BILL HEMMER: In your view, how real is the possibility of war between Israel and Iran?

EVAN BAYH: I think that’s more of a threat right now than a reality. And the reason for that, Bill, is Israel could launch a single attack against the Iranian nuclear facilities assuming we know where they all are. We know where most of them are but there may be some where we don’t. [...]

So the real consequence would be if Israel launched an attack against Iran, the Iranians would probably think we were complicit in that. They would never believe the Israelis did it on their own, even if that were true. The Iranians might then lash out at us. Bomb some of our embassies. Go after our troops in Afghanistan. Unleash Hezbollah against us some places. And that would then confront the United States with the decision that having being attacked by Iran, well of course we aren’t going to sit idly by and let them get away with that. So it could be a slippery slope toward war.

Watch it:

Bayh, who has previously bought into the “martyr state myth” that Iran is a suicidal country, should be familiar with the “slippery slope to war” from his membership in the Iraq-war pushing Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. His latest remarks don’t completely contradict his previous endorsements for the use of U.S. military force against Iran but it does offer a stiff rebuke against the increasingly explicit statements by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak suggesting Israel is preparing for a unilateral attack.

Admitting that an Israeli attack would almost inevitably result in retaliation against U.S. interests, thereby drawing the U.S. into another war in the Middle East, is an important admission coming from a certifiable Iran hawk.

The real warmongering was left to former Democratic senator and member of the war charging Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Evan Bayh, who boosted the right-wing claim that the Iranians are suicidal maniacs incapable of being deterred and added that, ultimately, the United States will have to attack Iran:

BAYH: The Israelis may be able to launch a one off strike on Iran but they don’t have the ability for the kind of sustained bombing campaign that it would really take to degrade their nuclear arsenal. … You’d have to bomb them for several weeks in a row. There’s only one country that has that kind of capability and that’s the United States. For Israelis it is an existential question. For us it raises the issue, is the Iranian nation a normal nation-state that’s belligerent and does things we don’t like but ultimately is not suicidal and can be deterred. Or are they really a suicidal theocracy that might actually use nuclear weapons even if it meant a nuclear retaliation against them. That’s a different case. … The odds are that they are not a suicidal theocracy. But the question is if you’re Israel can you afford to run that risk? Probably not. …

For us it may be better to try and stop that [proliferation] before it gets started by using limited force to prevent Iran from going nuclear when it gets right down to it. … We have to ask ourselves, is a nuclear Iran acceptable? If the answer is no, there’s really only one way to keep that from coming about and that’s the use of force.

Watch the clip:

While Bayh claimed that for Israelis, the Iran issue “is an existential question,” ex-Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy pushed back on this narrative last week, saying Iran is “far from posing an existential threat to Israel.”

And the claim that Iran is ruled by suicidal maniacs hell bent on blowing up Europe, the United States and Israel with nuclear weapons is an alarmist charge that the right trots out when advocating for military strikes to stop Iran from weaponizing its nuclear program. CAP’s Matt Duss recently outlined this “martyr state myth” over at Foreign Policy and notes that it is based on ” flawed assumptions.”

Thus, Bayh’s warmongering is also based on flawed assumptions. Perhaps he has yet to learn any lessons from his days hawking war with Iraq.

The United States Chamber of Commerce, which spends millions of dollars donated by large corporations to lobby against government regulation, has kicked off a new anti-regulatory road show, starring former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Andrew Card, George W. Bush’s former chief of staff. In a press conference at the Chamber yesterday, Bayh bashed “excessive” regulations, saying they “suck the vitality” out of the economy. And in an op-ed today, Bayh and Card laid out their case on behalf of the REINS Act, legislation that would virtually halt new or updated health and safety protections (see here, here, and here) by requiring that Congress vote to approve final regulations before they go into effect.

Their case is not only weak; it is false. Bayh and Card, hewing to the Chamber’s talking points, claim that the economic recovery depends on cutting back on government regulation, because “more regulations impose heavy burdens on job creators.” The answer is to “get Americans back to work by removing excessive and costly regulations that make it hard for businesses to grow.” The available evidence supports neither of these claims.

