This Post Is Only For Californians-- Unless You Also Live In A State That Gets Wildfires

It's wildfire weather in L.A.-- temperatures in the 90s and very dry. There are plenty of reasons to be angry about the irresponsibility of Members of Congress who voted for the Sequester-- and inconvenience at airports is the least of them. The possibility of losing homes and lives to wildfires is far more serious. Monday Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who's in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, and Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell were in Idaho were in Idaho explaining that Congress' Sequester had tied their hands in terms of using prescribed burns for fire prevention and that 500 fewer firefighters and 50 fewer engines will be available to fight fires in the dry West this summer.

Idaho has two congressmembers, both Republicans. Mike Simpson is a GOP Establishment shill and a lockstep ally of Boehner's. He voted for the Sequester. Raul Labrador is a bit of a rebel with a libertarian streak and he was one of the 66 Republicans who joined with 95 Democrats to oppose Boehner's sequester bill on August 1, 2011. Tuesday, the editors of the Great Falls Tribune in their state sent them a message: voters are watching:

Cutting federal dollars for firefighting would seem to be foolish on its face.

Unless Congress wants to see the West go up in flames this fire season, federal dollars for fighting fires should be restored to last year’s levels.

It’s an easy thing to suggest whacking the heck out of the federal budget. But it’s not such an easy thing to find federal programs that don’t affect people in small or large ways. Even chemotherapy to cancer patients has been delayed by cuts.

Last year, wildfires burned 9.3 million acres of land and destroyed more than 4,400 structures. It was one of the worst wildfire years in since most Americans were born. This year could easily be worse. A bad year for Congress' meat ax approach to ideologically-inspred budget cuts. And it isn't just Idaho that is worried, of course. New Mexico and Oregon were both hit very hard last year. Much of Texas, whose Republican-dominated congressional delegation is Austerity-mad, has been a tinderbox. Washington is another state under severe threat-- and so is Florida, another state where senior Republican congressmembers like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, John Mica, Bill Young, Vern Buchanan, Tom Rooney, Mario Diaz-Balart, Anders Crenshaw, Jeff Miller, Richard Nugent and Gus Bilirakis helped push the Boehner-Cantor-Ryan wing of the party's pro-Sequester position.

But no state is in greater jeopardy than California from the $115 million cuts to the federal wildland fire program budget. Fires have already begun and the outlook is grim. The games they play back in Washington are grim too and Members of Congress-- regardless of party-- who voted for the sequester should be held accountable. My own congressman, New Dem Adam Schiff, voted for the sequester. I won't be voting for him in 2014. This is the list of California congressmembers still in Congress who voted for the Sequester:

• Karen Bass (D)

• Howard Berman (D)

• Ken Calvert (R)
• John Campbell (R)
• Lois Capps (D)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog)
• Susan Davis (New Dem)
• Jeff Denham (R)
• Anna Eshoo (D)
• John Garamendi (D)
• Darrell Issa (R)
• Kevin McCarthy (R)
• Buck McKeon (R)
• Gary Miller (R)
• Nancy Pelosi (D)
• Dana Rohrabacher (R)
• Ed Royce (R)
• Loretta Sanchez (Blue Dog; her sister, Linda Sanchez, had the sense to vote NO)
• Adam Schiff (New Dem)
• Brad Sherman (D)
• Jackie Speier (D)
• Mike Thompson Blue Dog)

The California members with the good sense to vote against Sequester: Xavier Becerra (D), Judy Chu (D), Janice Hahn (D), Mike Honda (D), Duncan Hunter (R), Barbara Lee (D), Zoe Lofgren (D), Tom McClintock (R), George Miller (D), Grace Napolitano (D), Devin Nunes (R), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D), Linda Sánchez (D), and Maxine Waters (D).

On election day, few people just vote on a single issue. If your house burns down this summer and there are no firefighters there to help, you might want to at least take this one into consideration.

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Dust-Up In Orlando-- Alan Grayson vs John Mica vs Nick Ruiz

The Orlando Metro has 4 congressmen, Corrine Brown (D-FL-05), John Mica (R-FL-07), Alan Grayson (D-FL-09) and Daniel Webster (R-FL-10). These were the election results last November:

• Corrine Brown- 71%
• Alan Grayson- 63%
• Daniel Webster- 52%
• John Mica- 59%

Monday, Lauren Rowe, a feisty, albeit simpleminded, reporter from WKMG, Local 6, invited two of them, Orlando's dynamic duo, Grayson and Mica, on to Flashpoint to discuss the Sequester, which Mica voted for and which Grayson strenuously opposes. "Anybody," Grayson patiently explained to Rowe, "who's looked at this agrees it will cost at least 700,00 jobs nationally and maybe as high as 3 million. At a time when the economy is already weak, slowing recovering-- and could easily double dip into a double dip recession-- I think it's a mistake from any sort of view of economic management... And I'm against it; I voted against it. I've been pretty consistent about that. Remember, we're talking about federal employees. Every one of those jobs is a job in the United States. You give a tax cut to a multinational corporation and the money either ends up in Zurich, Switzerland or it ends up in Singapore or it ends up in Tokyo or Seoul. It hardly ever ends up here creating new jobs in the United States. When you cut federal spending, you're cutting U.S. jobs," he tried explaining to the bobble-head who was already on to the next question someone had written for her about "some seniors who are maybe missing their Meals on Wheels."

