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cosSeveral years ago, when the country was plagued with touchscreen voting machines that made re-counts impossible and gave no way to verify that their counts weren't buggy, Representative Rush Holt (one of the few scientists in Congress) was pushing a bill that would've required these machines to at least produce a paper printout at the time votes were cast, that voters could look at. While he - and I - much preferred paper ballots instead of voting by touchscreen, he didn't think he could get that passed, while this seemed to have a chance, and was better than nothing. Holt's bill had about 150 cosponsors, including multiple Republicans (Holt is a Democrat), but my Representative, Mike Capuano (Boston/Cambridge/Somerville/Chelsea) was not on the list.
I called Capuano's office to ask, and they told me he opposed it. Why? They weren't sure, so they said they'd find out and call me back, and not long after, they did call me back to explain.
Capuano recalled how he'd had to scramble for money to replace Somerville's voting machines. Somerville was not a rich city, and it was tough to fit this into the budget, but he felt it was very important, and had to cut some things he'd rather have not.
Now, this Holt bill was going to make lots of federal funding available to any election district that had touchscreen machines, regardless of whether they could afford the upgrades themselves - including many places that had splurged on touchscreen voting machines because they had money. Capuano felt very strongly that the federal funds should be means-tested, focusing on helping places (like Somerville back when he was mayor) that would have trouble affording voting machine upgrades, without giving the bulk of the money to rich counties that didn't need it.
Okay, I thought, that's reasonable. I want a federal law requiring paper, but means-testing the federal funding for it sounded like a good idea. So I called Rush Holt's office.
It turns out that Rush Holt agreed that it would be better to means-test the funds. However, his bill wasn't actually adding a lot of money. In 2002, the Federal "Help America Vote Act" - which was passed in response to the 2000 election scandal, and which spurred a lot of places to buy touchscreen voting machines - had made a few large pools of federal funding available to places that had punch card or other bad old voting machines. HAVA said nothing about requiring paper, and Holt was partially fixing that flaw. The funding Holt's bill made available was actually mostly from what was left over from the original HAVA funding pools; in other words, in addition to requiring paperless voting machines to be upgraded to add paper, he was also modifying the rules on an existing pool of funding for upgrading voting machines, to say that money could be used for these upgrades, but could *not* be used to buy paperless voting machines.
Holt thought means-testing was reasonable, but felt that if adding yet more restrictions on a pool of money that was already available to all these places, would bring more opposition. In addition to members of Congress who didn't care for requiring paper, he'd also get opposition from members of Congress whose districts were eligible for HAVA funding but would lose access to most of that funding under the new restrictions. Holt preferred to fight one battle at a time, and to take a positive step that had a chance of passing, rather than add more rules to it that might make it better but would give it no chance of passing.
I got all the data from Holt's office: What portions of HAVA made funding available, the sizes of all the funding pools, how much was left in each one, how much money Holt's bill was adding, and so on. I called Capuano's office again, and gave them all of that, along with what I thought was the right way of looking at this:
Capuano's office thanked me for the call, and said they'd pass along everything I'd said to the Congressman.
Shortly after, Capuano co-sponsored Holt's bill.
I've had this story in the back of my mind for years, and am finally getting around to posting it now because Massachusetts is holding a special election tomorrow to elect a replacement for Ted Kennedy in the US Senate. Mike Capuano is running in tomorrow's Democratic primary, and I hope you'll vote for him. I've had several other interactions with him since this one, and he's changed my mind on a few things. I've found him to be effective, smart, progressive, great at constituent service, and great at his job in Congress, and I think he'd be a good replacement for Senator Kennedy. I hope that if you live in Massachusetts, you'll vote for him, and whether you do or not, you'll pass this on to people you know in Massachusetts.
I called Capuano's office to ask, and they told me he opposed it. Why? They weren't sure, so they said they'd find out and call me back, and not long after, they did call me back to explain.
- We got those touchscreen machines all over the country after the 2000 election made a national spectacle of the problems with punch card voting machines, but Massachusetts had its statewide spectacle of the same thing four years earlier, with the 1996 election for Congress. Back then, most of Massachusetts used punch cards. Bill Delahunt narrowly lost in the 10th district, and after a recount of a few selected portions of the district, he was still behind, but he took it to court and the court called for a full recount. When all the ballots in the district were re-counted by hand, Delahunt won, and in the process, Massachusetts saw hanging chads and all the other problems that Florida showed the country in 2000. By the 2000 election, all of the punch card machines in Massachusetts had switched to optical scan.