To support their claim about excessive regulatory costs, Bayh and Card cite a study commissioned by the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, which claimed that regulations cost $1.75 trillion in a year. That study is popular with anti-regulation advocates, but never stood up to scrutiny. A Center for Progressive Reform report I co-authored details the serious methodological problems with this estimate; 70 percent of which was based on a regression analysis using opinion polling data on perceived regulatory climate in different countries. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service backed up and expanded upon this critique . In congressional testimony, Cass Sunstein, the President’s point person on regulation, described the statistics now cited by Bayh and Card as an “urban legend.”

As with any type of spending, regulatory compliance generates economic activity. While it is difficult to measure whether on balance job gains from this spending offset any job losses, existing studies (described in congressional testimony I gave) do not support the conclusion that regulation retards economic recovery. Instead, the studies find either no overall impact or, in some cases, an actual increase in employment.

This result is not surprising. After all, money spent on regulation contributes to the economy, because firms must buy equipment and labor services in order to upgrade their operation — to improve their environmental safeguards, for example, to comply with regulation. In some cases, regulations can also increase employment by making the affected industry more profitable and more productive.

Employers themselves consistently attribute “unextended mass layoffs” to causes other than regulation; Department of Labor statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute show that from 2007 to 2009, only .3 percent of such layoffs were pinned to rules. Extreme weather events actually accounted for more layoffs. And it’s important to remember that our current economic situation comes thanks largely to under-regulation of financial institutions.

Bayh and Card see regulators as having “unprecedented power” and call for “restoring balance and accountability in the process.” I don’t know what regulatory system they are viewing, but it bears no resemblance to the one operating currently in the United States. Far from having “unprecedented power,” agencies find it difficult to complete any type of controversial regulation in less than six to ten years because they must negotiate a complex gauntlet of analysis and reviews before they can issue a regulation, including judicial review at the end of the road.

The capacity of regulators to jump over these hurdles has been seriously eroded in recent years as agency budgets and staff have been held constant or even reduced by Congress, even as the number of imported toys, new chemicals, and job hazards and other dangers to people have increased. This explains why agencies have been unable to prevent a series of catastrophic regulatory failures, such as the BP oil spill, salmonella outbreaks, and the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster. This is a regulatory system gasping for air, not running roughshod over regulated entities.

The Chamber is hoping that, with its millions of dollars, and its slick bipartisan salesmen, it can sell its anti-regulatory message to the public. It will not let something as important as the facts get in its way.

I’ve been touting insufficient aggregate demand as the primary cause of America’s high unemployment rate, but it’s possible that Evan Bayh is single-handedly responsible for the situation:

Former Indiana Senator Evan Bayh will now serve on the board of directors of Fifth/ Third Bancorp. The new job adds to the list of responsibilities that Bayh has taken on since leaving the Senate, including positions as a Fox News contributor and a job with the United States Chamber of Commerce.

They forgot that he’s also holding down a third job as a lobbyist and a forth job with Apollo Capital Management as a private equity rainmaker. That’s a lot of jobs for one man, especially since in a few years he’ll be eligible to double-dip on pensions as a former governor of Indiana and a former senator.

Now, Peter Stone is reporting that Bayh will be joining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, perhaps the most influential lobbying group for multinational corporations and big businesses with a far right lobbying agenda. (View ThinkProgress’ history of the Chamber, including its decades-long opposition to women’s rights, labor rights, and even its refusal to support a war against Nazi Germany.)

Bayh will be joining former Bush administration official Andy Card in a Chamber-led lobbying campaign designed to weaken regulations on corporations across the board, and make it more difficult to enact new regulations. The REINS Act, which Bayh will be helping to pass, will severely undercut (and effectively repeal) significant portions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, health and financial reform, the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, among many other laws.

It is not clear how much Bayh is being paid by the Chamber, or by his new gigs at Apollo Global Management or McGuireWoods. During the period of 2009-2010, when Bayh was still in office, he appeared to be auditioning for a job in the private sector as a lobbyist:

– Killing Labor Reform: Despite past support for the labor rights legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act, Bayh eventually wavered on support the bill once it had a real chance of passing when President Obama came into office. Killing the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have given workers a fair chance to form a union, was the Chamber’s biggest legislative priority other than passing the bank bailouts of 2008.

