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I’m so confused.
First I read this piece from Politico, where poor ol’ Rep. Jim Cooper (BlueDog-TN05) was bemoaning his fate as an ordinary, non-leadership member of the Democratic caucus, shut out of all the discussions about the stimulus bill:
Now, I got in terrible trouble with our leadership because they don’t care what’s in the [stimulus] bill, they just want it pass and they want it to be unanimous. They don’t mind the partisan fighting cause that’s what they are used to. In fact, they’re really good at it. And they’re a little bit worried about what a post-partisan future might look like. If members actually had to read the bills and figure out whether they are any good or not. We’re just told how to vote. We’re treated like mushrooms most of the time.
Poor Cooper — he’s kept in the dark and fed manure.
Then I read another piece, this one from The Hill, in which Cooper also plays a starring role. The story is about a proposal by Cooper and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH and the new nominee for Commerce) to establish a bipartisan commission to reform Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security:
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), a member of the Blue Dogs, said that Obama’s call for a bipartisan fiscal summit and his nomination of Gregg show that he’s serious about getting beyond partisanship “so our children’s generation isn’t left to clean up the wreckage.”
. . . Whatever plan the commission comes up with, Congress would have limited opportunities to amend the Cooper-Wolf proposal before voting on it.
Under the Conrad-Gregg proposal, the task force’s plan could not be amended.
Here’s where I’m confused.
In the story from Politico, Cooper is complaining because Pelosi and the House leadership are drafting legislation outside of the normal committee structure and not giving regular members a chance to read it, let alone amend it. (The Blue Dogs and New Dems even sent a sternly worded letter to the leadership about this.)
In the story from The Hill, however, Cooper is advocating that House members abdicate their regular responsibilities for drafting legislation, that the normal committees be ignored, and that a special bill come to the floor for a straight up-or-down vote that can’t be amended.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Cooper doesn’t really care about how legislation gets drafted — all he wants is his Blue Dog clout to be respected and bowed down to by everyone else.
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I think you pegged him. He wants to be a player. Not too bloody likely, from the looks of it.
Why I’m shocked SHOCKED I say to learn that a politician would care more about his ego and power than about you know, actual voters and things.
Oh, he’s playing all right.
But he’s playing with fire. You don’t talk to Politico and say “By the way, the president told me it was OK to stiff the House Democratic leadership” if you’re not prepared to piss off the leadership, the President, or both.
It’s almost a “what are you going to do about it?” kind of interview, from the DC point of view.
I do believe that is bush like and I don’t care for it
well .. here’s what we know .. social security is the third rail of american politics .. if obama does this .. he;s out of office in 2012 .. if he wants to “do” SS .. that should be late second term work .. imo ..
Wait.
Judd Gregg is the nominee for the Dept. of Commerce not HHS.
Or has something changed this morning?
You know most Senators have only a mediocre intelligence. When you get to the House, things get decidedly scary. There stupidity is the order of the day and tracks very closely with where someone is in the political spectrum. By the time you get to Blue Dogs like Cooper, we’re looking on a variety of stupid that even most swamp mosses would look down on.
Cooper is a walking talking poster child of why our politics are broken. This is a guy you wouldn’t trust to cut your lawn and yet there he is in a position of great power in a government he doesn’t know a thing about.
Aacckk!
Thanks for the correction.
Mea culpa!
Don’t sugar coat it Hugh. Tell us what you REALLY think about this guy. (snark alert)
Thanks for that. Best chuckle all day.
Cooper has a point.
Now before anyone launches a virtual shoe at my post, let me explain. The dem “leadership” is a joke, I think we can all agree. One of the problems with Harry and Nancy is that they do not listen to the voices of their rank and file who are largely progressive and have recently started agitating for a better stimulus bill. (And why not have a better bill since the pukes will not NO regardless of its substance?)
I say let the rank and file have more power, or get Harry and Nancy out of the way and let a real leader lead. In that situation the blue dogs like Cooper will have to put up or shut up.
