Of Two (Three?) Minds

Sen. Snowe, last Thursday:

Snowe expressed frustration at the fate of the contentious small business bill that she helped to draft. The bill, which would create a $30 billion lending fund for small businesses, has recently been opposed by Republican lawmakers, including Snowe, who have asked for amendments to the bill.

And four days later:

Sen. Olympia Snowe says a package of tax breaks aimed at helping small businesses grow is her top priority when Congress gets back to work in mid-September.

The Maine Republican first introduced the legislation in January. She says Senate Democratic leaders have repeatedly delayed consideration of the bill, even though it has the support of President Obama and senators from both parties.

Apparently the senior senator opposes the bill and it's her top priority. Or something.

Also, Republicans are against it but also for it. And Democrats are to blame.

Quote of the Day

Village Soup:

Snowe expressed frustration at the fate of the contentious small business bill that she helped to draft. The bill, which would create a $30 billion lending fund for small businesses, has recently been opposed by Republican lawmakers, including Snowe, who have asked for amendments to the bill.

Quote of the Day

Former Maine Republican Party Vice Chairman Scott Kauffman:

The Maine GOP would like me to support a candidate who has openly called global warming a "hoax"...

Environmental protection is absolutely vital for Maine. And yet the GOP asks for my unity behind a candidate who has called for the closing of the Department of Environmental Protection.

Despite the ongoing disaster in the Gulf Coast, LePage is still in support of drilling for oil off our coast. How can I support a candidate who is willing to put two of our largest industries, fishing and tourism, at risk?

Remember, moderate bipartisan centrist that she is, Sen. Collins says that LePage has the "right message for the people of Maine."

And to back up those words, she gave his campaign $750.

Snowe Watch

Somehow I missed this:

One national polling outfit believes Senator Olympia Snowe will have a hard time winning a Republican primary next year.

"If Snowe wants to be elected, she needs to run as an independent," says Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling in Raleigh, N.C., which in November found 59 percent of likely primary voters would prefer a more conservative candidate. "Maine Republicans are willing to support a Tea Party candidate."

Moderation

The Hill:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last night estimated that the latest version of the Democrats' plan to extend emergency Medicaid benefits will reduce the federal deficit by almost $1.4 billion over the next decade.

The $16.1 billion Medicaid provision [is] part of a $26.1 billion package that also provides education funding to prevent teacher layoffs...

Maine Sen. Susan Collins...thinks the Medicaid funding extension "is necessary," her office told The Hill recently. But a spokesman also warned that her support would come only if "the enhanced FMAP rate is largely offset and would not contribute to our country’s fiscal problems."

So essentially, Collins won't sign off on Medicaid funding if it increases the deficit. And so the bill was rewritten to fit that requirement.

But this is all happening at the same time, remember, that the junior senator is supporting the passage of a new law to extend billions (trillions?) of dollars in unpaid-for, deficit-ballooning tax cuts for millionaires.

Holding both of those positions doesn't make Collins a hypocrite. But it does mean she's a pretty doctrinaire conservative.

Later Today

Via Politico:

With a Senate vote slated for Monday evening, the White House shows signs of a late-breaking push behind a $26.1 billion aid package to help state and local governments cope with revenue shortfalls due to the continuing housing crisis and slow economic recovery...

Cash-strapped governors are promised $16.1 billion to pay Medicaid bills next year and ease their budget situation; another $10 billion in education assistance would go to school boards to help with teacher hiring...

Monday’s vote to cut off debate will require 60 votes--a high bar to meet and one that will require Republican help.

Toward this end, Reid offset the full cost through a combination of foreign tax credit provisions and $17.1 billion in savings chiefly from cuts to food stamps and prior appropriations. The Medicaid assistance, which extends a program begun under the Recovery Act, is designed now to phase out in the first six months of 2011—something recommended by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.)

It doesn't increase the deficit. (Not that that's ever really been the issue.)

Good on Gag Rule

You wouldn't know it from reading the Maine press, but Sen. Collins has had a pretty abysmal record on abortion-related issues over the last eight years or so.

