Guns, Geysers and Mr. Reid

Whenever life feels dark and difficult, it’s always helpful to think about people who have it worse. Be thankful, for instance, that you’re not one of those co-pilots for regional airlines who make $16,000 a year and have to commute from Seattle to Newark. Or a person currently riding in a plane with a $16,000 co-pilot in the cockpit. Be thankful you aren’t a Chrysler dealer. Or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Nothing is simple if you’re Harry Reid. This week the Senate was working on a consumer rights bill for credit card holders when Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, suddenly proposed an amendment to allow people to carry loaded guns in national parks.

This would seem relevant only if consumers are worried that they will not be able to use their American Express at a souvenir stand in Yellowstone, and will need to hold up the cashier in order to bring home a much-anticipated geyser refrigerator magnet.

Coburn said it was not a “gotcha” aimed at forcing the opposition into a corner on a hot-button issue, although when you say you’re offering an amendment “to protect innocent Americans from violent crime in national parks and refuges” I think you are kind of stacking the deck.

But one way or another, the Democrats clearly did feel trapped into placating the gun lobby. Twenty-seven of them wound up voting yes on an amendment that would arm the tourists and make final passage of the credit card bill more complicated. Including Reid.

Then Reid tried to get the Senate to confirm David Hayes, Obama’s nominee to be deputy secretary of the interior. This proved to be impossible even though Hayes was both uncontroversial and a man whose qualifications for the job include having already been deputy secretary of the interior. But no, the Republicans threatened a filibuster because Senator Robert Bennett of Utah was ticked off at the Department of the Interior for canceling the sale of oil and gas leases on public lands in his state.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told Bennett that he’d review the leases and could probably reinstate some of the sales, but that it would be a lot easier to do all that if he had, um, a deputy. No deal.

This is exactly the sort of procedural roadblock that you need 60 votes to overcome, and people are beginning to ask why the majority leader can’t handle these things since Arlen Specter’s defection gave the Democrats 60 votes. Do not say this to Harry Reid! For one thing, Al Franken is still in court in Minnesota, and when you ask the Republicans how long they’re going to litigate the results of an election that took place last November, they murmur vaguely about how Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Anyhow, Ted Kennedy is sick and Robert Byrd is 91 and it’s a miracle some of the other ones can find their way to the Capitol. Even if you eventually get all 60 Democratic votes in the same room, how do you get them to do the same thing? You will remember that when Specter came over, Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska instantly said: “They might have a 60-member majority. That doesn’t mean they have 60 votes.” Reid must have found the point Nelson was making less chilling than the fact that the senator kept referring to his own party as “they.”

Next week, some supporters of Dawn Johnsen are hoping that Reid will take up Johnsen’s nomination to run the Office of Legal Counsel, the place where the president goes for advice on whether whatever he wants to do is legal. This causes the majority leader’s office to hold its collective head and moan.

Johnsen actually is controversial. She was once a lawyer for the National Abortion Rights Action League. Twenty years ago, she put a footnote in a legal brief saying that forcing a woman to give birth to a child against her will was “disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude.” This has been creatively translated into the charge that Johnsen, the mother of two, believes pregnancy is akin to slavery.

Also, she has spoken out so forcefully against the Bush administration’s politicizing the Office of Legal Counsel that Republicans are claiming she’d … politicize the office.

The inevitable filibuster threats have been made. Since the Office of Legal Counsel doesn’t actually have anything to do with abortion, it might be reasonable for Reid to expect that anti-choice Democratic senators could throw him a vote on the procedural issues and then oppose the actual nomination, when Johnsen would only need 51 votes and Reid would not require their help.

That, however, would presume a degree of consistency that is hard to get in a place that holds one important aspect of credit card reform is giving people the ability to pack a handgun at the Grand Canyon.

Gail Collins, New York Times

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Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/opinion/16collins.html?ref=opinion

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See also:

Whose Senate Is This?

https://abluteau.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/whose-senate-is-this/

‘The Chair Recognizes . . . the Roaming Gnome’

Looking for a cheap room in Vegas? Harry Reid can hook you up.

In the building next door, a former FBI interrogator concealed behind a screen was testifying about the interrogation of terrorism suspects. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had some equally urgent business before the commerce committee — not terrorism, but tourism.

“I come to this committee today with a simple message: Nevada is open for business,” said the Democrat from — let’s see, here — Nevada!

“We are ready to host your next vacation, whether that be on the Las Vegas Strip, the shores of Lake Tahoe, or the trails and crags of the beautiful Rocky Mountains.”