Grayson, who Democratic freshmen admiringly call "the Kraken," was like a patient professor trying to make Rowe understand. But she seemed neither capable nor interested. "OK, let's move on to immigration..." She seemed far more deferential to Mica. As you can hear on the video above, Mica regurgitated the stale Republican Party talking points of failed European Austerity. Not on the video, of course, is the actual Democrat who is running against Mica and will replace him as the fourth Orlando congressmember if the DCCC decides to spend money on a real Democrat instead of on a celebrity's sister who publicly bashes unions. We asked Nick Ruiz to take a look at the interview and tell us what Orlando voters would have heard from him instead of Mica. If you like it and would like to help him get into Congress, please consider a contribution on this page. Nick:

"The problems America has come to face are simply not being handled well by people like John Mica. People need higher wages. Mica votes against higher wages. Social Security does not pay enough for retirement purposes. Mica votes to cut Social Security. Government spending per se isn't out of control. The lack of appropriate levels of historic taxation are out of control. Pollution is out of control. Banks are out of control. Military escapades are out of control. People like John Mica are out of control, and left so, continue to unbalance and mismanage the federal affairs of the United States of America to the point where we lag behind nearly all other Western nations on multiple historic measures. That's a fact. John Mica, along with countless other Republicans, and even some horribly unreliable Democrats, have brought about mass American failure. That is their legacy. Be it on education, fair wages, healthcare, the military, energy policy, social justice issues and more. Repeatedly, people like John Mica default to senseless policies of social bigotry and economic hardship, that are breaking the back of our domestic social and economic systems, and have squandered our reputation amongst a world of nations. It's time for him to go. And I look forward to replacing him for you in 2014."

Can you imagine the look on Rowe's face when she has Nick on her show and he let's loose with something like that? Two krakens... better than one.

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John Boehner-- Bad For America, Bad For Ohio

Republicans find it easy and natural to demonize Nancy Pelosi. After all, conservatives have cast assertive and visionary women as "witches" and "bitches" since time immemorial. It's part of their whole self-inflicted patriarchal disease. And it's another manifestation of the pathetic Republican Party War Against Women. But this week, Billy House at the National Journal asked why isn't Boehner a target in congressional elections?

Excellent question and before we get into it, please let me remind you that although Steve Israel and the DCCC work frantically to protect Boehner and his chief henchmen, there is a progressive champion who's taken on the thankless task of running against Boehner in his western Ohio district, Andy Hounshell. Andy will get exactly nothing from the DCCC as long as Steve Israel is in charge but if you'd like to help him make Boehner's reelection bid something he has to take seriously, you can do that here at the Blue America ActBlue page.

Now, back to House's question. What he's asking isn't why the DCCC refuses to go after Boehner (or any senior Republican leaders or committee chairs, a failed strategy of Steve Israel that means absolutely never taking back the House as long as he's in charge). What he's asking is why don't the Democrats demonize the drunken, lazy, corrupt, dull-witted Boehner the way Republicans have always demonized Pelosi, wrapping her like a stone around their Democratic opponent’s neck. House asked around and hasn't found a clear answer.

One answer is that Democrats simply see more gain in attacking the tea party-- and like-minded congressional Republicans-- as a group with frightening ideas. Boehner is not typically viewed as a tea-party leader, and is often at odds with that faction himself. And while he could conceivably be attacked as an ineffective leader, many experts say he is simply not seen as a scary figure.

“Fear is a bigger driver,” one Democratic strategist said.

Indeed, during the 2012 elections, Democratic ads focused on Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate who was himself the architect of GOP proposals to overhaul Medicare and other social programs.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and others in the House Republican Conference also provide a broader “collective” cast of well-known foils for Democrats than is available in the Democratic caucus for Republicans, said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Still, a Gallup poll released last week showed both Pelosi and Boehner are well-known. Only 11 percent of those surveyed said they had never heard of Pelosi (the most well-known of all four of the House and Senate majority and minority leaders), and only 14 percent said they had not heard of Boehner.

