“Not Much Of A Deal”: The Trouble With The Minimum-Wage “Compromise”
Senate Democrats had originally planned to move forward this week on legislation to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10, but it was delayed in part so the chamber could tackle extended unemployment benefits, which may pass later today.
The delay, however, also carried an unintended consequence: the prospect of a “compromise” on the issue, spearheaded by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Democratic leaders so far are sticking to the $10.10-an-hour wage they’re proposing, while many Republicans, including more moderate lawmakers, say they are likely to filibuster the bill.
But the moderate Maine Republican says she’s leading a bipartisan group of senators hoping to strike a deal.
Collins hasn’t released the details of her proposal, which makes sense given that the talks are still ongoing, but Roll Call’s piece suggests she’s open to a minimum-wage increase, so long as it’s smaller. By some accounts, the Maine Republican is eyeing a $9/hour minimum wage, up from the current $7.25/hour, which would be phased in slowly over three years.
But Collins also hopes to trade this modest minimum-wage increase for a partial rollback of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act and some small business tax cuts.
The senator is calling her plan “a work in progress.”
One might also call it “something that won’t happen.”
Greg Sargent had a good piece on this yesterday, noting that Dems don’t seem to have much of an incentive to drop their target minimum-wage threshold.
For one thing, Democratic aides point out, the idea of such a compromise may be fanciful. Even if it were possible to win over a few Republicans for a lower raise, you’d probably risk losing at least a few Democrats on the left, putting 60 out of reach (Republicans would still filibuster the proposal).
Indeed, the office of Senator Tom Harkin – the chief proponent of a hike to $10.10 – tells me he’ll oppose any hike short of that…. Labor is already putting Dems on notice that supporting a smaller hike is unacceptable.
Even the balance of the so-called “compromise” is off. As Collins sees it, Republicans would get quite a bit in exchange for Democrats making important concessions on their popular, election-year idea.
That’s not much of a “deal.”
Complicating matters, even if Dems went along with Collins’ offer, there’s no reason to believe House Republicans would accept any proposal to increase the minimum wage by any amount.
It sets Senate Democrats up with a choice: fight for the $10.10 minimum-wage increase they want (and watch Senate Republicans kill it) or pursue a $9 minimum-wage increase they don’t want (and watch House Republicans kill it).
Don’t be too surprised if the party sees this as an easy call.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 3, 2014
“Rhetoric Won’t Patch The GOP Up”: It’s Hard To Patch Things Up When You Have Diametrically-Opposed Goals
Over at the National Review Kevin Williamson has penned a column we are all familiar with. It’s a rallying cry for conservatives to get over their differences and rally behind the Republican Party. In the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election, there were countless articles of this type written by pragmatic liberals. All you have to do is reverse the names, and it looks completely familiar.
And though I reject the notion that Mitt Romney wasn’t good enough for true-believing conservatives, let’s say, arguendo, that that was the case. Unless you are ready to give up entirely on the notion of advancing conservative principles through the ballot box, you might consider looking at things this way: Even if you do not think that it matters much whether Republicans win, it matters a great deal that Democrats lose.
Maybe you were not that excited that 2012 gave you a choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. I sympathize — I liked Rick Perry. But how is President Romney vs. President Obama a hard choice? How is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a hard choice? How is Speaker of the House John Boehner vs. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a hard choice?
It isn’t.
I don’t think these types of columns are ever very convincing, but that doesn’t mean that they are incorrect. If we were to give this genre a name, it would be Vote-for-the-lesser-evil essays. They don’t exactly get people fired up and ready to go.
And it’s not a great sign that people feel that they are necessary to write because it indicates that there are some rather strong divisions. Back in the 2005-6 period, Democrats became unified, and they did an adequate job of patching things up after the 2008 primaries. The divisions among Republicans are more fundamental. There’s a glaring generation gap on gay rights. There’s a yawning gulf between the businessmen who want comprehensive immigration reform and the nativist base that wants an end to all non-white immigration, whether it is legal or illegal. There’s a growing chasm between the libertarian non-intervention wing of the party and the John McCain bomb-em-first-ask-questions-later wing of the party. There’s also a Main Street/Wall Street divide over tax policy and social/religious issues.
