Max Baucus, senator of K street, is about to stick it to us again. Remember how he and Harry Reid handled health care reform? While Harry was out telling the base that a public option was on the table, it never was, Max was dragging the process out into a painful and tortuous process that gave the Repugs plenty of time to attack and misinform, while also giving the Insurance companies plenty of time to make sure they got everything they wanted. All under the cover of trying to get Olympia Snow and Joe Lieberman to support the legislation.
This is how the Republican lite Blue Dogs do sooooo much damage to the Democratic party. Look at all the "they're all the same" diaries that appear here on DailyKos and get recd to the rec list. Because of a few Blue Dogs, people throughout the country paint all the Dems and Repugs with the same brush.
Let's take a look at what the NYT is saying about the Baucus tax lobby connection.
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At least 28 aides who have worked for Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration — more than any other current member of Congress, according to the analysis of lobbying filings performed for The New York Times.
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Like Ms. Baker, many of those lobbyists have already saved their clients millions — in some cases, billions — of dollars after Mr. Baucus backed their requests to extend certain corporate tax perks, provisions that were adopted as part of the so-called fiscal cliff legislation in January. Baucus aides who later became lobbyists helped financial firms save $11.2 billion in tax deferments and helped secure a $222 million tax benefit that is shared with the liquor industry.
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But he often bucks his party’s leadership. Last month, for example, he voted against the Democrats’ budget proposal for 2014, which included nearly $1 trillion in new revenues. He also favored the Bush administration’s tax cuts in 2001 for Americans including the wealthy, putting him at odds with many Democrats.
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Several of the lobbyists regularly fly to Big Sky, Mont., for weekend fund-raising retreats that Mr. Baucus hosts, or attend more intimate events in Washington like a gathering last month near the Capitol, where Paul Wilkins, Mr. Baucus’s chief of staff, talked about the millions of dollars Mr. Baucus will need to raise for his re-election campaign next year.
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Last year, he introduced a plan — most of which was eventually passed into law as part of the fiscal cliff deal in January — that contained more than a dozen tax breaks, some of them pushed by clients who had retained Washington lobbying firms that employ his former aides or political advisers.Shannon Finley, who served as a political consultant and fund-raiser for Mr. Baucus before joining a lobbying firm in Washington, was hired in late 2011 by Beam, the liquor industry giant, to protect a federal tax break that it gets a cut of for producing its Cruzan rum in the United States Virgin Islands.
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With a debate on rewriting the tax code to streamline and simplify it expected to start this year — leaders in both the House and the Senate are working on their own drafts — lobbying could reach levels like that of the 2009 debate over health care, which also was overseen in part by the Senate Finance Committee, with Mr. Baucus at the gavel. His staff is already hosting meetings with industry lobbyists, academics and outside parties to get advice on the tax package that the Senate Finance Committee is trying to create.
So President Obama is going to propose a budget that does some damage to Social Security and Medicare, in trade for closing tax loop-holes for corporations and the rich. Any effort to achieve those goals will have to go through the senate finance committee, who's chair is Max Baucus. Now how do you think that's going to end up?
What the hell is going through Obama's head? Why is he putting his neck, and the Democratic parties neck, on the line with cuts in Social Security and Medicare, for a change in tax policy that has absolutely NO chance of getting through the corrupt hands of Max Baucus? President Obama is heading for a legacy of a weak, inept negotiating president who would rather win a compromise that is wrong, than lose a fight that is right.
It's time for US to start pushing the 75% of Democratic senators who want to do the right thing but are afraid to stand up to the Dem leadership, and get them to revolt against the Dem leadership and demand an end to the corruption that they are going to get blamed for. We saw some effort with filibuster reform, but Harry Reid crushed them and sent them curled up in the fetal position in the corner. Our Dem senators need to understand that the best path to reelection will be to stand up against the corruption in the party, and stand up for reforming the senate so it represents more of the public and less corporations.
The Tea Party, rather the Oligarchs that manipulate them, made big changes in the Republican party. We Dems need a revolution in our party, and it has to start with junior senators who will rise up and fight against their own corrupt leadership!