Yesterday, I got an email from Howard Dean's Democracy for America (DFA). Anyone familiar with the group knows (or one could deduce from Dean's involvement), at least in terms of electoral politics, it's oriented to the Democratic Party. This particular email showed how DFA can also spin a story to make Democrats appear more than they are.
The email quickly skirts around the failure of the Senate majority to address the doubling of student loan rates in a timely manner. (To say nothing of ignoring Elizabeth Warren's proposal to charge students the same tiny interest rate that the Fed charges big business.)
The DFA email says:
I'm proud to say that after receiving hundreds of calls from DFA members in the last 24 hours, five additional targeted Democratic Senators ... voted for the extension.
DFA may be glad they helped influence Senate voting, but others may ask why a pressure campaign was needed to get - not all - but most Democrats to vote the way DFA would like. This is all the more noteworthy if one considers misleading wording in the above quote. I also received an email from StudentDebtCrisis.org on the same events. The vote DFA refers to was not, in fact, to extend the lower interest rate that had been in effect until July 1. The StudentDebtCrisis message says, "Senate failed to take up a bill that would have reset interest rates". The vote was simply whether the Senate would discuss the bill. In that light, we have to ask why it wasn't possible to get more Democrats to vote for discussion.
The DFA told us that with those five other Democrats, the Senate voted 51-49 [to discuss]. (Do the math for the number of Democrats who opposed discussion.)
Yet, all DFA has to say about this is:
But you know who didn't vote yes? Every single Republican Senator -- enough to hold rates at 6.8%.
"Wait," you might ask, "Didn't you just say a majority voted to discuss the bill?" Yes, but what DFA doesn't clarify, but StudentDebtCrisis does is: the 51-49 vote fell "short of the 60 votes needed to begin debate". The Senate majority continues to maintain Senate rules that permits a minority to even prevent discussion. It's true that Harry Reid is once more
talking about changing the rules that let a minority block nominations by the president to certain posts. But to the best of my understanding he's not even saying anything about the rules that prevented this discussion.
The fact is, politicians will sometimes vote for a popular bill to make points with their constituents - if they know the bill will fail anyway. However, the same politician may not really favor the bill and may vote against it if he knows that will make the difference on whether it passes. Even with the ability of conservatives to stop the discussion, a number of Democrats would not vote for discussion to win points. Even beyond that, if the Senate discussed it and passed the bill, it would then have gone to the House. In May, the House passed a different bill on the issue of student loans, so Democrats could have supported a more progressive student loan bill knowing it would have to go to a Senate-House compromise effort.
By merely proposing a bill to extend the time period the pre-July 1 interest rate would apply, it essentially made the best case scenario that a Senate-House compromise would result in a new interest rate higher than the old 3.4% but less than new 6.8%. Perhaps, DFA should be asking why the Senate majority won't even do what is needed to start that discussion.
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Sometimes, I'm told I look too far ahead politically. They argue that the Democrats must act in the here and now. They can only tinker with the immediate situation. Yet, when I suggest the Senate majority should change the rules that let a minority block a majority, I'm told that at some later date the GOP may hold a Senate majority and those rules could then be used by a Democratic minority. Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Are we dealing with just the immediate situation, or are we ignoring serious problems facing us today because we are preparing for a future possibility?
In reality, it seems to be a moot point. A future GOP majority in the Senate could change the rules so a Democratic minority could not block them. (And history tells us past Democratic minorities in the Senate have not used those rules in the manner the GOP does.) Nevertheless, why aren't the "here and now" Democrats dealing with the here and now?
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For any DKos readers who think any one who raises such issues could only be a Republican, please think. Are Republicans advocating that the Senate rules be changed so Republicans can't do what they are currently doing? Are Republicans suggesting Democrats make their first offer in negotiations something better than the status quo so maybe at the end of negotiations the 99% won't have less than they did before?