Pelosi led the list of the four leaders in unpopularity, with 48 percent of those surveying saying they had an unfavorable opinion of her, while 31 percent had a favorable opinion.  Forty-one percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of Boehner, while 31 percent had a favorable view.

Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor-in-chief, said he believes-- though he has not seen data to back this up-- that Pelosi has fallen prey over the years to a polarized and intense right-wing media barrage, while more-liberal media voices are less prone to outright personal attacks.

Some of this too may be based on Pelosi’s success in driving the Democratic agenda, such as her role in helping to pass President Obama’s Affordable Care Act while speaker.

“You attack power, not weakness,” said a senior House Democratic aide, “which is why Boehner is less frequently used.”

“I like him, actually. He’s a nice guy,” added Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., of Boehner, who said the speaker has traditionally had a “reasonable and moderate” record.

“If he had it his way, the House Republican Conference wouldn’t be as dysfunctional as it has been,” McGovern said.

Everybody "likes" a lush but McGovern is wrong about Boehner having a “reasonable and moderate” record. His ProgressivePunch voting score on crucial roll calls for the current session is zero, far to the right of most Republicans. Even extremist icons like Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R-SC), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Paul Broun (R-Pit of Hell), Justin Amash (R-MI), and domestic terrorist Steve Stockman (R-TX) have managed to make common ground with progressives of a few issues critical to the well-being of the country. But not Boehner. In fact, Boehner's career-long score-- and he's had an overly long career-- is a frightening 1.22, one of the most extreme right voting scores in the history of voting scores. I think McGovern is mixing up a tipsy smile from the Speaker with an actual "reasonable and moderate record." Besides which, even people who don't agree with her politically, admit that Nancy Pelosi is warm, supportive and very likable. Not that that would ever stop a Republican witch-hunt.

This morning we asked Hounshell more about Boehner's actual record and what it's meant to ordinary working families in western Ohio. "As Speaker, John Boehner doesn't have to actually cast a vote and he rarely does. But when it came to voting on the devastating sequester bill," Andy told us, "he came down off his perch and voted-- for it. He alternates between taking credit for it and blaming it on President Obama. But the sequester is a disaster and it's an example of the failure of political elites and insiders in Washington looking out for everything but the interests of their own constituents. The sequester is causing real harm to real people.  It's time for them to sit down and work out a budget that will pass. I understand that it is difficult, but it is what they have been elected to do, and what they get paid for. This game of program cutting chicken hurts the people in this country that need their representatives the most. They fixed the flight delays with lightening speed, lets see what they can do with the cuts that are affecting those who need it most, like Head Start and Meals on Wheels."

Two weeks ago the Dayton Daily News reported how colleges and universities across Ohio were having to pull back on crucial, and in some cases life-saving, research programs.

Sequestration, the across-the-board cuts that automatically went into effect March 1 when Congress did not reach a deal to avoid them, is set to drain more than a billion from the federal organizations that fund research. The impact for public universities in Ohio is estimated at $95 million, according to ScienceWorksforU.S., a new campaign launched by the Association of American Universities.

“People like to think that the things that may be impacted are things that may not make a difference, but that’s not the truth,” said Dr. William Ball, vice president for research at the University of Cincinnati. “Promising research is potentially going to be affected.”

The Ohio State University has already seen cuts to grants for cancer and infection disease research, said Carol Whitacre, vice president of OSU’s Office of Research. OSU estimates it will see a cut of $13 million in fiscal year 2013 and $14 million for 2014. UC is also bracing for reductions. The university is at the forefront in research on strokes, a leading cause of death in the US. UC estimates its impact at $17 million, some of which could be years away.

“What people need to understand is that research is their future,” Ball said. The cuts, he said, are”personal” and “not just something that could happen to that institution across town.”

Thanks John Boehner! Yesterday Senator Elizabeth Warren, who's working to repeal Boehner's sequestration bill, told her constituents in Massachusetts almost the same thing Andy Hounshell is telling voters in Ohio's 8th congressional district:

We can't solve our country's budget problems with a meat-ax.

Sequestration isn't just dumb, it's dangerous and irresponsible. Blunt, across the board cuts are hurting our children, our seniors, our veterans-- the people who need our help the most.

Last week, Congress stepped in to restore full funding for air traffic controllers to keep out country moving. But our children, seniors, and veterans shouldn't have to get stuck on a tarmac before Congress pays any attention.

People with cancer or families dealing with autism or Alzheimer's shouldn't be ignored. Flight delays are bad for all of us, but it's also bad for all of us when we cut funding for Meals on Wheels and Head Start. And it's bad for all of us when medical research gets sidelined and when young scientists' work can't get funded.

The truth is that we could end those cuts and put a stop to sequestration right now if we just made big corporations, millionaires, and billionaires pay their fair share.

