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February 22nd, 2008
Don’t Buy the Hype - Support Obama for His Record of Accomplishments!
Posted by Asian Americans for ObamaA diarist over at Daily Kos put together some amazingly comprehensive research on Sen. Clinton’s and Sen. Obama’s legislative records. Both of them have passed several great pieces of legislation, and both of them have introduced some great bills currently under consideration. However, the research seems to show a few things:
- Sen. Clinton has a lot of bills that lack a single cosponsor. Sen. Obama does in fact frequently get Republicans to cosponsor his bills.
- Sen. Obama’s bills generally go farther in terms of the legal reform or change, while Sen. Clinton’s seem to reflect the cautious, smaller initiative approach developed for President Clinton by advisers Mark Penn and Dick Morris. This is not ALWAYS the case - she’s introduced some big bills - but Obama generally pushes for larger scale change.
- Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton frequently cosponsor each other’s bills.
- Sen. Obama has a very impressive legislative record for a Senator who has been in office for less than four years.
- Sen. Obama’s bills cover a broader range of issues. Sen. Clinton focuses a lot on children and health care (which makes sense), while Sen. Obama covers these issues as well as ethics reform, foreign policy, weapons proliferation, global warming, public health and disease, immigration, voting rights, etc.
- Sen. Obama apparently passed more bills and amendments than Clinton last year.
Just a sample of the very long post which is worth taking the time to read:
On Iran: S.J.RES.23 : A joint resolution clarifying
that the use of force against Iran is not authorized by the
Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq, any
resolution previously adopted, or any other provision of law.
On voting: Passed out of Committee and now on the Senate Calendar for Feb. 22, 2008
S.453 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections
Please check this out! This is a great bill. We need this. I can’t
believe that this time voter intimidation is not already illegal.
On veterans and military personnel: S.1084 : A bill to provide housing assistance for very low-income veterans;
On global warming: S.1324 : A bill to amend the Clean
Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuel
sold in the United States;S.1389 : A bill to authorize the National
Science Foundation to establish a Climate Change Education Program;
S.AMDT.599 to S.CON.RES.21 To add $200 million for Function 270
(Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and
sequestration technology by the Department of Energy. (This last one
passed both the House and the Senate as part of the budget bill.)
On campaign finance and lobbyists: S.2030 : A bill
to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting
relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered
lobbyists; and S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the
candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect
or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions
collected or arranged.
On Blackwater: S.2044 : A bill to provide procedures
for the proper classification of employees and independent contractors,
and for other purposes, and S.2147 : A bill to require accountability
for contractors and contract personnel under Federal contracts, and for
other purposes.
On global poverty: S.2433 : A bill to require the
President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further
the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction
of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half
the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on
less than $1 per day.
On global nuclear proliferation: S.1977 : A bill to
provide for sustained United States leadership in a cooperative global
effort to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals,
stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related material and technology,
and support the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Both candidates have respectable legislative records, and both have drawn reasonable support (co-sponsors) for their proposals. Unless you’re incredibly subjective, I don’t think that one or the other can be said to have done more than the other, when considering how long each has been in the Senate and how much the Republicans have controlled the agenda during those periods. (And I don’t think it’s a good idea to note how many Republicans have co-sponsored Obama’s bills. That basically says that the bills he’s proposed are acceptable to their conservative voting base, and that pretty much means the bills are likely not very progressive. That ‘centrist’–cough–part of his message is problematic for some, myself included.)
Clinton has sponsored 352 bills since Jan. 22, 2001 and co-sponsored 1713 bills during that same time frame. Here’s a link: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=300022
Obama has sponsored 129 bills since Jan. 4, 2005 and co-sponsored 535 bills during that same time frame. Here’s a link to
his record: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=400629
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:02 am
Hi John,
It was not at all my intention to imply that either Senator has a more impressive legislative record overall than the other. It was more to present the case that the often leveled charge that Sen. Obama has done “nothing” in the Senate or has no “record” of accomplishments is false.
On the “centrist” note, we’ve addressed that point frequently on this blog, as well as others such as George Lakoff of Don’t Think of an Elephant fame. If you take a close look at Obama’s record, the “bipartisan” cooperation of which he speaks is of quite a different species from any kind of “triangulation” or “centrist” policy making strategy (again, a creature of Mark Penn and Dick Morris), but rather finding ways to co-opt Republican support of certain values to build the votes necessary to pass progressive reforms.
Take a look at the specific bills that Sen. Obama got Republicans to cosponsor. The prime example is Coburn-Obama, which is not a bill that is “centrist” by any means. In fact, it sort of defies classification. Coburn-Obama created http://www.usaspending.gov, a searchable database of all government earmark (pork barrel spending) requests, where you can search by recipient, member of Congress requesting the earmark, agency providing the funding, etc. Sen. Obama found an area where an extremist on the other side agreed with him and got a terrific bill passed. I urge you to check out the website if you have a chance; it’s actually kind of addictive.
Other examples include the Lugar-Obama bill which applies the Nunn-Lugar model of securing loose nukes to conventional weapons. I would hardly call that a betrayal of progressive principles.
And remember, virtually EVERY bill that sees any action besides introduction in the Senate has both Republican and Democratic cosponsors. Ted Kennedy’s legislation frequently has GOP cosponsors. So does Russ Feingold and even Bernie Sanders.
This is the same pattern of strategy Obama employed in Illinois. The bills he passed in Illinois were definitely not compromise pieces of legislation, but he passed them all by securing Republican support. That includes creating a state earned income tax credit, requiring the videotaping of all police interrogations and confessions in homicide cases, requiring the recording of racial statistics for all police traffic stops, creating public financing for all judicial campaigns, massive death penalty reform - none of these are weak-kneed centrist bills. And all but a couple of the aforementioned bills were passed under a Republican majority.
The bottom line is not that Obama is MORE experienced than Sen. Clinton. It is that he is highly experienced despite what others say. And it puts BOTH of them at the top of those who have been Senators in terms of accomplishments.
However, I think that it is important to note that accusations of centrist compromise directed towards Obama are quite odd in light of the fact that in every ADA and National Journal rating since they’ve both been in the Senate, Obama has been far to the LEFT of her. Last session, he was the MOST liberal senator according to National Journal. Before that, he was ninth. Clinton has ranged from the mid-teens to mid-thirties during her career. And she did attempt to “center” her record as well, for example, by cosponsoring a flag burning bill in the Senate. And with people such as Mark Penn advising her, I think that strong progressives such as myself are right to be concerned about Clinton’s political approach.
I know from the data that Sen. Obama is a progressive. I am confident about that. His bipartisan genius is that he can co-opt Republican support without compromising principles. If we’re going to have any chance of a new progressive consensus, the opposite of the Reagan revolution, we’ll need someone who can cast progressive values in a light that appeals to those on the other side. Often times, those on the other side don’t disagree, they just THINK they do because of the way issues and such have been framed to them by the media and by the echo chamber on the right.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
THERES NOT A DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN WHO WILL DO ANYTHING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS THAT PLAGUE THIS COUNTRY. THE SOONER PEOPLE REALIZE THIS THE BETTER.