I certainly don’t mean to start yet another fight with the 4and20 blackbirds blog over the relative merits of Senator Tester and Representative Rehberg, but it’s hard to overlook the analysis offered today which suggests that Senator Tester is somehow trailing in the Senate race by a few points because he’s taken money from the “wrong constituency.”
It’s not only same tired argument that’s been trotted every few months, but it fundamentally ignores the dynamics of this race and the role of money in contemporary politics. While it would be wonderful if Senator Tester could choose not to take donations from people affiliated with corporations at all, unilaterally disarming against Denny Rehberg and letting him impose his idiotic worldview on the Senate for six years would be far more damaging than taking money from banks, law firms, cable companies, and the League of Conservation Voters—who are by far Tester’s largest contributors.
It’s also simply unfair to suggest that Tester is somehow beholden to big banks, and just willfully blind to suggest that Rehberg wouldn’t be far, far worse. There’s a reason that Rehberg is getting the support of Citizens United—and it’s not his position on the Constitution.
There’s a relatively simply set of reasons that Rehberg is marginally ahead in the polls. Montana is a state that leans Republican—and Rehberg has more incumbent advantage going into the race. In fact, rather than suggesting “that something fundamental is amiss” in the Tester campaign, the fact the Tester is within 2-3 points, given a 8 point GOP advantage in the state, suggest that his campaign is right where it needs to be to be competitive.
To remain competitive with the massive influx of Super PAC money that Represenative Rehberg will have at his “uncoordinated” disposal, Senator Tester will likely need to outraise Rehberg by 2:1.
From the outset, winning this seat was going to be a challenge for Tester, but eschewing large donations and driving around the state in a VW wagon fueled only by self-righteousness and biodiesel would make it impossible for him to win.
Ideological and financial purity may warm the heart, but they certainly doesn’t win elections. For my money, I think it’s in the interests of Montanans to send a Senator back to Washington who doesn’t believe that corporations are people, who believes in the minimum wage and the rights of workers, and who fights for the middle class.
While Representative Rehberg was voting entirely for the sake of the press yesterday, Senators Tester and Baucus were working to do something to restore fairness to America’s tax system—voting to end massive tax breaks to the oil and gas industry. The measure was designed to encourage development of alternative energy and reduce the deficit:
The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., would target more than $2 billion in annual tax subsidies to the so-called Big Five oil companies — BP, Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips.
Had the measure passed Congress, about half of the $24 billion in savings over 10 years would have been reinvested in tax breaks for biodiesel, wind, cellulosic ethanol and energy-efficiency programs.The other half would have been used to reduce the federal deficit.
Now Senate Republicans who killed the measure argue that these ending these tax breaks to oil companies would increase the price of gas at the pump. As is usually the case, though, they ignored the evidence. The Congressional Research Service says that’s simply not true:
For the purpose of economic analysis, the repeal of the Section 199 deduction is equivalent to an increase in the tax on corporate profit. It is widely accepted that a proportional change in taxes on profit affects neither the firm’s incremental costs or revenues, and therefore does not change its behavior with respect to output. Since output does not change, there is little reason to believe that the price of oil, or gasoline, consumers face will increase.
No one here argues with the idea that industry should be able to make a profit, but it’s hard to accept a system which allows massive, multinational oil companies to pay a much lower rate of taxes than small businesses pay. I think that the five big oil companies have probably reached a point at which they no longer need tax incentives to survive. I suspect they’ll survive with $125 billion in annual profits just fine.
But it was those corporations that Senate Republicans voted to defend yesterday. Not Main Street, not family-run businesses, but massive corporations who recorded $137 billion in profits last year. It’s little wonder that Republicans have received 88 per cent of oil and gas contributions this election cycle.
Does anyone have any doubt about how Representative Rehberg would have voted yesterday, given the $450,000 he has received from the oil and gas industry during his do-nothing career, including $141,000 in this cycle alone?
While Representative Rehberg would like to frame his ‘no’ vote on the Ryan budget today as
some kind of stand on behalf of Montana’s seniors, his continued failure to present any alternatives is yet another sign of his willingness to put politics ahead of practical solutions. It’s so bad that even the rabidly conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page called him out on it today:
Mr. Rehberg thinks he’s inoculating himself on Medicare, and he even issued a press release saying “I simply refuse to gamble with something as important as Medicare.” The real gamble is to continue on the current path that will ruin Medicare, and Mr. Rehberg’s vote suggests he’s from the remaindered pile of the GOP’s Tom DeLay status-quo wing.
Rehberg voted against seven budget proposals in the past twenty four hours. The only budget proposal he’s supported in the past year was the House’s radical Cut, Cap, and Balance Plan, which would have devastated Medicare while risking economic calamity, according to conservative Norman Ornstein:
Best Picture: Most Irresponsible Legislative Proposal of the Year. Here the clear winner is the balanced budget constitutional amendment, which has been endorsed by all 47 Senate Republicans. …. But a constitutional requirement to balance the federal budget is a virtual guarantee that we will have economic catastrophes that will make the Great Depression look like a picnic. Here is the problem, which should be evident to anybody who has taken Econ 101. When the economy sags, the initial remedy is what we call countercyclical policy — counter the downturn with a jump-start via economic stimulus. Every major country acted in 2008 to do just that, and by consensus avoided a global disaster far more serious than we got.
That’s Representative Rehberg: casting a cynically, politically-motivated vote designed to appeal to Montana’s seniors, despite his commitment to a budget proposal which would have been far worse for them.
Writing about Representative Rehberg always presents an interesting challenge. He never actually
does anything, so you have to discern his beliefs from votes he takes on other member’s bills and amendments. Yesterday was another day which revealed just how Representative Rehberg thinks, as he voted against online privacy for employees.
Rehberg voted yesterday against an amendment which would have protected employees from being required to reveal their Facebook passwords to employers. While it may seem difficult to imagine that any employer would do that, Representative Rehberg should know better. It’s happened here in Montana, most notably when the City of Bozeman briefly asked for online passwords from job applicants before a firestorm of controversy erupted.
It seems that Representative Rehberg is more interested in the rights of corporations than your right to privacy. Given Rehberg’s proclivity to tweet rather than govern, I’d say that his employees—the people of Montana—deserve his online passwords after this vote.
My guess? It’s probably abcd or boatbad.
We’ve discussed the disastrously bad idea that is Dennis Rehberg’s proposed federal land
grab of Montana’s northern border more than a few times , but it’s got to be even worse for the wannabe-Senator when the criticism is coming from within his own party.
Steve Daines, who backed out of the Senate race to defer to Congressman Rehberg blasted Rehberg’s support of H.R. 1505 today on the Voices of Montana radio show:
I share concerns as we see—as we deal with the threats abroad, here. But also ensuring that we do not compromise the rights of the American people. And, you know, there’s been a couple of pieces of legislation out there—one related to border security and so forth, here, where it’s going to allow the federal government to have what I believe to be more power than needed here, you know, extending 100 miles south of [Montana’s northern] border here, which puts a pretty big dent here in Montana. And when I start seeing those things, I realize we’ve got people back in Washington that don’t understand the importance here of states’ rights, and the importance here of ensuring that—I want to see Montanans taking care of the state. We don’t need to just have a bunch of federal bureaucrats and federal authorities here usurping the rights and the authorities here we have here in the state of Montana.
Montanans of all political persuasions—left and right—know that this is a terrible bill, just as we knew that REAL ID and the Patriot Act were incredible, unwarranted extensions of federal power over civil liberties.
Why can’t Dennis Rehberg ever seem to see that these bills are wrong?
