“In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.” Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), co-sponsor of the Toomey-Manchin background check bill.
Shameful.
Pigheaded.
Intransigent.
Disgraceful.
Dishonorable.
Contemptuous.
Disdainful.
There’s not much to say about the disgusting failure of the United States Senate to muster sixty votes to expand background checks for gun purchases that hasn’t been said already. Suffice it to say that if we can’t even agree to close a loophole that allows dangerous people such as felons and certified nutcases to purchase firearms through a legal seller, there can be no better example of our country’s abysmal dysfunction.
I’m not a big fan of Maureen Dowd but a recent column on President Obama’s failure to use his office effectively to get a better result on the gun bill did resonate with me. To some extent I accept the sharp rebuttal from his defenders that it’s unfair to blame Obama when the real problem is a radical GOP that provided just five votes for the expanded background checks and only one (Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois) for bans on assault weapons and large capacity magazines. The fact remains, however, that in addition to the four Democrats who voted down the expanded background check, ten also failed to support a ban on high capacity magazines and fifteen the banning of assault weapons – both of which were used in the mass shooting of children and teachers at Newtown.
Yet just four months into his second term, the president overall seems to have reached a dead end, and with him the country. The goals he set out in his most recent State of the Union address are laudable and dead right for the country – universal pre-school, significant investments in infrastructure and scientific/technological research and development to name a few key ones – but seem completely out of reach in the current political environment. And the president has suffered from a number of self-inflicted wounds as well.
In the debt ceiling debacle of 2011, for example, which yielded the monstrosity that is sequestration, it is clear he miscalculated the willingness of Republicans to tolerate steep across the board defense cuts which, in turn, led him to agree to omit tax increases from the automatic trigger, as he had originally proposed. We now have harsh cuts to worthwhile programs in the discretionary budget that disproportionately affect children and the poor. To add insult to injury, Democrats have retreated the first time the public at large actually felt the pain of sequester cuts and, in the process, handed the GOP a significant victory.
Another example is the fiscal cliff negotiations wherein he effectively held all the cards yet won a paltry $600 billion in new revenues; inequities such as the favorable tax rates enjoyed by hedge fund managers and the likes of Mitt Romney on his unearned income remain.
And the president seems almost passive in the face of the outrageous refusal of Senate Republicans to allow his nominations for federal district and appellate court vacancies and even some agency heads an up or down vote. Added to which is the fact that he has been slow to send up nominees for many such appointments. Things will hardly get better in the future as Republicans become increasingly confident of gaining control of the Senate in next year’s midterm elections. This does not bode well should a Supreme Court vacancy arise.
That the country is stuck in neutral is indisputable. And while it’s possible another Democratic incumbent with keener political and negotiating skills could have done better, you really have to wonder how much difference it would have made. The GOP has moved so far to the right it really has become a radical party, home to anti-tax and pro-gun zealots as well as Tea Party fanatics. It is clearly more intransigent and obstructionist with a Democrat in the White House now than it was even in the Bill Clinton years; to the point of a willingness to be destructive to the country’s economic interests if doing so furthers its ideological aims.
The reason is not hard to see in considering the yawning chasm between Blue and Red America, a development even the vapid editorial writers of The Washington Post have noted. And the GOP, driven by a base that brooks no compromise, will have ample opportunities for even more mischief in the days to come, what with the debt ceiling looming again. And next year when Obamacare kicks in and suffers inevitable teething troubles, the situation will be just ripe for exploitation by a party that couldn’t care less if millions of Americans don’t have adequate health insurance.
Like I said, with Democrats trying to move us forward and Republicans taking every opportunity to drag us back, we are stuck in neutral.
And what does all this presage? Merely that if you think things are bad now, just wait.
James Fallows has written about the anti-democratic nature of the filibuster a few times for the The Atlantic. In this one he cites a Politico story and explains how it fails to distinguish between breaking a filibuster and passing a bill:
I recognize that this theme now lacks novelty value. But here is why it matters to track an engineered usage-change as it is underway:
It takes 51 votes to “pass the Senate.”
It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster.
Through the past six-plus years, the GOP minority-power strategy in the Senate has deliberately aimed to make the filibuster, historically a rarity, seem routine and acceptable. Every news account that presents the super-majority 60-vote threshold as the “necessary bar” for Senate passage, and a majority of 55 votes as “certain defeat,” ratifies this strategy. Especially in an “informed” insider political-specialist publication.
