In the Throne speech or BC's version of the State of the State Lt. Governor Point made that declaration and that a partnership had been formed between BC and Montana.
No Federal Government on either side stepping in telling either the province of BC or the state of Montana what to do, just Premier Campbell and Governor Schweitzer sitting down like two statesmen working out a deal.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he would be flying to Vancouver, B.C., next week to sign a memorandum of understanding between the state and the province.
Staff members of both governments have been working on the deal since Schweitzer began meeting with British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell in the spring of 2005, he said.
How significant is this development? This a probably the greatest signal victory for the region, Glacier National Park, Flathead Lake, and mother earth in a generation. I could think of no better gift on Glacier's 100 year anniversary than this. To that I thank Governor Schweitzer and Premier Campbell.
The Human Rights Campaign can now confirm the House Education and Labor Committee will vote on Wednesday, November 18, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. on legislation to end the widespread practice of employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The vote was noticed moments ago.
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 3017), introduced by Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), would prohibit employment discrimination, preferential treatment, and retaliation on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity by employers with 15 or more employees.
Why are businesses with 15 or fewer employees still allowed to legally bias their hiring and termination decisions on someone's real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity? I'm waiting on the Quarterly Census of Emoployment and Wages report from The Montana Department of Labor and Industry to find out what number of Montana's small businesses currently have 15 or fewer employees. Judging from my past experience as a small business organizer, I'd think that a sizable number of businesses fall under this 15 employee quota.
I am still reading more on what this bill means for the LGBT community, and what we can expect. But a serious question I have is can a business fire an employee because they are black or jewish if they have under fifteen employees?
Update: Major federal employment discrimination law, which covers only "race, color, religion, sex or national origin," only protects employees at businesses with more than fifteen employees. State and local protections often serve to protect employees at smaller businesses.
Pending its passage at the federal level, it's still going to be important to work towards adding protections for all LGBT employees in Montana regardless of the number of coworkers they have. While the Equality Project is beginning a campaign to pass local non-discrimination ordinances in several Montana cities, much like what just passed in Salt Lake City, Kalamazoo and Ft. Worth, it seems like a critical component to leave out such a large number of business owners and legitimize discrimination.
Some very good news is that the legislation will protect the transgender community from workplace discrimination, which is legal in 38 states right now, including Montana.
The Senate's counterpart bill has almost fifty sponsors, including both Democrats and Republicans. Neither Sens. Baucus or Tester are listed as co-sponsors yet.
Past communications with Rep. Rehberg show he's opposed to ending workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. I'd like to know where his three Democratic opponents, Dennis McDonald, Tyler Gernant and Melinda Gopher, stand on the issue as this important bill moves forward.
Update: Montana's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) shows that there are 29,831 small businesses with fewer than 15 employees in Montana. While a portion of these businesses might be made of the self-employed, many will stil be allowed to make hiring or firing decisions based on someone's real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
HCAN put out a press release today about the Baucus Bill. I thought I'd post this up in its entirety, as HCAN goals were heavily pushed at LitW over the past year or so.
I always had the feeling that the local HCAN supporters really wanted a holy alliance between home-stater Max Baucus' legislative efforts and their movement.
Now Montana's HCAN supporters, many of whom also are Baucus supporters, are put in the uncomfortable place of choosing between policy and politics. This should be interesting.
HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA NOW CALLS BAUCUS BILL A FAILURE Calls on Senate Finance Committee to Fix It
Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN) - the nation's largest health care campaign - released the following statement today on Senator Max Baucus' health care bill:
Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager, Health Care for America Now:
"The Baucus bill is a gift to the insurance industry that fails to meet the most basic promise of health care reform: a guarantee that Americans will have good health care that they can afford. The Baucus bill would give a government-subsidized monopoly to the private insurance industry to sell their most profitable plans - high-deductible insurance - without having to face competition from a public health insurer.