That's why I'm joining Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to sponsor legislation that repeals sequestration by ending the tax giveaways and special breaks for our most profitable companies and millionaires.

Washington is rigged for the big guys-- the ones who can afford to hire an army of lobbyists, lawyers, and accountants to create and find the loopholes and special breaks that let big corporations off the hook for paying taxes.

• It's rigged for the five biggest oil companies, which made $118 billion in profits last year-- and yet still collected billions of dollars worth of government subsidies.

• It's rigged for multinational corporations, which get tax breaks to ship U.S. jobs overseas and stash their investments abroad.

• And it's rigged for hedge fund managers and billionaires, who pay lower tax rates than their secretaries.

The Job Preservation and Sequester Replacement Act closes corporate tax loopholes so everyone pays a fair share. And it implements the Buffett Rule so that people who make more than $1 million a year pay it forward so the next kid has a chance to make it big.

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Why Should Young Voters Be Embracing Cynicism? Barack Obama

Keith Ellison is as crystal clear as one can be-- without coming out and trashing Obama completely-- that the president's willingness to compromise with America's mortal enemies (the Republican Party and the oligarchs and plutocrats who own them) is bad for American working families. Yesterday Alex Isenstadt explained the politics of this in a Politico piece for people who have been sleeping for the last several months. He explains how Obama has blurred the lines-- lines going back 100 years-- between Democrats and Republicans on protecting working families with popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security. Voters have backed the outrageously corrupt, self-serving, careerist Democratic political class, including sleazy characters like Obama, against the outrageously corrupt, self-serving, careerist Republican political class for one reason: the Democrats have stood up for ordinary people, not the rich. Obama is the first Democrat to shift-- Clinton may have even been worse-- but Obama has made the worst mess of it-- especially in trying to take end the valuable political concept that Social Security is the third rail of American politics.

The president’s shift came after an election year in which Democrats made the GOP’s embrace of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial plan to overhaul Medicare a centerpiece of their campaigns. The offensive, Democrats say, helped them net eight House seats-- a respectable figure but short of the 25 they needed to seize the lower chamber.

Historically, polls have shown Democrats are the party seen as most likely to defend entitlement programs.

How large a role Medicare and Social Security play in the 2014 debate remains to be seen-- Democrats intend to highlight issues like immigration and gun control, with an eye toward driving minority and younger voters to the polls. But they also want to use entitlements as part of a broader message branding Republicans as overly ideological and uncaring about the middle class.

Driving home that theme, some Democrats say, will be tricky after the president’s controversial endorsement of chained CPI, a stingier way of calculating growth in Social Security benefits, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts.

“It is highly problematic,” said one Democratic pollster and veteran of congressional races, who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen as picking a fight with the White House. “There is no question the entitlement debate makes for an easy campaign ad.”

...While Obama would love for his party to win the House-- he has said he would do everything in his power to help Democrats take the speaker’s gavel from John Boehner-- his budget highlighted tensions with congressional Democrats. The president has said he wants to reach a grand bargain with Republicans to tame the nation’s $16 trillion debt. And getting there, Obama signaled with his budget, requires taking a whack at entitlements.

“The White House is more concerned about his legacy,” said Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster. “It’s the classic dilemma of the second-term incumbent.”

Some Democrats say slashing Medicare and Social Security will turn off the senior voters who are traditionally among those most likely to turn out to the polls in a midterm election.

“During nonpresidential election years, the percentage of voters age 65 and older is higher, and polls consistently show that voters age 50 and older strongly oppose use of chained CPI to cut benefits,” said Chuck Loveless, director of federal government affair for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “So from our point of view, the use of chained CPI is not only bad policy, its bad politics.”

“It would suppress Democratic turnout,” he added. “It’s pretty clear people are paying attention to this.”

In the days since Obama released his budget, many of the Democrats who have been quickest to distance themselves from his blueprint are those from senior-heavy districts. California Rep. Raul Ruiz, a freshman Democrat who represents a Palm Springs-area district where seniors compose about half of all registered voters, said “putting the burden of the national deficit on the backs of our seniors is wrong.”

Democrats are even concerned that Republicans could reverse the dynamic and portray Democrats as the bad guys on entitlements.

In an interview with CNN after Obama unveiled his budget earlier this month, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon called the plan “a shocking attack on seniors.”

“I’ll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country,” he said.

And it isn't only the elderly who will be staying home. Yesterday, the NY Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg explained how enthusiasm among young voters for Obama in 2008 has lead to cynicism about politics (something we predicted in 2008, having already seen exactly what kind of a politician Obama was in his few years as a senator). Obama was always two things: better than a Republican alternative and an inspiring politician. It's been mostly downhill from there. And she has a survey from the Institute of Politics at Harvard to back it up-- or at least to back up the perception.

