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Yglesias

How Norm Coleman Saved America From Socialism

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 7, 2010 at 1:44 pm

File-Norm_Coleman_official_portrait 1

Dave Weigel enters the counterfactual sweepstakes and wonders how different America might be today absent the long delay in seating Al Franken:

If Franken had eked out another 1000 votes in Minnesota, or if Republicans simply decided not to keep suing to overturn the recount he won, the Democratic agenda would have been radically different. In January and February, the 59 — not 58 — Democrats in the Senate would have only needed to grab one Republican to pass the stimulus. That probably would have resulted in a larger stimulus bill, with extra billions of dollars (maybe $110 billion) going to tax cuts or spending. Democrats would have had the votes for card check, and gotten that out of the way quickly, while Ted Kennedy was still healthy. Just having that extra vote to play with when Obama’s popularity was peaking might have shaken up the whole schedule, gotten nominees like Dawn Johnson into their jobs, and led to more action in the Senate that pleased the Democratic base and — possibly — had a marginal impact on the economy. As it was, Democrats only had a functioning “supermajority” from September 2009 (Franken in the Senate, Paul Kirk in Ted Kennedy’s seat) to January 2010, and all they did with it was pass health care.

I think that’s wrong on card check, where resistance inside the Democratic caucus was pretty big. But the larger point is correct—we likely would have had bigger stimulus, more growth, more nominees confirmed, and it’s possible the Rahm Tipping Point Theory of legislating would have worked. At a minimum, we’d have a somewhat more progressive policy status quo, somewhat less joblessness, and probably a somewhat different outlook for the midterms.

Weigel notes that “Here’s something amazing about the Franken mess: Republicans appear to have paid no price for it.” Exactly. I think that this highlights one of the most admirable things about the Republican congressional caucus. Both its leadership and its rank and file show a good deal more commitment to the substance of things and less concern about transient matters of appearance. Senate Republicans clearly understood that legislative outcomes in 2009 were a very important issue and focused their energy pretty decisively on playing an objectively weak hand to influence them. Senate Democrats, dealt a strong hand, spent an amazing amount of time fretting about process and superficial matters and only really buckled down in 2010 by which time their hand was much weaker.

Politics

Franken calls opposition to mosque near Ground Zero ‘one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve heard.’

By Zaid Jilani on Aug 19, 2010 at 1:15 pm

franken1 As conservatives continue their hateful campaign against building the proposed Park 51 Islamic community center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City, Democratic leaders have started to push back. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told a local news station earlier this week that the mosque was a “local decision” and that we’re “not at war with a religion, we’re at war with terrorism.” Illinois Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, despite being in a tough race, spoke out in favor of building the mosque as well. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) said it wasn’t the “role” of politicians to tell people where to worship and that the mosque’s organizers “should be able to” build where they want. Speaking at the Democratic County Chairmen’s Association breakfast yesterday in Illinois, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) continued this trend by slamming the mosque’s critics. He called opposition to the mosque “one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve heard,” and used his trademark humor to mock conservative opponents for being scared of “Muslim point guards” that might play basketball at the community center:

U.S. Sen. Al Franken gave a quip-filled speech at the Democratic County Chairmen’s Association breakfast Wednesday, attacking Republicans for opposing the building of a mosque blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. [...] Franken said conservative opposition to the mosque is “one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve heard.”

“I don’t know how many of you have been to New York, but if a building is two blocks away from anything, you can’t see it. It’s a community center. They’re going to have a gym. They’re going to have point guards. Muslim point guards,” Franken said, to laughter and applause.

Unfortunately, Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL), who shared the stage with Franken at the event, came out against the mosque on the same day. “I think we should be sensitive to people on Planet Earth in these special places whether its Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor or Ground Zero, that they not be subject to political controversy that could cause great harm,” he said.