Fallows go on to say that it doesn’t take a lot of extra print to distinguish between the votes necessary to break a filibuster and the votes necessary to pass a bill.
It’s not just the media that needs to make this distinction clear. Democrats need to use the words “Republican” and “filibuster” in the same sentence much more often than they do. President Obama and Senator Harry Reid and his fellow Democratic senators need to stop saying things like, “We aren’t able to get the votes necessary to move the bill forward” and start saying things like, “We have the 51 votes required to pass this bill, but once again the Republicans are threatening a filibuster in order to kill a bill that a majority of Americans support.”
If the Democrats change their language, the change to the way the media speaks about the votes will follow.
We at harikari have written much about guns, gun control, and the need to enact laws that make it more difficult for criminals and mentally unsound people to purchase guns. After the Newtown tragedy, Americans seemed to have had enough of the bullying by the NRA and they called for the expansion of mandatory background checks for nearly all gun-sale transactions. The Manchin-Toomey background-check bill was supported by nearly 90% of Americans. Polls show that a majority of Americans also supported a ban on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.
On Wednesday a bill to expand background checks was filibustered by Republicans, so it needed 60 votes to move forward. The senate voted for the bill 54-46. Yes, a clear majority of senators voted to move forward with the background-check bill but because of the Republican filibuster, the bill was killed. The senate also voted “down” the amendment to limit the capacity of ammunition clips 54-46.
90% of Democrats voted in favor of the bill, and 90% of Republicans voted against the bill that 90% of Americans supported.
For some smart commentary about how undemocratic the senate is and how the arguments of gun-control opponents are intellectually unsound, watch these two excellent segments from Thursday’s edition of The Daily Show.
First Jon,
and now John…
The United Nations General Assembly voted 154-3 with 20 abstentions for the first international treaty to regulate the global arms trade. The treaty is designed principally to curb the supply of arms to terrorists, rogue regimes and human rights abusers such as Assad in Syria, warlords such as the groups in Africa who kidnap young boys to become brutal soldiers, and organized crime.
The United States played a key role in shepherding the treaty through to a vote, yet will likely not ratify it, which requires a two-thirds majority in the US Senate, because of opposition from paranoid Republican lawmakers doing the bidding of the even more paranoid leadership of the NRA.
These paranoids, you see, continue to believe, against all the evidence and the credible assurances to the contrary contained in a definitive paper by the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights, that the treaty could be used to supersede their rights under the Second Amendment.
In opposing the treaty, the GOP and NRA zealots join such worthies as North Korea, Iran and Syria who all voted against it in the UN.
It should come as a shock that senior Republican senators would join the truly deranged people who lead the NRA to oppose a treaty whose only opponents in the UN were countries which have regimes we count among the craziest and/or most murderous in the world. It should, but of course it doesn’t.
Even as we lose our way at the national level in the quest for stronger firearm controls in the wake of the Newtown massacre and the appalling level of gun violence in America, the legislatures and governors of a handful of states have demonstrated political courage and leadership in passing sensible restrictions on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and tougher background checks on gun buyers.
Kudos to New York, Connecticut, Colorado, and Maryland (the latter’s to be signed into law shortly). All of them deserve enormous credit but Colorado, in particular, should be singled out for praise because, as the resident of another western state, I know how especially tough it is to overcome the opposition of gun zealots in this region. Here in Washington, for example, efforts to pass meaningful changes recently met with a dismal and shameful failure.
Laudable as the efforts of individual states are, however, they cannot substitute for tougher national regulations and here the picture is bleak and becoming bleaker. In the US Senate, the bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are unlikely to even get a vote, but are dead anyway whether they do or not. The expanded background check’s fate is uncertain but the NRA’s opposition to even that commonsense measure means it faces an uphill fight.
In fact, if any bill at all emerges from the Senate, it’s likely to be so watered down and toothless as to be virtually worthless. And then the GOP-led House will probably kill or change it so drastically that it will make things worse rather than better.
By acting in a meaningful way, New York, Connecticut, Colorado and Maryland have remembered and honored the victims of gun violence in America, including the small children and their teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary whose awful deaths were the catalyst for change. Shame on Congress for its failure to do the same.
