CT Progressive

Ezra Klein did an interview with the on-the-mend Henry Waxman on the subject of his recently-released book, and he promises that it will include a more sweeping description of how the sausage factory runs than is normally featured in this kind of work:

I wrote the book with the help of Joshua Green, a superb writer. It sets out many anecdotes and behind-the-scenes information that people don’t ordinarily hear about in books about how Congress works. They usually hear about a House subcommittee then a committee then the Senate then the Senate committee. They think about it in terms of little boxes. I try to portray the forces at play in dealing with legislation and how some things that were big battles at the time are now taken for granted.

It was a big battle to get food producers to put uniform labels advising people about calories and sodium and carbohydrates and other nutrients on food. But I think most people take it for granted that they can see those labels when they go into the store and use them to make their decisions. But the food producers said they were going to go bankrupt if they had to put these labels on, it would be such a burden, it would be excessive. Finally we got it passed. And I don’t think most people give it a second thought today. It’s just there. [...]

I also talk about the Clean Air Act, which is the most successful environmental law on the books today. There was a huge fight over a one–year period to get that legislation enacted. But now people in the Northeastern parts of the United States that were seeing acid rain don’t have that problem any more. And the cost turned out to be a tenth what they said it would be even though different industries argued that our economy would go to hell. Invariably they met their requirements, met them ahead of time, and met them at a fraction of the predicted costs. So we’ve had very successful laws. But very few people talk about government in those terms.

Funny, Connecticut’s Governor just vetoed a calorie-labeling bill for restaurants, using those very same scare tactics:

“Does it come as a surprise to anyone that a vegetable salad is healthier and more nutritious than a bacon cheeseburger?” the Governor said. “There has been a growing and troubling tendency by some to legislate nearly every aspect of our lives and society, including personal responsibility. Such legislation always comes at a cost to the taxpayer and to individual freedom.”

Governor Rell also noted the cost such a bill would impose on restaurateurs and on the Department of Public Health, adding, “This is hardly the economic climate in which to further burden our businesses and state agencies.”

I included that bit about the Clean Air Act from Waxman’s answer because it occurs to me that there’s a vast amount of what could charitably be described as lying going on in the organized opposition to progressive legislation, and somehow history manages to forget the names of those that tell tales of grossy inflated costs to industry and the supposedly market-destroying impact of pro-consumer and pro-health regulations. If the laws get passed, then advocates are putting their resources into the next fight; if the laws fail, then the lying goes unproven. But from watching the damage that can accrue to politicians that repeat these kinds of falsehoods, it seems like revisiting the claims of industry groups would have a strong public policy benefit, a potential that advocates haven’t yet tapped.

In the days since Waxman-Markey has passed in the House, it’s been the object of a lot of political jockeying — fierce bromides from the climate denialists that have been terrifying the electeds, and agitation from progressives concerned that the milquetoast bill that got passed out of the House might not be enough.

The policy details haven’t been easy to find in any one place, but the Wikipedia article on the subject has a decently brief rundown:

• It sets a slightly higher target for reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases than that proposed by President Barack Obama. The bill requires a 17-percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2020; Obama has proposed a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both plans would reduce United States’ emissions by about 80 percent by 2050.
• It includes a renewable electricity standard (almost identical to a renewable portfolio standard, but narrowly tailored to electrical energy) requiring each electricity provider who supplies over 4 million MWh to produce 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (such as wind, solar, and geothermal) by 2020. There is a provision whereby 5% of this standard can be met through energy efficiency savings, as well as an additional 3% with certification of the Governor of the state in which the provider operates.

Alternative compliance payments are $25/MWh in violation of the standard, adjusted for inflation beginning in 2010.

• It provides for modernization of the electrical grid
• It provides for expanded production of electric vehicles
• It mandates significant increases in energy efficiency in buildings, home appliances, and electricity generation.

The bill’s cap-and-trade program allocates 85% of allowances to industry for free, auctioning the remainder. 15% will be auctioned, the revenue from which shall be redistributed to low-income households. 30% of the allowances will be allocated directly to local distribution companies (LDCs) who are mandated to use them exclusively for the benefit of customers. 5% will go to merchant coal generators and others with long-term power purchase agreements.

Progressive criticism has come in a couple of forms: first and foremost, that the reduction targets included in this bill will not do enough to save the earth, which is the ultimate in non-petty concerns and seems to be backed up by scientific consensus.