Climate Progress

Recently Elected Dem Senators Want More ‘Passion,’ ‘Political Clarity,’ And ‘Fight’ For Green Economy

By Brad Johnson on Jul 28, 2010 at 4:45 pm

Democrats recently elected to the U.S. Senate have pressed their colleagues to ambitiously address climate and energy reform, and are frustrated by the lack of action. In a series of interviews with the Wonk Room at Netroots Nation, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) described the challenges of confronting climate pollution in the sclerotic legislative body, brought to a practical standstill by minority obstruction. They each discussed how the “new class” of 22 Democratic senators elected in the 2006 and 2008 waves (with independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont) have pressed for greater “political clarity” on climate by “rattling all the cages” in the Senate, alongside senior leaders such as Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).

Questioned by the Wonk Room why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) shied away from introducing a comprehensive climate bill for full Senate consideration as energy crises pile up during the hottest summer ever recorded, the senators noted the ability of Republicans to thwart the will of the majority through the abuse of parliamentary procedures. They recognized Reid’s decision to try for quick action with a limited package in what little time is left during this Congress. However, they relished the chance to debate the promise of a green economy before the November elections, seeing the issue as a political winner:

CARDIN: I think we need political clarity. I wasn’t so concerned about having a vote before August. But we needed the clarity of the bill.

FRANKEN: If you want to rev up people, and say Democrats believe in this — one of the gaps they’re talking about is the enthusiasm gap. So maybe, politically, that is the right way to go. I think that Harry tends to want to get half a loaf or a third of a loaf rather than no loaf at all. This bill could be considered a first step. A lot of that is strategic, in terms of positioning yourself for the election. I was sort of of the school that we should go for pricing carbon, and if we lose, we lose. But that’s not what we did.

UDALL: Our two classes — the class of 2006 and the class of 2008 — I think have a real passion for all of the things you talked about and a desire to do something. We’re rattling all the cages in the committees we’re on, doing the things that we can do. But there is kind of an institutional thing going on there that slows everything down. There’s no doubt about that.

MERKLEY: This generational factor is why, if we can create a course that at least puts us on the right track for the next six to eight years, we will have with each subsequent election more and more folks coming in — based on what I hear at the university level, and graduate school level, and based on the difference between our class and the several classes ahead of us — there is just a growing commitment and passion to fighting this fight on climate and energy.

Watch Udall, Merkley, and Franken discuss their efforts to bring new passion to the climate and energy fight:


The Democrats described by Sen. Cardin as the “new class” overwhelmingly support strong green economy legislation, unlike the older generation peppered with climate peacocks. In fact, according to Politico, every one of the 12 Democrats elected in 2008 would vote for cloture on comprehensive climate and energy reform. Of the ten Democrats elected in 2006, only Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) make polluter-friendly arguments against clean energy reform.

“This is going to be a generational battle,” Merkley explained. “We’re going to have keep working and pushing because even our most optimistic bill has fairly weak goals for 2020. We’re going to have to be a lot more aggressive between 2020 and 2050 if we’re going to address carbon dioxide.”

“We can’t give up,” Cardin said during his interview, “because the stakes are too high for our country.”

Update

In contrast to the above senators’ frustration with Republican obstruction, other Democrats want to ensure its continuation. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI, elected in 1990), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, 1992), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE, 2000), Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR, 2002), and one member of the newer classes, Sen. Jon Tester (D-MO, 2006), want to preserve the 60-vote threshold for all action in the Senate.

Politics

Franken: Republicans ‘Don’t Want People To Get Jobs Before The Election’

By Amanda Terkel on Jul 26, 2010 at 10:56 am

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) fired up progressive activists as the closing speaker at the fifth annual Netroots Nation conference on Saturday evening. He jokingly called the gathering “the most exciting political gathering of the year without guns” and told the gathering to keep fighting and pushing elected officials.

A few hours before the event, ThinkProgress sat down with Franken and asked him about the public’s frustration with the Senate’s gridlock. Franken told us that the new Senate will likely take up filibuster reform next year, an effort that he supports. He also discussed the need for other procedural reforms:

TP: Is there any other ideas that aren’t being talked about as much that you think would help the Senate be more productive?