The competing visions of the Democratic and Republican parties are clearly on display in their respective budget blueprints for the next decade. The Democratic vision includes the preservation of a strong role for government in providing a decent social safety net for the nation’s disadvantaged. The GOP on the other hand would slash government programs for the poor, cancel the expansion of health care insurance to millions of uninsured Americans, cut taxes on the rich and continue the sort of deregulatory policies that facilitated the financial meltdown and subsequent Great Recession of 2008.
It seems reasonable to ask where the GOP’s path would lead us and for the answer, a glimpse is provided by consulting Gallup’s annual Wellbeing Index, useful insight into the state of the states in terms of health, happiness (or misery), access to government services and other measurements.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the most miserable states are predominantly in the South, with their elevated rates of poverty, violence, medically uninsured and low level of government services. Not coincidentally, the South is the heart and soul of today’s Republican Party. Take Kentucky, the home state of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He has a lot to say about the need for small government, and his red state is certainly an exemplar of GOP ideology so let’s see how that’s working out (thumbnail sketch from MSN Money 24/7):
Most miserable No. 2: Kentucky
Well-being index score: 62.7
Life expectancy: 76.2 years (seventh lowest)
Obesity: 29.7% (sixth highest)
Median household income: $41,141 (fourth lowest)
Adult population with high school diploma or higher: 83.1% (sixth lowest)
Kentucky has one of the lowest proportions of adults with at least a high school diploma, and the state’s median income is the fourth-lowest among all states. Kentucky ranked second from the bottom in terms of physical health.
Twenty-nine percent of state residents indicated they had health problems that prevented them from doing age-appropriate activities, a higher proportion than residents of any state except West Virginia.
Not a pretty picture and it mirrors the situation in most other Southern states. What’s more their record has been consistent. The region has promoted its business-friendly, non-unionized, low tax environment for many years, yet as evinced in the data on Kentucky – fourth lowest median income in the nation and sixth lowest percentage of adults with at least a high school diploma – the failure of southern states to invest sufficiently in their human capital continues to keep them mired at the bottom in most measurements of wellbeing.
Yet the failure of their low-tax, low government service model at home has not deterred McConnell and the GOP from trying to impose their failed ideology on the rest of the country. Most of us I suspect would rather not go there; turning out to vote on the next election day and every one thereafter is one way to make sure we don’t.
I read an article in The Washington Post today that explains the differences in the gun bill yet to be resolved by the Chuck Schumer, representing the Democrats, and Tom Coburn, representing the Republicans. It all gets down to the issue of keeping records of background checks. Without a requirement to keep the background checks on file, how would we know that anyone actually complied with the law? How would law enforcement be able to track guns used in crimes?
Fear mongerers like Wayne LaPierre say that if people keep records, then the government will collect all the records and eventually send armed government agents to the homes of gun owners and confiscate all their guns. No rational person actually believes that – not in this gun-culture country.
To me the recordkeeping requirement is no different than the law that says when I go to a pharmacy to buy cold pills like Sudafed that contain ingredients criminals can extract to make meth, I have to show my ID, provide my address, and sign a purchase log at the pharmacy. The government doesn’t collect information about every transaction. If there is a crime and the police need to investigate the distribution of pills used to make meth, then they go to pharmacies and look at records. Same thing is true if I purchase a keg of beer. I have to provide the same information, but the police don’t bother with collecting the data from stores unless they bust a party where the beer in the keg I bought was served to minors. Then they want to know who bought the keg.
The Democrats believe that background checks must be done for all gun sales, and records of the checks and sales must be kept on file. Otherwise the law is absurd and useless.
So let your senators know that no matter what the NRA or Ted Nugent says, you think background checks must be required for all gun sales.
If you aren’t sure what to write on their contact pages, well here’s what I wrote, and you are free to use it and edit it to fit your own personal style.
Senator [insert name here],
I read today how Senator Schumer and Senator Coburn are at an impasse in moving a gun-control bill forward because many Republicans have the completely irrational idea that a law requiring the keeping of records of background checks for gun purchases would enable the government to collect all the data and send armed government agents to the homes of law-abiding citizens to confiscate their lawfully procured firearms. Really that’s what they think because that’s what Wayne LaPierre tells them to think. Well they are so wrong it’s not even worth discussing but, being a US Senator, I guess you have to. So please speak clearly, often, and loudly about how background checks would be used to keep firearms out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, and that law-abiding citizens are in no danger of having their guns confiscated by government agents no matter what Wayne LaPierre or Ted Nugent says.
It is of utmost importance that our country adopts reasonable, rational laws to try and prevent as many people who should not have firearms because of criminal records or known mental problems from obtaining them.
