A Vote in April on Fast Track & TPP?

How "The Mouse" Sees TPP (source)

by Gaius Publius

A what-to-expect note on TPP. There will be several battles; the first is coming in the Senate Finance Committee, likely in April, with a vote on "Fast Track" enabling legislation. ("Enabling" legislation means Fast Track enables TPP by disabling Congress's ability to debate and amend it.) If Fast Track passes out of committee, it will go to the Senate floor. If it passes the Senate, it will go to the House. If Fast Track passes both houses of Congress, TPP will be introduced. If Fast Track fails at any of these points, TPP will never see the light of day (unless Wikileaks leaks more of it).

Therefore, the first chance we have to kill TPP is to kill Fast Track in the Senate Finance Committee. (To help that effort, see the last few paragraphs below, about Sen. Ron Wyden. Then send him a nice note discussing his re-election.)

The White House Thinks TPP Will Pass

According to this piece in The Hill, the administration thinks Fast Track will succeed in the Finance Committee and Congress as a whole, while left-leaning (pro-worker) forces are pushing Democrats hard to defeat it. The Hill reports this about the administration's view (my emphasis throughout):

An Obama administration official said Wednesday that lawmakers will pass fast-track within the next month.

“We believe that the votes are there to move forward," said Catherine Novelli, undersecretary of State for economic growth, energy and the environment, in Singapore.

"We do expect it to be passed soon, within the next month or so,” she said, according to a Reuters report.

They might be right. There may be enough NAFTA-style (mainly bought) congresspeople in both parties to get Fast Track out of committee and passed on a floor vote in both houses.

Progressives Are Pushing Back Hard

Or maybe not. Left-leaning (populist and pro-worker) groups and all labor unions are opposed. The group Credo is being particularly aggressive in their opposition:

Petition urges Hillary to oppose Obama on trade

Liberal groups are pushing Hillary Clinton to oppose the Obama administration’s ambitious trade agenda and swing momentum their way.

Credo Action unveiled a petition on Thursday calling on the former secretary of State and Democratic presidential front-runner to publicly oppose trade promotion authority (TPA), also known as "fast track," and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

“We can get a huge boost in our fight to stop this secret trade deal, which is being negotiated behind closed doors by the governments of a dozen countries in collusion with corporate interests, if the next leader of the Democratic Party publicly goes on record against fast-track and the TPP now,” the petition says.

Credo argues in the petition that the trade deal is in trouble because of the work of activists who have taken the fight to voters.

Clinton has yet to play her hand on the issues. While she has acknowledged that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — a deal between the U.S., Mexico and Canada that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, ushered through Congress — likely hurt U.S. workers, she has shown no signs of opposing the current agenda.

Actually, Clinton has shown many signs of supporting neo-liberal "free" trade in general.

This is good strategy on Credo's part, since Clinton is front-and-center these days due to her widely expected candidacy announcement (note that there are no ifs in Credo's phrasing, "the next leader of the Democratic party"). She's also front-and-center due to her widely reported ties, in this Warren Wing moment, to Wall Street and Big Money in general. Ultimately the question becomes:

In a Warren moment, does Hillary Clinton support the money or the people?

The question is a sword that cuts two ways; it attempts to force Clinton's hand and also the Senate's. From that mentioned petition:

What does Secretary Clinton really believe on trade? If she wants to be president, she must commit to us that she stands for and with us.

As First Lady, she reportedly supported North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[1]

As a senator, she voted for numerous free trade agreements, but she also voted against giving President George W. Bush Fast Track authority — the same authority Bill Clinton employed during the 1990s to pass NAFTA and that President Obama is now requesting.[2]

As a candidate in 2008, she criticized NAFTA and swore to do things differently.[3] But then, as Secretary of State, she actively helped to pass the very deals she vehemently opposed as a candidate, including the job-killing Korea agreement, and a free trade agreement with Colombia – a country notorious for its horrific labor rights and unionist assassinations.[4] And, she was a vocal promoter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty back in 2011.[5]

As Clinton makes the move towards her near-certain presidential campaign in her pursuit for the nomination of the Democratic Party, now is the time for her make it clear where she stands on a trade deal which has been called "NAFTA on steroids" – for good reason. If Secretary Clinton wants to become President Clinton, she must come out and oppose Fast Track authority for trade deals like the TPP.

