Three lines for children

In the British Parliament, party whips distribute letters before important votes instructing members to attend. The number of underlines traditionally conveys the consequences for party members that fail to show up and vote with party leadership. The most important votes--generally the ones on which the government has staked its reputation--are underlined three times, with an implied consequence of party expulsion for disobeying members. This is called a "three line whip".

No such system formally exists in the United States Congress, where party controls have traditionally been much less important. Recent years have seen Republican Party leadership turn instead to dirty tricks and electioneering to effectively expel and intimidate unruly members, but the general idea is that we allow more personal voting freedom than most European systems. However, some votes are so crucial and so morally one-sided that party leaders should consider making consequences more clear.

While most Congressional activity leaves room for genuine ideological or practical disagreement, the imminent vote on an override of President Bush's S-CHIP veto is one instance in which there is a clear moral divide. Those who put their hateful right wing ideologies ahead of children do so for the cynical reason that a successful government health care program makes their opposition to universal health care look nonsensical. These people are not real Democrats, and the handful of Democrats who voted against the original bill and have not yet agreed to vote for the override should be made aware of their stance outside the acceptable realm of party positions.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of House leadership should announce that no person who opposes children's health care belongs in the Democratic Party. They should not run for re-election with Democratic Party funds and infrastructure, and they should not speak as representatives of the Democratic Party before the public. Speaker Pelosi should employ an effective three line whip by making absolutely clear to these renegade members that continued support of the right wing fringe in this dispute will earn them expulsion from the Democratic caucus and a refusal of party endorsement in the 2008 election.

UPDATE: The override has failed (by thirteen votes) and Representatives Jim Marshall (DINO-GA) and Gene Taylor (DINO-MS) both voted against it. Remember those names.

Widgets For Peace

Please post this widget around your personal web world. The code is available here. This is a great educational tool to continue rallying support for Senator Feingold's plan (endorsed by the CU College Dems) to end the war in Iraq.




Perhaps another example of the Dems' superiority on the web.

Nadler: Use the Power of the Purse

Representative Nadler gave a long speech against the war, the escalation, and the pathetic lack of resolve from Congress on the floor of the House today. Crooks and Liars has video, as usual.

" In the Supplemental Budget we will consider next month, we should exercise the only real power we have - the Congressional power of the purse. We will not cut off the funds, and leave our troops defenseless before the enemy, as the demagogues would imply, but we should limit the use of the funds we provide to protecting the troops while they are in Iraq and to withdrawing them on a timetable mandated in the law. We should provide funds to rebuild the army and to raise our readiness levels, for diplomatic conferences in case there is any possibility of negotiating an end to the Iraqi civil war, and for economic reconstruction assistance, but above all, we must use the power of the purse to mandate a timetable to withdraw our troops from Iraq.

"We must use the power the people have entrusted to us. The best way to protect our troops is to withdraw them from the middle of a civil war they cannot win, and that is not our fight.

"I know that, if we withdraw the troops, the civil war may continue and could get worse. But this is probably inevitable, no matter how long our troops remain. And if the Iraqis must fight a civil war, I would rather they fight it without 20,000 more Americans dying.

"Yes, the blindness of the Administration is largely to blame for starting the civil war in Iraq, but we cannot end it. Only the Iraqis can settle their civil war. We can only make it worse, and waste our blood and treasure pointlessly."

Gallup: People want Congressional action

Gallup has a new poll out showing that the majority of people would like to see a binding timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, just like the Columbia Democrats. Not surprisingly, they also give a decidedly lukewarm response to the idea of a "nonbinding" resolution (feckless is a more appropriate adjective) that effectively does nothing to bring the troops home. Clearly, the American people are sick of useless, symbolic gestures of disapproval from all involved and are ready to see Congress take legislative action to stop the war. A majority has long thought that the war itself was a bad idea; now they want the Democrats in Congress to find a way out, and that is just what they are going to do.

Already Hedging

Two stories about shifting positions

First, the Los Angeles Times has a story about how all that posturing from Nancy Pelosi and others about fighting back against big business is mostly just that: empty posturing. It's sad that our Democratic congress is only 100 hours in and already drawing back on a number of campaign promises. After all their talk about student aid, we got only cuts in Stafford Loans (The Boston Globe has a good summary here), with no help in Perkins Loans or Pell Grants or any other programs that specifically target poorer students. Couldn't they have had enough backbone between 330 congressmen and representatives to be actual Democrats for one week? It is sad.

Second, one place that can be counted on for finding people who will do impressively deep research is Daily Kos (of course, there are plenty people who do almost none. There's a front page post right now gloating about how "effective" Pelosi has been. I guess it's easy to say that when you ignore that the bills she's passing are compromising on every issue.) Anyways, this new set of diaries, starting here, chronicles every vote where John Edwards and Hillary Clinton differed while they were in the Senate together from 2001-2005. The first part chronicles their approximately thirty vote differences in 2001, and shows that, contrary to Edwards's attempts to portray himself as the farthest left in this primary, he actually was more likely that Hillary to be pro-business and anti-campaign finance reform. I was particularly disappointed to learn that Edwards, for example, supported the 2001 Bankruptcy Act that progressives like Paul Wellstone fought against. Obviously, Edwards (whom I supported in 2004) has had time to change his views, and I hope that further parts of the series will show that he did so while in the Senate, not more recently because he thought it would position him better. But it does support those who would say it's easier for Edwards to position himself as more progressive since he's no longer in the Senate After all, it's easy to tell Congress to cut funding for the Iraq War, when you're don't actually have to vote for it.

Karma

Sometimes, people surprise us. Just a day after the Senate almost unanimously passed a sweeping ethics- and lobbying-reform package that well surpassed not just the Republicans' own paltry attempts at reform but even the Democrats' rather-lofty campaign pledges and the measure railroaded through by Speaker Pelosi (damn, doesn't that feel good to write), disgraced Republican former-Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio was sentenced to 30 months in prison for numerous Abramoff-related ethics violations. For all his power, all his money, all his influence, he couldn't dodge this one—justice, at long last, was served. Kind of makes a jaded seen-it-all New Yorker sit back and say, 'huh'.

Add that to the remarkable nature of the Senate legislation, expanded over the objections of, well, everyone thanks in no small measure to Senators Feingold (D-WI) and Obama (D-IL), and things really start looking funny. What's a conspiracy-theorist to do when they bar up all the smoke-filled rooms? If you can't mistrust a lobbyist (restrained now from giving gifts, private air-flight, or anonymously fund-raising for legislators), who can you?

Obviously no reform is perfect, and there's certainly a lot more to be done - publicly financed elections, anyone? - but at least for this afternoon, I've got to tell ya - the system worked. Democrats, with their mandate for change, actually brought about change, even at the expense of their own reelection efforts. God-willing thanks to their efforts we won't see another Bob Ney polluting Capitol Hill any time soon. And that, to me at least, seems to justify a nice, long, contemplative 'huh'.