When President Obama nominated Senator Max Baucus of Montana to be the ambassador to China, he created a game of musical committee chairs in the U.S. Senate. Some of the changes are pretty significant. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana handed her Small Business Committee gavel to Maria Cantwell of Washington who handed her Indian Affairs gavel to Jon Tester of Montana. Landrieu took over the Energy & Natural Resources Committee, which is not a positive development if you care about carbon in the atmosphere. The Energy & Natural Resources chairmanship opened up because Ron Wyden of Oregon took over the Finance Committee from Baucus, and that could be the real game-changer here.
The Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over taxes and the big federal entitlement programs, just might be the most powerful committee in Congress. And in modern times its chairman has been relatively conservative, even when the Democrats were in charge. Is that about to change?
From 1987 to 1993, the chairman was “Loophole Lloyd” Bentsen—so named because of his skill at delivering tax breaks for Wall Street and oil friends in Texas. His successor, from 1993 to 1995, was New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan—an intellectual and committed progressive on some issues, but one who famously helped kill President Bill Clinton’s health care plan by declaring “there is no health care crisis in this country.” The next Democrat to take over Finance was Max Baucus, who broke ranks to help President George W. Bush pass huge tax cuts and the Medicare drug benefit.
But with Baucus on his way to China, to serve as ambassador, Finance has a new chairman: Ron Wyden of Oregon. And things are going to be a little different—particularly if Democrats win enough seats in November to hold the majority. By any reasonable standard, Wyden is a bona fide liberal—a staunch believer in universal health insurance, a more progressive tax code, and greater public investment. And unlike most of his predecessors, he’s not in the pocket of Wall Street. In 2012, Americans for Democratic Action and the Service Employees International Union each gave Wyden a rating of 95 percent. The conservative group FreedomWorks gave him a zero.
This is only a hope, but it could be that one of the most progressive accomplishments of Obama’s second term was made possible by simply sending Max Baucus to China. Sen. Wyden can’t perform miracles, and we may not like his willingness and ability to work with Republicans, but he is not Max Baucus, or even anything like Max Baucus. Wyden isn’t stuck on orthodoxy, but he won’t sell us out, either.
Meanwhile, Landrieu’s new perch should please the business community in Louisiana which now has a very powerful ally in a very important position. That advantage would all be lost if they got behind some freshman Republican in November. But, for people who want some kind action on the climate, a Louisiana Democrat isn’t any better than a Kentucky Republican. Unless Landrieu can do some kind of Nixon-to-China kind of solution, she is effectively a permanent block on climate efforts in the Senate.
I’ll be keeping my eye on how Sen. Tester does at Indian Affairs. It’s a huge asset to a Montanan Democrat because they need good turnout from Native Americans to win statewide elections.
One other thing I noticed is that Sen. Ed Markey grabbed Baucus’s slot on the Environment & Public Works Committee. Not to beat on Sen. Barbara Boxer, but she hasn’t been able to do a thing with her gavel on that committee because the Republicans have become climate denialists and anti-infrastructure deficit scolds. Still, having a lifelong committed environmentalist like Markey on the Environment committee is better than a corporate stooge like Baucus.
