U.S. Senate

The former Nebraska senator probably prefers Greenwich Village to Omaha

By Jeff Smith

Do I have to move to Omaha? (Credit: AP)

Given the tenuousness of Democratic control of the U.S. Senate, I imagine more than a few people in Washington are hoping former Sen. Bob Kerrey will run for the seat vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson. As both local and national sources are reporting, Kerrey is seriously exploring the bid – and Republicans are taking his possible entrance just as seriously. Operatives of both parties seem to agree that he may be the only Democrat who could hold the seat. I hope that he makes the race. But I don’t think he will.

First, some politicos call Kerrey a serial floater. They refer to his frequent Hamlet routine, in which he contemplates but ultimately declines to run for various offices: in 2000 for president, in 2005 for New York City mayor, and in 2008 for the last open U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska.

Second, after a decade in the private sector, I doubt Kerrey is excited by the prospect of a year of retail campaigning. He was famously aloof in his 1992 presidential campaign, which reinforced the regrettable nickname “Cosmic Bob.” As a former aide to ex-presidential candidate Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., I traveled with Kerrey briefly in western Iowa in late 1999 as he helped campaign for Bradley before the caucuses. During a break between events, an advance man suggested that Kerrey shake hands in a small-town square; Kerrey suggested bowling instead. While I appreciated his quirky charisma, obvious intelligence, and willingness to speak hard truths, I found him miscast for the practice of politics. Accounts of his time in the Senate suggest a similar distaste for schmoozing.

Third, he could lose. Nebraska has reddened quite a bit since his last race in 1994. Back then, Nebraska had a Democratic governor and two Democratic U.S. senators; now, Nelson is the last elected Democratic statewide officeholder (and likely would’ve lost in ’12, which was why he bowed out). And surely, his having spent his last decade heading one of the nation’s most liberal universities — located in the lefty bastion of Greenwich Village — would take a little explaining to culturally conservative Nebraska voters. Attempting a comeback in such a risky race, after an unblemished career record of wins, may seem unappealing.

Fourth, Kerrey might be haunted by the results of his last election. That election was a non-binding no-confidence vote brought by the faculty of the New School, where he served as president from 2001 to 2010. The overall vote was reportedly 271 to 3 against Kerrey, with the vote among senior faculty 74-2 against, and Kerrey announced his resignation soon thereafter. This occurred after Kerrey went through five provosts in seven years before naming himself provost in addition to president, which helped trigger student occupations of the administration building (back before the word “occupy” was capitalized). To say that Kerrey’s New School tenure was rocky would be like saying that Nixon had a bumpy presidency.

Even Kerrey’s New School detractors concede that he spearheaded some impressive achievements during his tenure on a number of fronts, substantially growing the endowment and streamlining operations. But he apparently had no constituency beyond the trustees and a few senior administrators; notably, the university quickly hired a new president with unsurpassed interpersonal skills whose early efforts at university-wide outreach have been widely hailed. New School veterans say that Kerrey could’ve benefited from even a small effort at retail politics within the university. That he did not attempt one further suggests a pattern of unease with the quotidian mechanics of politicking that could hinder Kerrey’s interest in returning to elective politics – especially in such a challenging climate for Democrats as Nebraska.

The last reason for my skepticism that Kerrey will run is simple: Would you want to spend a year in Nebraska — not to mention weekends for the next six years — after a decade in the Village? If he does, though, voters should choose him, if only for his deep commitment to his home state.

: Jeff Smith is Assistant Professor of Politics and Advocacy at the New School in New York City, and a former Missouri state senator. More Jeff Smith

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"Partisan gridlock" is to blame for "both parties" blocking jobs bills, according to Politico

By Alex Pareene

Sen. Ben Nelson and Sen. Joe Lieberman (Credit: AP/Reuters)

Topics:U.S. Senate, Unemployment, Republican Party, Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Politico, Media, Media Criticism

Politico gets a gold star today for writing a story that could be used by journalism professors as a textbook example of everything that is wrong with mainstream reporting on Congress. The story is about “Senate gridlock,” responsibility for which rests with “both parties.”

