WSJ Says Bayh Wants to Shake Up Status Quo By Protecting Business Interests
Here’s a curious report from The Wall Street Journal’s Naftali Bendavid and Greg Hitt:
Mr. Bayh and his group are well positioned to force changes in the president’s budget and on other contentious issues such as health care and climate change. Their stated goal is to rein in deficits and to protect business interests.
Without their votes, Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders don’t have a majority in the Senate, let alone the 60 votes needed to break Republican filibusters. That gives Mr. Bayh and his group an opportunity to assert themselves.
“We really do need to change business as usual,” Mr. Bayh said in an interview Monday. “People want results.”
The presumption here being that over the past eight years, the political powerhouses in Washington were insufficiently solicitous of business interests, so now we need to change things up by—at last!—paying attention to what executives want? That seems like a strange idea to me. But the Journal has on-the-record quotes from Bayh calling for “change” and “results” whereas the thing about business interests is just the reporter’s characterization. So perhaps Bendavid and Hitt have this wrong, and Bayh doesn’t actually think that the change we need is greater protection for business. Meanwhile, Bayh tells Politico that progressives have nothing to worry about:
“We literally have no agenda,” Bayh shot back. “How can they be threatened by a group that has taken no policy positions?”
This is a pretty good question.
39 Responses to “WSJ Says Bayh Wants to Shake Up Status Quo By Protecting Business Interests”
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March 26th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Ah. So THAT explains why they would stall a budget bill that would make significant changes in government policy.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Their stated goal is to rein in deficits and to protect business interests
We literally have no agenda,” Bayh shot back. “How can they be threatened by a group that has taken no policy positions?
Talk about a walking talking contradiction.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
paying attention to what executives want?
Executives are just employees. Powerful and wealthy? Perhaps. But if someone is supporting business interests it sounds like they are paying more attention to what the owners of capital want. Employees are usually just an afterthought.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I think the president is just a lot smarter, politically and in every other way, than this guy. Hopefully the outcomes will reflect that.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Of course they have no policy positions. This has been the problem with “centrists” for years – their positions depend largely on the political dynamics at the moment policy is being made.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
“We literally have no agenda,” Bayh shot back. “How can they be threatened by a group that has taken no policy positions?”
Never stopped the GOP.
Aren’t they coming out with a budget proposal today?
I bet it’s all about TAX CUTS.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
N.B. the many corporate boards (including health insurers and pharma) on which Bayh’s wife sits:
http://www.nndb.com/people/821/000164329/
March 26th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Bayh gets tons of money from Wall Street. I doubt the Journal’s editors are just engaging in wishful thinking.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Because we saw during the stimulus fight that what the agendaless moderates like Bayh do is they take a sensible progressive proposal and change it in thoughtless ways so it costs less money and is less effective.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Q: “We literally have no agenda. How can they be threatened by a group that has taken no policy positions?”
A: Because Evan Bayh has voted for more Republican amendments than any other Senate Democrat in this Congress.
Shorter Dan Quayle 2.0, “Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin’ eyes?”
March 26th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Evan Bayh, always the first to offer to pick up the soap when showering with corporate interests.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Also, Bayh just admitted that triangulation is his only guide. If triangulation is your only guide then you can never accomplish anything of substance if the opposition is strong enough to shift the goal posts in the debate. Radical Republicanism is a kind of judo that lets the energy of “moderate” Dems destroy the policy initiatives of Dems in general.
Thanks for NOTHING DQ 2.0.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Question: “How can they be threatened by a group that has taken no policy positions?”
Answer: By forming a group whose official, publicly-pronounced values and interests are at odds with progressive values and interests, I’d wager.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Bayh is a douchebag Democrat. He really feells more comfortable pushing a Republican agenda, but for historical reasons ended up in the Democratic Party.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
If they have no policy positions, then for what purpose have they organized themselves? Monthly cake parties?
March 26th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Monthly cake parties?
TV time and arslikhan from Very Serious DC-based Columnists.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
“If they have no policy positions, then for what purpose have they organized themselves?”
Because they want to feel important and get face time in the media. And the best way for Evan Bayh do that is to be a “moderate” by favoring the watering down of whatever Obama proposes. Thus you can organize without having any actual policy positions. I’m surprised he actually admitted it though.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Jim Clark, Exactly. They have organized a formal group of “muddled Democrats” and promoted the hell out of themselves. Believe me, they’e got an agenda, and my spineless Senator Warner is among them. He has a history of being timid.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
2022245623…call his office ..let them know that everyone knows what his agenda is ….whatever it takes to be relevant…lets make him ( or at least his staffers pay.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
“We really do need to change business as usual,” Mr. Bayh said in an interview Monday. “People want results.”
Evan Bayh is off da hook, yo.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
http://www.nndb.com/people/821/000164329/
This site is gold. I just connected Martin Delaney, Black Nationalist, to Evan Bayh via Free Masonry and his son, Birch. I’m pretty sure you can prove that Evan Bayh leads the cabal that runs the world.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Oh my God, this post is so childish!
What does MY think a recession is? A downturn in business activity, dummy!