That petition is here, by the way. If you want to do a progressive good deed — by pressuring Clinton and money-led senators as well — feel free to lend your name by signing it.

DC Democratic Leaders Want a "Path to Yes"

Mainstream Democrats — and I include "progressive" Nancy Pelosi here (who also supported Social Security benefit cuts) — are still seeking "a path to yes" on TPP. From the same Hill article:

Democratic leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) have said they want to find a way to “yes” on the trade deals.

But first her caucus intends to closely examine whether the TPP is good for U.S. workers.

This is both the problem and the "out," the hoped for "path to yes." Finding a way to declare TPP somehow "good for U.S. workers" is all the ground cover any money-financed Democrat needs to follow the yellow brick road and vote Yes on Fast Track. I'm hearing that Pelosi is not actually in favor of TPP (via private pushback against this earlier article), but vehicles like The Hill keep printing otherwise. If Nancy Pelosi wants to make these articles say something different, I suspect she knows how to do that — tell them to print something different. I'm sure they'd be glad to.

TPP Is the Next Piketty Battle

TPP is the next "Piketty battle" in the war between the Rich and the Rest, and it's a major one. NAFTA involved three countries. TPP, at last report, involves twelve:

Nations whose governments want to sign TPP. Indonesia
is considering it as well. You can see the original
"NAFTA Three" in the upper right. (Click to enlarge.)

The Hill is aware of how critical this fight is (as you should be as well):

Meanwhile, the trade debate is hitting at a critical time for lawmakers up for reelection or chasing a bid for the White House.

Labor unions and other groups opposed to fast-track are pressuring Democrats to bring a halt to the trade agenda or face backlash at the polls.

“I don't think anyone can credibly argue that America's trade policies are accomplishing our key national objectives — whether you point to our chronic current account trade deficits, our unsustainable net international debt, or the broader labor market data on wage stagnation and growing inequality,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a Thursday op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“If we keep at it, this could turn out to be a decent deal for us.”

Does that last sentence, attributed to Trumka, frighten you? It did me until I looked up the source and found his next sentence:

"If we keep at it, this could turn out to be a decent deal for us. But that won't happen with fast track."

On reading the whole source paragraph, it seems Trunka thinks that adding provisions to "fix weak rules of origin that China will exploit" and others to "address climate change and rebalance the pro-Wall Street tilt in the financial services, procurement, and food safety chapters" — that somehow this kind of language will make TPP a good deal.

It won't. Here's how that fantasy of NAFTA-enforced environmental regulations — used to sell NAFTA to the unwary — actually plays out:

After over ten years, it is now evident that in many ways NAFTA’s environmental initiatives were flawed from the outset, sundered by decisive weaknesses within its institutional frameworks and intentionally imprecise mandates. These only compounded the problems of insufficient funding and support for environmental efforts. Several specific shortcomings are particularly noteworthy. First off, in relative terms, NAFTA’s environmental institutions are painfully under funded: the CEC’s original $9 million budget has remained unchanged. Furthermore, the language of the agreement framing the institutions was made intentionally murky. The use of non-binding, toothless phrases like “fostering protection,” underscores the NAEEC’s fundamental lack of regulatory authority. What few rules do exist regarding monetary fines or sanctions are practically dormant, and serve more as a symbolic gesture than as a means of enforcement.

This is the way any progressive-friendly selling points will end up: underfunded, underdefined, unenforced.

But if Trumka wants to make Fast Track his bottom line, he's helping kill TPP for good, environment-protection "mandates" or not. TPP is so toxic that its authors don't want its text to become public until four years after it's signed. That's a toxic treaty. Without Fast Track, TPP is dead.