FRANKEN: Well, I think there are, you know, a lot of this is procedural reform on how you offer amendments, and again, obviously, on cloture, and filibusters, and how many hours you have to have of debate even after cloture. One easy idea is, you have to wait 30 hours after a cloture vote to vote, because there’s supposedly 30 hours of debate. Well, sometimes they’ve had cloture votes where it’s — we’ve had to vote cloture on something that isn’t controversial at all, like a nominee who ends up passing 98-nothing. There’s no debate over the next 30 hours. So, you could say, I mean, one easy reform would be, say, either side or both sides can give up 15 hours. So, instead of it being 30 hours, it’s 15 hours. I mean, a lot of all of this was just to slow-foot, to slow things down.

In a clear example of Republicans trying to “slow things down,” the Washington Post notes today that the Senate GOP — along with a few conservative Democrats — “have blocked measures that would offer summer jobs to teenagers, give aid to states to prevent layoffs of teachers and other state employees, and expand funding of Pell grants — arguing that all would raise the budget deficit.” Franken attributed their obstruction to crass partisan motives:

And Republicans sort of take this stance that the best thing we can do is slow everything down so as little can happen as possible, so that we can both blame Democrats for not having stuff happen, like jobs bills and stuff like that. And so that, you know, I mean sometimes it’d be a legitimate difference of opinion on something, but sometimes it’s been ridiculous. But I do think that this whole approach of slowing everything down, in many ways I think it’s so that, they don’t want a jobs bill because they don’t want people to get jobs before the election. It’s a harsh thing to say, and I don’t want to impugn the motives of my colleagues, but I don’t get what they’re doing otherwise.

Watch it:

Franken has had experience with the filibuster dating back to before he was even seated as a U.S. senator. As Republicans attempted to drag out the recount process in Minnesota (even though it became clear that Franken was the winner of the election), the GOP promised to filibuster any attempt to seat Franken early.

Transcript: Read more

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Yglesias

More Study for Franken Amendment: Possibly the Right Call

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 17, 2010 at 9:14 am

Al Franken campaign photo

Al Franken campaign photo

I missed this when it happened, but it seems that on Tuesday the Conference Committee sort of gutted Al Franken’s amendment on rating agencies. Tim Fernholz explains:

An all-day fight ensued behind the scenes among Democratic members of the Senate delegation over whether to protect Franken’s idea or accept the House’s language. Franken’s proposal, despite a strong vote in the Senate, is still viewed skeptically by some Democrats because it preserves the existing ratings agencies and by others because agencies have lobbied hard against it. Eventually, a compromise was brokered, directing the SEC to implement Franken’s plan — after a year-long study. It’s a classic Washington agreement, at once meaningless and damaging since regulators could ignore legislators’ intent after public scrutiny subsides.

“Today’s compromise is not everything we wanted, but it’s a major step in the right direction,” Franken said later. “The language agreed on by the conference committee means more time and more study than I think is necessary, but it also means definite action will be taken.”

In essence, I agree with Fernholz’s take on the dynamics. But I think further study of this might actually be a good idea. Franken’s proposal is that instead of the issuer of a security picking which rating agency he wants to have rate his security, that instead the security should be submitted to a pool that then randomly assigns it to a rater. In theory, this should curb conflicts of interest that allegedly undermined the soundness of the ratings process.

The thing is that I’m not sure conflicts of interest are really the problem here. For a lengthy account, see my salad-rating analogy, but the short version is that nobody would tell his friends “yeah guys, let’s go see The A-Team, the film critic the studio hired to review it said it was awesome.” The thing is that if you want to read a movie review, you presumably actually want to know if the movie is good. By contrast, there are lots of regulatory-compliance reasons why you might want to buy a AAA-rated security that are to a large extent independent of whether or not the security deserves a AAA rating. You take care of this by changing things on the regulatory side, which I believe both versions of the bill do.