But Somerville was one of the few places in MA that already used optical scan before the 1996 spoiled election. Mike Capuano had been elected mayor in 1989, by a narrow margin, and although there had been no controversy about the vote count in that election, he saw the potential problem and felt strongly that we needed a reliable vote counting system that people could trust, and that could allow for real hand recounts if needed. As mayor, he made Somerville the first place in Massachusetts to switch from punch cards to optical scan.
Capuano recalled how he'd had to scramble for money to replace Somerville's voting machines. Somerville was not a rich city, and it was tough to fit this into the budget, but he felt it was very important, and had to cut some things he'd rather have not.
Now, this Holt bill was going to make lots of federal funding available to any election district that had touchscreen machines, regardless of whether they could afford the upgrades themselves - including many places that had splurged on touchscreen voting machines because they had money. Capuano felt very strongly that the federal funds should be means-tested, focusing on helping places (like Somerville back when he was mayor) that would have trouble affording voting machine upgrades, without giving the bulk of the money to rich counties that didn't need it.
Okay, I thought, that's reasonable. I want a federal law requiring paper, but means-testing the federal funding for it sounded like a good idea. So I called Rush Holt's office.
It turns out that Rush Holt agreed that it would be better to means-test the funds. However, his bill wasn't actually adding a lot of money. In 2002, the Federal "Help America Vote Act" - which was passed in response to the 2000 election scandal, and which spurred a lot of places to buy touchscreen voting machines - had made a few large pools of federal funding available to places that had punch card or other bad old voting machines. HAVA said nothing about requiring paper, and Holt was partially fixing that flaw. The funding Holt's bill made available was actually mostly from what was left over from the original HAVA funding pools; in other words, in addition to requiring paperless voting machines to be upgraded to add paper, he was also modifying the rules on an existing pool of funding for upgrading voting machines, to say that money could be used for these upgrades, but could *not* be used to buy paperless voting machines.
Holt thought means-testing was reasonable, but felt that if adding yet more restrictions on a pool of money that was already available to all these places, would bring more opposition. In addition to members of Congress who didn't care for requiring paper, he'd also get opposition from members of Congress whose districts were eligible for HAVA funding but would lose access to most of that funding under the new restrictions. Holt preferred to fight one battle at a time, and to take a positive step that had a chance of passing, rather than add more rules to it that might make it better but would give it no chance of passing.
I got all the data from Holt's office: What portions of HAVA made funding available, the sizes of all the funding pools, how much was left in each one, how much money Holt's bill was adding, and so on. I called Capuano's office again, and gave them all of that, along with what I thought was the right way of looking at this:
- The lack of a requirement for paper was a flaw in the original HAVA legislation, *and* the lack of means-testing of federal funding was a flaw in the original HAVA legislation.
Rush Holt was attempting to fix one of these flaws; while he'd be happy to fix both, he was quite sure he couldn't get the votes to do that. It wasn't fair to blame Holt's bill, which aimed to fix one of HAVA's flaws, for not fixing another, separate flaw. It wasn't actually adding a significant amount of new funding, so whether it passed or not, almost the same amount of money would be available without means testing anyway.
Capuano's office thanked me for the call, and said they'd pass along everything I'd said to the Congressman.
Shortly after, Capuano co-sponsored Holt's bill.
I've had this story in the back of my mind for years, and am finally getting around to posting it now because Massachusetts is holding a special election tomorrow to elect a replacement for Ted Kennedy in the US Senate. Mike Capuano is running in tomorrow's Democratic primary, and I hope you'll vote for him. I've had several other interactions with him since this one, and he's changed my mind on a few things. I've found him to be effective, smart, progressive, great at constituent service, and great at his job in Congress, and I think he'd be a good replacement for Senator Kennedy. I hope that if you live in Massachusetts, you'll vote for him, and whether you do or not, you'll pass this on to people you know in Massachusetts.
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Re: I like Capuano but
I also don't think the issue is "pro choice enough" - that assumes a single unvarying dimension on which people can be ranked, which I reject. The underlying issue is a question of which compromises people are willing to make, and for what end. Voting for healthbill+Stupak is a calculated risk. The gamble is that it comes out with healthcare-Stupak and that you don't have to trade off something else.