Another concern relates to the auctioning of the emissions permits: the fact that the bill “allocates 85% of allowances to industry for free, auctioning the remainder.” In practice, that means that a lot of money will be made from these permits being bought and sold, only that the money will not go to your Supertrains and electric windmills and solar panels and other national infrastructure goodies. Obama’s budget proposal envisioned a 100% auction, which would have the somewhat counterintuitive impact of raising a lot of federal revenue without actually charging Joe and Jane public any additional money over the alternative scenario.

The current version also offends on the grounds of moral justice: the other 85% of the revenue will go to the same masterminds that set the economy on fire these last few years – Matt Taibbi’s article on Goldman Sachs connects the last several bubbles to the anticipated windfall from carbon offset trading. Believe what you like about Goldman, but this assessment sounds about right:

“If it’s going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it,” says Michael Masters, the hedge fund director who spoke out against oil-futures speculation. “But we’re saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That’s the last thing in the world I want. It’s just asinine.”

It’s exhausting trying to defend the bill once you glean that the grand bargain sacrificed 85% of the infrastructure improvements so those trillions can sit in the trading accounts of the top .01%, collecting dust and dividends until the next big crisis — at which point there will be no money and no Supertrains. Goddamn it.

“But,” say the activists, “defend it we must!” Just because a few robber barons won’t let us save the planet without tripling their net worth doesn’t let us off the hook for actually saving the planet. Let them have their cash, because now the Senate needs to pass the bill, and the odds are that they’re going to make it even worse.

There are some post-fixes possible: John Larson, lead sponsor of a Carbon Tax bill which would have avoided this giveaway nonsense from the start (the awesomely-numbered H.R. 1337) has also in the past offered legislation regulating derivative speculation, and maybe an approach like that would work for carbon as well. If so, maybe the right time to set the dogs loose on carbon profiteering would be after the ACES energy bill goes through.

Also, Krugman pointed the way to this testimony (PDF link) suggesting that import tariffs to equalize the cost of domestic goods and those goods produced in nations with unchecked carbon emissions would be feasible, legal (under WTO guidelines) and enforceable — which could mean that the energy robber barons would primarily be picking the pockets of the cheap-stuff-for-Wal-Mart robber barons. That would allow the proposal to potentially be improved by after-passage action by legislators fearing this kind of criticism, expressed by GOP Congressional Wannabe Justin Bernier in the 5th CD:

“It will hurt our economy without helping the environment. Because only America is covered by Cap and Trade, this new tax will give corporations another excuse to outsource millions of jobs to China, India, Mexico, and other polluter paradises.”

I can’t say for sure that our delegation will engage in a little friendly carbon-protectionism to ward off this kind of criticism, but if a Republican is complaining about it then at least the incentives, to them, will look to be going in the right way. (Sigh.)

Finally, from that same link above (a once-a-week energy policy blog written out of the New Haven Register) another interesting issue is raised: how will the Federal cap-and-trade system interact with the regional cap-and-trade initiative that Connecticut already participates in?

Connecticut is one of 10 states in the Northeast that are part of a part of a cap-and-trade program. The participating states use the money generated by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) auctions to fund clean and renewable energy programs.

The RGGI auction, which was held earlier this month, produced $4.7 million for Connecticut ’s clean energy and efficiency programs. Connecticut has received about $18.7 million from the four RGGI auctions held since last fall.

It’s unclear to me whether or not energy producers will need both the free Federal permits and the regionally-auctioned RGGI permits to operate: some of what I’ve been able to find makes RGGI permit-traders nervous (a good sign), like this report: (another PDF)

The current proposal allows the conversion of RGGI allowances into federal allowances in a way that RGGI bidders face no risk from paying too high a price for an allowance. This would create strong incentives for speculative bidding that would push the RGGI price much higher than its economic value. Such a price distortion would also negatively impact the federal cap‐and-trade program.

Since it’s already widely believed that the carbon market will be a hotbed of speculative trading, all this seems to mean is that while the Federal government plans to give away the store, the ten states in the RGGI program may reap a windfall of moneys directed towards their (read: our) own infrastructure projects.

Plus, if Waxman-Markey won’t decrease carbon enough to avert a climate catastrophe, I wonder if it’s possible for the RGGI-style cap to be benchmarked to a reduction based not on a historical point (i.e. “10% below 2002 levels” or some such), but rather a reduction above and beyond the Federal cap. If coal-state Congressmen can’t do the right thing, I imagine that us coastal-types might have an incentive to strengthen the policy however we can.