To which I add only this: Wonderful news; now please help. Those votes are coming soon. You can start with Sen. Ron Wyden, the pro-TPP Democratic gatekeeper (enabler) for "free trade moderates" in the Senate. Why Wyden? See here. Ron Wyden's contact information is here:

Senator Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C., 20510
tel (202) 224-5244
fax (202) 228-2717

If TPP passes, on the economic front it won't matter who's president. And if the "first woman president" abets sending yet more jobs to Asia in order to send yet more money to billionaire cash accounts ... maybe we need a different "first woman president." Or none at all until we find a good one. Just a first-woman-president thought...

GP

"Having no agenda when voters face real problems is a bad omen for incumbents" (Matt Stoller)

"People who run government should, at some level, want to govern. They should want to use the power of a democratic channel to solve the nation's problems. In the past 10 years, seeking to govern boldly has been frowned upon -- seen as naive or impossible.

"The result has been political and financial chaos, marked by periods of placid inactivity. It looks like our political leaders could well be seeking this, even as the public needs solutions."

-- Matt Stoller, in "At least Weiner was
a distraction," in Politico

by Ken

In this interesting Politico op-ed (I guess Politico is happy to have progressive content as long as it's pounding on Democrats), Matt Stoller takes off from the point that Weinergate is regretted as having been a "distraction."

"It's worth asking." he says, "how was Weiner a distraction? What is the Democratic agenda he was pulling voters away from?" And he concludes, "The simple fact is: There's no governing agenda being debated. So Weiner wasn't a distraction -- more like an in-flight soft-core movie in between election jockeying by a bored political class."

Of course Weinergate wasn't a distraction from dealing with our problems. It was a distraction from having to address all the problems that aren't being addressed by Beltway bigwigs except the marauding House Republicans, who aren't actually trying to address those problems either but have made them a handy cover for their blitzkrieg to transform the country into the extreme-right-wing hellhole of their wet dreams. But Matt probably wouldn't accept that as an excuse. "People who run government should, at some level, want to govern," he writes. "They should want to use the power of a democratic channel to solve the nation's problems."

He's not encouraged by what he's hearing from a leading candidate to replace departing chief White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, Rebecca Blank, "a 'pragmatic progressive' economist, which apparently means someone who feels bad about the damage caused by the problems they aren't trying to fix."

"Could this economy take off again?" Blank said recently in the National Journal. "The answer is absolutely yes. If you look at corporate profits, if you look at consumer balance sheets [improving] … gas prices are falling. I guess I understand the reason to say, 'Let's see if this economy can do it on its own.'"

On its own? Really? Tell this to the more than 9 percent currently unemployed.

The Right, of course, has been anything but shy about its "solutions," and it doesn't seem to matter that they aren't solutions. At least they're saying something, and thanks to inept Democratic ineptitude, they've succeeded in wrapping themselves in the mantle of "fiscal prudence," slashing horrendously wasteful government spending.

You'd think that even on the crassest level of political expediency, the administration would feel the need to have something to say to the public. Matt points out that before Weinergate the Dems were getting a certain amount of mileage beating up on Paul Ryan's assault on Social Security, which managed to be not only lousy policy but dreadful politics. But that's not exactly the same thing as having a political agenda.

As Howie has reported here extensively, in the days when Master Rahm Emanuel was running the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, candidates who hoped to receive DCCC support were somewhere between encouraged and coerced to take no positions on any issues that might be judged in any way controversial, the thinking (for want of a better word) being that that could only cost support and votes. As far as I know, that "philosophy" has been retained in all essentials by the Master's DCCC successors.

It's a dreadful strategy, destructive not just of soul but of political future. It depends, obviously, on the other guys beating themselves, and on a really primitive level, there's some logic to it, when you consider who and what the other guys are. But eventually the public sort of figures out when it's being filmflammed, or at least stonewalled. Now, it turns out, the Master's philosophy is being applied, not just to campaigning, but to governing.