It doesn’t matter whether the past eight years government was sufficiently solicitous of business interests. By protecting business interests in the current budget, you are protecting jobs. The millions of green jobs promised in the budget are a fantasy right now. The millions of jobs lost if the government doesn’t improve the business climate are putting food on families’ plates right now.
This is like the argument that the Republicans “have no right to complain about fiscal irresponsibility” because they ran deficits, too, so everyone complaining about Obama’s trillion-dollar deficits should STFU.
Because the Republicans messed things up, Obama’s got some inherent right to mess things up 10 times worse? Is that what he told us he planned to do?
The bad governance of the Bush years does not provide an alibi for even worse governance in the Obama years.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Vail Beach,
One of the most striking characteristics of the last 8 years is just how bad for business “pro-business” policies are. No business owner wants to pay their employees more, but now they’re pissed off that their customers don’t have any money. They don’t want to be harried by a bunch of regulations, but they’re pissed off that they can’t get loans.
We’ve been giving business candy for dinner everyday because candy tastes best. Now it needs an enema.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Obama,
Call them out… “Are you with me, or agan me?”
March 26th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
They have no agenda other than to foment fear. Are they, wait for it…..TERRORISTS?
March 26th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Njorl, you’re correct up to a point. The Bush recovery was widely noted as “jobless” (not quite true) and a period of stagnating incomes (very true). But I don’t see a causal connection between Washington’s pro-business policies and those outcomes. Global wage competition, which a US president really can’t do much about, combined with what we now see as diversion of capital into highly speculative and unsound investment propositions, which should have been restrained through regulation, is responsible for the weakness of the recovery. To impose new costs on business and to run up the deficit with a lot of pork-barrel spending disguised as countercyclical stimulus are not solutions that will result in higher wages or greater job security. In fact, the opposite.
This generation of Democratic activists can be forgiven up to a point for their insensitivity to inflation concerns. If you’re much under 40, you might have no direct memory of how inflation steals from both workers and retirees, and presents youth with a stagnant future. We had almost unabated inflation in this country from the mid-60s til 1983. We were a different country then. But most of you don’t know that except second-hand.
I expect those who are warning about inflation will ultimately fail to persuade anyone to take it seriously. But I’m here to tell you as a moderate Democrat that the moderates in both parties are right to be utterly freaked out by the extent of the debt Obama and the House Democrats are willing to embreace.
Look at it this way. In the 70s, lots of good liberals went neocon, in part because of the poor results of traditional Democratic economic policies. The inflation of the 70s sowed the seeds of Reaganism, which came into being with the help of a whole lot of Democrats. By averting inflation now, you’d be strangling a new generation of neocons in the cradle. Is that something you’d be interested in? I bet you would.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
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March 27th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Vail, if you don;t see a connection between Washington’s pro-business policies and unemployment/stagnant income, it’s either because you’re not looking or simply not paying attention to what you see. What “policies” have come from Washington have had the effect of encouraging corporations to put share value ahead of every other consideration in running their businesses. That has been the true “root of all evil” in business for the past 25-30 years. There is little or no concern for job or wage stability among corporate executives, who pad profit margins for investors by cutting staff, cutting pay, cutting benefits, and outsourcing jobs. The sub-prime meltdown is exactly the kind of situation that government polices have encouraged and enabled. The mortgage industry was once based on low-risk, moderate-return investment. Once the investment banks got into the driver’s seat (thanks repeal of Glass-Stegall!) they decided to run mortgages like a credit-card shop – make very risky loans with high potential profit, then dump the crap paper on someone else as soon as you’ve tarted it up to look like it’s not complete shi*. *That* is the product of our wonderful “pro-business” policies. The problem is that modern American business is becoming one giant Ponzi scheme, and the folks who control government seem to be in bed with the folks running the game.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:10 am
I am quite familiar with that time period, having tried to find a job in Philadelphia in 1981, when the unemployment rate was 22% officially, but really 40%.
You don’t understand my argument. The “business friendly” policies were precisely the elimination of regulations and the relaxation of regulatory enforcement that you agree is a problem.
For suppression of workers wages, you need look no further than the reactionary obstruction of the EFCA. How many businesses would have stayed solvent if they didn’t need to compete with Walmart’s low prices due to low wages. This measure would tend to be slightly inflationary, driving up prices and wages, but that is good for most people. It is bad only for those of established wealth. Even most people on pensions have their payments inflation indexed. The arbitrary choice that 2% is the desirable level of inflation was set specifically to benefit the wealthy. More people would be better off if inflation were a little higher.
How much more could businesses pay, and how much more would workers have to spend, if we were not crippling our economy with a health care system that promoted gross inefficiency. We have that, by the way, because we have a government that can’t stand up to industry.
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April 14th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
This is a republican in a Democratic seat. He is pouting that he was not picked as VP. He has been in the Senate forever and gotten nothing done. Having Joe Lieberman as your buddy in this endeavor is just shouting “I can’t get anyone with real power to work with”. His group is as pitiful as a bunch of republicans on Fox news. The bad thing is he can do real harm to real people. He has no empathy for anyone but himself. If he did he would have distinguished himself as other caring Senators have done… the ones with principles. He could now be known for ruining America and like misfits who do something, anything to have 15 minutes of fame, Bayh is doing this to get his 15 minutes… on Fox no less. That makes it 5 minutes tops.