Vote, or else

By Jennifer J. Foster

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (hey, that’s the first time I’ve gotten to write that! All right!) brought “pay-to-play” into our standard national political lingo.

But how about vote for pay?

An Arizona state legislator is moving a bill that dock the pay of lawmakers who miss floor votes without an excused absence. From The Arizona Republic:

“I think it’s just a matter of right and wrong,“ Rep. Jerry Weiers, R-Glendale, said Tuesday before the House Government Committee. “If you’re working, you should get paid, and if you’re not working, you shouldn’t get paid.“

Saying he’s tired of seeing colleagues miss votes they consider unimportant, Weiers calls in HB 2127 for lawmakers to lose an amount not less than $175 for each day they miss a floor vote. Those lawmakers also would be listed on the Legislature’s Web site as failing to vote.

As I said on Politics4All this afternoon—

SIDEBAR: If you’re a political junkie, you have to check out Politics4All.com. Think facebook meets RealClearPolitics. If you join, look me up. END SIDEBAR

—when I was working in the Florida Legislature, it wasn’t uncommon for members to “take a walk.“ This term was understood to mean that instead of voting for (or against, as the situation demanded) a bill, the legislator in question would have to answer his phone or nature’s call. And invariably and mysteriously, those emergency, can’t-miss interruptions would always come just as a vote was being called.

So the legislator could allow passage or ensure defeat of a bill without actually having to take a stand on it.

Now, taking a walk is tricky. If you have a particularly thorny issue and several legislators take a walk, you run the risk of losing your quorum. That could lead to the bill being temporarily postponed—the legislative equivalent of a death sentence—or rescheduled for another date, at which time the legislators might have to arrange for a brand new set of circumstances that, darn it, keep them from voting. This is especially applicable to thorny issues in committee, where there are fewer votes to be had in the first place.

With me so far?

As I said on Politics4All this afternoon, I like the idea of vote for pay. After all, lawmakers are sent to state capitals around the country to ... wait for it ... MAKE LAWS. In addition to the actual votes, this involves exposure to and consideration and deliberation of differing viewpoints on pending bills. You can’t be exposed to information about a bill or consider or deliberate it if you aren’t there.

If a legislator has a legitimate reason for missing votes, he doesn’t have to incur the fine. It’s simple enough to fire off a letter to the clerk or secretary of the chamber to explain the absence. Actually, he should be doing this anyway, since he should have explanations for all his absences on the record as a matter of accountability. Without those explanations, how can constitutents judge the legislator’s performance?

The Arizona bill would only apply for floor votes, but it’s already raising hackles among lawmakers there. “I think we have a built-in performance review of every member down here: It’s called the election,“ one sniffed with disdain.

Oh, how naive. I guess that fellow never heard of the power of incumbency.

Or maybe he has.

Anyway, there are two more interesting points about this story: One, notice the reasoning the sponsor gives for this bill:

“Unless someone can show me another way that can get people’s attention, money is the only way to get people’s attention,“ Weiers said.

This legislator has decided to speak to his colleagues in a language they’ll understand. Gutsy, sure, but also pretty disturbing when you think about it, since Weiers believes money to be the only currency that counts with his colleagues.

Secondly:

The committee endorsed the bill on a 4-3 vote, sending it to the House floor by way of the Rules Committee ...

Rep. Warde V. Nichols, R-Gilbert, joined Campbell and Driggs in voting against the bill. However, opponents said their objections were to the financial penalty and not to the idea of publicizing the names of those who miss votes.

Voting in favor were Rep. Sam Crump, R-Anthem, the committee’s chairman and a co-sponsor; Rep. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista; Rep. Frank Antenori, R-Tucson; and Rep. Steve B. Montengro, R-Litchfield Park. Rep. Tom Chabin, D-Flagstaff, was absent.

Catch that last part?

One committee member was absent.

The committee passed the bill 4-3.

I wonder ... does Rep. Chabin has an excused absence, or was he taking a walk?

Hat tip to Jeffrey Chubb for this topic.

Bye-bye, Blago

By Jennifer J. Foster

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich brought fire and brimstone to the Illinois Senate this morning, delivering a rambling, 45-minute diatribe/personal plea/pseudo-rebuttal to charges that he misused his authority as the state’s chief executive.

But it wasn’t enough: Senators just voted unanimously Gov. Rod Blagojevich in his impeachment trial and disqualify him from ever holding office in the state again.

Blago, who has maintained his innocence from the start, had complained that he was unable to call witnesses in his defense and that senators had only heard pieces of the wiretapped conversations that were at the heart of the allegations. Blagojevich pleaded with senators and appealed to their “sense of fairness” to either exonerate him or rewrite the rules of the impeachment trial to allow him to call those witnesses.

No dice.

Yes ... yes ... yes ... yes ... the votes rolled in, one by one. No one—not one single senator, not even those who had expressed concern about the process—voted to acquit him.

Blago becomes the eighth governor in U.S. history to be removed from office.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, he’s all yours.

Limbaugh v. Obama

By Jennifer J. Foster

You might have heard about the incident last week when GOP ubertalker Rush Limbaugh told the world he wants President Obama to “fail.“

There was context, of course, but due to all the outrage over the suggestion that one of America’s most high-profile Republicans would publicly call for the new president to fail, you might have missed it. If so, you can read where I covered it here.

Well, Obama shot back that he thought Republicans would do themselves a favor by not listening to Limbaugh.

You can imagine what El Rushbo thought about that.

Now Limbaugh is taking a new tack with an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. In it, he calls Obama to task for the massive spending that has made it into the federal stimulus bill—massive spending, Limbaugh says, that will do little to nothing to stimulate the economy.