– Killing Climate Change And Clean Energy Jobs Legislation: Bayh positioned himself to the right of some members of the GOP in opposing a renewable energy standard. He later railed against clean energy reform, which died in the Senate because of obstruction from Bayh and several other conservative senators.

– Supporting Pro-Corporate Senate Obstruction: Bayh even formed a coalition of conservative senators — including Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) — to slow and kill major reforms proposed by President Obama. As ThinkProgress’ Matthew Yglesias has noted, Bayh and his cohorts appeared to be “hoping to soak up special interest cash in exchange for blocking the progressive agenda.”

One must wonder: when did Bayh begin negotiations with the Chamber for his current job as a lobbyist? Did the expectation that he would leave Congress and join the private sector as a lobbyist impact his votes and actions while in the Senate? If he had been a staunch advocate for the workers and families of Indiana, and had fought for labor reforms, would he have been welcome for what is probably an extremely highly paid job at the Chamber? The same type of questions could and should be asked of former Reps. David Obey (D-WI), John Tanner (D-TN), Allen Boyd (D-FL), Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), Bart Gordon (D-TN), and many other recently retired members of Congress who have joined corporate lobbying firms.

Today, the Huffington Post reports that Bayh has taken a job at Fox News Channel:

Fox News is expected to announce Monday afternoon that former Indiana Senator Evan Bayh will become a contributor to the network, The Huffington Post has learned.

Bayh will be a commentator and political analyst across all of Fox News’ platforms.

Bayh joins a network that, in just the past week, compared Muslims to mafia members, characterized unions as one giant “kickback system” and union members as “violent,” “rabid leftists,” “howling liberals,” and which has been actively encouraging a government shutdown.

In an interview last year, Bayh said he wasn’t sure what he would do once he left the Senate. “If I could help educate our children at an institution of higher learning, that would be a noble and worthy thing. If I could help a charity or a philanthropic activity, cure a disease, or do something else worthwhile for society, that’s what has motivated my life.” He also said he wanted to help create jobs.

Bayh has indeed succeeded in creating jobs, for himself. In addition to his Fox News position, Bayh accepted a job at Apollo Global Management, a multi-billion dollar private equity firm, and also McGuireWoods LLP, a D.C. lobbying firm that engages on banking and climate change legislation, on behalf of “well-heeled” clients.

History's Greatest Monster

When he first announced that he was stepping down from the United States Senate, Evan Bayh cited a lot of high-minded reasons for the decision. So high-minded was his talk that Ezra Klein was moved to remark that “Evan Bayh might have been an ordinary politician, but he’s proving an extraordinary retiree.” It turned out, however, that his main plan was to get rich as a lobbyist. Today we learn that he’ll also be acquiring a secondary gig as a conservative television pundit:

Bayh will be a commentator and political analyst across all of Fox News’ platforms. He was a Senator from 1999 to 2011, where he became one of the more prominent conservative Democrats in the chamber. He was also the Governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1997. Bayh considered running for the presidency in 2008, but ultimately decided against it.

Note that there’s considerable synergy between Bayh’s job at McGuireWoods LLP and his Fox gig. This way business enterprises hoping for regulatory favors or subsidies from the federal government can hire McGuireWoods not only to take advantage of Bayh’s influence and knowledge on the Hill, they’ll also be gaining on on-air television spokesman, presumably one whose client affiliations won’t be disclosed to the viewing public. And since as best we can tell Fox has no journalistic standards, it’ll be an ideal venue for peddling whatever nonsense he likes.

Evan Bayh announced last year that he would not be seeking reelection, and gave a pious speech deploring partisanship. “If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months,” he announced. And now, just a few weeks into his post-public service life, he has already created a job — for himself: “Former Sen. Evan Bayh is joining McGuireWoods LLP as a partner in Washington, the law firm will announce on Monday.”

As a Senator, Bayh had a professional obligation to try to shape American public policy in the best interests of the American people and of the world. As a lobbyist for McGuireWoods LLP, Bayh now has a professional obligation to try to shape American public policy in the best interests of McGuireWoods LLP’s well-heeled clients. I’m not one of the large number of DC-based writers who frequently chats with Bayh, but if I were I’d be interested in learning why he thinks trading the former obligation for the latter one is a change for the better.