Apparently HELP (Kennedy’s committee, currently being overseen by Dodd) has finally put together a public option for inclusion in their health reform bill – and it’s due tomorrow:

The new HELP framework allows the public plan to “reimburse health care providers at rates which will be no more than the average reimbursement rate paid by private plans offered through Gateways.” Under this arrangement, the new public plan would have to negotiate its own rates and play by the same rules as other private insurers within the Gateway (i.e. Exchange) — it “would follow the same rules as private plans for defining benefits, protecting consumers, and setting premiums.” What’s more, the public option would be responsible for attracting providers and would thus have to rely on competitive rates (instead of Medicare-like rates) to retain enough participants.

This is a “level playing field” plan, not a “strong” public plan – meaning that it won’t be able to go as far as the House version in controlling rising healthcare costs. We’ll see how it scores on cost when the Congressional Budget Office rates it over the next couple of weeks.

Via Steve Benen, a story in the U.S. News and World Report about how Obama’s “common ground” on reducing abortions by means of expanded access to birth control, sex education, and prenatal care is being rejected by conservatives:

But more conservative religious groups working with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships say they would be forced to oppose such a plan—even though they support the abortion reduction part—because they oppose federal dollars for contraception and comprehensive sex education. This camp, which includes such formidable organizations as the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention, is pressuring the White House to decouple the two parts of the plan into separate bills. One bill would focus entirely on preventing unwanted pregnancy, while the other would focus on supporting pregnant women.

The White House declined a request for comment. Advocates for both plans say the administration has offered no hint about how it will come down on the matter. But with the White House expected to announce its plan on abortion and related issues this summer, advocates on both sides are strenuously lobbying for their plan, arguing that it offers the only true hope for common ground on very thorny issues.

“We welcome the opportunity to seek common ground with this administration . . . and to work on behalf of pregnant women and unborn children,” says Deirdre McQuade, a spokesperson for the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, which is pressuring the White House to decouple pregnancy prevention from supporting pregnant women. “But issues of pregnancy prevention are much more divisive and would only slow down much-needed assistance to pregnant women.”

There’s also one encouraging sign of progressives learning how to not get played:

But supporters of the all-in-one approach say that passing a support-only plan is unrealistic in Democratic-controlled Washington. “There would be a strong reluctance in the pro-choice community to trust that if Congress moved support-only, that a prevention-only package would also pass,” says Laser. “There’s also a fear that support-only would be defined as the new common ground. For the pro-choice side, the most important part of common ground is pregnancy prevention.”

Rosa DeLauro is the principal sponsor of a “more-pro-choice” alternative to the expected White House plan, the “Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act.” The scare quotes are for the fact that the bill doesn’t expand Federal funding for contraception, which – after a decade at shoveling cash to fundamentalists to preach abstinence-only to young adults in public schools – seems like it should be relatively non-controversial (or at the very least, eminently-defendable as a matter of equal treatment to both pro-choice and right-to-life groups).

Matt Browner-Hamlin is shrill:

The New York Times profile of Senator Max Baucus and his role leading the Finance Committee towards a healthcare reform bill contains an infuriating nugget of strategic hindsight.

He conceded that it was a mistake to rule out a fully government-run health system, or a “single-payer plan,” not because he supports it but because doing so alienated a large, vocal constituency and left Mr. Obama’s proposal of a public health plan to compete with private insurers as the most liberal position.

God God, man! It’s like Baucus had never heard of physics before he fell down.

Seriously, the lack of strategic understanding by Democratic elected officials is mind-boggling. That Baucus is only now realizing the strategic value of keeping a single-payer system on the table from Day One, even only as a means to provide political space for something like a political option, is simply stunning. Of course Baucus, and likely the whole country, will pay for his strategic error as the public health insurance option doesn’t survive the Finance Committee’s draft process. After all, while Baucus may be making noises about not being able to keep the Obama-backed public health insurance option on the table because of this error in strategy, he is also conceding it as a means of winning the support of at least one Republican on his committee. Not because he needs the vote to pass legislation out of the Finance Committee, but because he thinks bipartisanship is more important than providing working Americans with universal health care.

