D.C. Dispatches

Green Christmas: Congress passes $1.1 trillion spending, $630 billion tax packages

Sam Brodey — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 21:02:40 +0000

WASHINGTON — Congress capped its 2015 doing something novel: compromising on major legislation without even getting close to shutdown territory. On Thursday and Friday, Congress approved a $630 billion tax package and a $1.1 trillion spending bill, respectively. Together, they will determine the country’s spending and revenue levels in the upcoming year.

Earlier in the week, there was some doubt as to whether House conservatives would get on board with a large spending bill, called the omnibus, and if progressives would vote for a GOP-led bill. But any semblance of drama dissipated on Friday, with lawmakers eager to flee the Capitol to catch flights home for Christmas.

The House approved the spending package 316 to 113, with 150 Republicans joining 166 Democrats to vote yes. Reps. Tom Emmer and Keith Ellison were the only “no” votes in the Minnesota delegation. The Senate then approved the omnibus 65 to 33, with the backing of both Minnesota senators, sending the package to President Obama’s desk.

In typical Washington fashion, both Democrats and Republicans tried to claim victory. But this was the rare occasion where each side’s declarations of triumph were mostly legitimate: the package yielded big wins, and losses, for both parties, while true believers on the right and left will head home for the holidays disappointed.

What’s in it?

The spending bill — the product of weeks of negotiation between top Republicans and Democrats — will appropriate more money for some programs in 2016 than ever. The National Institutes of Health will get a $2 billion bump, NASA will see its funding go up by six percent, rural housing funds will be higher than ever, and general military spending will see a significant bump.

There was give and take, of course. Democrats accepted a major GOP policy priority — the lifting of the 40-year-old ban on exporting U.S. oil. But Democrats also fended off some policy riders Republicans desperately wanted, like provisions to defund Planned Parenthood.

The tax package, passed Thursday, will extend popular tax breaks, like the earned income tax credit and the enhanced child tax credit. It will also suspend the medical device tax in the Affordable Care Act for two years — something Minnesota politicians have been pushing for years. But House Democrats, including leader Nancy Pelosi, balked at what they called corporate tax giveaways included in the bill.

What’s of interest to Minnesota in these massive bills? The suspension of the medical device tax is arguably the biggest direct impact. The state is home to around 700 large and small medical device firms, which have long claimed they could hire more people if the tax were lifted. The bill also appropriates $1 billion for programs to protect the Great Lakes, which Klobuchar and other Midwestern lawmakers are greeting happily in the shadow of a growing invasive carp threat.

The omnibus also repeals mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for certain agriculture products, like beef and pork. U.S. agriculture industry advocates, like Rep. Collin Peterson, tend to like COOL because consumers tend to favor U.S. products, while U.S. trade partners and free trade advocates dislike it.

Beyond that, the Minnesota renewable energy sector will be pleased that tax credits for wind and solar power industries have been extended. And lawmakers have touted increased funding for the Bureau of Indian Education, which could be a boon for struggling schools in Minnesota.

Lawmakers react

As the dust settled Friday afternoon, Minnesota lawmakers struck very different tones on the legislation that passed. For Rep. Erik Paulsen, an ally of Speaker Paul Ryan, the package wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. “There’s always things you wish were addressed that didn’t get addressed,” he said. The Ways and Means Committee member maintained the end-of-year package was fiscally responsible, as members of his own party argued it was a toxic combination of higher spending and tax cuts.

“It’s divided government,” Paulsen said. “The fact that [Ryan] was able to negotiate quickly and with all sides and reach a deal expeditiously, without the drama, I give him high marks.”

In a statement, Emmer explained his no vote in a rather roundabout way. He praised several GOP-backed items on the “pro-growth” omnibus: lifting the oil export ban, strengthening the visa waiver program, raising military funding levels. Still, Emmer said he voted against it because of grave concerns over “an enormous and growing $18 trillion debt that our children and grandchildren will be burdened with… I have great issues with new spending without plans to slow debt increases.”

In a statement, Rep. Betty McCollum advanced the biggest talking point on the Democratic side: that this bill is a huge win for them, simply because it could’ve been so much worse. “Republicans hold their largest congressional majority in 66 years, but Democrats forced the most harmful conservative policy riders out of this bill,” McCollum said. “Democrats delivered increased investments for clean air, clean water, and our nation’s parks… this bill demonstrates that Republicans are still unable to effectively govern.”

While some Democrats cheered, Ellison hammered the omnibus. There was chatter earlier in the week that Ellison, and the Progressive Caucus he co-chairs, would attempt to gin up some meaningful Democratic opposition to the funding bill, primarily over the oil export provisions. Ultimately, only about 20 percent of the Progressive Caucus ended up voting no on the omnibus.

After the vote on Friday, Ellison said in a statement that the omnibus “does not provide anywhere near the funding levels we need to provide housing, health care, education and basic medical research for Americans.”

“While this spending bill removes some of the harm from the partisan riders included in the original draft, it fails to ensure that no American lives in grinding poverty, that everyone has access to quality education and that our roads, bridges and subway systems are safe and reliable,” he said.