I'm well aware that Capuano is steeped in the "way things get done" - the political dealings and backroom tradeoffs that characterize how legislation is made. You dont' get to be mayor of Somerville and not "get" that. On the other hand, the range of possibilities defines the space of what gets negotiated and it's also reasonable to say that womens' reproductive rights are not a negotiable item, and still expect to negotiate over the substance of the legislation.
As I said in my posting back in November, I thought that a robust public option was the only deal-breaker. I view this issue as a deal-breaker. Now, as to whether or not Coakley seized on it for purely political reasons and won't follow through... that's something I don't know. All politicians are opportunists; some more so than others. It's certainly true that (as you noted in your other post) Coakley has taken other positions that I disagree with. And it's possible that over the course of a six-year Senate term those issues will loom larger. But right now it seems like healthcare reform is one of the top five issues we're likely to see legislated. Congressional action on, say, the War on (Some) Drugs may or may not happen, but in any event it looms much less larger in my political calculus.
Re: I like Capuano but
> The gamble is that it comes out with healthcare-Stupak and that you don't have to trade off something else.
No, that's what you don't get: It's not the gamble you think it is. Voting for the bill doesn't prevent them from voting no on it later if it still has the Stupak language. But if they'd voted no on it, that would've been a huge gamble: that the bill fails in the House and then the only option they get is whatever comes from the Senate - and from the Senate when it feels no pressure from the House, at that.
You keep talking about the public option without seeming to realize that if the pro-choice House members had voted no on the House bill, that would have absolutely, without a doubt, completely killed any chance of anything resembling a public option.
Voting yes, on the other hand, while distasteful, was a very small risk. It meant keeping the House bill alive, pressuring the Senate to do better, making a conference committee possible to improve on whatever the Senate passes. It preserved multiple opportunities to stop the Stupak language, or to vote down the whole thing at the end if it still contained that language.
Coakley didn't get it. And I think you still don't get it. Coakley will hopefully learn once she gets into the job, but if we'd had a bunch of Coakleys in the House, as she were, when those votes happened, we wouldn't have a chance at decent health care reform.
Bottom line: Voting yes on the House bill was not a gamble, it was the unequivocally correct vote for anyone who supports a public option or decent health care reform, regardless of their position on choice. This is *not* a matter of who's stronger on women's rights. Coakley is NOT stronger on women's rights. She's just less clueful about how to get the things she wants in a legislature.
Re: I like Capuano but
You assert that if hc+stupak had been voted down then the only alternative for the House would have been to vote on whatever the Senate produced. But they can't vote on that - they only vote on bills brought up from the House itself. Sometimes you just copy the Senate bill and intro that, it gets voted on, the conference committee is a no-op and it's passed. And sometimes you vote on something that differs from the Senate bill and the differences get worked out in conference and then there's a (usually pro-forma) re-vote on the compromise.
Since the House has to produce its own version of the bill somehow either it could have carbon-copied the Senate bill (not bloody likely) or gone back and re-drafted a bill without abortion restrictions. Assuming nobody changes his vote you're right, the house can't produce its own bill. Another assumption is that Representatives would be persuaded to change their votes on abortion restrictions when it became clear that a bill with such restrictions wouldn't get out of the House. Reps don't like being dictated to by the Senate and - given the political cover of being able to say that they'd voted for it once - they could then have worked out a compromise that included no restrictions or less onerous ones.
My calculus is that given the choice of "eat Senate crow" or "come up with a bill that doesn't add new restrictions on abortion" the House would've chosen the latter option. I don't think my calculus is any less of a political realist view than yours and I'm sort of annoyed that you keep insisting I don't get it.
Re: I like Capuano but
If Nelson's amendment had passed in the Senate then the conference committee would have had two bills with abortion restrictions and would almost certainly have produced a final bill that contained the language. If you're claiming that when faced with that FINAL language the pro-choice Dems would then have changed their minds and voted against it I think you're being overly optimistic. I think they would've voted for it.
The only way I can see to keep anti-abortion language out of the final conf committee bill is to keep it out of either the House or the Senate version. By voting for it in the House, the Dems were counting on the Senate to keep such language out. That's a gamble.
Re: I like Capuano but
You're mistaken about that, and I answered it in my comment below.