TODD: Yesterday, the Census came out and said one in seven Americans are living below the poverty line. Do you look at that story today — you know, you open up your USA Today, right, and you see that story — and you see Washington is debating the tax rates for the wealthy, and you sit there and say, isn’t that a disconnect in America right now?

BAYH: It is a disconnect, Chuck. What we need to be focused on is growth, how do we create jobs, how do we expand businesses. That needs to be job one right now. And all these other issues involving, oh, fairness and things like that can wait.

Watch it:

As The Wonk Room explained, Bayh is pushing Congress to forget about income inequality that is the worst it has been since 1928, in order to spend $830 billion giving millionaires a tax break equal to almost two and a half times the median household’s income.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) has adopted the Republican line when it comes to the Bush tax cuts, even though he likes to style himself as a deficit-hawk. Today, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Bayh about the poverty data, and whether there is a disconnect between the real economic pain that people are feeling and lawmakers squabbling over tax rates for the wealthy. Bayh agreed that there is a disconnect, but then concluded that the poverty increase means lawmakers should forget about “fairness and things like that” and cut taxes for the rich:

TODD: Yesterday, the Census came out and said one in seven Americans are living below the poverty line. Do you look at that story today — you know, you open up your USA Today, right, and you see that story — and you see Washington is debating the tax rates for the wealthy, and you sit there and say, isn’t that a disconnect in America right now?

BAYH: It is a disconnect, Chuck. What we need to be focused on is growth, how do we create jobs, how do we expand businesses. That needs to be job one right now. And all these other issues involving, oh, fairness and things like that can wait.

Watch it:

So Bayh thinks that Congress should forget about:

– Income inequality, which is the worst its been since 1928. Currently, the top one percent of households make nearly 25 percent of the total income in the country. According to the latest data, “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007.”

In order to:

– Borrow and spend $830 billion on the richest two percent of households. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich will give a millionaire an annual tax cut of $128,832, which is nearly two and a half times the median household income.

Bayh conceded that the top two percent of earners doesn’t include many small businesses, but said that we should spend more than $800 billion to cut their taxes anyway, because “we want them doing more hiring, more investing, and at least hanging in there from a consumption standpoint.” However, according to a new study from Moody’s Analytics, the rich are more likely to save the money if their taxes are cut than spend it.

Normally you see “moderates” flocking to popular positions, especially when—as in this case—the popular position is also a genuine bit of difference-splitting middle ground. But that’s not the case here. Jon Chait speculates as to why:

One possibility is that vulnerable red state Democrats are trying to signal their moderation by breaking with the party leadership on a high-profile issue, even one in which the party has a popular stance. But the defections include retiring Democrats like Bayh and Conrad, and a blue state Senator like Lieberman whose main political danger comes from the left.

So my explanation is that Senators are both among, and surrounded by, the small minority of Americans who earn more than $250,000 a year. They hear from them disproportionately, they live among them, and they are them. So their conception of what is popular and what is reasonable on this issue is warped.

There’s something to that. But I think larger issue here is the perverse framing of deficit issues. If Mitch McConnell were sponsoring a bill to cut taxes on rich people and cut spending by an equal amount, I bet no moderate Democrats would find that tempting. And if Mitch McConnell were sponsoring a bill to cut taxes on rich people and raise taxes on the middle class by an equal amount, I bet no moderate Democrats would find that tempting either. But of course a permanent reduction in rich people’s taxes implies reductions in spending or higher taxes on the middle class. And the media never—never—frames a division within the Democratic caucus as pitting spendthrift moderates like Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson against deficit hawk liberals like Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer even though this is the precise divide that opens up whenever Bush-era tax policies are on the table.

We believe that changing the rules at this time will have a significant negative impact on our states’ workers and families and will compound the hardship that many are now facing in these difficult economic times.

The pro-smog letter was also signed by Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Kit Bond (R-MO) and David Vitter (R-LA).

Remarkably, the senators do not seem cognizant of Bush’s well-reported act of malfeasance, complaining that “the Agency has not presented new data or evidence to justify its course of action”:

Instead, outside of the regular five-year review process, EPA is choosing to interpret the same basic body of information that existed in 2008 and reach a different conclusion. . .