Here’s where things get interesting.

Limbaugh issues a challenge to Obama—in the spirit of bipartisanship, of course:

Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let’s say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion—$486 billion—will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46%—$414 billion—will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me ...

I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate—at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations—in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. There’s no reason to tell the American people their future is bleak. There’s no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There’s no reason to insist that recovery can’t happen quickly, because it can.

Such an arrangement, Limbaugh says, “would satisfy the American people’s wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.“

Then Rush strikes a surprisingly conciliatory tone:

In this new era of responsibility, let’s use both Keynesians and supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy—and if elements of both work, so much the better. The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, independents and moderates, but our economy doesn’t know the difference. This is about jobs now.

So far, no takers on the Hill—or on Pennsylvania Avenue.

What do you think of this? Do you find merit in Limbaugh’s proposal?

A victory for all women

By Jennifer J. Foster

The federal stimulus package is getting all the media attention when it comes to how Americans can stabilize their incomes, but President Obama just did something this morning that will have an even greater impact for a longer time than the next ballyhooed government giveaway.

He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act into law.

I’ll have more to say about this in my column this weekend. But the Ledbetter Act, in case you weren’t with us when we covered this back in September, sets right a grievous injustice perpetrated by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. The basics are these: Alabama’s own Lilly Ledbetter was a factory worker for almost 20 years. Set to retire, she discovered by accident that she had been paid less than men in her position. She sued. The Supreme Court told her, in effect, that since she didn’t sue when she was first discriminated against (back in the late ‘70s), she wasn’t entitled to sue. Never mind that she didn’t know about the problem until years later.

Well, the Congress and the new president have set all this right. With Ledbetter at his side, Obama signed the law that bears her name. The law makes the technical clarification that the statute of limitations restarts every time a discriminatory act occurs; in other words, each time a woman receives a paycheck that’s inferior to a man’s for the same work, the statute clock starts over.

Enough with the legalese. The bill ensures that women, who still make 78 cents on the dollar to men (and minority women earn even less), can expect to be treated—and paid—fairly, and they will have the courts in their corner when they are not.

It means that my sister, my three daughters and I don’t have to settle for less pay for doing the same work as men. It means that fair pay is no longer an intangible goal.

It means justice.

Thank you, President Obama.

See also:

“Equal is equal ... except when it’s not,“ my column on the Ledbetter Act

Previous blog entries that record how all three of my federal legislators opposed the bill and expose the lunacy of Republicans’ the-equal-pay-law-will-cause-more-lawsuits argument.

The advance story on the bill signing from the Associated Press and the AP’s Q&A on the legal implications of the bill

Everyone’s looking at you, Blago

By Jennifer J. Foster

As Congress deliberates President Obama’s ginormous economic stimulus package, reporters have reviewed the language and are starting to pick interesting pieces out of it.

For example, did you know that in addition to carving out 10 percent of the stimulus for “persistent poverty counties” (Section 1113) and tweaking eligibility requirements for workers’ compensation among employees in the recreational marine industry (Section 9101), Congress has taken the time and made the effort to specifically forbid the state of Illinois from receiving any federal stimulus funds as long as the possibility exists that they could pass through the hands of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (Section 1112).

That’s right: Unless Blagojevich resigns or is removed from office or the State Legislature directs the acceptance of the funds through legislation after the stimulus is passed, Illinois’ state agencies will get nada—zippo—from the feds.

There are exceptions, of course. Local government entities have an out if their funding is provided directly from a federal entity or distributed based on a formula.

In other words: If Blago can touch it, the feds aren’t going to send it.

Such is the nature of being persona non grata in politics. But being singled out like this in federal legislation shows the heights—or is it the depths?—of the governor’s dubious fame.

Actually, when I heard about this, I thought about that scene in “Goldmember” when Scottie replaces Mini-Me in Dr. Evil’s circle of accomplices.

DR. EVIL: All right, it’s geting crowded in here. Everyone out, everyone out, come on.

Not you, Scottie. Not you, Number Two. Not you, Frau. Not you, Goldmember. Not you guys back there. Not you, henchmen holding wrench. Not you, henchman arbitrarily turning knobs making it seem like you’re doing something.

(Everyone turns and looks at Mini-Me.)

DR. EVIL, sighing: Oh ... this is uncomfortable.

GOLDMEMBER: Ah, the tiny one can’t take a hint. He mustn’t understand; he is small.

And then Mini-Me sadly powers his evil powerchair out of the circle. 

Blago can’t take a hint. But by the weekend, he’ll probably be “former Gov. Rod Blagojevich,“ anyway, since the Ilinois Senate will hear closing arguments its impeachment trial against him tomorrow.

With all his legal problems, it’s probably for the best that Blago doesn’t have to worry himself with spending billions in federal stimulus money. He’s got his hands full enough as it is. 

See also:

Blago has apparently changed his mind about whether to acknowledge the Senate’s impeachment proceedings against him. After saying for the last two weeks that he’ll have nothing to do with them, he has now asked to make a statement during closing arguments.

But it’s probably going to be too little, too late. Illinois State Senate President John Cullerton didn’t appreciate Blago’s media blitz in New York earlier this week:

“If he wants to come down here instead of hiding out in New York, and having Larry King asking questions instead of the senators, I think he’s making a mistake,“ Cullerton said.

“He should come here, and answer the questions and provide the context that he claims these statements are being taken out of,“ he added.

And just in case you’re wondering, no; Blagojevich won’t be answering any questions from senators tomorrow.

... Not that you were holding your breath.