She cast a critical vote for Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, and backed the nominations of other activist, anti-choice judges like Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. But that's not all.

Collins also took the anti-choice position on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a backdoor attempt to undermine Roe. And she refused to join supporters of reproductive freedom in speaking out against a Bush administration rule designed to give health care providers wide latitude to deny services to women on a case by case basis.

Her record was so poor that Planned Parenthood endorsed her challenger in the 2008 election, the first time the organization backed an opponent of a candidate it had previously endorsed.

And then, as if to confirm the fears of pro-choice Mainers, the junior senator had this to say during the recent health care debate:

"If Congress makes the mistake of establishing a new government-owned insurance company, it would need to extend the prohibition [on abortion coverage] to that company because it is using federal funds."

That remark got lost in tumult of the reform debate, but it's a comment worth carefully parsing and mulling over: Here we have a nominally pro-choice pol trying to torpedo the public option by misrepresenting its design (a government-owned "company"?) and adopting the right-wing talking point that a public plan couldn't possibly cover abortion--even though individuals would be paying their own premiums--simply because the plan was administered by a federal agency.

In short, Collins managed to demonstrate bad faith, stealth conservatism and go-for-the-jugular partisanship all in a single sentence.

Good times.

In any event, all of this is by way of introduction to the news that Collins has done something right on the issue of choice for a change:

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted in favor of an amendment to permanently repeal...the Global Gag Rule [which] prohibits the US from funding overseas organizations that support abortion in any way--including direct services, counseling, or lobbying activities--even if the groups use their own monies for such activity...

According to Population Action International, the amendment passed on a 19 to11 vote, winning the support of almost all Democrats and two Republican Senators, Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

It's hard to know how to reconcile the junior senator's various positions on the issue. But anyway, this is a positive development.

Politico: Collins Killed DISCLOSE Act?

That seems to be where this is headed:

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine may have delivered a fatal blow to the bill Monday, announcing that she would not support cloture, which would break a filibuster.

Cornell du Houx on DISCLOSE Act

Via bluemir at Dirigo Blue, here's state Rep. Alex Cornell du Houx on the DISCLOSE Act. (Published before Sen. Collins admitted that she'll help block the law from an up-or-down vote)

We can't know exactly how corporations will use their new [post-Citizens United] influence in the 2010 elections. But we can make sure that their campaign expenditures are as limited, and as transparent, as possible...

The DISCLOSE Act would close the loophole that allows foreign-controlled domestic subsidiaries to participate in American elections, and make sure that government contractors and recipients of TARP funds couldn't curry favor by buying campaign ads.

It would establish new rules to prevent outside spenders from coordinating their campaign activities with candidates and political parties. And it would also impose strict transparency requirements-all corporate and labor union expenditures for or against a candidate would need to be reported promptly and clearly, and a company’s CEO would have to appear in all of its political ads, much like candidates must "approve the message" of ads funded by their campaigns.

The DISCLOSE Act isn’t perfect, but what it does is simple and important: It takes a harmful Supreme Court decision and ensures that it can do as little damage as possible in a quickly approaching election.

It is now up to the Senate to pass DISCLOSE in time for voters to have the information we need as we go to the polls in November...Big business lobbyists, who embraced the Citizens United decision and plan to spend millions on the 2010 elections, have been ratcheting up their efforts to defeat DISCLOSE, and have gotten most of the Republican caucus on board.

When the Senate votes on DISCLOSE this Tuesday, the votes of Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins will be crucial to its passage.

Both have been strong supporters of transparency and accountability in the past, but rarely have the voices against honest government been so loud. They will hear plenty from the business lobby; now they need to hear from ordinary citizens.

Question of the Day

Why would an above-the-fray centrist vote to block even the consideration of a bill that restores just a subset of the rules that she's previously supported and even voted for?

CLC: Collins Not Accurate

From Meredith McGehee, policy director at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. (The organization's president happens to be a Republican.)

The bill introduced by Sen. Schumer and being voted on today is a fair, appropriate and critically needed...Claims that the measure favors unions over corporations are not accurate.

