Max is organizing a big old meeting with a bunch of corporate representatives to discuss fast track. While his staff assure me that the corporate folks are being treated no better than the labor folks were (we're setting the bar awfully low here, guys), I thought this info that landed in my inbox this morning was helpful.
The five main speakers at this Democratic Policy Conference have a decidedly pro-GOP giving history:
Ari Berman has a new profile of Max in The Nation that is definitely worth a read. I've written before and I'll write again about my frustrations with my Senior Senator. We're both Democrats, sure, but we're definitely from different parts of the 'big tent.'
And while the Senator's staff tells me they're being responsive to their 'allies,' one of Berman's sources tells a different story:
A provision in the bill, reportedly slipped in by Grassley, that encourages employers to contract with staff leasing companies, making it harder to unionize temporary human resources employees, particularly angered the coalition of labor groups that supported the House version. "The Finance Committee operates like there's been no election," says one labor leader.
Consider also this paragraph:
Taxes are not the only issue on which Baucus parts from the majority of his colleagues. In early January he wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal calling on Democrats to renew Bush's fast-track authority for international trade deals. Given that most Democrats elected in 2006 campaigned against agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA, the editorial was a provocative move. Byron Dorgan, chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, took the unusual step of rebuking Baucus in a letter to the Journal. "There is, indeed, a growing Democratic consensus on trade--but in the opposite direction," Dorgan wrote. The chairman of the taxation committee in the Montana Senate went further, passing almost unanimously a resolution urging Baucus to oppose fast-track authority.
Of course, things might look a little differently if Senator Jim Elliott (the chair of the tax committee) raised money here in Montana the same way Senator Baucus raises money back in Washington. Fortunately, he doesn't (and neither do the 43 other members of the Montana Senate who supported the resolution). No doubt, that's making some Friends of Max Baucus very nervous, friends like these:
In recent years Baucus has not been shy about reaching out to K Street for campaign contributions. In February 2005 he asked fifty lobbyists to raise $100,000 each for his 2008 re-election campaign. Two lobbyists who attended told CNN that they "have never gotten such an aggressive pitch from a senator."