Here's Matt again:

In 2006, 2008 and 2010, incumbents had no answers for voters who wanted their problems solved. I remember watching [Bill] Clinton give a speech in late 2010, stumping for candidates before the Democratic immolation. Say what you will about the absurdity of his alleged fury toward Weiner, the man can give a stump speech.

Yet, after a half-hour, I still couldn't figure out just what Clinton's reason was for supporting the Democrats. There was something about student loans, and how it was the responsible thing to vote for bailouts. The rest was fuzzy.

Just what would congressional Democrats deliver in 2010 if reelected? They couldn't answer that question for voters. It looked like Democrats in 2009 and 2010 delivered foreclosures and unemployment -- so it's not surprising the public chose another path.

The subtext of 2010 was that Democrats had nothing to run on -- no popular accomplishments, and no agenda for 2011. The GOP faced a similar problem in 2006 and 2008 -- and they also met the voters' wrath. Having no agenda when voters face real problems is a bad omen for incumbents.


There's an obvious problem in that there isn't a whole lot of policy agreement among the political ranks disarrayed against the Right. Still --

[I]t's now 18 months since significant job destruction from the Great Recession ended. What has the Obama administration done?

According to the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds, the first quarter of 2011 saw the destruction of roughly $270 billion more in homeowner equity. That's wealth gone from consumers -- money that can't and won't be spent. The health care bill's main provisions don't kick in until after 2012, and Dodd-Frank's rule-making is still barely off the ground.

Though the 2012 presidential election cycle is likely to have different contours than the midterms, the administration faces the same questions. What are they considering doing about jobs? What have they delivered?

If Blank is any indication, the plan is hope.

Matt suggests "at least three basic ways the administration could shift this dynamic":

One, the solution most cited now, is to use the government's control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to spark a refinancing boom, adding dramatically to consumer purchasing power. These entities could change the net present value test to allow more loan modifications, write-down debt or simply refinance loans with high loan-to-value ratios.

If the administration pushed bank regulators to account for the value of mortgages and home equity lines of credit now on their books, the write-downs would make good commercial sense as well as helping the economy.

The second solution would be to use government power to create jobs. For one example, the administration could dub the Chinese government a currency manipulator and spark domestic manufacturing by shifting our terms of trade.

It's not as if the government is powerless. Though creativity, boldness and wisdom might be required to find the appropriate tools, I'm sure that those who have found the legal authority to attack Libya without congressional authorization could tackle our domestic problems.

Third, the Obama administration could take legislation to create jobs -- an infrastructure bank, or a Works Progress Administration -- and use a barnstorming tour to pressure Congress to go along.

It's not uncommon for presidents to use the bully pulpit to soften congressional opposition -- Ronald Reagan did it regularly. President Barack Obama hasn't done this, but there's no reason his administration couldn't.

By now it's not exactly news that Barack Obama isn't the FDR type -- someone with a palpable sense of crisis, determined to think creatively and throw whatever he could at the crisis -- the country needed at this point in time. And we know by now that when he thinks and speaks, his primary constituency is always the moneyed elites. But again, even on that crassest political level, doesn't he need to have something to say to the rest of the American people?

#

Hair of the Dog, Take Two: Let's Watch Who We're Being Bipartisan With

Calvin Coolidge, Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover-- problem makers, not problem solvers

Yesterday I tried getting across the idea that it makes no sense turning to the ideas-- and the people who promulgate those ideas-- that have driven our country to its knees. Republican ideology is failed ideology. Even as he prepares to finally leave the office he first stole in 2000, Bush is loathed by the overwhelming majority of Americans. Even a third of confessed Republicans think he did a lousy job. The Republicans in Congress are held in even greater contempt. Greed and selfishness is not a valid philosophy of governance. The precise economic policies espoused by the Republican Party that drove this country into Depression with the consecutive terms of three clueless Republican hacks-- Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover (1921-1933)-- are a mirror image of what has been served up by Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and, worst of all, by far, Bush II.