Franken-style randomizing could do some good, or else it could replace a conflict of interest (bad) with a scenario in which agencies have no incentive whatsoever to invest time and money in sound methods (worse). But that may be wrong or there may be good ways around it—I’d actually like to see this studied.

Yglesias

Senate Passes Potentially Contradictory Ratings Agency Reforms

By Matthew Yglesias on May 13, 2010 at 3:58 pm

File-Al_Franken_Official_Senate_Portrait

There were two main schools of thought as to what should be done to improve the ratings agencies. One said that the problem was conflicts of interest and wanted to solve this through random assignment of raters. Another said the problem was cartelization and wanted to solve this through forcing agencies to sell accuracy rather than franchise value. Today, it seems to me that today the Senate passed amendments reflecting both those ideas.

First, Al Franken’s amendment passed:

Franken’s measure would create a central clearinghouse, regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, to assign firms a credit rating agency to give an initial rating on a security, eliminating the practice of banks shopping around for the highest marks. Financial firms could seek out subsequent ratings on their own, but any discrepancies between the assigned and unassigned ratings would be made public.

But George LeMieux’s amendment also passed:

“There is a handful of federally-approved rating agencies that gave their top marks to some of the worst investments. Those stellar ratings made bad investments seem sound, up until when they crashed the markets,” said LeMieux. “An investment rating should mean something, but today it doesn’t. Removing their federal endorsement will end the dangerous over-reliance on these ratings and allow sound measures of risk to re-emerge in the marketplace-giving investors confidence an investment’s true risk is known.”

It’s not totally clear to me what LeMieux means by this and I haven’t seen a clearer explanation of the amendment anywhere. But he seems to be saying that he’s going to have the SEC stop designating official Nationally Recognized Statistical Ratings Organizations.

These are both decent ideas, but they’re also contradictory. The Franken process assumes there’s some finite number of authorized raters—NRSROs or some equivalent, but the LeMieux concept is precisely that there shouldn’t be any such set of privileged raters. Sometimes when faced with two ideas about how to solve a problem, doing both is smart. But as best I can tell that doesn’t apply in this case.

Update

Tim Fernholz IMs to say I’m misunderstanding what the LeMieux amendment does. He says it doesn’t get rid of NRSROs, it gets rid of regulatory dependence on NRSROs and enjoins regulators to develop their own independent risk assessments. That’s a good idea that would complement Franken’s.

Note that the actual language has been made available, Tim’s story seems to check out. Would be nice if this had been posted a couple of hours ago when the vote happened.


Update

,Here’s a more detailed account of LeMieux’s amendment from Mike Konczal. It looks good to me.

Yglesias

Franken Hits Obama Over CSPAN Promise

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 23, 2010 at 2:28 pm

header_cspan_e 1

I think Al Franken is right about this:

Franken wouldn’t relent.

“The president of the United States comes up here, you come here, and none of you are telling us what we’re going to do about health care,” he continued. “He should apologize to everyone here for his stupid idea during the campaign to put this all on C-SPAN.”

More generally, I wish we could influence the norms of campaign coverage so as to discourage presidents from making promises that are outside the scope of their authority. The President of the United States has a powerful role to play in the legislative process, but it’s also a bounded one. For a candidate to be making promises about the nature of congressional procedure seems generally unwise, over and above the fact that this specific promise was a silly one. I’d be fascinated to hear David Plouffe or David Axelrod explain to me how many votes they think they swung with this idea. I’d be shocked if as many as two people found this a compelling reason to vote for Obama, and yet it wound up dominating a couple of news cycles.

Politics

Obama signs Franken’s anti-rape amendment into law.

By Amanda Terkel on Dec 21, 2009 at 1:50 pm

Al Franken The White House Press Office sent out a statement today announcing that President Obama signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010 into law on Saturday:

H.R. 3326, the “Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010,” which provides FY 2010 appropriations for Department of Defense (DOD) military programs including funding for Overseas Contingency Operations, and extends various expiring authorities and other non-defense FY 2010 appropriations.

