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Tag Archives: Leader Harry Reid
Two Dems Help Defeat Senate Cloture Vote On Wall Street Reform
Two Democrats voted against ending debate on Wall Street reform in the Senate on Wednesday, helping defeat a motion for cloture that could have cleared the way for a final vote before the end of the week.
Democrats Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and Russ Feingold (Wisc.) joined all but two Republicans to defeat the cloture motion filed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), 57-42. A successful cloture motion would prevent rank-and-file Democrats from continuing to offer amendments to strengthen the bill.
Posted in News, Original Content
Tagged cloture, cloture motion, debate, defeat, end, Harry Reid, Leader Harry Reid, Maria Cantwell, Motion, Nev., rank and file, reform, russ feingold, Senate, senate majority leader, senate majority leader harry, senate majority leader harry reid, vote, Wall Street, Wash., way, Wednesday, wisc
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Durbin, Byrd, Mondale Call For Filibuster Reform
Robert Byrd, whose 50-plus years in the Senate give weight to his thoughts on the institution, charged Wednesday that the minority party has been abusing the filibuster. Byrd, in testimony before the rules committee, suggested changes to the rules that would strike a balance between allowing the majority to function and preserving minority rights.
Also on hand were Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Senate veteran who last led the fight to change the rules — reducing the necessary votes from 67 to 60 in the mid-1970s. The panel reflects the party’s long-running commitment to changing the parliamentary rules, something Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid first voiced support for back in March.
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Tagged committee, dick durbin, filibuster, former vice president, former vice president walter mondale, Ill., institution, Leader Harry Reid, Majority, Minority, necessary votes, parliamentary rules, party, Robert Byrd, Sen. Dick Durbin, Senate, senate majority leader, senate majority leader harry reid, testimony, Vice President Walter Mondale, Walter Mondale, Wednesday, weight
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Democrats Will Be Better Off if Reid Loses
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid likes to reminisce about being an amateur boxer. But his Senate tenure has often looked like an endless rope-a-dope.
Democrats could be better off if the Nevada senator loses his reelection bid, since his efforts to lead the party are saddled by the precarious politics of his conservative swing state.
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Tagged amateur boxer, bid, Boxer, dope, Harry Reid, Leader Harry Reid, Majority, Nevada, nevada senator, party, reelection, reminisce, rope, Senate, senate majority leader, senate majority leader harry, senate majority leader harry reid, senator, swing, swing state, tenure
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Senate Votes For Wall Street; Megabanks To Remain Behemoths
A move to break up major Wall Street banks failed Thursday night by a vote of 61 to 33.
Three Republicans, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Ensign of Nevada, voted with 30 Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in support of the provision. The author of the pending overall financial reform bill in the Senate, Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, voted against it. (See the full roll call.)
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Tagged Alabama, author, chairman christopher, Chairman Christopher Dodd, christopher dodd, John Ensign, Leader Harry Reid, Majority, move, Nevada, night, Oklahoma, provision, reform, Richard Shelby, Senate, senate banking committee, senate majority leader, senate majority leader harry, senate majority leader harry reid, support, Thursday, tom coburn, vote, Wall Street, wall street banks
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Wall Street Reform: Progressive Dems Glimpse Victory
For the first time since the Great Depression, Congress has Wall Street on the defensive. One setback after another has beset the financial titans accustomed to having their way when it comes to writing rules and regulations that govern their industry, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised to push forward on reform Thursday.
“We’re going to work into the night,” Reid said on the Senate floor Thursday.
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Tagged Congress, defensive, depression, Great, great depression, Harry Reid, industry, Leader Harry Reid, Nev., Reid, Senate, senate floor, senate majority leader, senate majority leader harry, senate majority leader harry reid, setback, Thursday, time, titans, Wall Street, way
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Weekly Mulch: Oil rig sinks, as does Senate climate bill
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Two disasters flared up this week, one environmental, the other political. Off the coast of Louisiana, oil from a sunken rig is leaking as much as five times faster than scientists originally judged, and the spill reportedly reached land last night. And in Washington, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) jumped from his partnership with Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) just before the scheduled release of the draft of a new Senate climate bill.
The trio had worked for months on bipartisan legislation on climate change. After Graham’s defection, his partners promised to press on, but the bill’s chances of survival are dimmer.
The next Exxon Valdez?
As Grist puts it, the spill off the Louisiana coast is “worse than expected, and getting worser.” The oil rig sank on April 20, and since then, oil has been pouring out of the well and into the Gulf of Mexico.
British Petroleum (BP), which operates the rig, along with the Coast Guard and now the Department of Defense, has pushed to contain and clean up the spill. The problem is deep under water and difficult to measure, but by mid-week, experts estimated that it was gushing 5,000 barrels a day from three different leaks.
Interior department officials said the spill could continue for 90 days. Mother Jones‘ Kevin Drum looks at a couple of estimates for how much oil could end up in the Gulf and concludes, “An Exxon Valdez size spill might only be a few days away.”
The federal government has rallied to respond. Administration officials have traveled to Louisiana, and both the executive branch and the legislative branch have announced investigations into the spill. But, as Care2 writes, the White House is saying that the explosion should not derail plans for future drilling.
“In all honesty I doubt this is the first accident that has happened and I doubt it will be the last,” press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, according to Care2.
New drilling, no regulations
Just a few weeks ago, President Barack Obama announced that the government would open up areas off the East Coast for offshore oil and gas drilling. The proposal already had some opponents, and the spill makes the politics of new drilling that much trickier. Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard reports that White House energy and climate adviser Carol Browner acknowledged the issue, along with energy experts around Washington.