>> By voting for it in the House, the Dems were counting on the Senate to keep such language out. That's a gamble. <<
You're also wrong about that, but more subtly: You missed the point that the House pro-choicers were attempting to pressure the Senate into not including that language, and knew their chances of success were very high.
Re: I like Capuano but
That's just not true, as a matter of simple fact.
>> Sometimes you just copy the Senate bill and intro that, it gets voted on <<
Exactly, "it gets voted on".
>> and then there's a (usually pro-forma) re-vote on the compromise. <<
"usually" doesn't mean it has to be. That was explicitly the strategy openly publicized by the House pro-choicers: If the final bill came back from committee with Stupak language they'd all vote against it. All the Republicans were already promising to vote against it for other reasons, so that would've killed it. But it's no longer necessary, because the Senate voted Stupak down (as House members thought it likely would, and perhaps also due to some Senate votes shifting because of the threat from the House - exactly what they intended).
>> Since the House has to produce its own version of the bill somehow either it could have carbon-copied the Senate bill (not bloody likely) or gone back and re-drafted a bill without abortion restrictions. <<
Not true. Once the House voted it down, it would not have re-drafted. This bill already went through three House committees, a full debate and amendment process, and a full House vote. There's no way whatsoever that the House would've gone through all of that again this session. They would've been forced to vote up or down on the Senate version, and if they'd voted it down, it would've been the House's fault the Obama's top priority got killed, and he could try to get Congress to try again next year, when better results would be unlikely.
>> I don't think my calculus is any less of a political realist view than yours and I'm sort of annoyed that you keep insisting I don't get it. <<
Your calculus rests on a number of misconceptions (only some of which I addressed here). You in fact do not get it. That vote was the unequivocally correct vote for any public option or real health care reform supporter. That is why just about every strongly pro-choice Democrat in the House voted yes on that bill. The rare exceptions I was able to find, such as Dennis Kucinich and Eric Massa, had already said they were going to vote against the bill for other reasons (mainly that its public option doesn't go far enough) before the Stupak Amendment came up.
That is overwhelming evidence, IMO, that this isn't just a matter of differing calculus - you're just wrong on this.
Re: I like Capuano but
Re: I like Capuano but
You are also arguing based on "$this WOULD have happened", no less than I am. This isn't you arguing facts vs. me arguing hypotheticals. We're both stating our views of what WOULD have happened in different cases; if you don't see that you're doing so as well as I am, that might explain why you don't get it.
As for the awfulness of Coakley
These issues come up ALL THE TIME.
Coakley would not have tried to stop torture.
Coakley would've enthusiastically supported most forms of Internet censorship (while Ted Kennedy led the opposition to the Communications Decency Act - which passed with only 14 Senators voting against it, despite being so unconstitutional that the Rehnquist court struck it down 9-0).
Coakley would've enthusiastically lobbied for warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity.
Coakley would've been fine with the Military Commissions Act.
Coakley lobbied against recent efforts to reform the Patriot Act.
Coakley will vote the way I like on more things than not, but she's a scary, dangerous, police state politician. She has done, and will continue to do, damage. I'm depressed at the fact that her political rise seems unstoppable, and very scared at the prospect of her becoming Governor. I'm trying to think of ways to reform her, since she can't be toppled (which would be much better).
Re: As for the awfulness of Coakley
Senators are subject to pressure and 6 years is a long time. If she runs for governor in six years I'll worry about it then. The MA Dems have a long history of producing craptastic candidates for governor, which is one reason they keep losing those races.
I will say that I'm not likely to condition my vote in a Senate race on whether I think that person might run for governor in six years.
Re: As for the awfulness of Coakley
That was an addendum, taking up a very small portion of my comment, at the end. It did not try to present it as the reason to have voted against her.
The thrust of my comment was, "These issues come up ALL THE TIME." Because they do. They came up in this Congress, they'll come up in the next, and the next, and the next. We've lost one of the best people on these issues - Kennedy - and have replaced him with almost a polar opposite, a lock'em'up prosecutor who favors brutal unethical police practices, surveillance, harsh punishment, and criminalization of anything she finds weird. I just want to make that clear.
This vote was bad primarily for the reason that it's going to make her a Senator. The chance of her also possibly becoming governor in the future is a secondary scare that was much less relevant, but is relevant in explaining my feelings about her.