Without this bill, the American people will not have the information they need to know who is spending millions of dollars to affect the outcome of November's elections. Sen. Collins should support cloture and vote yes.

There's a name for someone who persists in "inaccurate" statements even after being made aware of her inaccuracies.

Collins Against DISCLOSE Act

The junior senator, who pretends to be a champion of clean and transparent elections, tells Fox News she'll vote against the bill meant to prevent anonymous special-interests from coming to dominate federal political campaigns.

Seems like a good time to reach out to the roughly one-third of Democrats who voted for the junior senator last time around: If you know anyone in that category, why not take a few minutes out of your day to update them about the great work Collins has been doing on their behalf?

Quote of the Day

Trevor Potter, former Republican FEC commissioner and Campaign Legal Center president:

"For years the opponents of campaign finance reform said all we needed was disclosure," said former Federal Election Commission chairman Trevor Potter, now president and general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, during a conference call with other DISCLOSE backers last week. "And now that that's all we're going to get, they don't want us to have that either."

Values Deficit

The Sun Journal seems to be the only Maine daily that's willing, now and then, to write about the state's senators as if they were mere mortals rather than sainted celebrities. Just saying.

Former Poland music teacher Lee Libby is one of many Maine teachers who lost their jobs this year due to budget cuts.

On Wednesday, she did something about it.

She went to Washington, D.C., and met with U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, urging her to vote for federal legislation that would give money to the states to help schools retain teachers, among other things.

The legislation is a $10 billion fund projected to save 138,000 education jobs, said Cynthia Kain of the National Education Association. Maine would receive $39 million from the proposal, which has support from President Barack Obama and has passed in the U.S. House, Kain said.

[...]

Collins...said Wednesday she would not support the new legislation.

"Sen. Collins does not support President Obama’s proposal to borrow and spend an additional $23 billion to send back to the states and local governments because it is not paid for and would add to the already enormous deficit," her office said in a prepared statement.

[...]

Libby, 50, taught at Poland Community School for 23 years. She was laid off when the Poland-Minot-Mechanic Falls school district had to cut $1 million from its $18.1 million budget...

At Poland Community School, students used to get music class once a week. This year, the school will have one elementary music teacher for three schools.

If only Maine teachers were launching security-sapping foreign wars, showering money on billionaires or hawking a battlefield vehicle--then Sen. Collins might find a way to get behind their agenda.

But they just do boring stuff like educating kids. So we obviously can't afford it.

Bluff Called

Now what?

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has filed a new version of a campaign-finance bill aimed at winning the support of Maine’s key GOP centrist senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

The new version strips out several provisions included in the House-passed bill that conservative groups, as well as Collins, had said provides an unfair advantage to unions over corporations and other groups. Democrats are courting Snowe and Collins and could bring the bill to the floor for a vote as early as next week.

The bill specifically jettisons a provision dealing with requirements that all businesses, unions and groups must disclose transfers to or from or between their affiliates of $10,000 or more, according to a Senate aide familiar with the changes.

[...]

Collins’s spokesman, Kevin Kelley, did not respond to a request for comment.

Coming up with a new bogus excuse will probably take a few hours. (Hypocrisy is hard work.)

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

Pressure to support campaign finance disclosure legislation continues to mount for Maine Republicans Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins...

Advocacy groups have been lobbying the two moderates in an attempt to get the 60 votes needed so the bill (S 3295) can clear procedural hurdles in the Senate. The White House-supported measure, known as the DISCLOSE Act, would expand reporting requirements for political spending in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision that opened the door to corporate donations to campaigns.

Wednesday, the coalition of public interest groups wrote to Collins and Snowe and cited a poll showing 85 percent of Maine voters say it is important to know who paid for the political campaign communications that they see or hear.

[...]

Signers included the Maine Small Business Coalition, the Maine League of Women Voters; the Maine chapter of the League of Young Voters; Maine People’s Alliance; U.S. PIRG on behalf of its Maine members; the Maine Council of Churches; Maine Common Cause; and Engage Maine.

Interesting to see how this plays out.