Rep. Tim Walz struck a more conciliatory note: “If I’d written it, it wouldn’t have looked like this, but that’s not how this works,” Walz said, adding that Ryan negotiated the deal in good faith with Democrats. “It’s not supposed to work that way. In the end a compromise was reached, there’s good things in there, there’s good research in there, and it funds things accordingly.”

“That’s democracy,” Walz said.

As White House aide McDonough visits Range, questions about Pacific trade deal linger

Sam Brodey — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 16:49:13 +0000

Next week, the Iron Range will get a visit from one of the country’s most powerful officials: White House Chief of Staff and Stillwater, Minnesota, native Denis McDonough will travel there for a day to meet with officials and residents.

Denis McDonough

The official reason for McDonough’s visit is to address the dire state of the mining industry on the Range, and while he’s there, he’ll meet with locals and hear out their concerns.

The news of McDonough’s trip was welcomed by Gov. Mark Dayton, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Al Franken, and Rep. Rick Nolan, who represents the Iron Range. The Democratic politicians hope the visit from President Obama’s top advisor will spark a wider White House effort to aid the area, and they’ll all be present to greet him.

What won’t be so welcome on the range is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The proposed agreement, which would establish a free trade zone between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific nations, is a top second-term priority for the White House.

The TPP is deeply unpopular in blue-collar communities with strong unions — just like the Range, where locals believe the pact would devastate the already struggling mining industry. Nolan has been a leading critic of TPP, and Franken and Klobuchar joined him in voting against advancing an Obama-backed trade package this summer.

So, as much as the trip is an opportunity for the White House to show it cares about the plight of the Iron Range, will McDonough be able to convince Rangers that the administration has their best interests at heart as it pushes its trade deal?

TPP not home on the Range

Central to Iron Rangers’ concern over the TPP is the notion it will not do enough to stop so-called steel dumping, which many say has already done immense harm to the mining industry in the U.S. Countries like China and Japan have been flooding the U.S. market with metals that are deliberately under-priced in order to compete better against U.S.-made products.

Industry advocates and Minnesota politicians blame dumping for the rough state of the mining industry. (The high level of global commodity supply, and low level of demand, has not helped.) Two thousand Iron Range mining workers have lost their jobs this year, and several mining facilities on the Range have shuttered. Nolan says it might be the most dramatic, significant downturn he’s ever seen the industry face. He, and other Minnesota members of Congress, have introduced legislation to raise tariffs on other countries’ metal exports to a high enough level to end dumping.

But TPP could make such tariffs impossible. The sweeping agreement, which is subject to congressional approval, would establish a new free-trade zone with the U.S. and partners like including Vietnam, Japan, and Australia. (Japan is the world’s number two steel producer, ahead of the U.S.) The agreement would necessarily entail getting rid of tariffs on most goods from those countries, and trade negotiators in Japan likely would not welcome high U.S. tariffs on steel.

The TPP currently contains no language that specifically protects steel, so the U.S. mining industry is worried that the pact could put it at a major competitive disadvantage. It is also worried that TPP wouldn’t do enough to curb currency manipulation, which countries like Japan sometimes do to strengthen their exporting positions.

It hasn’t been all bad news for allies of steel, however: in December, the House passed the Enforcement Act, a Democratic-pushed measure that would give U.S. steel companies increased power to take legal action against steel dumping from China and other countries. Klobuchar and Franken introduced the Senate version of the bill, and it could pass — potentially making the approval of TPP easier to swallow for the Range’s supporters.

Can the president protect Iron Range steel?

In statements to MinnPost, Franken and Klobuchar did not specifically mention any points of tension with the White House. “What’s happening on the Iron Range is terrible, and for many workers and their families, it’s a desperate time,” Franken said. “We continue to see illegally dumped steel flooding our markets and contributing to job losses. I’ve asked the President to take necessary steps to address this… We need to explore every option to fix this crisis.”

Klobuchar, who said she “worked hard” to get McDonough to visit the Range, said that she hopes he “will urge the administration to take concrete action to implement stronger enforcement measures to confront foreign companies illegally dumping steel into the American market” after he visits.

In a conversation with MinnPost, Nolan maintained McDonough’s visit would not create any awkwardness, because the administration has some wiggle room to protect the U.S. mining industry under TPP. “Under the U.S. trade laws, there’s Section 201, that simply says domestic industries that are seriously injured or threatened can seek relief through a presidential action,” Nolan explained, adding that such an action wouldn’t require an official finding of unfair trade practices. (However, in that case, other countries could still take legal action against the U.S.)

“It’s an option there that the president can consider that is not inconsistent with support for free trade,” Nolan said. Indeed, George W. Bush, a major free trade proponent, took action in 2002 to raise tariffs on imported steel.

‘It’s a big deal’

The White House’s advocacy for free trade aside, there’s no reason to believe native-son McDonough won’t receive a warm welcome from Dayton, Franken, Klobuchar, and Nolan when he gets to Minnesota on Tuesday. He is slated to visit Range Community and Technical College in Virginia, and meet with mining industry workers and executives, as well as local officials and business leaders.

