Congressional Democrats Finally Breaking Free From Obama's Conservative Consensus?

If Democrats were looking for a conservative vision they would vote for Republicans. Last November when there appeared to be almost nothing but "competing" conservative visions being offered at the polls-- Obama's and the Blue Dogs' mainstream conservatism vs the GOP's off-the-rails reactionary brand-- Democrats stayed home in great enough numbers to make John Boehner Speaker, empower ignorant, nihilistic teabaggers (how'd that work out for everybody?) and derail the whole country. Deservedly, the Blue Dog caucus was nearly obliterated, losing over half its members and almost its entire leadership and helping end the careers of a shitload of ConservaDem quasi-Blue Dog allies like Suzanne Kosmas, Ann Kirkpatrick, John Adler Melissa Bean, and Michael McMahon. Tragically, they dragged down a handful of true-blue progressives like Alan Grayson, Carol Shea Porter, Phil Hare, Mary Jo Kilroy and Steve Kagen with them.



Obama's reelection strategy has always been to take the base for granted-- "where else will they go, to Michele Bachmann?" laughed Rahm Emanuel-- and pursue mainstream conservatives. For congressional Democrats to recover from what Obama and the Blue Dogs did to them last November, they're going to have to distinguish themselves-- as much as they can-- from Obama and his corporate policies next November. I haven't been all that optimistic that they would-- at least not in terms of the congressional leadership. Progressive challengers all over the country are politely telling the voters that they're not big on Obama and that they'll support him when he's right and stand up for him when he's wrong. Nick Ruiz (D-FL) has gone even further:

People ask me all the time-- isn’t the reelection of President Obama the most important thing for 2012? I say to you-– it is the least important thing for Democrats in 2012. The President has already proven he will not fight for the middle and lower classes. Therefore, he should be primaried and defeated by a truly democratic advocate for the majority of Americans.

Don't look for anything like that from Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. But Robert Pear reported something worth reading in yesterday's NY Times about a slight revision in course from the congressional leadership.

In an unusual break with the White House, the Democratic leaders of Congress told the Supreme Court on Monday that President Obama was pursuing a misguided interpretation of federal Medicaid law that made it more difficult for low-income people to obtain health care.



The Democratic leaders said Medicaid beneficiaries must be allowed to file suit to enforce their right to care-- and to challenge Medicaid cuts being made by states around the country.



The Obama administration maintains that beneficiaries and health care providers cannot sue state officials to challenge cuts in Medicaid payment rates, even if such cuts compromise access to care for the poor.



In a friend-of-the-court brief, the lawmakers said the administration’s position “would undermine the effectiveness of Medicaid.” In addition, they said, it conflicts with more than a century of court precedents that allow people to sue to block state actions that are inconsistent with federal law.



The brief was filed by seven influential Democrats, including Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, an architect of Medicaid; Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader; Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader; and Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Finance Committee.



Similar arguments were made in a separate brief filed by a dozen former federal health officials, including Donna E. Shalala, the secretary of health and human services under President Bill Clinton; Joseph A. Califano Jr., who was health secretary under President Jimmy Carter; and Bruce C. Vladeck, who was in charge of Medicaid and Medicare in the Clinton administration.



The issue, of immense importance to poor people and states, comes to the Supreme Court in a set of cases consolidated under the name Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, No. 09-958. The court plans to hear oral arguments in October, with a decision expected by the spring. The original plaintiffs in the case, Medicaid beneficiaries and providers, say they were harmed by California’s decision to cut payment rates that were already among the lowest in the country.

Obama, once again, is advocating a Conservative Consenus position, not a position that favors working families. Let the Republicans back him. It's good Democrats aren't. State Senator Eric Griego, the progressive running for the Albuquerque-based open congressional seat being vacated by Martin Heinrich, seemed heartened by the stand Democrats in the House are taking. "I stand with Leader Pelosi and other Democratic House Members who support the right of families who depend on Medicaid to challenge state cuts to their basic health care," he told us. "A quarter of all New Mexicans depend on Medicaid for basic healthcare and two-thirds of them are children. In the State Senate I have opposed cutting Medicaid and instead called for the richest one percent of New Mexicans to pay their fair share and for ending tax giveaways for large out of state corporations."