Under the Baucus bill, employers would have no responsibility to help pay for their workers' coverage and would be given incentives to have workers pay more for barebones insurance. Americans who don't get health benefits through work would still not be able to get good, affordable coverage.
We urge Senators on the Finance Committee to replace the Baucus plan with legislation that will do what the Senate HELP Committee and three House committees have done: guarantee that Americans have good health insurance that they can afford with the choice of a strong national public health insurance option."
Senator Max Baucus met Wednesday with advocates for single-payer healthcare, including Senator Bernie Sanders, and told them that he might drop criminal charges against 13 people arrested for speaking up in his hearings, but that he would not include any supporters of single-payer health coverage in any future hearings. According to one report, Baucus suggested that he'd been mistaken to exclude single-payer but asserted that the process of creating healthcare reform legislation was too far along now to correct that omission.
Senator Sanders said after the meeting that [b]if healthcare reform did not create a single-payer system it shouldn't be done at all,[/b](bolded by Steve W) and that within three or four years we would realize we'd solved nothing. He said that it would be better to increase funding for community health centers and take steps to make it easier for medical students to go into primary care, than to enact major reforms that didn't go to the root of the problem.
Sanders has a bill (S 486) that makes some of the changes he advocates, as well as a bill (S 703) to facilitate the creation by states of single-payer healthcare systems. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin has introduced resolutions on the same topic in the House. Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-chair of the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), attended a press conference following the meeting on Wednesday and filled me in. She said that while states are pursuing single-payer legislation, it would be much easier for them to succeed if they had waivers allowing federal healthcare dollars to go to the states, and if needed changes were made to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
Advocates of single-payer emerged from the meeting with Baucus declaring their determination to push ahead with what they see as a fundamental struggle for human rights. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and national vice president of the AFL-CIO, said the fight for single-payer is a civil rights movement, and that people "have to turn up the heat." When someone questions the political viability of single payer, she said, we should question "allowing people to die and suffer for lack of political will."
The press conference, in which Baucus did not participate, was attended by the New York Times, Politico, the Associated Press, Pacifica Radio, Congressional Quarterly, and a camera that Flowers believed belonged to CNN. Sanders opened the press conference with a statement on the domination of the private for-profit health insurance companies wasting $350 billion per year in billing, profiteering, and complexity. If we were serious about healthcare reform, he said, we would be having a serious discussion of single-payer.
Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and senior lecturer at Harvard, said that in her diagnosis the disease was market-driven healthcare in which access is based on the ability to pay.
Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founder of PNHP and associate professor medicine at Harvard Medical School, reported that Baucus had said he might be willing to drop charges of unlawful conduct and disruption of Congress against 13 people but had no intention of opening up any hearings to include single-payer. Himmelstein also announced the release of two new studies. The first, being released Wednesday, reportedly finds that some of the largest investors in tobacco stock are private health insurance companies. The second, to be released Thursday, reportedly shows that not only are personal bankruptcies increasing, but 62 percent of them are now due to medical debt.
Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and a practicing registered nurse, reported that Baucus had implied he'd made a mistake in not including single-payer but that it was too late now.
And, finally, Dr. Oliver Fein, president of PNHP and associate dean at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, said that he and his colleagues had asked Baucus for a full hearing on the merits of single payer and asked for the Congressional Budget Office to create a comparison of single payer with whatever plan Congress produces that is not single payer. Senator Sanders said that he would continue to push Baucus to hold a hearing.
Dr. Flowers said that in her analysis the single-payer movement is largely inclined to go in the direction that Sanders stated on Wednesday: support for a single-payer bill or nothing. I asked her whether she believed that those pushing for single payer would ever support a public option as doing more good than harm and whether she thought those pushing for a public option would ever advocate allowing states to enact single payer. Flowers acknowledged that there are many (perhaps even most) people in the public option movement who prefer single payer. In fact, it is difficult to find a supporter of the public option who does not claim to "personally" want single payer but to find it "politically unfeasible." But Flowers said that PNHP does not support a public option and backs only single payer. And she said she was unaware of any advocates of a public option also advocating for allowing states to create single payer.
http://www.davidswanson.org
So there you have it. Senator Sanders apparently agrees with Mark T. I have to think that I do too. We have seen the complete failure of the public private system in MA, it was embraced by the Repos and the insurance industry and passed by Democrats in the legislature. It doesn't work, except to enrich the insurance industry and to impoverish the people.
