion in middle-class tax relief but she has long been a critic of Bush's cuts for families making over $250,000 a year.

Obama said he would get rid of the cuts during his campaign, but has softened his stance in recently weeks, saying the dire state of the economy could force him to abandon the idea of quickly repealing them, for fear of worsening the contraction.

Earlier on Thursday, the speaker told reporters the Bush cuts were "the biggest contributor to the budget deficit" and said the threshhold for a prospective House repeal would be in the "$250,000 to $300,000 [family income] range."

And on the Senate side, it looks like populist champion Kent Conrad is also going to hold Obama's feet to the fire when he leans over too far in placating the far right idiots who authored the nation's financial catastrophe. "[S]enators emerging from a private meeting of the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday said that tax portion of Obama's stimulus plan is unworkable. They were especially critical of a proposed $3,000 tax credit for companies that hire or retrain workers. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota described it as 'misdirected.'" Conrad is correct in pointing out that all these tax cuts for businesses will do more harm than good for the economy.

"I don’t think it works,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), a member of the Finance panel and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “I don’t think it will give much lift to the economy.

“If someone offers you several thousands of dollars in tax credits when your product is not selling, are you going to hire someone?” Conrad asked rhetorically.

Obama surprised his colleague earlier this week by floating the idea of combining several hundred billion dollars' worth of tax cuts with the economic stimulus.

Conrad said economists learned from the Great Depression that marginal incentives are not effective “when the economy is falling away from you.”

“People use it to pay debt or to save — that’s human nature,” he said.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), another member of Finance, voiced skepticism.

“I’m not that excited about it,” Kerry said. “The creation of a tax credit for hiring isn’t going to make up for the lack of goods being sold."

Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), another Democrat on the Finance panel, which has primary jurisdiction over the stimulus package, said that infrastructure spending is more important.

“In tough times, people don’t respond that well to marginal changes,” Wyden said.

Conrad, Kerry and Wyden have had far more progressive voting records in the Senate than Obama and have acted as defenders of working families much more frequently. And on another Obama mistake-- his desire to appoint celebrity talking head Sanjay Gupta Surgeon General-- Rep. John Conyers is working to whip up some Democratic opposition to this ridiculous choice. I'm relieved that Democrats don't plan to take on a rubber stamp posture the way Republican members of Congress did with Bush.


UPDATE: OH, GOOD-- OTHERS NOTICED AS WELL

In this morning's NY Times Peter Baker and David Herszenhorn point out that Democrats aren't happy that Obama's bold talk is amounting to some rehashed and discredited Republican nostrums for economic recovery, namely more tax cuts and not enough job creation and infrastructure building. Obama is going to have to learn-- and learn fast-- that playing footsie with Republicans, as though they were men of good will, will only wreck his plans to rescue America from the mess they have made.

“There is only one thing we have got to do in the stimulus, and that is how can we create jobs,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, as he left the meeting. “I am a little concerned by the way that Mr. Summers and others are going at this in that, to me, it still looks like a little more of this trickle-down, if we just put it in at the top, it’s going to trickle down. A number of people in there said, ‘Look, we have got to have programs that actually create jobs and put people to work.’ ”

Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, said lawmakers and the incoming administration had differences over how to focus the huge federal spending in a recovery bill. “Investment, investment, investment has got to be the central focus: energy, roads, bridges, waterways, housing,” he said. “Job creation is Job One.”

Mr. Conrad, who described the meeting as extremely positive, said Mr. Summers ended it by telling the senators, “Message received, loud and clear.”

OK... now let's see what they do with it. Like John Judis I'm worried that Team Obama's actions may not be nearly as bold as candidate Obama's promises. And there is only one way to deal with reactionaries: a steamroller.