The 14th Amendment Blues

The Congressional Progressive Caucus and lots of Democratic candidates and activists have called on President Obama to invoke section 4 of the 14th Amendment to prevent the United States from going into default. New Mexico state Senator Eric Griego summed it up well earlier today when he wrote to constituents that the GOP refusal to negotiate in good faith has left us "teetering dangerously close to losing the full faith and credit of the United States," an unacceptable outcome.

We must put the country’s interests ahead of House Republicans’ insistence on an ideological crusade that takes our country’s future hostage in order to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for millionaires, Big Oil and other corporate special interests.

We expect Republicans in Congress to own up to their responsibility for fostering the conditions that have led our country to this point. But after spending trillions of dollars in Bush tax cuts for millionaires, paying trillions more on the nation’s credit card for two mismanaged wars under President Bush’s watch and having nearly caused another Great Depression by falling asleep at the wheel while big banks sank our economy, their intransigence is callous at best and morally bankrupt at worst.

That is why on Friday I called on the President to invoke the 14th Amendment to use executive order in raising the national debt ceiling immediately. Then let’s get to work cutting subsidies for big oil and tax breaks for the rich so we can create jobs and reduce unemployment because people are hurting and they want to work.

Not so fast, says my old friend "bmaz," an attorney in Phoenix who blogs at Emptywheel. He made a persuasive argument today on Twitter about why this is the wrong tack to take and, while I'm not entirely convinced, the argument was sound enough for me to ask him to summarize it for us at DWT:

THE CASE AGAINST TURNING TO THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT SO FAST

-by bmaz

As about everyone knows by now, the great debate is still ongoing on the issue of the debt ceiling. The frustration of those on the left with the intransigence of the Republican Tea Party, coupled with the neutered Democratic Congress, has led many to call for President Obama to immediately "invoke the 14th." The common rallying cry is that legal scholars (usually Jack Balkin is cited), Paul Krugman and various members of Congress have said it is the way to go. But neither Krugman nor the criers in Congress are lawyers, or to the extent they are have no Constitutional background. And Balkin's discussion is relentlessly misrepresented as to what he really has said. "Using the 14th" is a bad meme and here is why.

The Founders, in creating and nurturing our system of governance by and through the Constitution provided separate and distinct branches of government, the Legislative, Executive and Judicial and, further, provided for intentional, established and delineated checks and balances so that power was balanced and not able to be usurped by any one branch tyrannically against the interest of the citizenry. It is summarized by James Madison in Federalist 51 thusly:

First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments.
....
We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other-- that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.

Which must be read in conjunction with Madison in Federalist 47:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

This is the essence of the separation of powers and checks and balances thereon that is the very-- root foundation of our American governance. It may be an abstract thing, but it is very real and critical significance. And it is exactly what is at stake when people blithely clamor to "Use the 14th!"

Specifically, one of the most fundamental powers given by the Founders to the Article I branch, Congress, was the "power of the purse." That was accomplished via Article I, Section 8, which provides:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States...

and

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

The call to "Use the 14th" is a demand that the President, the embodiment of the Article II Executive Branch, usurp the assigned power of the Article I Congress in relation to "borrow money on the credit of the United States." This power is what lays behind the debt ceiling law to begin with, and why it is presumptively Constitutional. It is Congress' power, not the President's, and "invoking the 14th" means usurping that power. Due to "case and controversy" and "standing" limitations, which would require another treatise to discuss fully, there is literally likely no party that could effectively challenge such a usurpation of power by the Executive Branch and an irretrievable standard set for the future. The fundamental separation and balance of powers between the branches will be altered with a significant shift of power to the Executive Branch.