Baucus’s statement about the strategic error he made (though in fairness this is a mistake that every Democrat in the Senate save Bernie Sanders has made, as well as most members of the House caucus and Presidnet Obama) is a rare admission by a senior Democrat that there is political value in the party maintaining strong liberal positions. The simple fact is that if the Democrats want to achieve their moderate goals for quasi-liberal, pro-business policy, they can’t have quasi-liberal policies as the left flank. This leaves them coming to the table with only one direction to move: away from their goals and towards the Republican position. This amounts to making concessions before you even start negotiating, by the simple fact that you have no margin for concession short of not getting what you want.

The not-all-that-liberal Baucus is looking at a bill that started from a position of compromise and is rapidly becoming something that even he isn’t very enthusiastic about passing. And if your progressive base is dispirited and your wise moderates are dispirited, well, it makes it a lot less likely that a bill of any merit will pass, and that there are strong incentives (read, money) for your Joe Liebermans and Ben Nelsons to be seen as the one who caused health reform to fail.

But don’t worry, Matt - it sounds like Chairman Baucus has learned his lesson, and I’m sure he’ll fight vigorously for a strong carbon tax cap and trade regime agriculture giveaway package just as soon as health reform is done.

The Fairfield County Weekly follows up on this MLN post on the votes by our Congressional delegation for war funding, getting quotes from Murphy:

On Afghanistan, Murphy says he voted for the bill because “It supports President Obama’s troop withdrawal plan and his counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan.

“Though my support for President Obama’s plan in Afghanistan comes with a short leash — if Afghanistan and Pakistan become more destabilized, we will need to reconsider the costs of our involvement,” Murphy says in a statement.

Murphy returned from a recent trip to Afghanistan where he was told about dramatic upticks in suicide bombings, something previously unheard of in the war-torn nation. Murphy also returned convinced the American military must stay involved.

“I believe we need to refocus our efforts in Afghanistan to stifle the drug trade, work with tribal leaders to suppress the insurgency and help bolster the country’s flagging economy,” Murphy writes on his congressional Web site.

Joe Courtney (by way of spokesman Brian Farber):

Courtney spokesman Brian Farber says the bill was about more than money: it compensates troops caught in the Bush administration’s stop-loss policy, essentially a back-door draft that kept troops stuck in years-long deployments, and requires Obama to report to Congress on military progress in Afghanistan.

“The [Obama] administration’s approach to Afghanistan is different, including working closely with local communities, tribal leaders, and providing the Afghanistan government the tools they need to defend their borders from Taliban and al-Qaeda,” Farber says.

… and the Greater New Haven Peace Council, following up on a meeting with Rosa DeLauro:

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the New Haven Democrat and powerful right hand to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, met with the Greater New Haven Peace Council for more than an hour this spring on the topic of Afghanistan. Peace council member Henry Lowendorf says DeLauro heard the group out but was not persuaded.

“She is sincere,” Lowerndorf says. “She really believes. She wants to support Obama. I just see Obama digging us deeper.” [...]

“This is not change,” Lowendorf says. “This is more of the same.”

I wonder: do Murphy, Courtney, and Obama have any sense that the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan played any role in the Democratic takeover of the House, Senate, and White House over the last couple of years? Come on, guys — time to shut these wars down.

As mentioned in the previous post, Love Makes a family surveyed Connecticut’s Congressional delegation on marriage equality and DOMA. However, a couple of our Reps weren’t exactly forthcoming:

Rep. DeLauro would not comment specifically on support of marriage equality but responded that she was “comfortable with Connecticut’s law.”

Only Congressman Larson refused to provide a response on marriage equality and DOMA after repeated requests.

Larson followed up with the Courant, and in a post titled “U.S. Rep. John Larson releases his statement on same-sex marriage,” they faithfully transmitted it:

“I am proud that Connecticut has taken a leading role in giving same-sex couples the same rights and recognition as other couples in our state. Connecticut is telling the world that, in our state, if you love each other and are committed to each other you have the right to have your relationship legally recognized. The fight to attain this recognition was not easy and I salute all of the people who worked hard for years to bring it about. I am also a co-sponsor of legislation that would repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and I have signed onto a letter calling on President Obama to instruct the Armed Forces not to initiate any further investigations to determine the sexual orientation of a service member. I support the repeal of Section 3 of DOMA and the extension of benefits to same-sex partners. I applaud President Obama for the first steps he has taken to bring that about.”