Given the absence of new or different scientific data, EPA should maintain the current ozone standards, which EPA finalized only two years ago and concluded were adequately protective of public health and welfare with an adequate of safety [sic].

Actually the conclusion EPA staff and scientists drew in 2008, based on the scientific evidence that “ozone has a direct impact on rates of heart and respiratory disease and resulting premature deaths,” was that a standard no higher than 70 ppb was needed. The agency calculated that a standard of 65 ppb “would avoid 3,000 to 9,200 deaths annually,” two to three times more than a 75 ppb standard. The difference is that George W. Bush is no longer the decider.

The senators also claim that the previous smog standards harmed the economy:

We note that many states are only recently coming into attainment with the 1997, 0.084 ppm ozone standard. Attaining that standard required costly mandates on businesses, which greatly restricted the ability of local communities to grow their economies. . .

While we believe we can and should continue to improve our environment, we have become increasingly concerned that the Agency’s environmental policies are being advanced to the detriment of the people they are intended to protect. That is, these policies are impacting our standard of living by drastically increasing energy costs and decreasing the ability of our states to create jobs, foster entrepreneurship, and give manufacturers the ability to compete in the global marketplace.

The claim that attainment with the 1997 standard “greatly restricted the ability of local communities to grow their economies” is without evidence. In fact, the only noticeable effect of the 1997 standards on the economy was to dramatically cut the regulated pollution, making millions of children healthier, even as the economy steadily grew, as this EPA chart shows:

Finally, the senators claim — again without evidence — that “non-attainment” penalties under the Clean Air Act “undermine the economic viability of communities within our states.” In fact, “there is no clear evidence that non-attainment designations or progress in addressing air quality prevent areas from growing,” EPA officials informed the Wonk Room. Areas such as Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and many others have been non-attainment for years and have had very strong growth rates. The EPA tells the Wonk Room:

We see no significant differences in the trend of employment, wages and number of establishments between attainment and non-attainment areas.

There is clear evidence, however, that this effort to ensure that more children have asthma attacks comes on behalf of coal and oil corporations in the senators’ states. Peabody Energy, the “world’s leading coal company,” is based in Missouri and has mines in Indiana, and is a top campaign contributor to McCaskill, Bond, Lugar and Bayh. Murray Energy, the “largest privately owned coal company in America,” is based in Voinovich‘s state. Landrieu and Vitter have collected a combined $1.5 million from the pollution industry, whose refineries and power plants keep killing children and keep sending these senators back to Washington.

Today, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) appeared on CNBC to make his case for extending all the tax cuts. “We’re all about trying to keep the current law as it is and not allow this administration to raise these taxes,” because of a desire to “commit ourselves to help small business,” Cantor said.

Most Democrats are on board with the President’s plan to allow the cuts to expire for the richest Americans. “President Obama has indicated that he wants to extend those tax cuts for those with $250,000 in income and below,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND). “So I think Congress will work very hard to get that done.” Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), however, said that Cantor’s position is “exactly right”:

We don’t need to raise taxes now. Eric is exactly right. If we’re going to deal with those things, we ought to wait until the economy has a full head of steam going, jobs are being created, several hundred thousand a month, then you can deal with some of the long-term issues. That ought to start with spending restraint, then we can deal with some of the long-term issues. We don’t need added uncertainty, added burdens on business right now.

Watch it:

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), not surprisingly, jumped on board, saying “if you want to do something to stimulate the economy, you could make it clear that tax rates aren’t going to go up at the end of the year.”

First, this trio is hiding behind small businesses to argue for extending tax cuts for the richest segment of the population. Fewer than 2 percent of the small businesses in the country face either of the top two tax brackets, while 34 percent are in the lowest tax bracket and 14 percent actually qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is available to low-income working people.

So Bayh is joining Cantor and Gregg in going to bat for the richest two percent of the country at a time when income inequality is the worst its been since the 1920′s. According to the latest data, “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007.” The top 1 percent of families now receive nearly 25 percent of the country’s income, after earning less than 10 percent in the 1970s.

This year alone, the Bush tax cuts will give millionaire’s more in tax breaks than 90 percent of American households make in total income. That’s the conservative agenda to which Bayh is giving his explicit approval.