The Harvard survey, of more than 3,100 voters under 30, found that faith in most major institutions-- with the notable exception of the military-- has declined over the past several years. Today, only 39 percent of young voters trust the president to do the right thing, as opposed to 44 percent in 2010. Just 18 percent of voters under 30 trust Congress, compared with 25 percent in February 2010.

“The hyperpartisanship and gridlock that has befallen Washington, D.C., is having a traumatic effect not just on our nation’s status at home and abroad, but on the political health of tens of millions of once (and hopefully future) idealistic young people,” wrote John Della Volpe, the Harvard institute’s polling director, in the study’s conclusion.

The economy is a major reason for the disillusionment of young voters, who are saddled with student debt and worried about how to find jobs, said Kristen Soltis Anderson, who tracks young voters for the Winston Group, which advises Republican candidates. Mr. Durgin is one example; part of his upset with Washington, he said, has to do with his livelihood.

“I’m losing money,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing positive that has happened to me in the last 12 months.”

Young voters seem disappointed with both political parties, although Ms. Anderson, the Republican pollster, said her party appears to be taking the brunt of millennials’ dissatisfaction. Mr. Obama had a 52 percent approval rating in the Harvard poll-- slightly better than his approval ratings in polls of older adults nationwide-- but down from his approval rating of 58 percent in a Harvard poll of millennials in 2009.

“They are disappointed with him, yet many question the motives of Republicans even more,” Ms. Anderson said.

She added: “It’s tough to be young these days-- the economic concerns are very great, and a lot of what you hear out of Washington is not addressing those concerns. There are a lot of questions: Does either party really have my best interest at heart? And I think the answer to that is, ‘No.’”

That cynicism is coupled with a deepening partisan divide. While Mr. Obama’s job performance rating would suggest that most young voters feel he is doing well in office, a deeper look at the numbers reveals a split: 86 percent of young Democrats approve of Mr. Obama’s job performance, while only 10 percent of young Republicans do.

“At no time since President Obama was elected in 2008 have we reported less trust, more cynicism and more partisanship among young voters,” Mr. Della Volpe wrote in the study. “Young voters, like older Americans, are becoming more partisan by the day.”

...Political analysts know that voters are heavily influenced by the president and the political climate in which they come of age; young voters of the Franklin D. Roosevelt era, for instance, tended to stay Democratic throughout their lives, while those of the Ronald Reagan era still tilt strongly Republican.

And that brings us back to Keith Ellison and other progressives in Congress and running for Congress who may be backing Obama on marriage equality and immigration and gun safety but want nothing to do with him on his backing for the failed Republican Austerity agenda. Ezra Klein has always looked like a real Obamabot to me but Monday night on Maddow's show, if you read between the lines, he's almost saying, defensively, that Obama is... well, "better than a Republican." He may be, but he's sure not as good as a Keith Ellison, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Jeff Merkley.

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Ted Cruz vs Chris Van Hollen-- How To Win Friends And Influence People

Ted Cruz wants to make a name for himself as the Senate's biggest douche bag. Fellow Texans Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman could give him a run for his money in the House, but in the Senate... Cruz is as bad as it gets. I suspect other Republican congressmen don't like being publicly referred to as squishes by this loudmouthed Texas pissant. And outside of Texas, it's not a good idea calling the grieving and sincere parents of the murdered Newtown victims political props.

In his short time at the Capitol, Senator Ted Cruz, a freshman Republican from Texas, has shown little regard for long-standing rules of decorum. But on Friday, he publicly discussed the closed-door dealings of the Senate Republican Conference-- and trashed his colleagues in the process.

Stopping by a Texas meeting of the Tea Party-aligned group FreedomWorks, Mr. Cruz called many of his colleagues “squishes,” forced to stand on conservative principles by the uncompromising stands of a triumphant trio of Republican “constitutionalists”: himself and Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

...“We’ve had probably five or six lunches with a bunch of Republican senators standing up and looking at Rand and Mike and me and yelling at the top of their lungs-- I mean really upset. And they said: ‘Why did you do this? As a result of what you did, when I go home, my constituents are yelling at me that I’ve got to stand on principle.’ I’m not making that up. I don’t even bother to argue with them. I just sort of let them yell.”

Yesterday Maryland Congressman, a member of the Democratic House leadership, also publicly disagreed with his colleagues... although he didn't call anyone names or try to pump up his own stature at their expense the way Cruz did. Van Hollen was one of just a handful of Democrats who voted NO on the FAA sequester fix. Unfairly, I assumed he voted against it-- along with 3 other Marylanders-- because he can commute to work by car and doesn't have to worry about flight delays. But that wasn't the impression he gave the Washington Post's Greg Sargent during an interview yesterday. His thinking was a lot more strategic than selfish.

