Perhaps Roll Call‘s Joannna Anderson doesn’t understand Senator Al Franken’s sense of humor, or perhaps she just can’t tell when Sen. Franken is saying something serious with a smile on his face. I doubt that the following exchange was meant in any way to be in jest.
Roughly 25 minutes into Thursday’s [Judiciary Committee] meeting, senators had finished debate but were still lacking the attendance level needed to officially advance legislation on child pornography victims and public access to government information. Then, Franken arrived to push attendance over the tipping point.
“You know, you guys are in the majority,” Franken teased GOP senators as he entered the room.
With a reporting quorum secured, Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, sought to quickly move ahead with the committee’s agenda.
But Franken pressed his point, telling Grassley, “No, I want to say something about this.”
“You know when we were in the majority … we had the responsibility to provide a quorum,” Franken said. “And I thought that you guys, your side, didn’t show up because you just resented being in the minority. But now I know … it’s just sheer laziness.”
Utah Republican Orrin G. Hatch interjected, “You did a very good job, I have to say. You did show up.”
Franken replied, “That’s all I wanted to say.”
Reportedly, everyone had a good laugh over this, and then the committee got down to business. But no more Republican members ever showed up and it was only due to Democratic attendance that the committee was able to conduct its business at all.
But while the GOP-led committee did ultimately rely on Democrats to get the final numbers it needed, the partisan divide was hardly drastic. In the end, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by a slim 6-5 attendance level. Though Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., — a would-be No. 7 — briefly ducked into the room after the meeting had adjourned.
At bottom, this was a simple honest observation by Sen. Franken. While in the majority, he had assumed that the Republicans’ refusal to attend committee hearings was part of a strategy of obstruction. Now that he’s in the minority, he realizes that it’s deeper than that. Many of their members simply don’t care about the actual job of being a U.S. Senator, which is to mark up legislation in committee hearings. They care so little about it, in fact, that they’re willing to let bills be marked up with Democratic majorities.
To be sure, the chairman won’t let this go so far as to allow the Democrats to hijack his bills by ramming home amendments that he opposes, but he has to take extra precautions and endure unwanted delays to avoid that happening because his colleagues are so disinterested in legislating.
If the Democrats were similarly disinclined to care about their jobs they would never provide a quorum for their opponents and make their work easier to conduct. But the Democratic senators are actually interested in marking up bills on “child pornography victims and public access to government information.”
Just for a moment, think about why Al Franken chose to sit down and concentrate on the business at hand rather than leaving until some Republican senators showed up to provide the needed quorum?
He sat down because he was reporting to work. He was ready to do his job. But he couldn’t help but make a wisecrack about the work ethic of his colleagues.
He made an astute observation.
But it wasn’t a joke.
I doubt that it’s laziness. I’m almost certain that the GOP (greed, oligarchy, privilege) senators were busy working the phones and glad-handing for funds for their next campaign.
Laziness about their actual job rather than their interest in keeping it.
In all fairness to the GOP Senators, if they’re not too busy glad-handing, then they’re primping and preening for their appearance on FOX “news,” and/or the Sunday morning gab-fest’s.
After all, ‘If it’s Sunday, it’s time to meet with the conservatives.”
This is why it is frustrating when I hear people make the generalization that the parties are simply matching sides of the same coin. I am sure there are Republicans who actually care about governing. But this instance is simply emblematic of the inherent differences in the party’s members. I have little doubt that one could find dozens or hundreds of similar occurrences.
No doubt. No doubt at all.
Republican party discipline and donors ensure that those Republicans who care about governing keep their opinions to themselves. Or are soon primaried away.
Exactly – the parties couldn’t be more different.
So frustrating to hear “Dems are just GOP-lite” when it’s so obviously untrue.
It’s sad that the all had a “good laugh” about it.
Indeed.
And let’s point out that Joanna Anderson is most definitely part of the problem, both for deciding to characterize Senator Franken’s criticism as a joke, and for openly rejecting the premise of his criticism and making excuses for the Republicans. She spends paragraphs of her reporting doing this.
The work of the Committee was delayed because the majority party did mot see to it that a quorum was filled. Franken was absolutely right.
So, FUUUUUUUUUCK Joanna Anderson!
When a party runs on the idea that government can’t do anything right, they have a vested interest in ensuring that government can’t do anything right.
It also points to the fact that the GOP insists on having Democratic cover for everything it does. That is why Joe Manchin is so useful to Republicans.