I'm thinking the AFL-CIO is a union who understands the problems and that SEIU is too in bed with Max and their partners in the health insurance industrial complex to see clearly how this is going to end up. - Steve W
Montana Sen. Max Baucus has started talking of new legislation to prevent America's wealthiest citizens from illegally hiding money in off-shore accounts, and so away from the prying eyes of the Internal Revenue Service.
You'd think such measures would be no-brainers. After all, stashing money like that is criminal. These tax dodges are like the worst leeches. They use our country, our infrastructure, our laws and resources to make their millions, but, unlike the rest of us, they refuse to pitch in their fair share. We're living in a country where every door has been left open for the wealthiest. And those gold-plated thieves ha've made off with piles of our money. Estimates have these off-shore accounts costing our nation more than $100 billion in lost tax revenues. Click here to see a New York Times column on the subject.
America needs that stolen money to help us restart our economy, rebuild our infrastructure and pay for health care for all.
And Americans need to realize that it's this same class of modern robber barons who are bankrolling the campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act.
Email Rep. Denny Rehberg and tell him to stop tax cheats and help rebuild Montana's working families. Email Sen. Jon Tester to keep up the good work by voicing his support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Tell Sen. Max Baucus to close the door on those tax cheats and stand up for Montana.
One of the hallmarks of modern life is a constant sense of astonishment over the disconnected-but-seamless rhetoric from the cynical far-right.
It's the same story on the Employee Free Choice Act.
The Big Business, anti-union contingent avoids a real discussion of the act by spewing a verbal loop of nonsense that the bill somehow restricts the rights of workers to the secret ballot.
Remember, this is Republican opposite land, where everything means the opposite of what they say it does. Of course, the bill does nothing to the secret ballot. Nothing at all. Yet the far-right has been able to spread this message throughout the media simply by endlessly repeating it. Check out this Web page from MediaMatters. It's insane.
And then yesterday a Politico reporter offered us all a glimpse into the ridiculously well-funded Republican machine that manufacturers this baloney.
The (anti-)ECFA campaign began in earnest in 2005, when Mike Murphy and John McLaughlin began polling aspects of the bill and settled on the worker sign-up provision as the most vulnerable.
"We developed a framing that it was really a privacy issue," said Murphy, describing what became a campaign against taking away a "secret ballot" for workers.
But such deceitful tactics have a fatal flaw. Eventually, we get wise to the deceit. That's what happened in the last election. That's what's happening now. The far-right is spending millions pushing their anti-hope, anti-change message. (Remember: they like the economy like this and won't stop, even when the rest of us live in tarpaper shacks and pay for the privilege of working.)
And yet the popularity of the Employee Free Choice Act is rising. Every week more legislators sign on as co-sponsors. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow us to get economy get back in balance.
Amid the verbiage about what health care reform should and could be, don't lose sight of one key point: Sen. Max Baucus has made a commitment to a massive policy shift.
That's important. If Baucus has his way, health insurance will cease to be an ever-more-expensive luxury.
And for that, we should thank him.
So go ahead. Send him an email note. Let him know you vote. Tell him what you do and where you live. Most important, tell him what health care reform means to you.
And ask for updates from his office as the reform takes shape.
It jumps up on people and gets them dirty from time to time. But it's tryin' to do good. And that's what matters. - Anonymous
I expressed my concerns about the FISA Amendments to Montana's senators 10 days before the FISA vote. This is what I got from their offices. I responded, with full disclosure of my desire to make this a public conversation. No reply from the Senators yet.