Reading through it line by line, it doesn’t appear that he actually gave anything like a position on marriage equality in that statement. As fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, Larson could “salute” the hard work of marriage equality proponents by endorsing marriage equality on the Federal level instead of just pretending.

It occurs to me in watching Chris Dodd re-integrate himself into the local political culture - coordinating op-eds with Love Makes a Family and their press operation, writing on local blogs, along with bringing local people down to DC and just generally being more readily available for sit-downs with local constituencies - that his current situation is such that he’s more susceptible to public pressure than your average Senator at the moment. Most especially from the left, as he has a somewhat urgent need to solidify his skeptical base.

And in a way, that’s a little bit of a shame, as he’s generally one of the best handful of Senators on any issue you might care to name: he’s fought anti-consumer bankruptcy policies, filibustered warrantless wiretapping, trimmed back the abusive practices of credit card companies, and so on. If he was the median Senator, we’d be in pretty good shape, all things considered. So he’s compelled to come over to MLN and toot his own horn on his support for the Public Option in the upcoming healthcare reform debate – when, in truth, he’s pretty far down on the list of people I think needs to be cajoled by progressives on healthcare.

Meanwhile, the other Senator is proudly touting his opposition to the public option, in a pretty brazen opposition to public opinion, and I can’t think of any meaningful opportunity for progressives to persuade him, nor (imagining his perspective) can I see any real incentive for him to open himself up for public input on the matter.

It really does seem like our two Senators are engaged in very different sorts of politics: Dodd is focusing on his (largely progressive) constituents who live in Connecticut, while Lieberman is focused on cultivating the support of conservative institutional players in Washington DC. His project to block the release of torture documents brought me more despair than most of Lieberman’s nonsense, because I realized that even if he casts the deciding vote to destroy Obama’s public plan in the Senate, we’re overwhelmingly likely to see our President’s smiling face in an endorsement commercial three years hence for what Joe is doing on these photos.

I have to wonder how we can apply pressure to Lieberman – can it be done through the institutions of the Senate and the Sunday talk shows, or is there a way to change the incentives on the ground in Connecticut so he has to engage in politics differently?

Cramdown provisions – allowing bankruptcy courts to adjust the amount owed by homeowners – is coming to the House floor this week.

This is a great idea – not just because it has the potential to keep a lot of people in their homes, but because it’s the first major reversal of the anti-consumer practices of the last two decades in bankruptcy and banking regulation.

It will also be important as a means of evaluating the reliability of our new Democratic Congress – this is the one item that the lenders that kicked off our current crisis don’t want to see passed. It’ll be interesting to see if the “New Democrats” caucus has the stones to try and stop it.

Question, via Rick Green: Great GOP Divide: Pragmatism Or Posturing?

I’m critical of Rick’s columns sometimes, but I have to give him credit here for a great get:

State Republican Chairman Chris Healy told me that what the most popular Republican in the state supports is “a fairly awful piece of legislation. … We argue that this is not a stimulus and it is a spending spree.”

I asked him why national Republicans are opposed to this while Republicans-with-actual-jobs such as Rell and Gov. James Douglas of Vermont and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California are pleading for it.

“We do have differences,” Healy admitted. “She has to make the trains run.”

The Republican Chairman would prefer to, what, see the trains left to rot? Beaten into plowshares?

I obviously can’t speak for progressives categorically, but those that I know seem, to a person, to be involved in politics as a means to a variety of ends: getting cleaner air and water, allowing poor people to get decent medical care, letting old people retire with dignity, and, well, making the trains run. Healy casually admitting that he could give one damn about government working or not working is pretty amazing.

Oh, and just in case you were remembering those “moderate northeastern Republicans” more fondly in retrospect…

Which is why the Republicans in Washington look so feeble here. Former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, very likely Chris Dodd’s opponent next year and an old hand in Congress, explained the dichotomy to me.

“The members of Congress have a different set of responsibilities. They may have greater concern for the long-term impact. Where you stand depends on where you sit,” Simmons said.

“If you sit in the governor’s chair, you have to solve this budget problem. If you sit in the House and Senate, you have to make sure that you don’t collapse the economy more than you already have.”

“I would have voted against it,” Simmons told me.

All of this is pretty revealing. Which do you think is more long-term — taking political potshots or reaching across the aisle and finding common ground?

If your only goal is getting Republicans elected, then you’d want to go the “potshots” route. Which is why Healy has been working himself into such a lather lately.