Here’s the first sentence:

Rival Democratic and Republican jobs bills failed in the Senate on Thursday, the latest sign of the partisan gridlock gripping Washington as Americans look for relief from high unemployment and a sagging economy.

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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Every single Republican opposes $60 billion measure

By Andrew Taylor, Associated Press

Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, John Barrasso

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., right, accompanied by, from left, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011. (Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

Topics:U.S. Senate, U.S. Economy, From the Wires

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in the Senate Thursday dealt President Barack Obama the third in a string of defeats on his stimulus-style jobs agenda, blocking a $60 billion measure for building and repairing infrastructure like roads and rail lines.

Supporters of the failed measure said it would have created tens of thousands of construction jobs and lifted the still-struggling economy. But Republicans unanimously opposed it for its tax surcharge on the wealthy and spending totals they said were too high.

The 51-49 vote fell well short of the 60 votes required under Senate procedures to start work on the bill. Every Republican opposed the president, as did Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and former Democrat Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who still aligns with the party.

Obama’s loss was anything but a surprise, but the White House and its Democratic allies continue to press popular ideas from Obama’s poll-tested jobs package in what Republicans say is nothing more than a bare-knuckle attempt to gain a political edge by invoking the mantra of jobs but doing little to seek compromise.

“The truth is, Democrats are more interested in building a campaign message than in rebuilding roads and bridges,” said Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “And frankly, the American people deserve a lot better than that.”

“Their goal is to do everything they can to drag down this economy, to do anything they can to focus attention negatively on the President of the United States in hopes that he can get my job, perhaps, and that President Obama will be defeated,” Reid said. “So let’s not talk about campaign speeches here on the Senate floor. Let’s talk about reality.”

After Republicans blocked Obama’s infrastructure plan, the president’s Democratic allies immediately turned to kill a competing GOP infrastructure plan that would have extended existing highway and transit spending programs and paid for the spending with a $40 billion cut in unspent funding for other domestic programs.

Obama unveiled his $447 billion jobs plan in September and has launched a campaign-style effort — featuring multiple rallies in states crucial to his reelection bid — to try to get it passed. In votes last month, Republicans blocked the entire $447 billion jobs package and a subsequent attempt by Democrats to pass a $35 billion piece of it aimed at preventing layoffs of teachers and firefighters.

Another political flash point is the way Democrats have sought to pay for Obama’s jobs measures — a surcharge on income exceeding $1 million. The idea enjoys wide backing in opinion polls but is stoutly opposed by Republicans, who say it would hit small business owners and therefore threaten job growth.

With the demise of Thursday’s measure, an announcement could come as early as Friday on what’s the next piece of Obama’s jobs agenda to break out for a stand-alone vote. Democratic aides say the next measure would be legislation to provide a $4,800 tax credit for hiring an unemployed veteran and increasing the tax credit for hiring a veteran with a service-related disability to up to $9,600.

Republicans back the idea of the veterans hiring tax credit.

Thursday’s legislation would have provided an immediate $50 billion investment in roads, bridges, airports and transit systems. It also called for a $10 billion bank to leverage private and public capital for longer-term infrastructure projects.

The measure would be financed by a 0.7 percent surcharge on income over $1 million.

After Obama’s full $447 billion jobs bill was filibustered to death last month, the White House immediately announced it would seek votes on component pieces. That’s a way to exert political pressure on Republicans sensitive about their own jobs agenda, which so far has centered on relaxing regulations and boosting offshore oil exploration and drilling.

Obama last week uncorked a “We Can’t Wait” initiative that relies on executive authority rather than legislation from a bitterly divided Congress to help homeowners refinance “underwater” homes and give borrowers relief from their student loans.

Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are casting blame on the Senate for failing to act on 15 “forgotten” jobs bills, including a measure to repeal a law requiring federal, state and many local governments to withhold 3 percent of their payments to contractors until their taxes are paid.