In all these cases, important factions within the GOP simply want different things. It’s hard to patch things up when you have diametrically-opposed goals.
Interestingly, Mr. Williamson says he quit his membership in the Republican Party during the Bush years because he couldn’t abide belonging to the same club as Arlen Specter. He also says that “the Affordable Care Act, [is] the worst domestic defeat for the cause of limited government in a generation,” which is a nice admission. It shows the real reason that conservatives keep bad-mouthing a law that is working very well and is already covering seven million people. We can understand, now, why conservatives have fought the law with so much fury. They believe, correctly, that the mere existence of the law is a tremendous ideological defeat. Whether it works well or not is completely beside the point for these folks.
Going forward, that’s going to be an increasingly suicidal political position to take. There will be divisions on that, too.
By: Martin Longman, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 30, 2014
“Washing Koch As White As Snow”: No Matter The Camouflage, Things-Don’t-Go-Better-With-Koch
Joe Scarborough recently got into quite a huff—and got the Morning Joe crew to huff with him—over Harry Reid’s attacks on David and Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialists who fund dozens of conservative causes and Republican campaigns. Reid had said, rather catchily for him, that Senate Republicans “are addicted to Koch.” The Senate majority leader also said the brothers “have no conscience and are willing to lie” in political ads, and that they’re “un-American” for trying to “buy America.”
Reid said he doesn’t begrudge the Kochs their wealth, but “what is un-American is when shadow billionaires pour unlimited money into our democracy to rig the system and benefit themselves and the wealthiest 1 percent.”
That might sound hyperbolic unless you have followed the long list of ways the Kochs are indeed buying America. For starters, while their Koch Industries is the one of the nation’s largest air polluters, their money is a huge factor in blocking climate change progress and spreading know-nothing denialism; they fund ALEC and its stand-your-ground political agenda; and they’re waging a multimillion-dollar war against the Affordable Care Act, trying to convince young people, through ads like the one with the creepy Uncle Sam gynecologist, that they should be afraid, very afraid of Obamacare. Through innumerable think tanks, PACs, nonprofits and dark-money trap doors, Koch money has formed a veritable “Kochopus” that reaches deep into academia, industry, state legislatures and Congress. (For more, see here and here.)
But what’s really gotten Harry Reid to put up his dukes is that the Koch-funded PAC Americans for Prosperity (AFM) has spent more than $30 million, and counting, on ads attacking Democratic senate candidates in the upcoming midterm elections. To defeat Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina, for instance, AFM has already dropped $8.2 million on TV, radio and digital ads. As Politico puts it, that’s more “than all Democratic outside groups in every Senate race in the country—combined.” Koch money could easily flip the Senate to a Republican majority, leaving little but presidential vetoes to blunt the GOP House’s politics of cruelty.
Joe Scarborough understandably fumed at the “un-American” charge, but he framed the Koch’s power quite differently.
“Let’s first tell the truth about them and what they do, put some perspective in it,” he said Thursday. “It’s unbelievable what they’ve done for cancer research, what they’ve done for the arts, what they have done for education.”
Indeed, you can tell by the way the bros have been slapping their names on cultural institutions that they think they can get their reps fixed wholesale. In New York City alone, the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center has become the David H. Koch Theater. As you enter the Metropolitan Museum of Art, signs tell you you’re standing on the new David H. Koch Plaza. David Koch’s name had also been elevated by his contributions to WNET, the city’s PBS affiliate. That ended last year, however, when WNET ran an independent documentary critical of him. To placate Koch, they axed a second similar film, but Koch resigned from the board and took his money with him.
But by emphasizing the Kochs’ philanthropy—which, come on, is the least two men worth $40 billion each and tied at number four on the Forbes rich people list, can do—Scarborough was providing exactly what their largesse was intended to produce: praise and a media force field that can deflect political criticism. Not that Joe is terribly adverse to their politics, but the point of his outrage in the Morning Joe banter was to shift focus away from Koch policies to Reid’s breach of polite discourse. Willie Geist said that the “addicted to Koch” line “seems beneath the office.” Former congressman and nominal Democrat Harold Ford sniffed, “There’s no need for that kind of vitriol.” Only Donnie Deutsch got close to the heart of the matter, asking whether the “Koch brothers spending a billion on advertising is good for democracy.”
