Politics

Unprecedented obstruction in the U.S. Senate remains the largest factor in our inability to overcome the influence of corporate money in politics. It is impossible for progressive legislation to proceed if Republicans are able to harness Senate rules to do the bidding of corporate America. Thankfully, several recent developments have drawn attention to Republican obstructionism at the behest of extreme ideological interests. For all of these reasons, it is again time to take up the cause of rules reform in the U.S. Senate.  
 
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) infamously declared that his “single most important” goal was to make President Obama a “one-term president.” His playbook from the start of the Obama Administration was simple – to convince his caucus to obstruct anything and everything. As a result, 60 votes became the needed threshold for nearly every order of Senate business. And the Senate Republicans bullied our democracy with the 60 vote club. They derailed energy and climate legislation, halted the DREAM Act, which passed the House while receiving 55 votes in the Senate, and blocked any debate on the Employee Free Choice Act, which passed the House with an overwhelming majority and garnered 59 votes in the Senate. Senator McConnell succeeded beyond belief in stopping our democracy from governing.  In fact, never before in American history had the U.S. Senate seen such levels of obstruction.

On Monday, the Senate confirmed Paul Watford's nomination to the 7th seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The nomination seemed vulnerable to a filibuster but eventually succeeded by a vote of 61-34.

Yet Watford’s confirmation is unfortunately the exception that proves the rule.

The 5th seat on that same court has been vacant for 2699 days, or since 2004. Obstructionist tactics increasingly prevent a vast number of critical judicial and other presidentially appointed positions from being confirmed—so much so that many potential nominees refuse even to subject themselves to the process.

The most powerful of these obstructionist tactics is the filibuster, which is used by the minority to force the majority to reach a 60-vote cloture threshold. Often, the simple threat of the filibuster stymies a nomination from proceeding.

“This will be the most important election of ourlifetime.”  You’ve heard it so many times before that it has become cliché. But for those most concerned about the far-reaching policy outcome of the political fight, the election merely serves as a draft for the upcoming legislative season. The confluence of events scheduled to occur during the fifty-five day ‘lame duck” session and the first 100 days of the 113th Congress will have a profound effect on each of our lives and the fate of our nation.

The 2012 election comes at a pivotal moment. Our nation is at a crossroads, with record spending, record debt, and a quality of life deteriorating for most Americans in a way that we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago. The choices made in November will go a long way in determining what the America that our children live in will look like.

As The Hill reported Wednesday, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain appears to be back in the game on campaign finance reform, and he couldn’t have come at a better time.
 
McCain, who thought he had tamped down the issue with his landmark 2002 law banning soft money, is talking with several Democrats, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the author of the latest bill aimed at SuperPAC transparency. His presence in this important conversation will hopefully help shed more light on the increasingly important issue of public access to information on SuperPAC donors. As a respected member of Congress, McCain’s presence will also increase the activity of lobbyists who are already keeping close tabs on SuperPAC transparency legislation circulating both chambers.
 
The Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission—a ruling that completely changed the political influence landscape going forward. Allowing organizations to give unlimited amounts of money to Political Action Committees (PACs)—ultimately helping a candidate into office—feels a lot like secret influence peddling which is something that we can all agree is not a good thing.

It’s an election year, and the Senate can’t agree on how to keep the student loan interest rate from doubling on July 1 from 3.4 percent to 6.8. While both sides agree that it should be done, how to pay for it is the stumbling block. A party-line cloture vote failure has once again brought calls for changing the Senate’s rules by majority vote at the beginning of the next Congress, bypassing the two-thirds cloture requirement if there’s opposition.

In a late September 2011 New York Times/CBS Poll, only 6 percent of respondents -- an all-time record -- believed Congress deserved re-election. President Obama's approval rating hit a low of 38 percent in the Gallup Poll of October. The fact that we seemed unable to get our economy growing again and that American troops were at war on the other side of the globe had something to do with those numbers, but so did the nation's perception of the culture of Washington, driven by that city's obsessions: power and money.

In a recent article published in The Hill, Wall Street pitted lobbyists against provision of STOCK Act legislation, Kevin Bogardus refers to members of the political intelligence industry as “operatives.”  This definition continues the growing trend of defining the political intelligence industry as a backroom secret swapping between Wall Street and Capitol Hill. Political intelligence, however, is much more than that and shouldn’t be defined by a few bad apples.  
 
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once famously said that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”  At a time when Americans are profoundly exasperated with the legislative process, the STOCK Act is a positive first step toward exposing Members of Congress and their staff who profit from inside information. But in their otherwise laudable effort to shine light on Capitol Hill’s darker corners, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and others’ failed effort to include an amendment to include “political intelligence” as part of the STOCK Act risked harming an industry that also serves the public good.  Let’s be clear on the difference between “political intelligence,” which can promote open, honest government – and insider trading, which is what happens when privileged information is used for personal gain.

While I had not intended to publicly comment on the Berman-Sherman race, May is Asian-Pacific American heritage month and I am deeply concerned that discussions about the top spot on the Foreign Affairs Committee have taken a turn that lacks the respect we ought to afford Ranking Member Howard Berman and the some 18 million Asian-Pacific Americans who should not be marginalized by the speculation.

Much like Black history and Women’s history, the history of Asian-Pacific Americans has been one of marginalization and discrimination. Although we have made great strides forward, occasionally news outlets and, unfortunately, sometimes Members of Congress, perpetuate the marginalization by overlooking the contributions of Asian-Pacific Americans. Consider the following excerpts.

The disregard for taxpayers shown by a few individuals at the General Services Administration (GSA) should not be tolerated. Already, several GSA employees have either lost their jobs or are on administrative leave while their actions are being investigated. The agency has instituted personnel and organization changes. GSA Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini has already elevated spending approval to be the direct responsibility of the Deputy Administrator.

As a Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I take the responsibility of oversight over government agencies very seriously. The Committee rightly brought the GSA Inspector General (IG) to discuss the IG’s report detailing the breach of public trust that occurred.

We must not lose sight of the contribution that federal workers — including the vast majority of those employed by GSA — make each and every day to the smooth functioning of our federal government. These hard-working, ethical public servants do their best to serve the public. 

The investigation into the 2010 Las Vegas General Services Administration (GSA) conference has exposed a wide range of indefensible and intolerable practices and actions. Efforts to hold the agency and its senior management accountable are still ongoing. Inspector General Brian Miller testified that his office has asked the Justice Department to investigate “all sorts of improprieties” . . . “including bribes, including possible kickbacks.”  According to testimony, most of the contracts for the conference were not competitively bid as federal rules require. 

Jeffrey E. Neely, one of the executives under investigation in the scandal, told investigators that he believed it was all right not to get competitive bids because he was paying for quality. Robert A. Peck, one of the senior GSA executives forced to resign was head of the Public Buildings Service in his second term of running the department.

Since the GSA, with 12,600 employees in 11 regional offices and main offices in Washington, DC handles much of the government’s procurement, these revelations have raised a host of additional questions about how contracts are let, whether taxpayer dollars are being efficiently use, and about fairness in the letting of contracts and hiring.
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