One of the key problems in our current corporate governance system is shareholders (who are the owners of a company) can’t get their own candidates onto the ballot for election to a company’s board of directors. Currently, during an board election, a company sends out a “proxy” (ballot) with its preferred slate of candidates and bills the cost to the company, while “dissenting shareholders [must] pay up for mailing and publicity costs, sometimes in the millions of dollars,” to send out their own, separate ballot.

A provision that would have guaranteed investors “proxy access” was included in the House version of financial reform. The Senate, however, changed the provision to limit proxy access to investors holding 5 percent of a company’s shares. The Street’s Eric Jackson has a theory as to what happened:

Why did the Senate — unprovoked by the House — decide to insert this change into its own legislation? Sources have told me that both Senators Bayh and Mark Warner insisted on this new language after strong lobbying from the Business Roundtable. Apparently, both men threatened Sen. Dodd that they would vote against the financial reform bill without this new language, which would block cloture on the bill and slow down its passing.

According to the Huffington Post, the White House also lobbied for the higher threshold.

The problem, though, is that most investors don’t come anywhere close to owning 5 percent of a company. “We’re just horrified that the Senate would try to weaken language that was similar in both bills. To set such a high threshold makes the reform totally unworkable,” said Ann Yerger of the Council of Institutional Investors. As Ryan Grim pointed out, “the biggest pension funds are more likely to hit the half-percent threshold in rare cases.”

Former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today calling the Senate’s version of the provision “comically useless.” “The bill, already weakened by deal-making as it emerged from the Senate, has been bled dry of nearly every meaningful protection of investors,” he wrote.

Studies have shown that both total returns and share performance are better for companies with an investor presence on their board, which makes sense, as investors have a vested interest in the entire company’s performance, not just lining the pockets of executives. It doesn’t make sense for the Senate to water down what the House has done.

Bayh walked back his statement in an interview with POLITICO Tuesday, saying it was “hyperbole” and he “wouldn’t say it again.” Still, he said, the statement was “probably largely true” if limited to the past six months — even if what he really meant was “that we’re not doing enough.”

But Bayh’s new claim is discordant with the fact that the stimulus passed by Congress in Feb. 2009 has been creating jobs in the past six months. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the Recovery Act “added between 1.0 million and 2.1 million to the number of workers employed in the United States” in the fourth quarter of last year, which ranges from Oct. 2009 to Dec. 2009.

Evan Bayh, on his way out the door, has a variety of ideas for making the Senate work better. Most interesting are his filibuster proposals:

[F]ilibusters should require 35 senators to sign a public petition and make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters.

Filibusters should also be limited to no more than one for any piece of legislation. Currently, the decision to begin debate on a bill can be filibustered, followed by another filibuster on each amendment, followed by yet another filibuster before a final vote. This leads to multiple legislative delays and effectively grinds the Senate to a halt.

What’s more, the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60.

The middle paragraph highlights a point that I think doesn’t get enough attention—the amount of time-consuming delay that a minority smaller than 40 can create under the current rules. As for the rest, these are good ideas but I would prefer instead an alternative in use in the Maryland State Senate, the Assemblé National of France, the Virginia House of Delegates, the United Nations General Assembly, and the US House of Representatives where you count the “yes” votes and you count the “no” votes and the side with more votes wins. It’s a pretty good decision-procedure! Especially for a system that has a number of other veto points.

But it’s good to see Bayh taking these issues up. I wish he would stay in the Senate and fight for his ideas as tenaciously as he’s fought for lower taxes on the children of multi-millionaires.

This morning, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) told MSNBC that he is “totally opposed to the idea of changing the filibuster rules.” “I think that’s foolish in my view,” he added. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has also been lukewarm on the idea, saying that he doesn’t think there are enough votes to change the rules.

However, this afternoon on MSNBC, departing Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) disagreed with his two colleagues, saying that filibuster reform is absolutely necessary:

MITCHELL: Do you think the filibuster can be changed? Could that happen now while you are still in the Senate?

BAYH: I think it can happen, Andrea. … I think this is something we need to do. Perhaps looking at changing the threshold once again down to 55. Perhaps saying things like administration appointees other than the various highest ones should not be subject to the filibuster, because it just brought the process to a halt and the public is suffering. … The public has a right to see its business done and not routinely allow a small minority to keep us from addressing the great issues that face this country. I think the filibuster absolutely needs to be changed.