Free Money

From Sen. Collins' eNewsletter:

U.S. Senator Susan Collins, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced her support for a bipartisan proposal to limit federal discretionary spending for Fiscal Year 2011.

[...]

"I have joined my Republican colleagues...in supporting...[t]his bipartisan proposal...because it essentially freezes...discretionary spending at last year's levels.

Seven paragraphs later:

Collins...announced that the [Appropriations] [C]ommittee has approved her request for $17.2 million for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery. This funding is included in the Fiscal Year 2011 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs spending bill.

Ironic? Self-negating? Totally contradictory?

Not at all. The above ellipses hide the fact that the proposed spending freeze covers non-defense discretionary spending only.

Because when the government spends money on defense, it doesn't actually cost anything.

Helping Old Friends

Sen. Collins' old friend Karl Rove is benefiting from the junior senator's lack of urgency when it comes to the campaign finance-related DISCLOSE Act:

A new political operation conceived by Republican operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie formed a spinoff group last month that--thanks in part to its ability to promise donors anonymity--has brought in more money in its first month than the parent organization has raised since it started in March.

The new group, called American Crossroads GPS, has been telling donors their contributions would be used to dig up dirt on Congressional Democrats' "expense account abuses" and to frame the BP oil spill as "Obama's Katrina."

The GPS group pulled in $5.1 million in June, its first month in operation.

Mission accomplished?

The Collins Playbook

--1. Embrace progressive priorities. (E.g. health care reform, pro-environment policies, campaign funding transparency.)

--2. When Republicans are in power, lament (quietly and infrequently) the paucity of opportunities to advance these progressive goals. Then vote the Republican position down the line, even when it moves the country in the opposite direction.

--3. When Democrats are in power and bills advancing these priorities take shape, nitpick, distort and obfuscate.

Explain that you still support the goal in theory, but complain about a minor provision of the bill that even competent reporters won't want to take the time to examine. Be sure to suggest that the provision hurts "small business."

Feel free to echo false conservative interest group-sponsored talking points and generally misrepresent the position of legislation proponents.

--4. If the legislation remains popular with Mainers at this point, drop the discussion of substance and critique the process. Impute bad faith to the bill's advocates and accuse them of being partisan.

Complain that they've failed to accommodate unspecified Republican concerns. Suggest that the lawmaking process has been too secretive. Or, conversely, that there hasn't been sufficient behind-the-scenes work on the bill for it to be ready for debate out in the open.

--5. If, after all this, the legislation is still popular in Maine, argue that now just isn't the right time to pass it. Outline other, more pressing concerns. Suggest that the issue needs to be studied more. Call for the process to start again from scratch. (If necessary, flee the country.)

--6. If the legislation seems likely to pass despite all these efforts, do your best to water it down and undercut it. Use the debate as an opportunity to advance conservative memes and to attack the president.

--7. Finally, when it comes time to vote, consider the following: How important do Republican colleagues, corporate allies and potential donors consider the defeat of the bill? Will voting for the bill result in enhanced Capitol Hill power and prestige? Weigh these competing factors and come to a decision.

(Don't worry about the views of Mainers. The state's media outlets will do their best to keep voters in the dark.)

More DISCLOSE Act

It's important to keep in mind that the discussion of Sen. Collins' disingenuousness and bad faith about campaign finance reform isn't academic. Collins is actually in a very good position to call the shots here.

Specifically: If Collins works to block the reform bill from coming to the floor, it's hard to see how it passes either now or anytime soon--since there will likely be more Republican senators in the next session of Congress.

By contrast, if Collins actually lives up to her rhetorical commitments to Maine voters and backs the bill, it has an excellent chance of becoming law.

The stakes really that clear; Collins can ratifying a system of corporate-dominated elections or she can reject it.

The choice--between advancing the cause of good government and being a loyal Republican partisan--couldn't be more stark.

Real and Fake Priorities

During her 2008 race, Sen. Collins often lamented the duration and expense of modern political campaigns. She bemoaned the influence of interest groups and third-party advertising. She even pledged to shun support from outside attack groups.