“This reopens the issue: Is the risk worth the reward?” Lincoln Pratson, a professor of energy and environment at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, told Sheppard.
And even though BP is relying on the Coast Guard and the Department of Defense for help managing this spill, the company is pushing back on efforts to minimize those risks, Lindsay Beyerstein reports for Working In These Times.
The company “continues to oppose a proposed rule by the Minerals Management Service (the agency that oversees oil leases on federal lands) that would require lessees and operators to develop and audit their own Safety and Emergency Management Plans (SEMP),” Beyerstein writes. “BP and other oil companies insist that voluntary compliance will suffice to keep workers and the environment safe.”
Climate bill catastrophe
The country might also have to rely on companies’ “voluntary compliance” with measures to combat global warming: Congress doesn’t seem likely to pass a bill regulating carbon any time soon. Sen. Kerry and friends were supposed to release their version of climate legislation Monday, but over the weekend, Sen. Graham backed out. His reason? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had floated the idea of prioritizing immigration reform, which Graham argued would undermine work on energy legislation.
“It seems like the senator…has a bit of an attitude problem,” wrote The American Prospect’s Gabriel Arana. “He storms out of climate talks because Democrats have dared consider working on two things at once? The degree to which movement in the Senate hinges on this single, mercurial senator, seemingly the only one whose agenda includes something more than stymieing Democrats, is remarkable.”
Call the clean up crew
After Graham’s announcement (Arana called it a “hissy fit”), congressional democrats scrambled to prove that the climate bill was not knocked entirely off course. On Monday, Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman met with their wayward colleague; by Wednesday, Sen. Reid had promised that he would “move forward on energy first;” and by Thursday, Kerry and Lieberman had asked the EPA to start evaluating the bill’s environmental and economic impacts.
Although a draft of the bill was supposed to come out on Monday, no one has seen it. At Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard reports that even the EPA, which is supposed to analyze the bill, hasn’t received the full draft.
“According to the EPA, the senators submitted a “description of their draft bill” for economic modeling,” she writes. “The agency confirmed in a statement to Mother Jones the senators “have not sent EPA any actual legislative text.” The agency is determining whether it has enough information about the bill to produce an analysis of its economic and environmental impacts.”
Despite assurances from the Senate leadership, it’s not clear if climate legislation will come to the floor this year or, if it does, that it will pass.
Not a disaster
There was one bright spot of news for environmentalists this week: the United States will build its first off-shore wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod. The project, called Cape Wind, has a host of opponents, but Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar decided to approve it. The scale will be smaller than originally planned–130 rather than 170 turbines, the Washington Independent reports–which could mollify critics who worried about its visual impact.
Cape Wind is a prime example of how clean energy projects can still cause harm or anger the people who live in their shadow. The Texas Observer recaps opposition to clean energy projects: A working-class neighborhood fought against efforts to build a biomass plant in their town, and won.
“Despite some activists touting these projects as solutions to global warming, and politicians promoting them as the key to economic prosperity, renewable energy projects tend to have their own sets of problems for local residents,” reports Rusty Middleton.
Biomass is one thing: burning materials like waste wood might produce fewer greenhouse gasses, but a biomass plant still dirties the air around it. But if the choice is between an off-shore wind farm that could mar a pleasant vista or an off-shore drilling operation that could spill gallons of oil onto your coast, it seems clear which is the better option.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Posted in News, Original Content
Tagged Arana, bill, bipartisan legislation, british petroleum, Carol Browner, climate, draft, drilling, East Coast, energy, exxon valdez, Gabriel Arana, Graham, Gulf of Mexico, interior department officials, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Jones, Kate Sheppard, Kerry, Kevin Drum, Leader Harry Reid, Lieberman, Lincoln, Louisiana, louisiana coast, louisiana oil, media consortium, mother, oil, oil rig, Prospect, rig, robert gibbs, Sarah Laskow, Sen. Graham, Sen. Kerry, Sen. Lieberman, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Reid, Senate, spill, the Gulf, Washington
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Reid Calls Republicans’ Bluff
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just scored a political victory by losing a vote. That sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true. By failing to bring the Wall Street reform bill written by Chris Dodd to the floor for debate, and by losing a cloture vote on the issue to Republican opposition, Reid has shown that the Democrats (and the White House) have learned a few lessons from the health reform debate. Because by refusing to back down, and refusing to “compromise” (read: water the bill down and add loopholes for Wall Street) with Republicans, Reid is showing real strength, and real leadership.
Harry Reid is from a gambling (or, if you’re employed by the industry, “gaming”) state. And he has just raised the stakes, because he thinks he’s got a winning hand in this debate. The Washington Post just released a poll today showing that reforming Wall Street is wildly popular with the public at large (two-thirds are for it), which certainly helps Reid’s position. But just because an issue (or a sub-issue) is popular with the public, it doesn’t always win in Congress (see: public option). Sometimes politicians squander the issue’s popularity, and drive away their own supporters by continually weakening and gutting the bill they’re debating.
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Tagged bill, chris dodd, cloture vote, debate, floor, Harry Reid, health reform, issue, Leader Harry Reid, Majority, political victory, public, reform, reform debate, Reid, republican opposition, Senate, senate majority leader, senate majority leader harry, senate majority leader harry reid, victory, vote, Wall Street, winning hand
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