Watch it:

As Bayh also pointed out, changing the filibuster is not without precedent. During the civil rights debates that his father, senator Birch Bayh, participated in, the filibuster “was being used to frustrate some basic fundamental equities in this country.” In 1975, the threshold then “reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) is “actively” supporting filibuster reform and is reportedly “in talks with a number of other Democratic senators regarding possible changes to Senate rules.” Vice President Biden, formerly a veteran senator, also expressed frustration with the current situation in a recent interview with CBS News, saying, “I don’t ever recall a time in my career where to get anything done, you needed a supermajority, 60 out of 100 senators. You can block anything with 60 (votes). I’ve never seen it this dysfunctional.”

I have several more months in which to kick him around.

Here’s an obviously admiring Charles Lane on Evan Bayh’s decision:

Quitting the Senate was a no-lose move for the presidentially ambitious Bayh, since he can now crawl away from the political wreckage for a couple of years, plausibly alleging that he tried to steer the party in a different direction — and then be perfectly positioned to mount a centrist primary challenge to Obama in 2012, depending on circumstances.

There will be those Democrats who bid good riddance to Bayh and his coal-burning-state apostasy about cap and trade, etc. If so, they won’t need a very big tent to contain the celebration. On a more pragmatic view, Bayh’s dramatic vote of no-confidence in his own party’s leadership looks like another Massachusetts-sized political earthquake for the Democrats. Not only does it imperil the president’s short-term hopes of passing health care and other major legislation this year. It also makes it much more likely that the Republicans can pick up Bayh’s Senate seat in normally red Indiana and, with it, control of the Senate itself. If present trends continue, November could turn into a Republican rout.

The noteworthy thing here is that Lane, who seems to like Bayh and not see him as a selfish, immoral grandstander basically sees Bayh as a selfish, immoral grandstander. This is a move that, according to Lane, was undertaken not because Bayh believed it would improve the welfare of the people of the United States or of the world, but because it was “no-lose” from the selfish point of view of Evan Bayh. I think that kind of cynicism about the motivates of politicians is often warranted, but I don’t think it’s something that should be so blithely accepted in our public discourse. If a politician admitted on television “I’m running for office out of a lust for fame and power” that politician would be in big political trouble. When politicians undertake major actions for what appear to be selfish reasons, political observers should dwell a bit on the morally troubling nature of the conduct and not just congratulate the politicians on their savvy.

“Two weeks ago, the Senate voted down a bipartisan commission to deal with one of the greatest threats facing our nation: our exploding deficits and debt. The measure would have passed, but seven members who had endorsed the idea instead voted ‘no’ for short-term political reasons,” he said. “Just last week, a major piece of legislation to create jobs — the public’s top priority — fell apart amid complaints from both the left and right. All of this and much more has led me to believe that there are better ways to serve my fellow citizens, my beloved state and our nation than continued service in Congress.”

Sam Stein notes that Bayh’s replacement will have to “move remarkably fast in order to get his name on the ballot. The deadline to file is this Friday but candidates have to have 500 valid signatures from citizens in Indiana’s nine Congressional Districts to properly certify his or her candidacy.”

If you look, I suspect Paul does not, but if you look at the far left-wing blogs and that kind of thing they’re severely criticizing the president for being too fiscally austere. My own take on this, Paul is right. Domestic discretionary spending increased last year. I voted against the omnibus, I voted against the “minibus” and that’s last year. the question is where do we go now? The freeze is important. He identified $20 billion if you aggregate over the next ten years is $250 billion less spending. Does it solve all our problems? No. But it’s a step in the right direction.

Watch it:

Bayh is a “deficit peacock” — someone who likes to harp on deficits, while at the same time voting for budget-busting expenditures like a $250 billion tax cut for the heirs of wealthy families. Despite Bayh’s preening, “far left-wing” blogs haven’t been the only critics of Obama’s freeze. Additionally, part of why progressives are criticizing Obama about is not that the spending freeze is too “austere,” but that it doesn’t go after defense spending. As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has argued, “If President Obama is serious about controlling spending, he can’t exempt the Pentagon.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurs, telling reporters that the entire defense budget “should not be exempted” from the freeze.