To turn to those ideas now, or to treat their partisans as though they men and women of good faith and have something worthwhile to offer to the rescue effort may be called "bipartisan" Inside-the-Beltway, but looks like political game playing to the rest of us. I'm eager to give Obama the benefit of all doubts-- on his crappy middle of the road retread cabinet picks, on his less than bold political decisions, even on the footsie he's playing with those whose ideology are so damaging to our nation. I keep telling myself that he's very smart and knows how to play the game and in the end will beat back the reactionary forces both inside the Democratic Party and in the party that is the mortal enemy of working families.

And, remember, as Sean Paul pointed out today, you find bad faith, greed and selfishness not only on the Republican side of the aisle but among the putative Democrats calling themselves DLC, New Dems and Blue Dogs as well. Grover Norquist-- and if anyone knows a fellow douche bag when he sees one, it is Norquist-- rued how shabbily the Blue Dogs are being treated by real Democrats.

“Ironically, some of the biggest losers from the Pelosi rules changes will be fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats. The ‘pay-go’ rules they fought so hard for two years ago-- to require new spending proposals be balanced with additional revenue or cuts elsewhere-- have been gutted. And no term limits will mean they will have to stand in line for a taste of real power. ‘All of those nice pro-life, gun-owning young Democrats recruited by Rahm Emanuel will never have any real influence now,’ says Grover Norquist.”

Today's news about Obama's backpedaling on the Employee Free Choice Act is not encouraging. During his 70 minute interview with Washington Post editors and reports, Obama "gave his support for legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize, but he said there may be other ways to achieve the same goal without angering businesses. And while many Democrats on Capitol Hill are eager to see a quick vote on that bill, he indicated no desire to rush into the contentious issue.

"If we're losing half a million jobs a month, then there are no jobs to unionize, so my focus first is on those key economic priority items I just mentioned," he said. "Let's see what the legislative docket looks like."

Reaching that goal without angering businesses-- who simply hate unions and have always and will always oppose the aspirations of working men and women-- is like making an omelet without breaking an egg. This is just plain silly-talk. Like Thomas Frank opined in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, in the heart of the beast, Obama should act as though he won, not kowtow to the enemies who are just waiting for him to slip up so they can do him in and cripple his ability to do any good whatsoever for the people who elected him.

Watching Dick Lugar (R-IN) toss those softballs to fellow Senator Hillary Clinton should have warmed the heart of anyone and everyone who's ever thought that the Inside-the-Beltway crew have more in common with each other than they do with the people whose interests they claim to represent around election time. I'm sure Dick Lugar is a decent enough man-- I once sat next to him at a White House state dinner and he rocked out to Lou Reed just like a real person-- and I'm sure he really does feel some affection for his old travelin' bud Barack. But Dick Lugar, and even the most decent Republicans, owe their fealty to a political party that in now thoroughly controlled by men and women who are as viscerally opposed to American values as are Osama bin-Laden and fundamentalist religionist fanatics, whether from Iran or Virginia. Meanwhile, the members of unions-- as Marcy points out so eloquently at Emptywheel today, have helped build America into the best place on earth, despite the concerted efforts of the greed and selfish and their elected representatives. In great contrast, I was reading some more of Arianna's Right Is Wrong this morning and I thought today would be a good time to point out this passage that starts on page 251.

Even in the unlikely event that the Right would admit that their selfishness, arrogance and stupidity contributed to the current recession (and they won't), it would still not temper their instinctive pursuit of misery dollars. The perverted form of capitalism at the core of the Right's philosophy dictates that when others are suffering there is money to be made.

For the Right, crisis begets opportunity, not to solve problems but to profit from their perpetuation. Just think of Halliburton and Blackwater sopping up juicy profits from the bloodshed in Iraq, a market closed to them while Saddam was still calling the shots.

