If someone ever develops a Mad Men-type television show focused on the lobbying biz, the [Max] Baucus Retirement will provide a major episode.
Yes, Max Baucus announced his retirement at the end of his term, and people are mainly dancing in the streets. Democrats and progressives have never been happy with how Baucus runs the Senate Finance Committee and most were furious with his near-disastrous foot-dragging on ObamaCare. Next in seniority is Energy & Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden. Progressives should encourage him to stay there for two reasons. First, if he gives up his chair on Energy, it will probably go to Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and given Louisiana’s dependence on the oil industry, we will never get anything worthwhile on climate change out of her. But, secondly, Wyden teamed up with Paul Ryan to offer a partial privatization of Medicare overhaul plan that seemed like a horribly bad idea. Of course, if Wyden stays at Energy, then Chuck Schumer is in line for the Finance chair, and that comes with its own problems.
As for Max Baucus, he’s been a senator for 35 years. The best you can say for him is that kept the seat out of Republican hands for a very long time. Let us hope that former Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer runs for and wins the seat. I kind of like that guy and he sure as hell will be less of a mush than Senator Baucus.
Gonna put up a pool on how long after retirement it takes Baucus to land a cushy job with some major health insurance corporation–most likely WellPoint?
there are a good number of insurance orgs sited in Montana, so that sounds like a reasonable suspicion
>Gonna put up a pool on how long after retirement it takes Baucus to land a cushy job with some major health insurance corporation–most likely WellPoint?
I’m sure the job is already lined up and of course he’s already been on the payroll for years.
So happy we’re going to get to yank the Finance gavel away from this ass. It’s not worth losing the Senate majority over (though it’s close to being worth it), but hopefully that’s where Schweitzer fits in.
One more Reagan Dem crawls off to some corrupt lobbying job. Schweitzer would be a huge improvement if the Dems can bring themselves to endorse such a “risky” candidate. Schweitzer will enrage a lot of people including liberals on some issues, but it’s hard to imagine him turning into a creepy syncophant of the Baucus kind.
Schweitzer will enrage a lot of people including liberals on some issues, …
What issues? Energy and guns? I wish I could find a trusted link, but supposedly Schweitzer supported a Manchin-Toomey type bill. So that leaves energy, and I don’t even know what his feelings really are there.
He supports Keystone. Iunno about coal, but Montana has a decent amount of its production.
Schweiter would be a western Joe Lieberman.
A gun whacko who so believes in the blessed nature of these weapons of murder that he signed a bill based upon the bogus theory ( settled in 1865 after extended period of disorder by dishonorable treasonous criminials) of nullification.
Carbon economy is his baby. Supported XL pipeline, more dirty coal, only time to enforce any environmental regulations is to ensure access on private lands for hunters and fisherman, except of course when those lands are owned by corporate industrial land rapers.
Disavowed Gore when running for Senate as a D in 2000. So he obviously doesn’t believe in dancing with them that brought him.
A veteran of the revolving door. made money by being a switch hitter between Gov and corporate world while serving his true masters in the corporations, second only to his own self interest.
If he runs as a D let him do it on his own. No outside support, endorsements, money or ads.
Since we know he will be nothing but a mole inside the D’s caucaus trying to negate any positive action on guns, environement, energy or restricting the golden goose he has profited from – the revolving door whyhelp infect the D’s caucaus with this virus of self interest, carbon loving, gun whacko?
You should consider evaluating the scenario where the Democrats retain control of the Senate in 2014 but Mary Landrieu loses.
In that case, assuming Wyden takes Finance, then Maria Cantwell is in line for Energy.
I think she has a better than decent shot. Her bro is apparently a hugely popular Mayor of N’awlins – it may have a big impact on Dem turnout if he stumps the state for her.
She’s had two closes races – scraping by in a runoff in 2002 (which was impressive), and getting re-elected without much trouble despite only being by 6%.
Hopefully Jindal’s tanking numbers helps to take down the GOP there a notch and keep Landrieu in that seat.
Interesting – she must be a pretty scrappy pol. I didn’t think about the Jindal factor either. Federal and state officials often seem to pass by each other like ships in the night, in terms of their electoral effects on each other. But maybe Bobby’s fall will be to her benefit.
I really can’t think of anyone in politics that I hate more than I hate Max Baucus – only the supreme court 5 are higher on my list of reasons this country is so profoundly broken.
All the others you mention – wyden, landrieu, schumer – all are terrible, but Baucus is in his own league.
So long as we don’t lose that seat to a Tea Party nut, I am thrilled. More than any other Senate Dem, Baucus time and again seemed to go out of his way to hurt the party and its priorities.
