A number of Senators are engaged in a hard-fought race to emerge as the chamber’s most conservative Democrat. In the running are such Senators as Mary Landrieu and Bill Nelson, perhaps even Mark Warner, Max Baucus and Michael Bennet. But the race looks to be coming down to three Democrats: Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln.
Over the past month, Bayh and Nelson took a clear lead by becoming the public face of the newly formed “centrist” caucus and by casting the only two Democratic votes against Barack Obama’s budget. (This was no minor vote: This ambitious budget is meant to serve as the base of the political reorientation of the Obama era - a direct response to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 budget. For Nelson and Bayh to vote against the budget puts them at odds with the basic principles of Democratic governance.) Undoubtedly feeling left out, Lincoln has been compensating her support for the budget by working overtime on other issues.
Lincoln deals blow to EFCA, but we shouldn’t read that much into it
Yesterday, the Arkansas Senator took a stance against the Employee Free Choice Act, labor’s top legislative priority. Lincoln had voted in favor of the bill’s 2007 version, but she had been signaling her reluctance to support the current bill for months. She took a step further yesterday. “I cannot support that bill,” Lincoln said at a meeting at the Little Rock Political Animals Club. “Cannot support that bill in its current form. Cannot support and will not support moving it forward in its current form.”
Coming just a week after Arlen Specter announced his opposition to the bill, her announcement was a heavy blow to EFCA. Democrats need to present a unified front to have any hope of reaching 60 votes - and an actual defection by Lincoln would make it all but impossible for them to achieve it.
What is particularly damaging to EFCA is that Lincoln is explicitly closing the door to having it both ways: Voting in favor of cloture, against the bill legislation. Nebraska’s Ben Nelson has explicitly said he might do just that, and, as I explained last month, the true measure of a Senator’s opposition is whether they explicitly close the door to voting differently on the cloture vote and the passage vote. Specter said he would not last week, and Lincoln joined him yesterday when she said she will not support the bill “moving forward.” Later in the evening, she added that she will not support “efforts to bring it to Senate consideration in its current form.”
Yet, Lincoln made sure to qualify her opposition and repeat that she opposed the bill in its current form. And here is why that makes her announcement not terribly newsworthy: Arlen Specter’s opposition already all-but-guaranteed that the current version could not pass. To get 60 votes, Democrats need to convince Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski or George Voinovich to support the bill - and that will take compromise.
Simply put, that Lincoln opposes the bill in its current form matters little since Specter all but killed “the current form.” What matters is whether she could support a watered-down version - perhaps one that would drop card-checks and keep binding arbitration. Yesterday the evening, Lincoln released a statement that clarified her earlier comments and left the door open to support “alternatives:”
While I may not have been clear about my position in the past, I am stating today that I cannot support Employee Free Choice Act in its current form and I can’t support efforts to bring it to Senate consideration in its current form. I will consider alternatives that have the support of both business and labor but my pledge today is to focus my full attention on the priorities I have mentioned that affect every working family in Arkansas.
EFCA’s defenders already knew that they needed to find “alternatives” to get 60 votes. And no one had any doubt that Lincoln would one of those Senators who would try to water down the legislation. For her to now come out against the bill’s “current version” thus doesn’t change much about the current situation.
Cutting the estate tax
Just a week ago, Lincoln made headlines when she teamed up with Arizona’s John Kyl, a Republican, to propose a bill that would lower the tax rate on estates over $7 million from 45% to 35%. The measure, which would affect less than 0.3% of households, would cost the government a massive $250 billion over 10 years.
Ever since the Administration announced its budget plans, Lincoln had done much complaining about the budget as well. In particular, she had focused on the provision that would reduce the charitable deduction savings for wealthy taxpayers. Her explanation: Concern that it could lead to a drop in donations. But her decision to sponsor the estate tax reform suggests she is much more concerned with protecting the wealthiest than with ensuring non-profits stay afloat. Indeed, the estate tax bill’s critics warn that it would cause a drop in charitable donations by reducing the tax incentive. (The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has a detailed analysis of the legislation, for those who are more interested).
51 Senators voted to pass the bill and create a reserve fund for this estate tax relief, which means that 10 Democrats joined all Republicans to vote in favor: Lincoln, Baucus, Bayh, Cantwell, Landrieu, Murray, both Nelsons, Pryor and Tester. The usual suspects, except for Washington’s two typically liberal Senators (Murray and Cantwell) who must have a lot of wealthy constituents back home.
Particularly fascinating are the “yea” votes of Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh. To justify their vote against the budget, they portrayed themselves as fiscally disciplined. “Under this budget, our national debt skyrockets from $11.1 trillion today to an estimated $17 trillion in 2014,” Bayh said. “I cannot support such results. We can do better, and for the sake of our nation and our children’s future, we must.” But it makes little sense for the Indiana Senator to rant about the growing deficit of Obama’s budget when he is eager to support tax cuts for the wealthiest. I have trouble grasping how any Senator can portray himself as concerned about the growing debt to justify voting against health care funding - and then vote for the Kyl-Lincoln estate tax bill within days.
Preparing for 2010
Most misleading in how Bayh and Lincoln are justifying their rightward drift is their argument that these moves are needed for them to win re-election in 2010. Let’s take Bayh first: He is extremely popular in Indiana, there are no credible Republicans even mentioned as a potential challengers, and he has more than $10 million stocked up in the bank. He is one of the cycle’s safest Democrats.
As for Lincoln, a myth has developed that voting in favor of EFCA will somehow kill a Senator’s general election’s chances. Let’s be clear: A vote was already held on this bill in 2007. In 2008, Republicans did their best to use the issue - and they could use recorded votes, not just statements. They used it particularly ferociously against Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Mark Udall in Colorado (both had co-sponsored the 2007 bill in their respective chambers), Al Franken in Minnesota and Jeff Merkley in Oregon. The issue got no traction.
