Alan Grayson, Progressives and the Regulatory Process
by: Lauren Reichelt on August 8th, 2010 | 12 Comments »
As the Progressive movement has grown, we have become increasingly proficient at influencing the passage of legislation. We’ve learned to place strategic calls and ads as bill move through committee. We’ve learned about reconciliation and other parliamentary procedures. We have pushed stimulus funding, a health care reform bill, and a financial regulatory reform bill over the legislative finish line. But alas! we are still a nascent movement. And as such, we have not learned to attend to the details of the regulatory process AFTER our bills are passed.
Progressives are accustomed to thinking of the passage of a bill as the crossing of the finish line in a race. Actually, a bill’s passage is merely the beginning. It is a shame that so very few people are willing to open a health care diary now that the health care reform bill has passed. While we rest on our laurels, the various regulatory agencies that oversee HCR are being swamped by industry lobbyists.
Obama has crises to tackle on so many fronts because Bush and Cheney were able to dismantle the agencies responsible for enforcing existing bills. Why bother to waste political capital repealing the Clean Air and Water Act if you can quietly undermine it by stacking the appropriate regulatory agency with oil and coal proponents? Few Americans realize that in the last year of his administration, Bush nearly managed to eliminate hospitals and emergency rooms willing to see the uninsured by changing arcane Medicaid rules.
Once adequate banking laws are put in place, progressives will have to learn to carefully monitor the regulatory process. It’s arcane. It’s boring. But there are rooms full of lobbyists for every common citizen attempting to influence regulators behind the scenes. That’s because we are a nascent movement, whereas corporate interests have been playing and winning the Washington game for years.
Perhaps this is the reason that Representative Alan Grayson, one of the left’s strongest champions, initially stunned supporters by abandoning efforts to regulate telecoms to insure net neutrality. Grayson reasoned that it makes more sense to pursue a bill mandating net neutrality than to enforce it through FCC regulations. After hearing from many of his supporters, he changed his mind. He will still pursue a bill but will also urge the FCC to regulate for net neutrality.
For those still unaware, net neutrality means that telecoms are unable to create charges or other impediments for use of the internet, allowing higher speeds and better access to well-funded sites. Excessive charges would eliminate many of the successful and unprofitable progressive blogs (including Tikkun Daily) that rely heavily on volunteer labor and budget conscious readers for their existence. Ending net neutrality would end the Progressive movement. Senator Al Franken called Net Neutrality “the first amendment issue of our time.”
Grayson initially prefered to gamble on passage of a bill rather than to rely on Progressives’ ability to influence the regulatory process.
This is a serious mistake.
The Progressive movement needs desperately to learn to attend to the regulatory process. Our current Congress seems unable to pass a bill insuring net neutrality. What better way to force us to learn about the nuts and bolts of legislative implementation than to force us to dog the FCC as it regulates our very existence?
Crossposted at Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com)
Lauren, but how can Progressives win over the fascist-Nazis in our polce state that I call the United States of Hell?
in our police state
I doubt we could win over any genuinely committed fascist-Nazis. However, we can learn to influence the regulatory process. It took the right about forty years to gain their hold on our government. They systematically got themselves elected to local and state government positions and learned to influence regulation. It was a grassroots effort. We can conduct the same kind of extended campaign.
There are no easy solutions. If we want change, we have to work at it for generations.
Progressives also have lobbyists. My mail box, both USPS and online, is full of requests to support various efforts. The dilemma I face, as always, is where to put my priorities. As my resources are limited, by the time something new comes along such as net neutrality, I am already overcommitted.
So please do continue with your selling job about the importance of the issue. But I doubt the problem is that we do not know the need for regulatory oversight. I dutifully wrote my letter when the FCC was performing its town meetings. The story I heard was that the chairman had zero interest in what voters wanted. He was determined to give GW Bush what he wanted, and that provoked some of his committee members to resign in protest. Maybe that played a role in Obama’s election. It sure made more of a difference than my letter.
It is certainly true that money speaks and on the issue of net neutrality bloggers have been quite aggressive. I was using net neutrality as an example but I was speaking about health care or at least that is what was in my mind. We put up a great team effort to score a touchdown and then simply walked away from the game. This will probably happen with banking, ag reform, etc., etc.
We HAVE in fact scored some outstanding victories regarding net neutrality regulation. It should be our model for all other regulatory efforts.