Obama will do to us in the area of Social Security what Bubba did in the area of welfare. There will be no relief for the working or middle classes but a black Democrat will be allowed to throw us to the side.
If Social Security is eviscerated the New Deal will be relegated to nothing except an experiment in bringing some sort of European social insurance to America.
FDR didn’t institute all his initiatives in order to regular people, he did it to save capitalism from itself in the face of numerous strikes and vast pockets of discontent, dissent, and anger among the regular folk.
Now Americans are just apathetic enough to believe that Bubba was a rock star instead of a moderate Republican and that Obama is really the hero of the working class.
Aaargh! Now I guess we know why McCaskill has been muttering about “entitlement reform” the last couple of days.
Needed: new and better leadership in the Senate.
Actually as a Blue Dog wanting to follow the Republicans and destroy Social Security and the social safety net, no he doesn’t have a point. Or at least not a point we should be supporting.
He’s the one who needs to shut up and do his job that he was elected to do and not try to build an empire.
We’ve had way too many years in the recent past where the House Leadership, on both sides of the aisle, presented execrable bills that were passed because no one had a chance to read them and digest the actual content before voting. Execrable bills, that we are having to live with now.
Is someone in line to primary him?
the pukes will vote
notNOWe agree, dakine01.
Cooper is a hypocrite to demand more power for rank and file members on one hand while offering a vile bill on the other that precludes the rank and file from making amendments. That stinks.
But he is right about Harry and Nancy not listening to the dems in Congress who, frankly, would be more effective leading themselves than following their “leaders.”
Does any of this surprise you, that what every politician wants…to be bowed down too.
BTW: Pelosi informed us that 500 million Americans are loosing their job every month. Not too sure how either she or Boxer keeps their jobs, both are equally competent at getting the facts completely wrong. Still trying to figure out how she came up with that figure…was that a global figure, did she get the millions/thousands wrong, or was it the actual number. Any way you look at it she would have been wrong.
You have obviously read current “stimulus” bill. Lot of fun garbage in there that we’ll be living with for a long time.
He may well be correct.
But if I have a choice between Nancy Pelosi, who at least nominally votes for and supports the professed ideals of the Democratic Party and its base, and Jim Cooper who makes me wonder why he calls himself a Democrat since he votes against the supposed core values of the party, then I have to select Speaker Pelosi, no matter how often she might p*ss me off in day-to-day aspects.
Me too. And, if Nancy listened to her rank and file–the majority of whom are real democrats–clueless Blue Dog asshats like Cooper would have to shut up because they are a fringe element of the party.
Whoops!
It seems Cooper is trying to walk back some of his comments to Politico.
Sounds like someone got called on the carpet.
Check out this post from a local Nashville blogjam.
Much of this stemmed from an interview on Liberadio! weekly broadcast.
We’ve been following it here in TN since EARLY this morning.
Had you ever heard of Jim Cooper two weeks ago? I had–he was my Congressman two-plus decades ago.
If you’re just gonna dismiss him as another Blue Dog, you’d be wrong. The guy has bucked the establishment–left and right–for years. The guy was a Rhodes scholar. He’s not a Heath Shuler-esque Blue Dog who couldn’t learn an NFL playbook, much less the intricacies of the federal budget.
And knowing his history, I don’t believe he’s out to gut Social Security and Medicaid. (Heck, his first Congressional office had a 4 foot by 4 foot picture of FDR visiting an early TVA project, so I don’t think he’s trying to eviscerate the New Deal.) He’s first and foremost a deficit hawk, though, and without changes to these programs, the money does run out. (Speaking here from graduate work in government budgeting and finance, not Cooper’s press releases!)
I don’t doubt that he said more than he wishes he’d said. And I don’t doubt that anything I’ve said will change how you feel about him right now. But don’t underestimate him based on what you’ve learned in the last 48 hours. If you think you know where he will stand on something else based on where he stands on this, you will be surprised–most unpredictable politician I’ve ever seen.