Questions for LITW: who else out there got this response? Who in each respective office wrote this response? Did they even read the thing? I mean the FISA amendments, not my email...
As equal treatment for all Senators from Montana, I include at the bottom Senator Tester's office's response and my comments.
(Here's another cool tool from the Sunlight foundation that allows us to keep an eye on the schedules of our elected representatives... - promoted by Jay Stevens)
Cross Posted from the Sunlight Foundation "We can never understand [a House member's] Washington activity without also understating his perception of his various constituencies and the home style he uses to cultivate their support..." states Richard Fenno in Home Style: House Members in Their Districts. Fenno understands that the work of members of Congress is more than committee meetings and votes but is also people they meet with from the district. The work in the district builds trust constituents need to send them to Washington and to accept the decisions they make there. Fenno's makes the point that the work of lawmakers done in the district is not an exhibition but the yang to Washington's Ying.
This trust that lawmakers create in the district extends to who they meet with in Washington. The Punch Clock motto has always been "Members of Congress work for us, and we should know what they do every day." Fenno made this point a different way, "Trust is, however, a fragile relationship. It is not an overnight or one-time thing. It is hard to win; and it must be constantly renewed and rewon. "
In this spirit, Sunlight has decided to help out by creating a trust-building tool. This tool, the Punch Clock Map, is a Google map mashup with corresponding RSS feeds that lets citizens see for themselves just how elected officials spend their time and how they serve their district's needs.
The Punch Clock Map provides a visual representation of the meetings detailed by the eight members of Congress who post their daily schedules online. Currently, that includes: Sen. Max Baucus, Rep. Kathy Castor, Rep. John Doolittle, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Bill Nelson, Rep. Denny Rehberg, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Sen. Jon Tester. (As Rep. Alcee Hastings posts an abridged weekly schedule, his is not included.)
To let citizens monitor how their elected officials address their district's needs, the maps mark the home-base location of the organization or individual who met with the lawmaker, not where the meeting occurred. If the lawmaker's schedule provides a location, organization or individual (who can be easily identified), those meetings are plotted on the map. (The map does not include internal business meetings, committee hearings, meetings with constituents without easily identifiable addresses or location and meetings with other current members of Congress.)
The Punch Clock Map is an extension of the Punch Clock Campaign, an initiative the Sunlight Foundation began in 2006, which asked all candidates for congressional office - challengers and incumbents - to promise, if elected, to post their daily schedules on the Internet. Inspired by the 60 percent of Americans who 'punch a clock' to account for their time at work, Sunlight asked why members of Congress should not also account for their time to their employers: the citizens they represent.
Building trust is an essential part of the representative - constituent relationship. Posting a schedule helps maintain the trust that lawmakers go through such efforts to maintain and it also helps instill trust in the constituents who are always looking for ways to not trust their lawmakers.
I am the outreach coordinator for the Sunlight Foundation
(This is good, big news. Max and Jon have both been great on protecting the Constitution. Good for them. - promoted by Matt Singer)
Today both Senators Baucus and Tester said they would vote against the nomination of Judge Mukasey for US Attorney General. Colorado's Salazar will also vote against.
These defections could be critical should Senate Democrat's attempt a filibuster. I'm going to call Baucus and Teseter's offices and ask if they would be willing to join a filibuster should one materialize.
So far only Schumer and Feinstein have come out as voting in favor of the nomination, and of course Independent Lieberman. That leaves 48 Dems either opposed or undeclared.
Below is a joint statemnet released by Montana's US Senators.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester today released the following statement:
From fighting terrorism, fraud, corruption and the scourge of meth to gaining the trust of the American people the next Attorney General has a huge task ahead. Over the past several weeks, we have listened carefully to what both Judge Mukasey has said and what he has refused to say.