Alan Grayson announce he was voting for health care early. My Opinion is Mr Grayson Will vote for any bill that will put more Americans out of work Create higher taxes on everyone and call it a tax increase on the RICH. Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid are Mr Grayson Idols. Just look at his voting record he is so proud of.
Mr Grayson is to arrogant, he is truly Mr Obama go to man he has been for Cap and trade Vote for ever tax increase while in office. Mr Grayson is one of the biggest reason unemployment is so high he believes the unions will cure all problems. 90 percent of all employment is by private industries and who wants all of Mr Grayson tax increases? When Mr Bush was President cost to hire a new employee was around 35 percent. After Mr Grayson tax increases small employers will have to pay the Government around 65 percent in taxes. What is the incentive to hire anyone??
As long as Congress continues to embrace socialism with Mr Grayson help Private enterprise will continue to move jobs over seas
Mr Grayson phone rang off the hook asking him to not vote for more tax increases . Mr Grayson wasn’t interested in his constituent opinion. Mr Grayson has voted for embrassed every tax increase Nancy Pelosi has ask him to vote for. Florida does not need more of Mr.Grayson Tax increases. As and independent let’s replace Mr Grayson. His replacement doesn’t know who he works for we can replace him next. Obama has to be stop and Mr Grayson has proven he is one of the go to guys.
When we have an FCC official (Mark Lloyd, the diversity Czar) who idolizes Hugo Chavez and his dictatorship in Venezuela, and especially his control over the Venezuelan media, then Americans rightfully look none too fondly at “Net Neutrality” and the “Fairness Doctrine” We also are suspect when Socialists and Communists in the Orwellian-named Free Press organization advocate net neutrality as well. The internet is just fine the way it is–a free market of ideas. We don’t want the internet to be NPRed or CPBed.
The stimulus. Are you serious? A trillion dollars for nothing. A colossal waste. A bill that was voted on when no one voting on it knew what was in it. Every single member of the House and the Senate who voted for that monstrosity deserves to be put out of office on their asses for dereliction of duty and a dishonoring of their Oaths of Office.
The Banking “reform” bill? It will do nothing; it will help nothing. We need to enforce the laws and regulations we already have, and to do it effectively. The last thing we often need from Congress is another law, especially one that no one, again, has read.
The Health Care bill? Will one Progressive at least admit that this is a nation of laws? If it is a nation of laws, then the uncomfortable issue of the constitutionality of the bill comes into play. It is patently un-Constitutional. If you will admit that Progressives don’t care about the Constitution, then that will at least be honest. If it is only a matter of the ends justifying the means, then this nation is no longer a nation of laws, and no longer the nation that our Founders bequeathed to us, and not the nation that our Veterans, including myself, fought to support, honor and defend. You have no idea how much of a debt you owe to those who have maintained your freedoms.
I think, however, that I find it most distressing of all that you are so enamored of Alan Grayson. Have you watched this man on CSPAN? Have you seen him on the news? Have you heard the things he says?
I agree that it is unconstitutional to force people to buy private insurance from corporations. But it is also inhuman to deny people access to health care. Please watch “Sicko” by Michael Moore if you don’t believe this is happening. Neither option is good. I think we can do better.
“…..from corporations with a history of mistreating their customers.”
No one is being denied basic care. That is part of the reason that our rates have gone up so much. Those without coverage end up in the very expensive emergency room, It is against the law for a hospital to deny care in that emergency room. It is against the law for people to steal groceries from a grocery store, but not against the law for them to steal health care from a hospital. I grant that people may not get every measure available, but that is going to increase under this bill, not decrease. It’s already happening–the government is trying to ban effective, expensive Cancer medications, just like in Britain, where a man is many times more likely to die of prostate cancer and a woman many times more likely to die from breast cancer. The safety net is substantial enough for all to receive basic care in the U.S. that is leaps and bounds over the care received in other countries, especially the NHS in Britain, which is the model for what we will receive, if this bill stands, which I think is unlikely. If you think the government will treat you better than the corporations, then you have not experienced the health services that the government already runs–the VA and the Indian Health Service. If the average American could experience the VA as I have, then there would have been tens of thousands protesting the passage of health care “reform”. The Indian Health Service is nothing less than a national scandal and disgrace. The government also runs Medicaid and Medicare, but sabotaged them with the health care bill and reduced reimbursement rates, which will by itself result in denied care for people because doctors won’t take new patients in those programs. We can do much better than the health care bill that was rammed through Congress.