Training your eyes on an oligarch’s philanthropy and away from what it camouflages is to accept in some way the essential justness of great wealth. As if to second that notion, Governor Chris Christie said at CPAC last week that Reid was “rail[ing] against two American entrepreneurs who have built a business, created jobs, and created wealth and philanthropy in this country. Harry Reid should get back to work and stop picking on great Americans who are creating great things in our country.” Some of those great things include millions in donations to the Republican Governors Association, which Christie (still) heads.
Reid’s attacks are part of a larger Democratic pushback, which includes TV spots and sites like KochAddiction.com and StopTheGreedAgenda. The strategy is transparent: link GOP candidates to the Kochs and make the Kochs into villains.
Creating a visible villain is, of course, a time-honored political activity. The Dems have vilified Newt Gingrich and more recently Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, while the Republicans’ demons include Nancy Pelosi, the Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers. As for “un-American,” a few years ago Glenn Beck falsely portrayed George Soros, the closest big-time funder progressives have to the Kochs, as a Nazi collaborator.
But beyond a bunch of liberals who follow the Koch trail, will voters know or care about what the billionaire brothers do with their money?
Paul Waldman in The American Prospect doubts it. And so far, he says, the Democratic ads aren’t up to the job. In this very busy spot, running in Michigan, the Koch brothers appear as barely identified ghosts amid a jumble of hard-to-follow words.
For what it’s worth, the things-don’t-go-better-with-Koch message is getting across, at least with focus groups. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin told the Times, “Our research has shown pretty clearly that once voters recognize the source of the attacks [on Democratic candidates], they tend to discount them substantially.” Focus groups, he said, had an “overwhelmingly negative” reaction to the Kochs’ political involvement and believed that the Kochs’ “agenda will hurt average people and the undermine the middle class.’”
Billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins might have been only kidding when he said that democracies should be run more like corporations: “You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes.”
But if you pay for enough misleading ads, that is, in effect, what a million bucks can do. And the more the media unthinkingly hail your charitable giving, the more mileage a million dollars will get you.
By: Leslie Savan, The Nation, March 10, 2014
“Congress Is On The Ballot In November”: Forget The Conventional Wisdom, What The Numbers Really Say About President Obama
ABC News and the Washington Post have released a new poll indicating that the president is in trouble — and warn that both his standing and the Affordable Care Act hang over the 2014 elections. As ABC News’ Gary Langer put it: “Barack Obama starts his sixth year in office with the public divided about his overall leadership, dissatisfied with his economic stewardship and still steaming about his rollout of the health care law – all factors threatening not only the president but his party in the midterm elections ahead.
Dan Balz and Peyton Craighill write, “Obama’s general weakness and the overall lack of confidence in the country’s political leadership provide a stark backdrop to the beginning of a potentially significant election year.”
While the president surely needs to raise his standing and address many issues, this is a remarkably biased reading of their own poll. Too bad the last month has not fit the narrative of a failed president on a downward trajectory — like George W. Bush.
What is wrong with their interpretation? It’s hard to know where to start.
- They have the president’s approval rating at 46 percent. The average in all the polls is up, not down. Congressional Democrats would be quite content if the president’s approval rating were in the upper 40s. This is not a blip, but rather the trend based on multiple polls. Commentators should pay attention.
- The congressional generic vote is even, but they failed to note that Republicans had taken the lead at the end last year — and that this is an improvement for Democrats.
- Republicans in Congress are at a remarkable low, relative to the president and congressional Democrats. They are 18 points lower than the president on confidence and 8 points behind the Democrats in Congress. How could you ignore that in a congressional election year—especially when voters in this poll express a strong commitment to vote against incumbents? Did they pay attention to earlier polls from Democracy Corps that showed 50 percent (in an open-ended question) think Republicans are in control of the whole Congress?
- Health care produced one of the more amazing contortions in the poll. They focus on Obama’s handling of the rollout and bury the fact that the country is evenly split on whether they favor or oppose the law. As we have said, the issue unites Republicans and is not a winning issue for them in 2014. Maybe the voters are paying attention to Congress’ failure to extend unemployment benefits and pass a minimum-wage bill— issues that have 60 percent support. Maybe there is a reason that Republicans’ standing continues to drag them down.