To see how even the worst disasters can make the Right's eyes gleam with the prospect of pushing their agenda past the complacent Democrats, take a look at Hurricane Katrina, where disaster relief instantly became a policy and patronage boondoggle-- and a profit engine.

After the disaster, Tony Snowe, the soon-to-be White House Press Secretary, crowed: "This would be a marvelous time to push in a serious way for school choice, dramatic regulatory reform... even more thoroughgoing tort reform, privatization of everything from the Department of Commerce to many FEMA duties, and so on."

Political journalist David Sirota spotlighted a few of the top opportunities the GOP saw arising from Katrina, including the suspension of the seventy-six-year-old Davis-Bacon Act requiring federal contractors to pay workers "prevailing wages," the chance to offer more giveaways (and fewer regulations) to oil companies, and-- proving that no issue was too tangential to link to Katrina-- the chance to try to get the president's derailed attempt to privatize Social Security back on track.

That's who Obama seems willing to sell out the people who elected him for. Katon Dawson (R-SC), in his quest to become the head of the RNC, articulated exactly what the Republicans' version of bipartisanship is-- the bipartisanship for which Obama is willing to sell out working families so fast. I hope I'm wrong but I see no reason to believe I am.

Will Obama Be Able To Save Us From Depression-- Even With Lunatic Fringe Republicans Like Jim Bunning Screaming "Bring It On!"

Jim Bunning, senile extremist hellbent on bring on another Depression

It sounds like Obama has some solid plans in store for turning the economy around, although he'll probably be unable to implement them without... Snowe

President-elect Barack Obama committed Saturday to the largest public works construction program since the creation of the interstate highway system a half-century ago as he seeks to put together a plan to resuscitate the reeling economy.

With unemployment on the rise and no end to the recession in sight, Mr. Obama began highlighting elements of the economic recovery program he is trying to fashion with Congressional leaders in hopes of being able to enact it shortly after being sworn in on Jan. 20.

Mr. Obama’s remarks sought to expand the definition of traditional work programs for the middle class, like infrastructure projects to repair roads and bridges, while also pushing a federal effort to bring in new-era jobs in technology and so-called green jobs.

In short this is what he's proposing:

Ø  Embark on a large-scale effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient;
 
Ø  Make the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since President Eisenhower established the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s – creating millions of jobs and compelling states to act quickly and make smart investments;
 
Ø  Create jobs and help our children compete by launching the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen;
 
Ø  Renew our information superhighway by boosting broadband deployment in communities across America;
 
Ø  Modernize our health care system so that every hospital and doctor's office is using cutting-edge technology and every American has access to electronic medical records.

Let's assume for a minute, as Gail Collins did in today's Times, that reactionary Democrats like Landrieu, Nelson and Pryor (not to mention Holy Joe) stay on the reservation and that a couple of Republicans can be moved to abandon partisan warfare (against America) now and then. How will the Republican Party-- determined to move the sundial back in the direction of 1200 AD in 2012-- define itself while Obama is trying to rescue America from the catastrophe their policies have caused?

Tom Curry at MSNBC took a stab at it by looking at the likely scenario for the reactionary party in 2010. He spoke with Democratic economist Rob Shapiro who explained that “GOP opposition to the bailout seems to embody the general Republican approach of ‘no matter how bad things are, you’re on your own.’ Even though the public may oppose this bailout, they are going to even more strongly oppose deterioration in the economy without a bailout... If the economy turns significantly worse after the failure of the auto companies, the public will blame it on those who helped create the conditions that let the economy deteriorate further.” And Curry points to the 2010 Kentucky Senate race as the perfect test case.

When he ran in 2004, Sen. Jim Bunning, a Republican, won his seat by only by only 1.4 percent-- and the Cook Political report rates his 2010 race as a “toss-up.”