By agreeing to give the FAA flexibility in implementing the sequester, in response to the outcry over flight delays, Democrats effectively squandered their leverage in the sequester battle, by signaling that they will selectively undo its effects when the political going gets tough. Does that mean they’ve lost the sequester fight completely?

In an interview this morning, Dem Rep. Chris Van Hollen-- a top party strategist-- was surprisingly frank in conceding that Dems had given away crucial leverage by agreeing to the FAA fix. But he said Dems could still make up some of that lost ground-- and called on them not to agree to any more targeted sequester fixes.

“We have certainly made it more difficult to stand firm going forward,” Van Hollen told me. “But we’re going to have to reclaim some lost ground here. We cannot have a situation where people just cherry-pick the sequester.”

Van Hollen bluntly suggested that Dems-- in agreeing to just a targeted FAA fix-- had sent a message about Congress that it’s only responsive to powerful interests.

“If you do that, you’re attacking the symptoms rather than the underlying cause,” Van Hollen said. “When you do that, what happens is the most politically strong groups with the most lobbyists get relief, at the expense of everybody else. Meals on Wheels, or kids on Head Start, or grants on biomedical research-- all of those get left behind.”

...Van Hollen called on Dems to have a united front in this battle going forward, and said they should not agree to any more targeted fixes. “I don’t think we should be voting for exceptions to this,” he said. “We’re going to have to draw a line and say we’ve got to deal with this in a comprehensive way, rather than play Whack-a-Mole.”

“It’s going to be tough,” Van Hollen acknowledged, speaking of the pressure that will be brought to bear on Dems to agree to more targeted fixes. “That’s why it’s going to require a united position and leadership.”

Andy Hounshell is the progressive Democrat in Ohio running against John Boehner-- and he knows how these conservative tricks work. He has a similar view on this that Van Hollen holds. This morning he told us:

"It is nice to see that Congress can agree on something, unfortunately it is something that affects a small percentage of Americans. While I am sure that the inconvenience of flight delays can be troubling to some, it pails in comparison to the cuts to programs that many Americans depend on such as Meals on Wheels. It would be great to see our Representatives sit down and actually deal with the entire budget and sequester rather than hen pick where the pinch of the sequester is going to be felt. It looks like that pinch is going to be felt by the people in this country who can't afford lobbyists. Kids in Head Start and seniors relying on the Meals on Wheels program are the ones who need their Congress right now. It would be nice if their Congress was as worried about them as they are about travel delays for those who are fortunate enough to travel by plane. By plucking out the problems that only affect the affluent, it leaves only the poor and middle class to deal with the pinch of the sequester, and we know how that works out."

If you'd like to help us elect the kinds of progressive strategic thinkers that Van Hollen clearly needs in Congress, well, you can find Andy Hounshell and others with similar views here on the Blue America ActBlue page.

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Unanimous Consent-- If Not Courageous

Keith took that oath-thing seriously

Yesterday everyone was upset that the Senate had passed-- by voice vote (so no record of who voted for and against it) and by unanimous consent-- a work-around for the sequester for the FAA. TPM pointed out that Eric Cantor was crowing how the craven Democrats had backed down. Cantor's Memo:

As a CQ / Roll Call reporter tweeted last night, "Make no mistake, this FAA fix is a complete, utter cave by Senate Democrats and, if signed, by the White House." This is a sentiment expressed in other press reports over the last 12 hours, including, Politico: "Democrats blink first on aviation” and Chicago Tribune: “White House Scrambles For Damage Control."

Consider that the Democrats opening position was they would only replace the sequester with tax increases. By the first of this week Senator Reid proposed replacing the whole sequester with phony war savings. And by last night, Senate Democrats were adopting our targeted “cut this, not that” approach. This victory is in large part a result of our standing together under the banner of #Obamaflightdelays.

Ezra Klein came right out and said in the Washington Post that The Democrats have lost on sequestration. "The original theory," wrote Klein, "was that the specter of sequestration would be so threatening that Republicans and Democrats would agree to a budget deal rather than permit it to happen. That theory was wrong. The follow-up theory was that the actual pain caused by sequestration would be so great that it would, in a matter of months, push the two sides to agree to a deal. But Democrats just proved that theory wrong, too."

In effect, what Democrats said Friday was that in any case where the political pain caused by sequestration becomes unbearable, they will agree to cancel that particular piece of the bill while leaving the rest of the law untouched. The result is that sequestration is no longer particularly politically threatening, but it’s even more unbalanced: Cuts to programs used by the politically powerful will be addressed, but cuts to programs that affects the politically powerless will persist. It’s worth saying this clearly: The pain of sequestration will be concentrated on those who lack political power.