This is not something to be done lightly or if there is any possible alternative available. Indeed, the only instance in which it could be rationally considered would be if all alternatives were exhausted. That does NOT mean because the GOPTeaers are being mean and selfish. It does NOT mean because you are worried about some ethereal interest rate or stock market fluctuation that may, or may not, substantially occur. It does NOT mean because your party's President and Congressional leadership are terminally lame. That, folks, is just not good enough to carve into the heart of Constitutional Separation of Powers. Sorry.

And for those that are thinking about throwing "experts" such as Jack Balkin in the face of what I have argued, go read them, notably Jack himself, who said before invoking the 14th, first the President would have to prioritize what was paid by existent resources, those that could be liberated and revenues that did still come in:

...certainly payments for future services -- would not count and would have to be sacrificed. This might include, for example, Social Security payments.
....
Assume, however, that even a prolonged government shutdown does not move Congress to act. Eventually paying only interest and vested obligations will prove unsustainable-- first because tax revenues will decrease as the economy sours, and second, because holders of government debt will conclude that a government that cannot act in a crisis is not trustworthy.

If the president reasonably believes that the public debt will be put in question for either reason, Section 4 comes into play once again. His predicament is caused by the combination of statutes that authorize and limit what he can do: He must pay appropriated monies, but he may not print new currency and he may not float new debt. If this combination of contradictory commands would cause him to violate Section 4, then he has a constitutional duty to treat at least one of the laws as unconstitutional as applied to the current circumstances.

So, contrary to those shouting and clamoring for Obama to "Use the 14th," it is fraught with peril for long term government stability and function, and is not appropriate to consider until much further down the rabbit hole. It is NOT a quick fix panacea to the fact we, as citizens, have negligently, recklessly and wantonly elected blithering corrupt idiots to represent us. There is no such thing as a free lunch; and the "14th option" is not what you think it is.

As a parting thought for consideration, remember when invasion of privacy and civil liberties by the Executive Branch was just a "necessary and temporary response to emergency" to 9/11? Have you gotten any of your privacies and civil liberties back? Well have ya?

Right-Wing Democrat Marty Chavez Takes The Re-Invention Route... As Albuquerque Democrats Laugh

I was very excited to take a job as general manager of Sire Records, mostly because of my love for bands like the Ramones, Depeche Mode, Smiths, Ministry and Talking Heads. These were the bands that were reintroducing a new honesty and candor back into pop music after a cruel decade of pretentious, overblown corporate rock. But when I took over at Reprise, the label's biggest artist, by far, was Madonna, who I didn't understand at all. My boss, the label's founder, Seymour Stein, took her right off my hands. "I'll handle Madonna and the Cult. You handle everyone else. No, you handle everyone else and the Cult," he told me on my first day on the job. The was fine with me and I soon realized that "handling" Madonna didn't take up much time, basically because she handled herself-- including her much-hyped penchant for reinvention. I came to admire her and the way she reinvented herself, like a slickly handled brand. It's on thing for a pop star; it's something entirely different for a politician.

Early in May we expressed our concern that the DCCC would back one of New Mexico's least trustworthy right-wing Democrats, Marty Chavez, in a race for Martin Heinrich's open House seat in Albuquerque. Chavez was mayor of Albuquerque and his name recognition is as high as it could possibly be. But many Democrats who recognize his name, don't recognize it with fondness. So he's trying a Madonna-like reinvention. I doubt it will work as easily on New Mexico voters as it worked on the incompetent lunkheads at the DCCC. I doubt it and I fear it-- fear it because America doesn't need another right-wing hack in Congress making believe he's a Democrat. And in this case, the man Chavez is running against, state Senator Eric Griego, is one of the most promising progressive leaders running for Congress anywhere in America. Yesterday I got this statement from Eric's campaign:

"I stand with seniors, the disabled, and the working and middle class families of New Mexico in calling on President Obama and Congress to keep their hands off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as they negotiate a solution to the federal debt default crisis. While I support President Obama in his effort avert the catastrophic collapse of our recovering economy, any deal with Republicans that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid for New Mexico seniors and working families while failing to ensure that our nation's wealthiest are paying their fair share is entirely unacceptable."