Although he did not show up for Thursday’s Banking Committee hearing, Bunning said two weeks ago that the essential issue is “whether the federal government should intervene in the private-sector economy. And I believe it should not.”

He added that if Chrysler and General Motors went into bankruptcy or liquidation, “I think that’s probably the best thing that can happen. Then there will be a reorganization and they’ll be able to jettison things they couldn’t ordinarily jettison, like health care benefits, like pension benefits and there will be someone to pick those up like the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.”

The firms would “may come out of bankruptcy a heck of a lot better off than they go into it.”

If Bunning is a crazed far right extremist-- and he certainly is, one of the craziest of them all-- then Republican George Voinovich (R-OH) is what you would call a mainstream conservative. He doesn't see the world in neat little black and white prepackaged boxes like Bunning (who is also severely senile and barely able to function-- not that that prevented him from being elected in 2004). A couple weeks ago Voinovich, who must also face the voters in 2010, acknowledged that "bankruptcy could trigger a deep recession and send us over the cliff. If these companies are allowed to fail, taxpayers will wonder why Congress failed to act."

We're already in a deep recession and probably close to depression territory. Voinovich, unlike Bunning and the extremists from his party, favors a responsible rescue plan. He and Arlen Specter (R-PA) are co-sponsors of legislation seeking to rescue the Big 3 automakers. Here's President-elect Obama talking about his plans this morning:

Maybe Obama Doesn't Need 60 Senate Votes After All?

I know, I know, I know... I've been a big ole bundle of gloom and doom about the Democrats' prospects of effecting any real substantive change with a Senate that has morphed into an even less democratic body than it was when I was growing up and only 51 votes (instead of the current 60) were needed to get anything done. But with goose-stepping reactionaries like Kyl and McConnell bragging to the Federalist Society that they would prevent Obama from enacting his agenda and with a clown like Saxby Chamberpot-- albeit in a backward red state filled with religious fanatics-- running on a platform of pure anti-Obama obstructionism, how can anyone be optimistic?

If you have to ask, you probably didn't read your Reuters yesterday... did you? Thomas Ferraro, who is not a humorist, assures us that Senate Democrats will pack plenty of muscle even without the 60 votes required to overcome rampant GOP obstructionism.

Sixty votes are needed to override the roadblocks, which Republicans routinely invoked over the past two years to stop or at least slow down legislation they opposed...

Senate Democrats will have the muscle, with the help of a few moderate Republicans, to pass a crush of bills, including ones to stimulate the economy, ensure equal pay for women, ease global warming, lower prescription drug prices for the elderly and change course in the Iraq war... Democrats will be able to reach 60 with the help of a handful of moderate Republicans willing to break ranks with their conservative leadership on certain issues.

A real page-turner! I can't wait to find out who these "few moderate Republicans" are. Willing to break ranks, no less! Who? Who?

McCain-- on global warming and an economic stimulus package. And it isn't just McCain. Democratic operatives insist that on almost any given issue-- except EFCA of course-- there is a Republican or two they can dig up who will help them. I'll believe it when I see it; I mean I don't even believe they can dig up reactionary assholes like Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson to help them on half this stuff-- and they're sort of Democrats in a manner of speaking... officially. Anyway, here's what they say they can do-- even despite McConnell, Kyl and Chamberpot:

* Give residents of the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C., a full-voting representative in the U.S. House. It presently has no voting rights in Congress.

* Allow the government to negotiate with companies the prices of drugs covered under the Medicare program for the elderly.

* Overhaul U.S. immigration policy with a guest temporary guest worker program and border security.

* Mandate that U.S. military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan be allowed to remain at home for the same amount of time they spent in battle.

* Reverse a U.S. Supreme Court decision that made it tougher for workers to sue for pay discrimination.

And McConnell as much as says he doesn't care about any of this crap as long as the Democrats don't push through EFCA. That's the Chamber of Commerce and Big Business' line in the sand and I'll bet the GOP is more willing to stand and fight there than Obama is.