We are deeply troubled by Judge Mukasey's refusal to acknowledge what our courts, our military and every single previous administration has recognized: waterboarding is torture and it is illegal. Failure by our government to repudiate torture exposes American men and women fighting around the world to potential danger and injustice.
For too long the Department of Justice has lacked an independent leader who will attack the many problems that face this country, while preserving the liberties guaranteed in our Constitution. We do not believe that Judge Mukasey will be that needed independent voice and we cannot, in good conscience, vote for his confirmation.
(I guess we can't let Baucus get away with an entire day of unadulterated praise, can we? - promoted by Jay Stevens)
Over the years, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D) has issued a lot of press releases made a lot of headlines railing on corporate tax loopholes and the "tax gap" - the gap between what taxes are owed and what taxes are paid. In fact, just last month, the Financial Times reported that Baucus held a hearing specifically to rail on tax loopholes that let companies hide their profits in Caribbean tax havens. "If American companies are setting up shop at the beach just to avoid their tax obligations, we can't keep our heads in the sand," Baucus thundered. This posture has allowed Baucus to sugarcoat his generally lobbyist-friendly agenda with something that seems populist.
Cut to this week's debate over the farm bill. Bloomberg News reports that House Democrats paid for part of the bill by closing tax loopholes so as to "make it harder for overseas companies to use Caribbean tax havens to avoid taxes on US profits." Sounds like something Baucus would pick up and champion when the bill comes through his committee, right? Wrong.
Here's CongressDaily from today:
"When House Democrats last week put a tax provision affecting foreign-based firms into the farm bill without committee debate, Republicans rushed to condemn it as a tax increase on firms like Switzerland-based Nestle that bring jobs to the United States...It is one of several companies cited frequently by opponents of [the] language that would see no tax penalty under the change...The Senate is likely to turn a more skeptical eye to the offset. Finance Chairman Baucus said Wednesday that the provision will not be a part of the Senate farm bill. 'We're not going to do anything that is similar to what the House did,' Baucus told CongressDaily."
So, to sum up, Baucus was against precisely the kind of tax loopholes he is apparently now for - even in the face of evidence that all the Republican arguments against the Democrats' bill are actually substantively false.
I wonder...which particular lobbyists got to Baucus this time?
Yesterday, I wrote about how the reemergence of the populist wing of the Democratic Party bodes well for the party's prospects in the Rocky Mountain West. Today, we find out that reemergence is being aggressively challenged inside of Washington, D.C.
In a story fit for The Onion, Roll Call newspaper reports that a group of Democratic Senate staffers-turned-lobbyists are putting together a new corporate fundraising machine to siphon as much cash as possible to the K Street-friendly Senators because - get this - doing Corporate America's bidding inside the U.S. Senate supposedly makes it hard for these senators to raise money.
Leading the charge is Montana's own Sen. Max Baucus (D). His former Senate Finance Committee chief of staff - the guy who left Congress after writing the Medicare bill and immediately became a drug industry lobbyist - is among those listed as a top organizer of the new PAC. Baucus himself is slated to appear at the group's first Big Money fundraiser, which will also be headlined by Joe Lieberman's former chief of staff-turned-Enron lobbyist.
So, just in case you were wondering why some senators like Baucus, who represents one of the poorest states in the country, could push job-killing trade policies that may threaten this region's high-tech economy, or oppose a plan to use a tiny tax increase on millionaires to finance a plan to prevent a massive tax increase on middle class families, make sure to read this story - it makes everything clear (well, other than why a reporter would label people who oppose such a plan as "ideological moderates" rather than out-of-the-mainstream lobbyists in Senators' clothing). It also will give you some sense of how Democrats, thanks to their tight connections to Washington lobbyists, may be their own worst enemy in this region.