But can we afford it, Harry?

“The average nightly room rate is now only $98, which is far lower than any other major convention city in the country — $98!” the majority leader continued. “We have mountain sheep, mountain goats. . . . We have antelope.”

Anytime you invite the head of Disney theme parks to a congressional hearing, things are bound to get a little goofy. Throw in a Las Vegas tourism official, a Travelocity executive and a couple of hoteliers, and the hearing will turn into a publicly funded tourism trap.

“I have some deals that Travelocity asked me to pass out here,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chairman of the commerce subcommittee holding yesterday’s hearing. She held up a piece of paper that screamed “TRAVEL STEALS AVAILABLE TODAY!” and promoted two days free at Walt Disney World and half-off flights to Hawaii.

While people sat in the audience wearing “Travel Is Good” buttons and holding Mickey Mouse briefing folders, a Michigan innkeeper noted her “five indoor pools and a family fun center with an indoor 18-hole miniature golf course.”

Lawmakers spoke of their own battles in the war for tourism: “We’re going to spend Fourth of July week in Minnesota, up north, our family,” Klobuchar said.

“Travelocity has a good deal on cruises, 47 bucks a night, in Alaska,” said Sen. Mark Begich of — you guessed it — Alaska.

“It’s cheaper than staying at home,” added Sam Gilliland, whose company owns Travelocity.

“Forty-seven a night?” asked Klobuchar.

“Forty-seven dollars a night on a cruise in Alaska,” repeated Begich, who disclosed that he has booked a timeshare in Hawaii for the winter.

The lawmakers traded fond reminiscences of travel. “Growing up we would rent a camper and attach it to the back of my dad’s car,” Klobuchar recounted.

“We didn’t have a camper,” said Begich. “We went in a station wagon, if you can imagine that.”

Klobuchar had moved on — to her childhood dream of working at Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming. “I never got there.”

No, but she got the next-best thing: a Senate seat, which she is using to create a Corporation for Travel Promotion to serve as a worldwide American tourism bureau. Hence, yesterday’s hearing on “Tourism in Troubled Times,” scheduled right in the middle of National Travel and Tourism Week.

“We understand that other countries are out there saying . . . ‘Come to Rome, see the beauty of Italy,’ ‘Visit Paris, see the wonders of France!,’ ‘Come to London,’ ” remarked Sen. Byron Dorgan, of the underappreciated tourist destination of North Dakota.

But even without federal dollars, the industry representatives seemed to be having no trouble promoting themselves yesterday.

“Travel is good for America,” Gilliland declared in his opening statement. To further that goodness, “I’ve attached to my testimony a listing of some of the most compelling offers available in 2009, what we’re calling the year of the travel deal,” he said.

Jay Rasulo, from Disney, played a Disney-produced video for the lawmakers showing lots of smiling Americans — cowboys, firefighters, fishermen, mothers, children — welcoming tourists to the United States.

The senators were impressed with their envoy from the Magic Kingdom.

“To the gentleman from Disneyland, I tell you, we could learn a lot from Disney,” Begich posited. Sen. Mel Martinez, from — you won’t believe this — Florida, celebrated Disney World as “a place where dreams come true back in Florida” and suggested that rude U.S. immigration officials “ought to go through the Disney college, friendly environment, whatever, management training.”

The fun was just beginning. “Our second panel may have somebody who can sing a travel jingle,” Klobuchar teased.

The jingle singer, however, got cold feet. Judy Zehnder Keller, from the Bavarian Inn Lodge in Frankenmuth, Mich., recalled “Dinah Shore singing that famous General Motors commercial in the 1950s, which started out with ‘See the USA in your Chevrolet.’ ”

“I was really hoping you were going to sing that jingle,” Martinez said.

“Maybe you’d like to sing it,” the hotelier proposed.

Others wanted a piece of the commerce committee commercial. “With hotel rates reduced by as much as 40 percent in Myrtle Beach, Charleston and Hilton Head Island,” testified Chad Prosser, from the South Carolina tourism department, “there’s never been a better time to travel.”

“We offer world-class entertainment, exquisite dining and fabulous shopping,” offered Rossi Ralenkotter, from the Las Vegas convention authority.

Klobuchar tried to “summarize what we’ve learned” from the testimony. “First of all, there are good deals out there for the summer,” she said. “There are things to do, from campgrounds, to — what did he say? — a cruise in Alaska for $49 a night.”

Even better, Madam Chairwoman: $47 a night.

Dana Milbank, Washington Post

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Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303276.html?hpid=opinionsbox1