...It is worth noting how different the Democrats’ approach to sequestration has been to the GOP’s approach to, well, everything. Over the past five years, Republicans have repeatedly accepted short-term political pain for long-term policy gain. That’s the governing political principle behind their threats to shut down the government, breach the debt ceiling, and, for that matter, accept sequestration. Today, Democrats showed they’re not willing to accept even a bit of short-term pain for long-term policy gain. They played a game of chicken with the Republicans, and they lost. Badly.

In the House Friday, the bill passed 361-41, a dozen Boehner-hating Republicans joining just 29 Democrats willing to stand up for principle. I was shocked to see Hoyer was one of the Democrats taking a principled position along with people like Donna Edwards, Barbara Lee, Keith Ellison, John Conyers, Mark Pocan, Rick Nolan, Chellie Pingree, who we usually expect this kind of courageousness from.

You see, what's at stake here is that, of course there should be no sequester on the FAA air traffic controllers. We've come a long way since Reagan. But by signaling to the Republicans that they'll fold on each individual sequester matter, it puts the Republicans-- most of whom don't give a shit about public opinion-- to pick and choose. That means things like Head Start will never get dealt with-- just destroyed. That's what Obama will be remembered for, just or not. And that takes us back to the Senate vote Thursday night.

The unanimous voice vote came around 8pm and only had two participants, Harry Reid and Susan Collins. They were unanimous. Now, to be fair, Reid had requested-- in writing-- that any Democrat who didn't agree to the unanimous consent agreement speak up. Not ONE SPOKE UP... until the next day. Who can argue with what Bernie Sanders said on the Ed Schultz Show Friday after the House vote?

What we have to understand is that clearly there was a serious problem. We're seeing air traffic delays all over the country and that's something that has to be addressed. The problem is that when it's Members of Congress who are flying-- and they do a lot of flying-- when it is business people, upper class people who fly, we respond. But what my worry is, you've got 70 thousand kids that are going to lose slots in Head Start [and] I don't think our Republican friends are going to be quite so quick to respond to the serious crisis and what it means to working families. When you've got folks not getting the public health that they need, I don't think our Republican friends are going to be there. When teachers are going to be laid off, I don't think our Republican friends are going to be there. Clearly the answer is we need to end sequestration but do it in a way that makes sense, which is to have more revenue coming in, primarily, in my view, by ending these outrageous loopholes, such that one out of four corporations in America pays nothing in taxes. But not just cut, cut, cut.

I asked another very progressive congressman, a House Member, why he voted for the bill today. "Because the world is better with it than without it," he told me, "even though it’s a stupid way to accomplish that." We went back and forth a little and I mentioned that the Republicans would get their way on everything about the sequester they had manipulated Obama and the foolish Democrats into to begin with. "It’s worse than that," he told me. "What we voted on doesn’t end the sequester for air traffic control. All it does is give the White House the authority to move a certain amount of FAA money from certain other accounts to the air traffic control account. The FAA still is subject to the sequester cut, in full. It’s just a device to shift blame from the Republicans to the White House if anything goes wrong. Notwithstanding that, it’s better than the status quo, and I’ve got the world’s 23rd largest airport to think about."

Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a senior member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, voted for it as well, pointing to over 3,500 flight delays reported since Sunday "as a result of the indiscriminate budget cuts which were mandated by the so-called sequester." His statement:

“While this bill is not nearly good enough, I nevertheless support its effort to help the FAA deal with the effects of severe and misguided budget cuts. Indiscriminate, across-the-board budget cuts were never a good idea, and their effects on things like air travel were all too predictable. So while this bill may help the FAA to better handle such draconian budget cuts, it unfortunately does nothing to prevent equally damaging cuts to other critical public sector programs. It does nothing for the 70,000 children who will be forced off of Head Start, or for the millions of Americans who will have to wait longer for new prescription drugs to reach the market, or for the 600,000 women, infants, and children who will be left hungry after being dropped from the supplemental nutrition program. Only by repealing the sequester outright can we avoid these severe budget cuts and prevent their crippling effects on vital public services.

“Unfortunately, instead of addressing these problems and working to create jobs, Republicans in Congress have spent their time pursuing a single-minded obsession with cutting government spending. Meanwhile, the deficit has been shrinking at the fastest rate since the demobilization after WWII. In this fiscal year alone we have seen deficit estimates fall 15% on the strength of our growing economy. The deficit was originally projected to be $900 billion. Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office revised it down to $850 billion. And just last week it was revised down again to $775 billion. That is a $125 billion savings. It is enough already. With these savings alone, we could cancel the sequester without increasing the deficit by a penny.

