The bankruptcy bill passed the House today.
Here's the roll call, it passed 302-126. No one broke ranks on the GOP side, and 73 Democrats voted Yea.
There was an earlier motion to "recommit with instructions", which basically means to allow more opportunity for amendments. It failed on almost a straight party-line vote. One Republican (Johnson, IL) broke ranks, and one Democrat (Boucher, WV) broke ranks.
There are some good data points for the online activists, though.
A coalition sprung up in the aftermath of the Senate vote.
DebtSlavery ended up able to pull together a lot of organizations, hold press conferences, and organize protests at the offices of several Representatives.
Today they released the following press release:
Progressive Leaders say Bankruptcy Bill Battle is Just the Beginning
Bankruptcy Bill Opponents Thank Congress Members Who Voted No, Promise to Hold Accountable Those Who Voted Yea, and Prepare for Upcoming Battles
Following Senate passage of the bankruptcy bill on March 10, Democrats.com and Progressive Democrats of America created a coalition at www.DebtSlavery.org to work against passage in the House.
Today that effort fell short by a vote of 302-126. But compared to the 90 Democrats who voted for a nearly identical bill in 2003, only 73 Democrats voted Yes this time. Of the 22 Democrats who campaigned for the bill and whom DebtSlavery.org targeted to change their votes, three reversed their positions and voted No - John Larson (D-CT), Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Adam Smith (D-WA) - while a fourth, Shelley Berkley (D-NV), did not vote.
When Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) proposed to return the bill to committee to make it less horrendous, her motion failed narrowly by a vote of 200- 229. The Democratic vote on that motion was 198 to 1, with only Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) joining Republicans.
"Working Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Rep. John Conyers and Rep. Barbara Lee for their leadership in this struggle," said Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com. "We also thank Rep. Lynn Woolsey for speaking against this bill in Wednesday's Democratic caucus, and Rep. Jim McDermott for speaking so eloquently against this outrage on the floor of the House. Those who rose to speak against the bill on Thursday deserve our thanks, including Rep. Bill Pascarell, who said he was switching from a Yea vote to a No, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi."
"But still we must ask: Where was Rep. Pelosi before today? Why did Minority Whip Steny Hoyer support this outrageous bill? Why did Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid even try to take credit for this Republican bill?" Fertik said.
"And why did 'New Democrats' Ellen Tauscher, Ron Kind, Artur Davis, and Joe Crowley push this bill on their colleagues? What party do they imagine they belong to? Who do they think elected them to Congress?" Fertik asked.
"DebtSlavery.org is just getting started. In three short weeks, we built a broad and determined coalition of progressives who will fight for economic justice and will fight against Republican class warfare from above. We have served notice to 'New Democrats' in the House and Senate that we will hold them accountable for selling their votes to Big Business and selling out America's working families," Fertik said.
"We will move on to new bread-and-butter battles, including the Paris Hilton Estate Tax Cut battle in the Senate, the Loan Shark Predatory Lending Act in the House, and the Gasoline Price Gouging Energy Bill. We will unite the Democratic base and reach out to grassroots Independents and Republicans who want to end Republican class warfare from above. We will give hardworking Americans a voice - and a choice," Fertik concluded.
"We will remember who voted against the Democratic base," said Tim Carpenter, Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America. "Those 73 House Democrats and 18 House Senators have a year in which to try to make up for this. It's hard to see how they'll be able to do it, but we'll be watching and remembering, and we'll be ready to promote challengers in 2006."
CONTACT:
David Swanson, Coordinator of www.DebtSlavery.org 202-329-7847, david@davidswanson.org
Bob Fertik, President of www.Democrats.com 718-424-7772, bob@democrats.com
Kevin Spidel, PDA Political Director, www.pdamerica.org 602-373-6990, kevin@pdamerica.org
The DebtSlavery.org coalition includes:
Democrats.com, Progressive Democrats of America, AFL-CIO, The Nation, National Organization for Women, American Progress Action Fund, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, People's Email Network, Public Citizen, Democracy Week, Black Commentator, Thom Hartmann Show, Milwaukee Labor Press, Politology, Fly By News, Billionaires for Bush, Evans Media USA, Take Back America, United Progressives for Democracy, Rapid Response Network, Public Campaign Action Fund, Progressive Populist, ACORN, Drum Major Institute, Campaign for America's Future.
Back when I first started writing about the need for a coalition, I said:
I honestly doubt that the blogosphere is yet powerful enough to really change this. But this does show that on some matters, the political battle is NOT left versus right, but grassroots versus... whatever kind of crap they're reacting to. And I'd like to see one good attempt at some bipartisan muscle-flexing from the blogosphere. If for nothing else, a benchmark of how far we've come and how far we have to go.
Politology got some great flash-in-the-pan coverage, including airplay on MSNBC, CNN, and Air America. Since politology is a weblog and not an actual organization with a staff, a lot of the attention died down pretty quickly, but it led other organizations to be more encouraged to work hard and oppose the bill. I continued to post action alerts and encourage people to contact their reps, which yielded some results. Reid was forced to release a defensive-sounding statement that his office refused to put in writing. DebtSlavery wrote articles for publication and organized more efforts against the bill, including the protests and press conference. MoveOn was originally intending to ignore the issue, but they came around and started a pledge campaign to fund radio ads.
And it actually made a difference. Not enough to change the result, but it's a start. It's a good data point. None of the A-list bloggers on the liberal side gave the politology or debtslavery efforts front-page coverage (despite repeated requests), but we still got some reps to switch their votes. With more attention, we might have had even better results, and even more reason to feel encouraged.
At this point, it's about taking names. Several of the Reps who voted Yea have a pattern of doing stuff like this. A couple of them (Hooley and Boucher that I know of) also voted to end the estate tax. It's up to each person to decide how they want to use the knowledge - either pester the reps to get their act together, or start supporting primary opponents. We should also thank the Reps that switched their votes. I got some satisfaction that two Reps from my northwest region came around. (Still po'd at Wu and Hooley, though.)
It's obvious that blog power and online activist power is increasing, not decreasing. We got a data point, and the trend is still rising. It'll get better.