It’s not that they don’t want to govern, they don’t want accountability for the crap that they are about to do to the voters who voted for them. “But it was bi-partisan” will now become their refrain and your drinking words only if you want to pass out early.
See as a resident of MN I have noted that once Franken got to the senate he didn’t stand out or grab headlines blasting the GOP like on his radio show, but instead he got down to work for the people of the state while maintaining his personal sense of humor. While it might be a strategy to be thought of as serious enough for the senate (Smilin’ Norm tried to attack him on that) it resulted in Franken being a pretty damn good senator. Not perfect, but better than Klobuchar I think.
Franken in his first term was deliberately quiet on the national media radar, opting to prove his seriousness by keeping his nose to the grindstone and staying MN-oriented. Mission accomplished.
Now in his second term I’d like to see more of him on the national stage. He’s too smart, well-informed and clever to remain so much out of the limelight. And he can communicate effectively to the average citizen, effectively using appropriate amounts of humor, something few of the Dem policy wonk grinds can do.
Would also like to see him go a little bolder in the liberal direction with big-issue policy proposals and a fresh re-thinking of FP. But that’s going to be a tall order given his outspoken support of Hillary.
To “go bolder in a liberal direction,” Franken would have to be a progressive. He’s not — he’s a liberal, possibly better than most, but he was right in there with Clinton in support the Iraq debacle. Liberals tend to blow it again and again on the big questions in real time. Reflecting more of a cafeteria approach to policy issues than basic principles. The latter only required a few minutes to think through same-sex marriage when the issue was first raised by the LBGT community. Liberals required a decade or more before they found it acceptable — and then more because it was not so politically dangerous than it was the right thing to do for a nation that espouses equal rights under the law.
Because I find Franken a most likable and agreeable person, and because of his strong ties to the progressive Paul Wellstone, I probably tend to give him the benefit of the doubt more than for most pols.
So I continue to hold out hope that Franken, like Wellstone before him, will someday soon take a courageous stand in the FP area that is in sharp contrast to the national security establishment consensus.
Appreciate you optimism. And while political maturity is a late stage development for most people, it’s mostly complete by age 50 and thereafter, what looks like modifications are more like further development of wisdom and the associated applications of it to the completed political orientation. At age 63, Franken is more or less who he will be in the future.
People who get set in their ways do so because they stop thinking and learning. This can happen at any age but not here. Al Franken is just getting started learning how the game is played from the inside. I remember his friend Ditto Head from Air America where his old friend would spout some right wing horseshit and he would tear it apart to my amusement. His new Ditto Heads are even worse with real power and now he’s dealing with them, for real. He has changed a lot and will continue to change especially from a perspective learned from the inside. I see him as becoming part of a Senate progressive leadership core along with Elizabeth Warren and her allies. Stay the same? No way.
Being “set in one’s ways” has nothing to do with what I was saying.
btw — Warren isn’t a progressive. Within her area of expertise, consumer finance, she makes the case that a return to some of the forms of financial regulation instituted under the New Deal is necessary. Don’t disagree with that and back in the mid-1930s it was truly progressive. However, even then progressives could see that it was merely a start towards a fair deal.
“At age 63, Franken is more or less who he will be in the future”
That is the definition of being set in one’s ways.
Warren isn’t a progressive? You sound like the right wingers who say no one is “conservative enough” for them to support no matter how far to the right they are. You would do well to abandon this kind of purist bullshit. How could you know that Warren’s financial regulation isn’t a first step to a revised new deal for our times? It took a long time for the new deal to even get defined and then a long hard fight even with large majorities in congress to win what we once had. So if you don’t get the whole thing defined, not even defined on each issue now but in the distant past then there is no way anyone can pass your progressive purity test. The issues that Warren talks about could light the same fuse that led to the original new deal progressive movement if she runs for president or not. If that is not progressive then I don’t know what is.
You’re still not getting it and it’s tacky and rude to throw out a silly straw man for your failure.
Simple illustration. I have opposed the death penalty since the age of fifteen and still oppose it. Does that mean that I’m “stuck in my old ways?” Possibly. At fifteen, I was a good little Catholic girl and listened to both modernist (Vatican II) priests and nuns and traditionalists. Back then the official RCC teaching supported capital punishment. Since then that official teaching has shifted by almost 180 degrees. Many older Catholics are still stuck in their old ways by supporting capital punishment. However, younger Catholics aren’t progressive because they oppose capital punishment. Like their elders, they’re merely accepting the rules of their church as taught to them in catechism class.