Also Thursday, the House approved legislation to allow small companies to sell more shares to potential investors and community banks to increase the number of shareholders they can have before they have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The bills are part of four measures the House is taking up this week to ease SEC registration rules that have been seen as an impediment to small businesses attracting investors and expanding their operations.

“While the president is out doing campaign events all over the country, what he could do is to actually come to Washington and be focused on trying to help pass bills that would create a better environment for job creation and help put the American people back to work,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

: More Andrew Taylor

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In which we help Nebraska's "centrist" senator make a 2012 decision

By Alex Pareene

Ben Nelson, horrible senator (Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Topics:Ben Nelson, U.S. Senate, 2012 Elections, Democratic Party, War Room

According to the Lincoln Journal Star, Senator Ben Nelson has not yet decided whether or not to run for reelection. Consider this my open letter to the distinguished Democrat from Nebraska: Please, please, I beg you, Senator Ben Nelson, do not run for reelection.

“I’ll sit down with my family to discuss the future,” Nelson said Tuesday during a telephone interview. “They are my sounding board. I value what they say.”

Nelson said he will weigh his family’s views along with a personal judgment on “whether I believe I have a role to play in dealing with a very divided Congress in a very divided country, whether I could be constructive in finding some solutions, whether I am convinced I can be a positive force for the following six years.”

Senator Nelson, you have never been a “positive force” during your time in office thus far, and it seems unlikely that you will become one at any point in the next six years.

Please, retire quietly, or even with an alternately self-righteous and self-pitying editorial about the death of “bipartisanship” and “civility” and “Senate decorum.” Promise to devote yourself to good deeds outside of office and then get rich lobbying for the corporate interests that currently sponsor you, I don’t care. Just get out of office, because you are horrible. You’re a miserable excuse for a senator. You have made millions of people’s lives worse in real and tangible ways, and you will continue to do so as long as you remain in the United States Senate.

You opposed capping ATM fees because you are so old and rich and stupid that you have never used an ATM. “I know about the holograms,” you said in your defense, because you’re a useless fool.

You joined the cadre of “centrist” Democrats who attempted to sabotage every major legislative priority of the Democratic Congressional majority, and you went back and forth on the public option before definitively coming out against it and the hugely popular “Medicare buy-in” compromise. Then you won a sweetheart Medicaid funding deal solely for Nebraska that almost killed the entire healthcare reform bill and led to everyone in the country calling you venal and corrupt.

And you opposed a measure to stop federally subsidizing usurious private student loan providers — calling a money-saving anti-corporate welfare proposal “a government takeover of student lending” — because you think representing the interests of usurious lending institutions that donate millions to your campaigns is actually an example “being constructive” and “finding solutions.”

You supported the Stupak Amendment, voted for the anti-gay marriage amendment, and supported the Iraq war. You supported both horrible, wasteful Bush tax cuts.

You have no major legislative accomplishments, either. Not one! I can’t name a single important bill you ever sponsored or co-sponsored and I suspect most other longtime Senate observers could, either. You are a failure as a Senator with no legacy to speak of beyond trolling your own party, repeatedly.

Consider this an official endorsement of your retirement from politics. Please go crawl into a hole.

Yours,
Alex

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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The obstruction will only get worse as the election draws closer

By Alex Pareene

Topics:U.S. Senate, Republican Party, 2012 Elections, Politics, Congress

Our useless vestigial Senate remains a lavish old folk’s home for America’s worst people, and it will only get worse next year. Joe Lieberman has announced his intention to block a bill that will send states money to hire and retain public employees, because he is Joe Lieberman, the mascot of all this is awful and detestable about the world’s most deliberative body. This after Senate Republicans “defeated” the larger jobs bill by preventing it from being debated in a vote that they won with a minority. That is business as usual, reported by the objective political press as “gridlock” that “both sides” are responsible for. And as Al Kamen writes today, the Senate’s slow trickle of judicial confirmations will likely cease once the presidential election is underway.