Many compare Obama’s number after his inauguration and make that the standard for his standing. He took a very hard hit that hurt Democrats. But his position is improving and health care is no wedge issue. The Congress is on the ballot in November, and I urge those reporting on polls to escape the conventional wisdom about the narrative.
By: Stan Greenberg, The National Memo, January 27, 2014
“On His Way To Irrelevance”: Ted Cruz, Suddenly The GOP’s Biggest Loser
Sen. Ted Cruz’s fearless crusade to defund what he calls Obamacare ended with a whimper not a bang Thursday, as the junior senator from Texas dropped his demand that the Senate vote on amendments to defund the Affordable Care Act before passing the $1.1 trillion spending bill.
“The majority leader and Senate Democrats have chosen not to listen to the American people,” Cruz said. The Senate voted 72-26 first to cut off debate, then to pass the bill.
Apparently Cruz’s Senate GOP colleagues spent the Thursday lunch hour begging him to drop his plan for a defund-Obamacare vote, according to the Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery. He still tried, but he didn’t try that hard.
Concerned that the freshman senator’s quick surrender might be interpreted as backing down – which it was – his office issued a statement later saying “he remains committed to keeping the conversation about Obamacare front and center as the law continues to harm more and more Americans by raising their premiums, canceling their plans and keeping them from their doctors.”
Sure. The Affordable Care Act is on its way to stability, as the number of signups continues to surge in advance of the March 1 deadline, and as people who lost coverage find better plans and/or subsidies. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, is on his way to irrelevance.
Cruz made some headlines Wednesday for picking up the right-wing staffer fired by the House Republican Study Committee (for leaking their deliberations to right-wingers in Congress). Hiring Paul Teller his deputy chief of staff was supposed to be a stick in the eye to his moderate colleagues, but nobody outside the wingnut blogosphere seemed to really care. Teller, who tried to sabotage his House GOP bosses but got caught, might be a good hire if Cruz planned to run against John Boehner for speaker, as he seemed to want to do last fall. Sadly for Cruz, he can’t do that as a senator.
His presidential hopes don’t look much more encouraging. Let’s stipulate that national 2016 polls have little predictive power in January 2014 – in fact, they’re rarely predictive later in the cycle, because the primary and caucus delegate count is the only poll that matters. Still, they tell us something about each potential candidate’s national appeal. And Cruz’s is diminishing.
Just a month ago, he was tied for fourth place in the NBC/Marist Poll, with the support of 10 percent of those surveyed. Now he’s down to 5 percent, and way behind the top-tier candidates, in seventh place – he even trails Rick Santorum. (He came in first in a late-September Public Policy Polling survey done at the height of his government-shutdown showboating.)
Interestingly, Christie is still the GOP front-runner in the Marist Poll, although he’s slipped badly in a head-to-head matchup with Hillary Clinton – from 3 points behind just a month ago to 13 points behind now. As a journalist, the stumbles of Christie and Cruz sadden me a little bit, selfishly: It would be a lot of fun to cover them going head to head in 2016. And imagine if they teamed up as running mates: Mean and Meaner. On the other hand, as a human being, it’s a relief to see two men renowned for their self-regard and nastiness get undone by it.
There’s even bad news for Cruz in Texas, where state Sen. Wendy Davis is actually outraising Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in advance of their 2014 contest for governor. Democrats are more than ready to make Texas a blue state again, and it may not happen in 2014, but it could by the time Cruz has to run for reelection in 2018.
Ted Cruz may still run for president, but in reality, he’s mainly in the running to become Jim DeMint, the former senator and current Heritage Foundation head – a right-wing firebrand who makes enemies out of even some ideological friends, establishes no Senate legislative legacy, and moves on to a lucrative, flattering wingnut welfare sinecure.
They’re buddies now, but DeMint might want to watch his back. Cruz is smarter than he is, and makes sure everyone knows it. He’d run a crackerjack think tank, making sure to hire nobody from the “minor” Ivies.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, January 17, 2014
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