Democrats Are Done With Max Baucus

[DonViejo]

After years of resentment over his compromises with Republicans and defections on key votes during the Bush administration, they're not humoring him anymore.

By Nancy Cook
September 26, 2013 | 8:10 p.m.

It’s been a rocky few months for Max Baucus. Few people in the upper chamber are listening to the Montana Democrat as he nears the end of his final term, according to interviews across several key Senate offices, and his colleagues have largely abandoned his most beloved project, tax reform. “There is a squeamishness about Senator Baucus doing tax reform, because of his record of giving concessions to Republicans,” one senior Democratic aide says.
Baucus, the Democrat progressives love to hate, has endured a string of indignities from his own party and its leadership in recent months. In May, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and other top Senate Democrats ignored his request to return an online-sales-tax bill—a potential vehicle for states to earn huge revenue from growing companies such as Amazon—to his committee for more review. Then, toward the end of the summer, Majority Leader Harry Reid nixed Baucus’s effort to overhaul the tax code when he refused even to participate in a Baucus-led exercise asking lawmakers to defend specific tax breaks. Worse, Reid announced his dis before a gaggle of reporters.

But the most demoralizing development might be this: Few Democrats even want Baucus to overhaul the tax system, according to aides. Such legislation would require them to take tough votes to eliminate potentially beloved tax breaks, and Baucus refuses to be pinned down about the kind of revenue the process would raise. (The Senate Democratic budget called for close to $1 trillion in new revenue.) “He has not made people feel like they’re buying into a process where lawmakers understand the outlines,” says a senior aide to a key Democrat. Like others interviewed for this story, the aide insisted on anonymity to talk freely.

Staffers and lobbyists say that isolation and distrust are now the capstones to Baucus’s three decades in the Senate. “It just leaves his career with bit of an incomplete,” says another Democratic senior aide.

It also obscures Baucus’s legislative victories, from the 1986 overhaul of the tax code, to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, to his efforts to thwart the Republican-led privatization of Social Security in the mid-2000s. In good times, Baucus has shown policy chops and an ability to compromise that his most liberal critics do not always acknowledge. “Baucus knows how to bring people together around a practical concept,” another senior aide says. “Every time he does that, [other lawmakers] get nervous about their power.”

full article
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/democrats-are-done-with-max-baucus-20130926?mrefid=mostViewed

[a kennedy]

1. Yah, good bye, and good luck now get the h*ll outta here.

Ugh.......didn't need him in the first place.

[stillwaiting]

2. There are plenty more conservative Democratic Senators that will be more than happy

to continue the destruction of core Democratic Party values. With Baucus retiring, others will begin to get more of the attention in the spotlight.

TPTB have been extraordinarily effective at placing their guys in Democratic Senate seats over the past few decades. TPTB's bench is very strong and stacked well in their favor (even on "our" side of the political aisle).

[truebluegreen]

3. Git. (as in ...Out and Stupid...)

The wonder that is the ACA--which yes, is better than what we had before--is not a legacy to brag about. Not to mention the absurd process he presided over getting it done.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

4. There's still more DLC types in the Senate that need to go but his departure

is a major victory for us!!

[winterpark]

5. I don't know why the writer would cite the ACA as a victory for baucus when he was the

one that would not even let single payer into the conversation, much less at the table. Baucus has always struck me as smarmy and in it for himself and his wealthy patrons. Good riddance!

[karynnj]

6. Lots of things to blame on Baucus, but BERNIE SANDERS said that there were

not enough votes for single payer. In the Congress which had 60 Democrats, his estimate was less than 10.

[Filibuster Harry]

7. Good riddens Max. enough said.