Within the Appropriations Act is Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) amendment prohibiting defense contractors from restricting their employees’ abilities to take workplace discrimination, battery, and sexual assault cases to court. The measure was inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. Many Republicans opposed the legislation — saying it was an unnecessary attack on their allies in the defense contracting business — and faced intense political blowback over their positions.

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Politics

Flashback: McCain Refused To Grant 30 Seconds Of Time During Iraq War Debate

By Faiz Shakir on Dec 18, 2009 at 1:46 pm

mackYesterday, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), acting on the orders of the Senate leadership, refused to grant Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) “an additional moment” to continue speaking on the Senate floor after his 10 minutes expired. Franken’s objection caused Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to groan about how Franken’s move was unprofessional, unprecedented, and disrespectful:

McCAIN: I’ve been around here 20-some years. First time I’ve ever seen a member denied an extra minute or two to finish his remarks. … I just haven’t seen it before myself. And I don’t like it. And I think it harms the comity of the Senate not to allow one of our members at least a minute. I’m sure that time is urgent here, but I doubt that it would be that urgent.

Unfortunately, McCain’s memory is suffering. In fact, McCain has engaged in the very same behavior that he was criticizing Franken for yesterday.

On October 10, 2002 — just ahead of the looming mid-term elections — the Senate rushed a debate on a war authorization giving President Bush the power to use force against Iraq. The resolution ultimately passed the Senate after midnight on an early Friday morning by a vote of 77-23.

During the course of the frenzied floor debate, then-Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN) spoke in favor of an amendment offered by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) that would have restricted Bush’s constitutional powers to wage war against Iraq. After a minute and a half, Dayton ran out of time, prompting this exchange:

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator’s time has expired.

Mr. DAYTON. I ask for unanimous consent that I have 30 seconds more to finish my remarks.

Mr. McCAIN. I object.

Byrd stepped in to grant Dayton time to finish his remarks. But just moments later, Byrd asked for more time to speak for himself. Again, McCain objected, prompting Byrd to chide him for doing so. “This shows the patience of a Senator,” Byrd said. “This clearly demonstrates that the train is coming down on us like a Mack truck, and we are not even going to consider a few extra minutes for this Senator.”

After being publicly shamed, McCain acquiesced to Byrd’s request. But moments later, McCain added this disclaimer: “I wish to say very briefly that I understand people have a desire to speak. We have a number of Senators who have not spoken on this issue. It is already looking as if we may be here well into this evening. From now on, I will be adhering strictly to the rules.” In other words, he acted just like Franken did yesterday.

Update

The Fox & Friends crew attacked Franken this morning, calling him “uncivil,” a “newbie,” and “an angry clown.”

Politics

Franken refuses Lieberman’s request to drag on Senate debate. (Updated)

By Faiz Shakir on Dec 17, 2009 at 5:03 pm

This afternoon, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) spoke for 10 minutes on the Senate floor about a health care amendment he is co-sponsoring. After his 10 minutes expired, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) — the president chair of the Senate at the time — informed Lieberman his time was up. When Lieberman requested “just an additional moment,” Franken retorted, “In my capacity as Senator from Minnesota, I object.” “Really??” a surprised Lieberman said, “don’t take it personally.” Lieberman’s friend, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), flipped out, erupting in anger at Franken’s move:

MCCAIN: I’ve never seen a member denied an extra minute or so, as the chair just did.

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI): If the chair would yield for that…I think the same thing did occur earlier this afternoon, for reasons which have to do with trying to get this bill going. […]

MCCAIN: I think it harms the comity of the Senate.

Watch it:


Update

A Senate staffer tells ThinkProgress that the reason Franken cut off Lieberman is because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) office has been asking all presiding chairs to enforce the 10-minute rule for both sides. Franken was simply following the direction of leadership.

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