And yes I know that banning assault weapons again is just crazy, because everybody should be allowed to own whatever kind of gun they want. That’s the American way! Right? No it’s not. You know it and I know it, and we both know that a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammo clips that are designed to kill the most people in the most efficient way won’t get through the current congress.
So let’s start with background checks and let’s stand OUR ground.
Cheers,
[Your Name here]
Four bills that seek to curb gun violence in America made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee where they confront an uncertain fate in the full body. It is unclear which, if any, will prevail in an up or down vote even if Republicans don’t decide to filibuster.
Only one of them received significant GOP votes in committee, a relatively non-contentious bill that would increase funding for school safety measures. The most muscular bills, to expand background checks to private sales and a reinstatement of the assault weapon ban which includes curbs on large capacity magazines, received no Republican votes and face a particularly hard struggle.
The story has been the same in states such as Colorado, Connecticut, New York, Oregon and Washington State where gun control legislation proposed by Democrats has won minimal to non-existent support from Republicans. Some such as New York, Connecticut and Colorado have managed to pass meaningful and commonsense restrictions regardless, or seem close to doing so. In Oregon the struggle goes on. And in Washington, my home state, the effort failed.
Most states of course aren’t even bothering to try to strengthen their gun laws and, truth be told, while state laws are laudable and worthwhile, they cannot substitute for tough national laws. And the NRA has little to fear on that score, not with a GOP essentially in its pocket and a Democratic Party still fearful of the gun lobby’s power.
The ultimate responsibility for the looming failure in the other Washington, however, rests with the people of this nation. Even in the wake of the most horrendous mass shooting in our history, we have failed to generate the outrage and demand for action that is surely warranted. No political or electoral consequences will accrue to Republicans and the handful of Democrats who will, shamefully, join them, who will tow the NRA line to defeat even the most sensible restrictions such as banning military-style semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines that afford a deranged gunman or criminal inordinate firepower, or a universal background check.
We will prove to the world once again that we are a dysfunctional nation that has lost the ability to agree upon much less address our greatest problems, whether it is the budget, health care or our stunning level of gun violence.
Fault for this lies in part with arcane senate rules that require super majorities to get anything done and a GOP willing and able to abuse those rules to an unprecedented degree. And thanks to a supine United States Supreme Court, the GOP’s gerrymandering ways have managed to win them a 33-seat majority in the House of Representatives despite the fact that they lost the popular vote.
However, it is also true that we have become a nation tyrannized by a minority of fanatics whether it is the Tea Party who dominate today’s GOP or the NRA and fellow gun-zealots, whose power to paralyze our public policy apparatus is disproportionate to their numbers but highly destructive to the nation’s well-being.
Unless and until we are willing to confront and defeat the extremists in our body politic, we will never make this a better country for our children.
In the wake of the mass shooting of primary school children in Newtown, Connecticut, we were told that legislative reforms of our gun laws would be hard given the 47% of households with firearms.
It turns out that this number was inaccurate and that the correct figure is 34%. Interestingly the percentage has declined from 50% in the 1970s and has been particularly marked in southern and western states where the gun culture is strongest.
This means that 66% of households in America don’t have a gun of any sort, yet their voice in the gun-control debate is all too often drowned out by the screams, squawks and histrionics of the gun zealots.
Now it’s true that not all of the 34% are as unreasonable as the NRA leadership and the more fanatical elements of the gun lobby, and are open to some new restrictions. Similarly, there are undoubtedly some among the 66% who do not own firearms who nonetheless oppose government regulation.
Nonetheless, we hear way too much about the rights of the 34% and too little about the effect of lax regulation of firearms on the lives of the 66%. The Second Amendment is not an absolute right, and the gun lobby will be sorely disappointed if they believe even this conservative Supreme Court will set aside laws aimed at curbing the firepower of deranged gunmen or criminals and making it more difficult for them to arm in the first place.
We should applaud the political courage of legislators in New York who passed tough new common-sense restrictions, and the continuing efforts of legislators, in Connecticut, Colorado, Oregon and Washington State. We should also salute the ongoing efforts in the United States Senate. In all cases, it is Democrats who are striving to bring at least some sanity to this issue and Republicans providing the head wind as lapdogs of the NRA gun-zealots.
But when the next mass-shooting massacre happens as it surely will, which side will be able to look in the mirror and honestly say they did their best to prevent it?