What did Baucus stand for other than a desire to screw the little guy? For almost 40 years he carried on the grand tradition of terrible corporatist Senators from Montana. Good f’ing riddance.
Screwing the little guy was his whole point. I wish I could remember the interview but somewhere Max admitted that he was only a Democrat because of career advancement.
If true, I am not at all surprised.
It’s still a damn shame the White House did not take charge on the healthcare issue and tell them that Chris Dodd and Tom Harkin on HELP would be the leaders on the bill, not Baucus. We would’ve gotten a lot better bill passed.
They did take charge. They wanted “Mad” Max on point.
I don’t think it was up to the White House, although I could be wrong. IIRC the bill’s passage was so delicate that the White House had to coddle all the relevant committee chairman, and something like 5 bills were produced total. And the reason they had to do that was that if even one committee chair got pissed they could’ve shitcanned the whole thing.
In that case, the White House could’ve easily dictated policy. Instead, they didn’t want to have the perception that they were steamrolling Congress (which is what people said Clinton did), so Obama let 3 House committees and 2 Senate committees all pass different versions, and then work to reconcile them.
That was a stupid move. I hate how Albany is run, but in this situation, they should’ve done what is often done there – put the relevant people in charge in one room, hammer out a deal that EVERYONE agrees to ahead of time, and ram it down the throat of Congress, but let the committee chairmen be the public face of that.
There was so much time wasted on healthcare that we left a lot of things on the table. We could’ve gotten something on carbon passed if we weren’t paying so much attention to healthcare. More stimulus could’ve been done. Instead, we basically focused non-stop on healthcare for more than half a year, mainly because Baucus dragged his feet (IIRC, the Senate Finance Committee was the last committee to vote on anything).
Look, I dislike Baucus quite a bit, and Max’s sandbagging of Sebelius the other day over ACA implementation when he was one of the chief people responsible for the Goldberg contraption that is the ACA was beyond despicable, but let’s get real:
I am fully aware that there are plenty of things that got done. But given how much time was spent on health care, we could’ve gotten a few more things that were important done if we had lined up our team and made sure people were comfortable with the marching orders. Instead, we let things be quite a bit of a shitshow and let assholes like Ben Nelson and Bart Stupak suck up oxygen and time on really stupid matters.
It also sucks to imagine what we could’ve accomplished if we only needed a simple majority on these votes instead of having to clear the filibuster hurdle every time because of Mitch McConnell’s abuse of it. That shithead deserves to rot in hell.
I share your extreme irritation with Nelson and Stupak (I’d also throw Lieberman and a few others in there), and your hatred for McConnell. Truly, fuck that guy.
I try to look at the raft of issues that Obama and his first Congress faced in deciding if I believe their actions reflected the best priorities. Look at it this way: the part of the Federal budget which was truly growing out of control, and would have continued to do so even after the Recession was reversed, was Medicare and Medicaid. In addition, people ineligible for Medi/Medi were being abused by the health insurer and pharmaceutical complex, which wrought increasing amounts of damage on the economy and our communities.
Something needed to be done to stop the 8 to 10% yearly increases in spending on the total health care system, a system which was providing poor health support for people with low and middle incomes. I can understand why Obama and Congressional leaders felt the need to pass health system reform in that Congress. Health care costs may have crowded out the New Deal/Great Society programs if their increases would have been allowed to continue.
Also, I wouldn’t say that “we let things be quite a bit of a shitshow and let assholes like Ben Nelson and Bart Stupak suck up oxygen and time on really stupid matters.” We, and Obama, were horrified as the assholes began throwing up last-minute roadblock after roadblock; there was a ton of immoral sandbagging going on. There was also many tons of institutional, ideological and financial supports for the health care system status quo; no way could we have gotten every single member of the House and Senate Dem Caucuses “comfortable with the marching orders”.
I have always thought that Obama’s mistake was overlearning he lessons of the Clinton debacle. There was a middle ground to be had between what Clinton (the WH drafting the bill) did and what Obama did (letting the committee chairs draft it).
My really unpopular opinion is that middle road would have been a lot easier to achieve if Daschle had been HHS for the time it took to get the bill passed. I think losing him to that tax “scandal” did untold damage to the HC efforts. We needed someone who knew the Senate like he did to drive the efforts and then step down for someone with Seibelus’ experience.
I don’t think it’s unpopular; it’s realistic. Sebelius has done a good job, but Daschle would’ve been perfectly positioned to channel exactly what Obama wanted into the bill.