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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Fixing the dysfunctional upper house requires more dramatic measures than the majority leader's tinkering

By Jonathan Bernstein

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (Credit: Yuri Gripas / Reuters)

Topics:U.S. Senate

Senate reform is back in the news, thanks to some incredibly obscure procedural shenanigans on the Senate floor last week and a follow-up Op-Ed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Washington Post. The narrow issue concerned filibuster rules but the broader issue is how to fix dysfunctional Washington.

The news was not good. For those who believe that the Senate is unable to function properly under current rules and practices, however, neither the very minor change in precedent nor Reid’s Op-Ed — which blamed Republicans for abuse but didn’t even hint at doing anything further about it — were very encouraging. Indeed, for anyone who wants to retain the Senate’s old traditions and advantages, the time to reform Senate rules is as soon as possible — because otherwise the Senate is most likely going to wind up as a second House of Representatives.

The problem is that both parties have been in a decades-long war to exploit the Senate rules, which has produced a dysfunctional chamber that looks little like what it was in, say, 1961 or even 1981. Most of the ratcheting up has been by Republicans, who began filibustering all major legislative initiatives during Bill Clinton’s presidency and increased that to across-the-board filibusters in 2009. During Barack Obama’s first two years, we had for the first time a true 60-vote Senate, in which every bill and every nomination was automatically filibustered.

Democrats have contributed, too: Their defeat of Defense Secretary nominee John Tower in 1989 ushered in a new era in which partisan battles over nominations were the norm, and in the majority they reacted to filibusters by restricting the ability of minority-party senators to offer amendments. The Senate has never been a strictly majoritarian body, but it used to be perfectly ordinary for bills and nominations to pass narrowly — which used to mean (winning!) votes of 51-49 or 52-28. No more.

This can’t and won’t last. During periods of divided government, such as the current one, it doesn’t matter very much; the seemingly epic struggle over the jobs bill in the Senate over the last week was really just over bragging rights, since everyone knew that the House wasn’t going to support Obama’s bill regardless of whether it passed the Senate or not. But the next time there’s unified government, it’s unlikely that a majority party, just elected, will allow itself to be constantly thwarted — especially if it has serious policy goals.

Indeed, that it’s lasted this long will probably be seen to have been a fluke; Democrats were less frustrated in 2009-2010 because they had 60 seats for part of the time, and Republicans during 2003-2006 rarely had any legislative plans of their own, so wound up only really caring about judges — and so that was what they threatened to go “nuclear” about.

If what you want is a parliament-like Senate run by and for the majority party, in which the minority party and individual senators have little ability to legislate, that’s all good. But there’s good reason to search for a middle ground between the present mess and party control.

First of all, a Senate in which individual senators from both parties can fight for particular interests adds something in terms of representation not available elsewhere in the political system. And second, a chamber in which individual senators can make significant contributions to policy, with or without the support of the majority party’s agenda, can be an overall more productive institution, increasing (as I believe the framers intended) the overall potential of the system. We’re used to thinking of checks and balances as a way to prevent things, which is true, but checks and balances also means giving more actors a chance to have meaningful policymaking roles, which makes the whole system far more vital.

So those who really do want a powerful Senate that uses contributions from all its members should be acting now to reform the rules before it’s too late. I’d like to see reforms that include a simple majority confirmation of executive branch nominees while retaining holds so that individual senators can fight for their narrow interests; a guaranteed but still supermajority vote for lifetime judicial nominees; and a new superbill or leadership bill to replace the awkward and arbitrary reconciliation rules. Such a bill would give the majority party a good shot to get (some of) their priorities passed each year — while giving the minority a real chance to pass amendments. Others have tried to invent complex schemes for some sort of sliding scale of filibusters, trying to guarantee both minority voice and majority action.

But unless real defenders of the Senate step up and act soon, none of that will matter. We’ll most likely wind up with majority party rule, with a meaningless minority party with strong incentives for irresponsible behavior, just as we have had in the House ever since reforms implemented in the 1960s and 1970s strengthened majority party leadership in that chamber. And Congress, and the constitutional system, will be permanently damaged.