To now claim that EFCA will doom Lincoln’s electoral prospects is not supported by any evidence. If anything, Arlen Specter stands much more to lose in the general election by opposing the bill than Lincoln does by supporting it.
Another great post. I think there is definitely some political posturing by certain Democrats, and this should be expected from time to time.
I’m not surprised with Baucus and Nelson…they are definitely more on the center-right in regards to the economy/taxation. They are sticking to their principles. There stance is definitely at odds with the Democratic party maintstream. In defense of these men, I fully support their right to vote against Obama’s budget. I don’t want the Democratic party to become the party of solidarity like the GOP. That is dangerous to the party as a whole. The moderate GOP members are scared to break away from their own party because of retribution (i.e. Specter).
As far as Lincoln goes, I’m not that surprised she has taken this position. The state of Arkansas has drifted to the right of the nation in the past 10 years. While this issue may not have been a key issue in 2008, the GOP will be more able to use this position against her in 2010 because now the GOP is not playing as much “defense” in regards to the Bush administration. I think her words/rhetoric is more to get the Democrats to negotiate with moderate-minded Republicans on this issue.
Bayh is a bit different–Indiana has definitely become a swing state. However, Bayh has for the most part always been a centrist, so his actions may actually reflect his own core beliefs.
Actually Taniel I disagree with you that EFCA would have had no effect on Lincoln. Arkansas is the near top of the least friendly states for unionization, and Walmart in particular is very popular in Arkansas. For her to support the current form in EFCA could very well have hurt her in the 2010 election, espcially with a poll showing her having fairly weak popularity numbers and under 50% against second tier Republicans. A vote for EFCA could have very well boosted a Republican challanger. And lets not forget that 2010 will not be as disastrious a cycle as 2006 and 2008 were for Republicans, so it may be (just a tad) disingenious to assume that just because EFCA wasn’t effective in 2008 that it couldn’t be in 2010, especially with a state as pro-Buisness as Arkansas.
As for Bayh, you are right about him. He is overwhelmingly popular in his home state as the former governor and now Senator. Obama may have won Indiana in 2008, but it was only barely, and Bayh won reelection to his seat in 2004 by over 60% of the vote, which is how Bush did himself. Bayh was always a fiscal conservative, and indeed that is a big reason why he is so popular in Indiana. Also, his rightward drift is an indication that he is returning to his natural tendencies and isn’t trying to attract liberal Democrats for a nationwide run (he was a early contender for the 2008 Presidential Democratic nomination remember).
I think the estate tax proposal is insane for several reasons, but the most pressing is its fiscal irresponsibility. Unless Lincoln has a proposal to pay for it, it has no business being in the budget.
In the past, I’ve been grateful that there’s a Senate to protect us against the sometimes excessive nature of the House. This time, I hope for the opposite.
Jaxx,
You are right in saying that 2010 being less blue than 2006-2008 will make a difference: Nothing Republicans tried seemed to be successful. But the point still remains that GOP-affiliated group spent a lot of money with EFCA-related attacks, and of all things that worried Democrats in 2008, that was not really one of them. At the very least, there is an argument to be made that EFCA is not the g-e killer that it is being made out to be, and that part of the reason that it is being tagged as a risky vote is the lazily reported conventional wisdom that pro-labor positions will hurt a candidate. But your point is well taken.
It does seem strange for Bayh to wax eloquent about the debt one minute, then support a costly tax cut the next. However, this reasoning works both ways. Liberals cheered Obama’s debt-laden budget, but now they’re all up in arms over the crippling effect of a $250 billion tax cut? The left wing of the Democratic Party would happily spend $250 billion on just about any hare-brained scheme other than tax cuts or the military, so it’s hard to take their fiscal hand-wringing seriously.
Hypocrisy is not unique to any political movement. Besides, it may not even be hypocritical. Fiscal conservatives think tax cuts for the rich promote fairness and benefit the economy, just as liberals think their federal spending does. There’s nothing outrageous or internally inconsistent about the views Lincoln and Bayh have expressed, they’re just more fiscally conservative than their fellow Democrats.
Nathan: Liberals cheered Obama’s debt-laden budget, but now they’re all up in arms over the crippling effect of a $250 billion tax cut? The left wing of the Democratic Party would happily spend $250 billion on just about any hare-brained scheme other than tax cuts or the military, so it’s hard to take their fiscal hand-wringing seriously.
That’s really not a fair analysis. First, it was the Democratic Congress that reinstituted some form of pay-go during the Bush administration. Now that the economy is in crisis and even conservative economists admit that deficit spending is the order of the day, it doesn’t make sense to stick with it for now–though hopefully we will return to it.
And the problem with the $250 billion isn’t just that it’s a tax cut. It’s that it’s going to the wealthiest people in the country. If we’re in such dire need of a stimulus, that’s about the worst bang for the buck you can get, and there’s really not much debate about that regardless of one’s position on the political spectrum. From what I’ve read, tax cuts are simply not as stimulative as direct spending–and tax cuts for the most well off are not as stimulative as tax cuts for those who are more likely to spend the money.
The persistence of the tax-cut mantra, especially for the most well-off, continues to amaze me. Fiscal conservatives can can “think tax cuts for the rich promote fairness and benefit the economy,” but thinking it won’t make it true. Regarding fairness, every dollar not paid by the wealthy will have to be paid by the non-wealthy to make the cuts fiscally responsible (unless there are spending cuts which few conservatives have had the courage to ask the public to accept); how many think the middle class aren’t paying enough in taxes already? And as for benefiting the economy, the evidence I think is paltry at best.