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WASHINGTON – Opposition to a government spending bill and concerns about President Obama’s plan for limiting greenhouse gases put Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., at the helm of a group of Senate Democrats trying to nudge policies in a direction they say is more moderate.
But it’s also earning Bayh the ire of progressive Democrats, who say they will let Hoosiers know that Bayh is trying to block the “popular programs of a popular president.”
Bayh said he admires the groups’ passion but their concerns “are based on factual inaccuracies.”
In a morning telephone news conference, three groups said they will launch a campaign on blogs and through e-mails in Indiana and other states where “conservadems” have seats in Congress. They said the campaign is not coordinated by the White House.
Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, said “powerful special interests” in Indiana and other states are trying to foil Obama’s policies, including his plan to reduce greenhouse gases. The “cap-and-trade” system would limit greenhouse gas emissions but allow factories that emit more than the allowable amount to buy credits from companies that emit less.
The groups took particular aim at Bayh’s participation in a letter this month signed by 25 Republicans and seven other Democrats who opposed a streamlined budget process that would make it easier to pass key proposals – such as a cap-and-trade system – with 51 votes instead of 60, which is required to stop a filibuster.
But Bayh said he isn’t necessarily opposed to a cap-and-trade system; it just has to be written carefully.
“If this is not done correctly,” he said in an interview, “it will lead to job losses.”
If jobs are transferred from the Midwest to countries that do not have equally strict air pollution laws, he said, the nation would be hit with the double whammy of job losses and more pollution around the globe.
Bayh said he signed the letter about the budget process because “in many ways, the process determines or shapes what the content will be. If you don’t insist on a process where your voice is heard, then it makes it more likely that the end product will be one that you can’t support because it will unduly harm your people.”
Indiana is a coal-producing state, and its many coal-fired utilities could pay a steep price under a cap-and-trade system.
Asked whether Bayh is representing his state’s interests, Borosage said lawmakers should embrace policies for the good of the country, not their states.
He said it’s one thing to try to negotiate changes in the cap-and-trade system, but blocking the budget reconciliation rule is obstructionist.
“Even if you oppose and want to weaken or change or negotiate on cap-and-trade – we don’t expect Democrats to march in lockstep; our party has never done that – that’s a very different thing to say you will join with Republicans to prohibit the president from getting an up-or-down majority vote on his agenda. We think that’s going way too far and is adding to the obstruction,” Borosage said.
Bayh noted that neither the cap-and-trade bill nor the budget bill has been written yet. He also pointed out that the congressional committees will write their own versions of the 2010 budget.
“Are they opposed to the president?” he asked rhetorically. “I think being perpetually alarmed is something the far right and the far left have in common.”
Bayh has formed a group of 15 like-minded Senate Democrats he described as pragmatic. If some or all of the group bucks the party leadership on any bill, the legislation probably would not get the 60 votes needed to block a Republican filibuster.
The group is similar to the Blue Dog Coalition in the House, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats that includes Hoosier Reps. Joe Donnelly, D-2nd; Baron Hill, D-9th; and Brad Ellsworth, D-8th.
“We just cannot allow the senators or the congressmen to get cold feet about change and – whether they want to or not – become the unwitting accomplices of special interests who don’t want it or obstructions who want it to fail,” William McNary, president of USAction, said during the telephone conference.
A week ago, USAction released videos of commercials critical of five members of the Blue Dog Coalition they said are being squeezed by “special interests in Washington.”
Later Tuesday, USAction spokeswoman CeCe Grant said “we’re softening our approach” and would not run any negative ads about Bayh. She said the shift came after discussions within the organization.
During the phone conference, however, Borosage also said Bayh is “wrongheaded” to take the position that less government spending is the answer to the economic crisis.
Bayh opposed the $410 billion bill for domestic programs for this year because he said it was too expensive.
“Indiana is getting hit very hard,” Borosage said. “We need the federal government to be doing more, not less.”
Borosage said the groups hope that lawmakers from states where Obama “won handily” will “get with the program” if their constituents weigh in.
Obama won Indiana, typically a Republican state, with 50 percent of the vote last fall.
Asked whether he is concerned that the campaign would hurt the 2010 re-elections of Bayh and other moderate Democrats, Borosage said, “I fail to see how educating constituents about the votes from the members on major issues facing this country will endanger their election.”