Those modernist priests and nuns of several decades ago couldn’t teach other than the official RCC position. They could, however, encourage students and parishioners to “think it through” based on core principles. And also discourage absolutist thinking.
The RCC change on capital punishment is dependent on absolutist thinking. It’s added support for the “correctness” of its 19th century position on abortion that was mostly made up out of whole cloth. And while IMHO it’s a step forward for the RCC to oppose CP it was way behind thinkers and people in many countries and within many religious communities.
If I were a capital punishment “purist” (the favorite charge against progressives by neoliberalcons), I could never have voted for Bill Clinton because he signed death warrants. However, I do respect purists without whom in the general population few progressive positions would materialize and attempt not to criticize because it’s possible that they are correct and I delude myself into thinking that it’s okay to minimize certain issues in certain elections.
That does not mean, however, that any issue can be thought through once and then accepted as dogma. Issues and circumstances change. For example, if I once applauded the decision in Loving v. VA, wouldn’t I have to revisit that issue if I were to support DOMA? Of course — unless one is comfortable being a hypocrite and/or conservative. The values/principles that underlie Loving are no different than those for same-sex marriage. (One of my core principles is that manipulating others to the dark side is evil.)
Core values/principles used by progressive thinkers are robust and require few modifications over time. Doesn’t mean the answers to new or changing issues are ready-made in those principles. In real time, often takes a bit or a lot of work to think it through.
Good point to work with. You arrive at the tender age of fifteen with a true progressive mind to oppose the death penalty while the church is for it, you know, the old eye for an eye thing. You’re a progressive because you opposed it while the church elders were for it. That is a great progressive idea, being against the death penalty. You win or at least your progressive idea wins and the church is now against the death penalty. A new fifteen year old shows up who is also against the death penalty. You say the new person is not progressive because that person is following what the church says. Why? That person just embraced a progressive idea. Did you test that person on any other progressive issues? How many issues would it take for you to declare this new fifteen year old a progressive? Could this test be a moving target where no amount of issues would be enough?
“Core values/principles used by progressive thinkers are robust and require few modifications over time.” How about conservative core values/principles such as marriage is between one man and one woman and God almighty intended for the races to live on separate continents (Loving vs. Va.)? Those are robust ideas and require few modifications over time. Can’t you see how silly this is?
The system is rigged so the 1% can take everything for themselves. The progressive movement is about the 99% getting a fighting chance. This is not about all the liberal/progressive/conservative/wingnut issues that have been used by the 1% to get the system to this point. This is a progressive movement about getting that fighting chance. Anyone who wants to contribute to that goal is worthy of being called progressive no matter what they believed before. A progressive movement to really change things is going to need a lot of people. This is how the last progressive movement got started.
True on Iraq but since he did not vote on that subject that point is moot.
Frankly (npi) I find him a better legislator than a comedian and I mean that as a compliment. I think he’s willing to compromise to get things done w/o betraying his core principles. That takes finesse – something that is lost in this era of over the top soundbites.
And as Booman reports here; he’s not afraid to call BS on the other side – a quality that is sorely missing on the left. Go Alcee Hastings!
I find him a better legislator than a comedian
However, his support for GWB’s “excellent adventure” isn’t moot. He had a megaphone in the run-up to that disaster. It was easy to get that one right and frankly, giving a pass to all those that got it wrong is emblematic of why this country gets so little right and so much wrong.
Oops — meant to say that I agree on Franken’s performance as a legislator.
There are 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary committee. Per the story, there were 5 Republicans present and 2 of them were Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
If I told you the 5 Republican Senators who could neither find a way to show up for work on Thursday, 5 February nor find a way to inform their fellow Republican and Chairman prior to the scheduled meeting they could not make it to work, and thus save Grassley from “embarrassment” were:
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
David Perdue (R-GA)
Thom Tillis (R-NC)
would the “laziness” of any one of those Republican Senators in any way surprise you?
It did not me.
You can watch the interaction starting at 46:00 in the video on this page –
http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/executive-business-meeting-2015-02-05
They always show up if the national media cameras are rolling. Eager to hog whatever moment they can that may be seen by the public at large. Otherwise, they have more important things to do in feathering their own nests.
OMG. That is an all-star clown show, and I love ending up with Sen. Thom “Poopy Hands” Tillis (R – E Coli).
I learned the expression “kidding on the square” from reading Franken’s books.