“We are already reducing the deficit by more than we planned, and the results of these cutbacks are being felt across the nation in ways that slow our economy, hurt the elderly, take food out of the mouths of women and children, and undermine our students as they try to prepare for their futures. We can no longer afford Republican attempts to pursue such a contractionary fiscal policy during a period of high unemployment and stagnant middle class wages.

“In order to build on our economic recovery, we need to stop all of the severe budget cuts-- not just those affecting air travelers. It is time to cancel sequestration and start pursuing policies that will actually help Americans get back to work.”

So... what I would ask Nadler and Sanders and our other progressive friends whose hearts I know are in the right place, where do we go from here? Is there a strategy? We seem to have unilaterally disarmed. Is all that's left starting petitions and wringing our hands? By the way, Keith Ellison, one of the few strategic thinks among the Democrats, voted NO. He explained exactly why to Minneapolis voters:

“I oppose the harmful furloughs for air traffic controllers, which create unnecessary flight delays, and impact our hardworking pilots, flight attendants, and airport workers. Air traffic controllers keep our families safe and support an economy that relies heavily on air travel to function. But avoiding these cuts should not come at the expense of millions of teachers, researchers, and American families who are also feeling the devastating impacts of the sequester. By maintaining cuts to students on Head Start, women and children on nutrition assistance, and funding for cancer research, we are neglecting the communities who can least afford it.

“This bill does not address the 8,000 fewer students who will receive primary and secondary education assistance in Minnesota or the 100 teachers and aides who may lose their jobs because of it. It does not help the more than 2,000 civilian Department of Defense employees in Minnesota who will be furloughed-- losing $12.5 million to support their families. And it does not help the more than 3,000 Minnesotans who will not be tested for HIV because the Minnesota Department of Health will lose about $127,000 in funding.

“The flight delays this week are only one example of what will happen if Republicans in Washington get the huge budget cuts they are demanding. Instead of only addressing the most visible impacts of these harmful cuts, we should fully repeal the sequester and adopt a balanced approach that asks wealthy corporations and individuals to pay their fair share. It’s time to stop pushing broken ideas and start investing in America’s working families.”

My cowardly congressman, Adam Schiff, a New Dem, happily voted to give the Republicans their way. The word courageousness is not part of his vocabulary. Thank God there are a few like Ellison around. In fact... you can find Keith here if you want to let him know you support what he did Friday.

I've pretty much given up on Obama altogether. I voted for a protest candidate in November. But he's still the president and there's nothing but worse on the political horizon. This morning, though, he used his weekly address to talk about dumping Sequestration altogether and replacing it with a Grand Bargain.

Two months ago, Congress allowed a series of automatic budget cuts to fall across the federal government that would do the opposite. In Washington-speak, these cuts were called the “sequester.” It was a bad idea then. And as the country saw this week, it’s a bad idea now.

Because of these reckless cuts, there are parents whose kids just got kicked out of Head Start programs scrambling for a solution. There are seniors who depend on programs like Meals on Wheels to live independently looking for help. There are military communities-- families that have already sacrificed enough-- coping under new strains. All because of these cuts.

This week, the sequester hurt travelers, who were stuck for hours in airports and on planes, and rightly frustrated by it. And, maybe because they fly home each weekend, the Members of Congress who insisted these cuts take hold finally realized that they actually apply to them too.

Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they’ve decided it was a bad idea all along. Well, first, they should look at their own budget. If the cuts they propose were applied across the board, the FAA would suffer cuts three times deeper.

So Congress passed a temporary fix. A Band-Aid. But these cuts are scheduled to keep falling across other parts of the government that provide vital services for the American people. And we can’t just keep putting Band-Aids on every cut.  It’s not a responsible way to govern. There is only one way to truly fix the sequester: by replacing it before it causes further damage.

A couple weeks ago, I put forward a budget that replaces the next several years of these dumb cuts with smarter cuts; reforms our tax code to close wasteful special interest loopholes; and invests in things like education, research, and manufacturing that will create new jobs right now.

So I hope Members of Congress will find the same sense of urgency and bipartisan cooperation to help the families still in the crosshairs of these cuts. They may not feel the pain felt by kids kicked off Head Start, or the 750,000 Americans projected to lose their jobs because of these cuts, or the long-term unemployed who will be further hurt by them. But that pain is real.

The American people worked too hard, for too long, rebuilding from one economic crisis just to see your elected officials keep causing more. Our economy is growing. Our deficits are shrinking.  We’re creating jobs on a consistent basis. But we need to do more to help middle-class families get ahead, and give more folks a chance to earn their way into the middle class.  And we can, if we work together. That’s what you expect. That’s what I’m going to work every single day to help deliver.

But don't expect him to veto it. He won't. He's not FDR... and never will be. We've seen what he is.

Bingo!

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