That's where Eric Griego is coming from-- and he has a record to back it up. It's why Blue America endorsed him and it's why we feel good asking donors to contribute to his campaign. It's who he really is. Don't be surprised to see a similar kind of statement from Chavez as he tap-dances around his reinvention process-- even though it is decidedly not who he is. Who he is, as political observers in Albuquerque are well aware, is a triangulating, self-serving hack who fought against increasing minimum wage and fought against environmental protections and, in fact, fought against reformers and Democrats throughout his disgraceful career.

The first time I really became aware of what a destructive tool Chavez is, wasn't even that long ago. New Mexico's progressive congressman, Tom Udall, then a Blue America fave, was running for the open Senate seat being abandoned by Pete Domenici. Chavez wanted the Senate seat as well and went on an insane, well-financed and distorted jihad against Udall. He was confident, he bragged, that he could defeat Udall in a primary.

“Philosophically, he’s so far to the left,” Chavez said. “I’d rather not have him in the race, but that’s a challenge I’d not shy away from.”

But he did shy away from the challenge. Polling showed him consistently losing to any Republican in the general-- and to Udall in the primary. So he quit the race... and then told the Albuquerque Journal running for a mere House seat-- the one he's running for now-- was beneath him.

Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez on Tuesday tossed a bucket of ice water on any speculation that he might be considering a run for the 1st Congressional District seat.

Chavez, in a telephone interview, blasted the U.S. House of Representatives and said that jumping into the race for the open, Albuquerque-based seat is "not an option."

The House is "not a place where I want to be," said Chavez, who late last week unexpectedly abandoned his short-lived bid for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

He said Tuesday that while the Senate remains a place where "individuals of substance gather," the House-- whose members face re-election every two years, compared with six-year terms for senators-- is "not a place for ladies and gentlemen any longer. ... They play a type of politics (that) I think is destructive."

Odd he would shy away from destructive politics. That, after all, is his hallmark. His short-lived race against Tom Udall didn't endear him to New Mexico Democrats.

Continuing his recent mean-spirited barrage against his high-polling Dem primary opponent for U.S. Senate, Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez is now accusing Rep. Tom Udall (NM-03) of "endangering our national security."

...It's one thing to criticize your primary opponent's positions, but I think this kind of over-the-top rhetoric coming directly from Chavez can only serve to turn more Dem voters against him. Chavez already has a reputation for publicly and privately trashing fellow Dems on the Albuquerque City Council, supporting Repubs and their causes and vowing to vote for Repub Sen. Pete Domenici if he ran for reelection.

Do Chavez and his campaign team really believe that using inflammatory language like this to attack one of the most highly respected and popular Dems in the state will help him in his quest for Dem primary voters? Astonishing. Not only is it wrong, it's bad politics.

Now Chavez, a pro-growth, Chamber of Commerce type hack, is trying to reinvent himself as what he calls a "green mayor." It's a joke and completely manufactured by him and demonstrably false--he's actually terrible on the environment, and spent most of his tenure as Mayor defending himself against lawsuits from environmental organizations and fighting all of the City Council's pro-environment initiatives. Union members know how awful he is and he's not going to hoodwink them, so he's trying to persuade voters of his "progressive" cred using environmentalism.

Eric Griego makes no bones about joining the Congressional progressive Caucus and working on an agenda focused on American families, rather than on multinational corporations. Everything in Chavez's record points to another slimy pro-corporate Blue Dog if he gets into Congress, which is probably what makes Steve Israel so excited about him. This guy's got to be stopped. Please do what you can to help Eric Griego win the primary.