(David nails this topic, of course, but I wanted to get my two cents' worth, especially about the idea that abetting a massive tax increase for middle-class families is at all a political winner for a politician "up for re-election next year in a state whose voters overwhelmingly favored Bush in 2004." That's right, folks, Baucus favors a tax increase on middle-class Montanans! That makes him...electable? The only possible reason I can think of why Baucus would oppose efforts to shift the burden of the tax increase to the ueber-wealthy (to Clinton-era levels) is that he values big donations over your interests. - promoted by Jay Stevens)
"Donnie," sighs Walter Sobchak to the Big Lebowski, "These men are cowards."
Words to remember when watching the political system these days. Take, as just today's example, the Associated Press's new report about how Montana Sen. Max Baucus (D) is using his position as the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to block a proposal to permanently protect middle-class taxpayers from a massive tax increase. Reading this story makes you realize that it was no coincidence that The Onion in 2001 ran a now-famous satire piece authored by a fictional Baucus entitled "I'm Such a Shitty Senator" and featuring a fantasy of Max lamenting "Christ, what a hack I am." Yes, Max, you really are.
Here's the AP's excerpt:
"House Democrats' promise to permanently protect millions of middle-class families from a mostly unknown tax increase is faltering before it's even unveiled...[House Democrats] would like to rewrite the AMT to once-and-for-all prevent it from ensnaring about 20 million additional and unsuspecting middle-class taxpayers...The problem is that Rangel's and Neal's plan is a nonstarter in the Senate where the tax-writing Finance Committee's chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is up for re-election next year...Baucus has shown no interest in a Rangel-Neal proposal to pay for protecting middle-class voters from an AMT increase by instead imposing a new 4 percent or so surcharge on incomes above $500,000 a year. That would effectively raise the marginal tax rate on those with half-million-dollar incomes back to 39 percent, where it was in 2000...Many Democrats, including party leaders, appear comfortable with Baucus' temporary fix rather than forcing a politically risky vote to raise taxes."
Washington is indeed a screwed up place, utterly divorced from the reality the rest of the country faces. But this is just about the craziest thing I've seen in a long time. Somehow, inside the Beltway it is considered "politically risky" to even consider a proposal that permanently protects tens of millions of middle-class taxpayers and is paid for by merely returning the tax rates of the tiny handful of Americans who make $500,000 a year to Clinton-era levels. The fact that Democratic leaders think it is politically safe and LESS risky to refuse to permanently address this imminent middle-class tax hike is an even more sad commentary on how incredibly out of touch some of our "representatives" really are with the majority of Americans.
This is all made even more insane considering both the increasing political impotence of the GOP's tax arguments in the Rocky Mountain West, and Baucus's position representing one of the lowest income states in the country. I don't know off the top of my head the exact number of people in Montana who make over $500,000 a year - but if I had to guess, I'd say it's extremely small, perhaps under 1,000 total people. The fact that he is afraid to permanently protect middle-class taxpayers as the senator from Montana shows just how bought-and-paid for American politics truly is. To put it into Montana terms, this is a senator who is now on record refusing to protect the vast majority of his constituents for fear of making the folks at the Yellowstone Club angry.
Here's the deal, folks: A Senate Finance Committee chairman that refuses to permanently prevent a massive, regressive tax increase on middle-class families from occurring - and actually goes out of his way to stop that permanent fix - is effectively endorsing the massive, regressive tax increase in question. That's not an interpretation - that's just a fact. While Baucus may worry about the GOP making the absurd charge of "tax raiser" if he supports the Rangel plan to protect the majority of American taxpayers, he should quake in fear at the idea of the GOP making him American history's poster boy for tax increases if he continues blocking a permanent solution to this problem.
Walter Sobchak is correct. These professional politicians in the Senate club, these Wise Old Men of Washington - yes, Donnie, it's true: These men are cowards.
(Max is doing some very good work. - promoted by Matt Singer)
As a frequent critic of Sen. Max Baucus's (D) decisions at the helm of the Senate Finance Committee, I must say it is encouraging that he seems to be embracing a more progressive, pro-middle class agenda in the last few weeks.
