I just received an email newsletter from Mark Warner full of "bipartisan" idiocy that just pushed my buttons:
There has been a lot of talk recently about the apparent gulf that exists between what we're talking about here in Washington and the economic uncertainty that too many Americans are experiencing in their daily lives.
An event I hosted in the Fredericksburg area earlier this week illustrated this economic anxiety in a powerful way.
My office sponsored a federal job fair at the Stafford County campus of Mary Washington University, and more than three-dozen federal agencies were represented -- from the Transportation Security Administration, to the Peace Corps, to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
The response was overwhelming -- literally overwhelming.
As many as 7,000 jobseekers showed-up to speak with these federal agency recruiters, and the unexpected response resulted in long lines and significant traffic congestion. In fact, our event reached capacity before lunchtime -- so members of our staff started collecting resumes and contact information from people who could not stay.
As I visited and chatted with many of these jobseekers, I heard stories from the long-term unemployed and the under-employed -- all of them obviously willing to stand in line -- not because they wanted some kind of hand-out, but because they simply wanted an opportunity to improve their situation and help their families in this tough economy.
After returning to Capitol Hill, I spoke to my colleagues on the Senate floor about the experience. I told my colleagues that the individuals waiting in those lines did not understand or care about filibusters or the other procedural tactics that too often dominate the discussions here in Washington. It is crucially important that we put partisanship aside and get serious about a bipartisan effort to create more, and better, jobs.
My office will host additional job fairs in the coming weeks, because the need obviously is there.
But I look forward to the day, hopefully soon, when we no longer are overwhelmed by the large crowds of jobseekers like we saw earlier this week.
Thanks,
Mark Warner
My response:
In your recent email, you said:
"I told my colleagues that the individuals waiting in those lines did not understand or care about filibusters or the other procedural tactics that too often dominate the discussions here in Washington.
Fine, people who are hungry for results don't care about procedural tactics. That's because it's your job to care about those tactics and overcome them when they get in the way of progress, not to pretend they're not part of the problem. Then one sentence later, you say:
"It is crucially important that we put partisanship aside and get serious about a bipartisan effort to create more, and better, jobs."
Did those people waiting in line say they care about it being a bipartisan effort? Did they say that they'd rather have no progress than have "partisanship"? I doubt it. You didn't hesitate to use them as props to criticize those who recognize the problem of the unprecedented abuse of the filibuster to obstruct all Democratic legislation, but at least you didn't put those words in their mouths.
I understand that your natural inclination is toward bipartisanship and compromise, and you had considerable success forging a compromise with moderate Republicans in the Virginia State Senate. But on Capitol Hill, we have just been through a year in which Republicans took advantage of such inclinations to make endless demands on health care legislation and then, when asked if they would vote for the bill if the provisions they demanded were included, said no. When offered provisions the president was willing to compromise on, and asked what they were willing to offer in return, responded "nothing." If you have no moderates to work with across the aisle, if you have a solid voting bloc that doesn't believe in the very idea of compromise and sees bipartisanship as a weapon to undermine Democrats no matter the harm to ordinary people, then bipartisanship is a sucker's game.
And just recently, in the face of unprecedented suffering and unemployment, Republicans used their minority in the Senate to block a real jobs bill that would have helped those people, and it was a great victory to get a minimal jobs bill. Do you think those thousands of people are better off with that "bipartisan" bill than one suited to the magnitude of the problem? And then when a single senator blocked unemployment benefits for people like them, no one in his party criticized him and several spoke out in support.
We who pay attention to politics care about the filibuster and other procedural delays because we understand those are the tools they use to do these things. The people standing in that line don't care about procedural tactics, they just care that you're not getting the job done. And if you care more about your bipartisan image than about getting the job done, then they get to keep worrying about that instead of going back to work.
Grrrr....