So, in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent Citizens United decision, which opened the door to a limitless flood of outside money in elections, it made sense that Collins would call for new reforms. As a spokesman told The Hill:

"As a co-sponsor of the 2002 campaign reform law, Sen. Collins was disappointed that the Supreme Court struck down so many key provisions of this bipartisan legislation," Kelley said.

"She believes that it is important that any future campaign finance laws include strong transparency provisions so the American public knows who is contributing to a candidate's campaign, as well as who is funding communications in support of or in opposition to a political candidate or issue."

Several months later, with legislation taking shape to do exactly that, one would expect the junior senator to be one of its most ardent supporters. Right?

Well, not exactly:

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a leading proponent of greater campaign-finance restrictions in the past, is taking issue with a bill imposing transparency in political advertisements.

[...]

In a statement, Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley said Collins believes the public has a right to know who is contributing to campaigns but has concerns that the [DISLOSE Act] gives an unfair political advantage to unions over corporations.

[...]

In addition, Collins's spokesman said the timing of the bill should not take precedent to more pressing economic matters.

"Rather than rushing to change complex campaign finance laws mid-cycle in a manner that clearly favors one political party, Congress should remain focused on addressing the economic crisis and high unemployment rate," Kelley said.

(Anyone else having flashbacks to the health care debate, when the junior senator thought the Obama plan was pretty good until it was time to actually go ahead and pass it? At which point she registered a series of hazy and unfounded complaints about the legislation, while also groaning about its timing? Ah, the memories.)

On the substance--the charge that the bill favors unions over corporations--here's David Vance, of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, via e-mail:

One of the provisions that House Republicans criticized deals with strengthening the prohibition in current law on government contractors' efforts to influence the outcome of elections. They claimed that the provision did not include unions. That is both incorrect and an inaccurate comparison...

Nonetheless, we encourage Senator Collins to address her specific issues with the legislation with the sponsors. It is not a perfect piece of legislation as the sponsors will freely admit, but the alternative of turning a blind eye to a flood of corporate and union treasury funds--much of it anonymous--in the coming election would be disastrous.

Here's Trevor Potter, a former Republican FEC Commissioner, tackling the same criticism:

The bill requires funding disclosure for all election advertising--union and corporate.

In previous elections, unions and corporations spent millions of dollars on TV ads "paid for" by groups with patriotic-sounding names--leaving viewers with no idea of who was behind them. Under the DISCLOSE Act, these ads have to identify their actual funders.

That is the most important element of the bill--and it applies equally to unions and corporations.

The bill prohibits those with federal contracts larger than $7 million from spending treasury funds for independent expenditures and electioneering communications. The treatment is identical for unions and corporations.

[...]

Based on the legislative language's equality of treatment, claims of union favoritism seem to be unsupported efforts to discredit the bill and stave off its primary goal: disclosure of those underwriting the massive independent expenditure campaigns that are coming to dominate our elections. (Emphasis mine.)

In short, Susan Collins is up to her old tricks--putting conservative orthodoxy and Republican electoral strategy ahead of sound policy and the will of Maine voters.

Loyal Republican that she is, Collins knows that the new "anything goes" campaign finance reality is just fine with her corporate allies. And her Republican colleagues. And that denying President Obama another victory can only help GOP electoral prospects.

Which is why it's necessary for Collins to trot out the "it's not the right time" talking point. (Anyone remember Collins advancing that line of argument during the debate over any of the Bush administration's major initiatives?)

And in terms of the timing, as Vance notes, again via e-mail:

It was the U.S. Supreme Court that changed the rules mid-cycle and...8 in 10 Americans were outraged by that decision to allow unlimited corporate and union treasury funds into our elections.

That decision ignored precedent and a century's worth of law to curb corporate and union abuses of the democratic process dating back to the age of the Robber Barons and staggering corruption in Washington...This legislation will address those concerns. (Emphasis mine.)

An above-the-fray, non-ideological moderate with a strong commitment to clean elections would agree.

But Susan Collins simply isn't that legislator--if she ever was. And she hasn't been for a long, long time.