"A bill introduced on June 14 by Senate Finance Committee leaders Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that was a direct response to the plans of Blackstone and a number of hedge funds to go public. The legislation would boost the tax rates of all publicly traded investment partnerships, closing what the senators view as a loophole allowing such firms to be taxed at rates far lower than the 35 percent rate applied to most corporations."
"Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he had other pressing trade issues [than renewing fast track authority], such as extending relief to trade-hit American workers. 'I have always said that it is more important to get trade promotion authority done right than to get it done fast.'"
To be sure, this latter statement ain't perfect, and begs questions as to why Max still seems so willing to even consider Wall Street's demands for Congress to give up its power (and thus his own power) to reform America's lobbyist-written trade policy. But the fact that he hasn't already used his chairmanship to ram a fast-track reauthorization bill through Congress is pretty solid progress, considering he has been a champion of lobbyist-written trade policy for the better part of 15 years. It shows Max is at least listening to the Montana Senate which overwhelmingly asked him to oppose fast track reauthorization.
Couple all of this with Max's strong statement against the War in Iraq a few months ago, and we're seeing some important progress from Montana's senior senator. Whether that's just because he's running for reelection or not really is really not all that important. Most of these politicians are professional weathervanes, meaning what's important is concrete results - and that's what we are getting from Max right now thanks to progressive pressure.
Montana Sen. Max Baucus is all over the news displaying his outrage at the proposed U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement. As the Denver Post reports, Baucus and other Western senators are upset that the deal does not include provisions making sure South Korea opens its markets for beef.
This is, of course, a very valid concern. But is Max "The World Is Flat" Baucus really going to scuttle all the other things he likes about such a trade deal for this one provision? Is he really willing to give up all those patents protections for his former staffers-turned-drug-industry lobbyists, and all those intellectual property protections for high tech products - all for beef? To Max, wouldn't that be throwing out the baby with the bathwater in the same way he criticizes fair trade Democrats when they threaten to filibuster entire trade deals over labor, human rights and environmental standards?
Of course it would - Max has pharmaceutical and high-tech campaign donors to think about. So why isn't he coming out against "fast track" trade negotiating authority, so that Congress could simply amend his concerns into the proposed U.S.-South Korea Trade Agreement?
Right now, "fast track" allows presidents to send final trade deals to Congress for a simple up-or-down vote - and prevents lawmakers like Max from amending the deals to address their concerns. Without "fast track," Max could offer an amendment to the U.S.-South Korea Trade Agreement forcing South Korea to open its beef markets as a condition of the deal. Put another way, Baucus's current behavior inadvertently makes a strong case for him to oppose "fast track."
So Max, are you still saying you support reauthorizing presidential "fast track" authority, all while you are stomping your feet in outrage about the South Korea deal? Or do you think maybe you might reconsider this inherently ridiculous behavior?
(Interesting thoughts from David. Like him, I consider myself a progressive, but find myself conflicted by the Progressive Democrats of Montana. Still, I'd rather be in their camp than Punke's any day. I'll try to flesh out some thoughts on the PDMs, but it's the middle of a damn busy week for me (did I just describe Monday as the middle of a week? ouch). - promoted by Matt Singer)
I have two simple questions: Why, as he's finally starting to talk a decent game on fair trade, is Sen. Max Baucus apaprently hiring a top official from President Bush's U.S. Trade office as a top trade staffer on the Senate Finance Committee? And why does an international corporate trade lawyer and former top staffer to the China PNTR-pushing Clinton U.S. Trade office think he has any clout to lecture Montana progressives about politics?
(This is going to be a very interesting issue to watch in coming weeks. So far, the Sidney weekly seems to be leading the press corps in coverage. We'll see if Noelle Straub or someone else tackles the fast track stuff happening at the federal level and track where Rehberg and Max will come down on it. - promoted by Matt Singer)
All successful movements understand the use of both the carrot and the stick. Today, the Progressive States Network, the Citizens Trade Campaign, and local labor/environmental/agriculture groups show what an effective stick looks like here in Montana, as they helped the Montana State Senate overwhelmingly pass a resolution demanding Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) use his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee to reject President Bush's request for "fast track" trade authority. The full press release from the Progressive States Network is at the end of this post.