About Mr. Moore. I noticed with interest that he did not go to Cuba when he had his heart problems. He, a millionaire, stayed here. People from around the world, including Canadians, if able, come here for treatment. I have seen Sicko; I only wish it had tilted less toward propaganda. There have been numerous documentaries on other national health systems and their inadequacies as well. I still would rather be here than anywhere else, even in the VA system.
The best solution for health care is employment. The problem is that both parties have overseen and participated in the looting of this country and the dismantlement of our industrial base, and the complete destruction of the American Dream. I think we should have a good safety net for those in need, but I don’t think the government is the best way to provide it. I mean, think about it, all the efficiency of your local DMV, combined with the compassion of the IRS. I don’t want the government to do this, and, unless we are “changed” or “transformed”, the very idea is alien to our form of government. We are a republic, not a fascist state, nor a socialist state, nor a communist state, even though we are rapidly approaching those forms. Other options besides the health care bill were presented, but were completely rebuffed. We need patriots and statesmen/women who are interested in the welfare of the nation, and are willing to honestly approach the problems and honestly sort through the options and deal with them. Giving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bribes in order to buy votes in the Senate is not the honesty nor the statesmanship we need. We will not get that from the Social Democrats (Progressives), the Conservative Democrats (what few survive), or the Republicans.
One last thing, if the administration adds twenty million illegals-turned-legal-by-amnesty to the healthcare system, what do you think that will do? It will collapse the system. And it will collapse Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare, too.
We are doing our very best to drive doctors away from the practice of medicine in this country, and we are not making things any better for anyone, except for a ruling political class and the lawyers. You noticed that the Congress is too good for their own health care reform bill….
What is this terrible fear of socialism all about? Don’t like socialism? Then be sure not to collect Medicare or Social Security and just so we’re not infected with the terrible evils of socialism, let’s be sure we remain the only major economy in the entire world not to have universal health care. Caring for everybody is too socialistic. A Confucian sage once said, “Humanity is the ultimate measure of all we do.” Well, I guess we lose on that score.
People do not receive long term health care in emergency rooms. Emergency rooms are mostly for stabilizing serious or life-threatening conditions or as a last resort when one has no insurance. Emergency rooms don’t provide long term cancer care or long term care for a diabetic or long term anything. Further, Medicare doesn’t create high prices. It responds to the high cost of health care in this country and to control that requires some serious reworking of our for-profit health care system. The health care bill has some good things in it but does not do enough to control costs. I’ve heard that the exchanges (not to be created until 2014, unfortunately) do attempt to control costs.
I wouldn’t say the stimulus was a trillion dollars for nothing. First, it wasn’t a trillion dollars but I believe that the tax cuts in the bill and sweeteners for small business (as I recall), to try to lure Republicans into voting for it when they had no intention of doing so, weakened this bill. This bill saved jobs but didn’t create enough. What was the Republican plan? Ditch the stimulus so that it could be used for tax cuts for the rich? The fact is that for the past 30 years, we’ve had a smoke and mirrors economy, with people borrowing heavilly to maintain a middle class lifestyle, thanks to the the old trickle down economic theory. Millions of jobs were outsourced and one stimulus plan couldn’t turn around an entire transformation of an economy from a manufacturing economy to a financial/service/retail economy (and, yes, both parties are guilty in this respect).
Republicans are the party of 2% ( the top 2% of Americans). I’d take Alan Grayson over any Republican and some Democrats, any day. Take a look at H.R. 4529, the bill to privatize Social Security and Medicare. It was introduced by a Republican and has 13 Republican co-sponsors. The bill titled “Roadmap for America’s Future Act of 2010: A Plan to Solve America’s Long-Term Fiscal and Economic Crisis” blames budget problems on programs for the little people. It’s not war. It’s not the cost of maintaining an empire. It’s not tax cuts skewed to the rich. It’s not programs like the Medicare Modernization Act, passed for the benefit of Big Pharma. It’s all those little folks whose jobs were outsourced and to whom we now must pay Social Security and Medicare in their old age. For Republicans, (and some Blue Dogs), the little people are the problem. Social Security was looted and in a properly functioning government, those responsible would be held accountable but we ignore their culpability.
All we have to do is look at the meltdown of Wall St., to know that some government regulation is absolutely essential to the welfare of society. Markets are not self-regulating. If we don’t have protections in place,–environmental, food and safety protections, financial protections– society will be victimized again and again, by those who care about nothing but making lots of money and then passing costs to society when risks go bad. It’s pure unmitigated greed, rising to the level of fraud and criminality in some instances.
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