Make no mistake about it: the Senate resolution, authored by fair trade champion Sen. Jim Elliott (D-Trout Creek), is no small accomplishment: Baucus, by virtue of his chairmanship, is the single most powerful lawmaker in Congress when it comes to "free" trade, and "fast track" is the single most important "free" trade policy because it gives presidents the ability to ram lobbyist-written pacts through Congress without any labor, human rights or environmental standards. Additionally, Baucus used the very first day of his chairmanship to author an op-ed on the Wall Street Journal's right-wing editorial page demanding Congress support Bush's request for "fast track" reauthorization - a move that made K Street lobbyists cheer, but should make the rest of us retch.
As noted, the press release is in the extended entry. It will be interesting to see Baucus's reaction. In just the last week his language on trade seems to have changed - but whether that rhetorical shift means a policy shift is anyone's guess. This is, after all, the guy who traveled to India to give a speech trumpeting job outsourcing.
I'm headed up to the Capitol here in Helena this morning for a hearing on a resolution by State Sen. Jim Elliott (D) demanding that Montana's congressional delegation oppose President Bush's efforts to reauthorize "fast track" authority - the authority that lets presidents ram lobbyist-written trade deals through Congress. This resolution is particularly significant because Montana Sen. Max Baucus (D), as chair of the Finance Committee, is in a position to decide what happens to "fast track" in Congress. You may recall that in 2005, the legislature resoundingly passed a similar resolution against CAFTA, sponsored by Elliott and then State Senate President Jon Tester (who, as a U.S. Senator today, continues to make strong statements against our current unfair trade policy).
Baucus has said he wants to help Bush reauthorize "fast track" - a declaration that may make K Street happy, but is bad news for Montana small businesses, farmers and workers. Hopefully, this resolution will make him think twice. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: The Senate Labor Committee passed Elliott's resolution by a strong bipartisan vote of 9-2. Now the bill heads to the Senate floor.
(This is truly good news. Let's hope we hear something similar from Jon Tester soon. As soon as we can, we'll have the full text of the speech up. - promoted by Matt Singer)
I've had my issues with my Senator, Montana's own Max Baucus (D), on a whole host of economic issues, and I assume I will continue to have those gripes with him (especially if he pulls shenanigans with tax giveaways on the minimum wage bill). But today Max made me very proud that he is my senator. He gave a speech on the floor of the Senate demanding a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq within the next six months, and opposing President Bush's plans for a military escalation.
Baucus originally voted for the war and has previously voted against proposals to bring the troops home, but today said "If I knew then what I know now I never would have voted for the war." That he is now making this bold statement is a major step for him, and for the larger efforts around the country to end the war. I'm really hopeful he signs onto Kennedy's bill and supports all the other legislative initiatives to end the war - but whether he does that is a question for later. Today, let's just cheer him on.
On the first day of the new Congress after Democrats took the majority thanks to many of its winning candidates running explicitly against “free” trade, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for the reauthorization of legislation to allow President Bush to negotiate trade deals with no labor, human rights or environmental standards. Baucus says he supports this “fast track” authority being “improved as it is renewed, with better trade enforcement capability and better environmental and labor provisions.” But he doesn’t explain how giving Bush the authority to negotiate trade deals with no input from Congress would somehow obligate Bush to include labor/human rights/environmental provisions in those trade deals. If someone knows of an “improved” fast track proposal that somehow obligates Bush to adhere to a fair trade agenda while cutting out Congress from holding his feet to the fire, please explain in the comments section. Otherwise, we should assume this is a smokescreen much like the highly-touted NAFTA side agreements that were shown to be a sham before the ink on that deal dried.