Difference of opinion on the TPP notwithstanding, Minnesota politicians are treating McDonough’s visit as part of a serious, good-faith effort from Obama to aid the struggling mining industry. “It’s a big deal,” Nolan said. “It’s not very often the president sends his chief of staff out anywhere in the country to address a particular concern.”

“This is a great opportunity for us to have the ear of the president and see if we can’t get this turned around.”

So the world agreed to a major climate-change pact. What does that actually mean for the U.S. and Minnesota?

Sam Brodey — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 16:47:23 +0000

By now, you’ve probably heard of the climate deal that was reached this weekend in Paris — 196 countries, late-night negotiating, existential threats, etc. — and you’ve heard it’s a big deal. Historic, even.

But in the United States, which remains probably the place most skeptical of the idea of manmade, catastrophic climate change, what will this international agreement really mean?

First: In the rest of the world, the accord is being called an unprecedented achievement, and a turning point in the climate movement. And, at least symbolically, it’s hard to overstate the significance of what negotiators at the COP21 meeting arrived at: a near-unanimous acknowledgement of the threat of climate change and the international community’s obligation to do something about it.

The agreement has two big, long-term goals — to continue the global rise in temperature to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, and to take steps to contain it to 1.5 degrees if possible. Temperatures have already risen by about 1 degree from the pre-industrial era. Countries agreed to tackle these goals as soon as possible by setting concrete carbon emissions targets, but the idea is to have the temperature rise under control by 2050.

A key sticking point, however, is this: The specific targets are nonbinding. A country will not receive formal punishment if it fails to meet the emissions goals it set out. But the agreement does enforce a transparency structure under which countries have to disclose how they’re doing every two years — the idea being to name and shame those nations that aren’t making as much of an effort.

U.S. officials praise agreement, stick to plan

U.S. officials have a lot of latitude to decide how they want to approach the agreement and meet the goals it outlines. The current executive branch is pretty friendly toward that objective: President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry joined virtually the entire world in praising the Paris agreement as an unmitigated victory in the battle against climate change.

Sen. Al Franken, who traveled to Paris to participate in the conference, said it was a historic and exciting agreement.

“This is a global acknowledgement that we have a problem, that we need to reduce our CO2 emissions, that we need to do things to remediate the damage that’s going to be done in certain parts of the world, that we have a transparent process going forward to measure what countries are doing in terms of meeting goals,” Franken said.

Minnesota’s other Democratic members of Congress joined them. Rep. Keith Ellison hailed it as “one of the most important agreements in human history … [it] gives us a fighting chance to protect our way of life against the worst impacts of climate change.” Rep. Tim Walz called it a “step in the right direction. … Climate change is real and needs to be addressed now.”

Republican Reps. Erik Paulsen and Tom Emmer did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the agreement “shows the world that nearly 200 countries are united and ready to take action. In Minnesota, we’re already ahead of the curve and have been proactively working to cut greenhouse gas emissions and adopt energy efficiency practices for years.”

“This international agreement takes all the work we have done in our own country to a much bigger and more meaningful level,” Klobuchar said.

How will all that lofty talk translate into action in the U.S.? Helpfully for Obama and his climate allies, the Paris agreement doesn’t require approval by Congress, because it does not legally commit the U.S. to concrete action or punitive measures for failure. A ratification of the deal would likely have been dead on arrival in Republican-controlled Congress, as the Kyoto Protocol was in 2001.

Obama’s plan to honor the Paris accord doesn’t really require congressional approval, either. The White House believes its Clean Power Plan, a comprehensive energy strategy outlined earlier this year, will be enough to get the U.S. to meet the targets laid out in Paris. The CPP requires states to cut carbon emissions from power plants by a third by 2030, and takes specific aim at plants that use coal.

But the Clean Power Plan is an administrative rule, not a law, and a future administration — say, under a President Trump or Rubio — could take a very different approach. Republicans from coal country and beyond have attacked the CPP as a jobs-killing executive overreach. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has suggested it is illegal.

Still, some observers are confident the new climate regime established in Paris could endure in the U.S. even if a Republican wins the White House in 2016.

Minnesota: above average

Though the White House has found enemies in a few states because of its climate plan, states are legally required to implement it. After some initial reticence, Minnesota seems to have embraced the CPP, and is on track to easily meet the plan’s requirements. Franken said he “think[s] we’ll meet them and exceed them.”

Gov. Mark Dayton is, of course, required to abide by the federal government’s rules, but welcoming it now probably beats fighting it. North Dakota is one of the states that sued the government over the CPP, but observers say the state is quietly preparing its compliance anyway.

Even before the White House rolled out its climate agenda, Minnesota had put in place one of the strongest renewable energy standards in the country, requiring that 25 percent of the state’s power come from sources like solar, wind, and hydrogen by 2025. Beyond that, Minnesota had already reduced emissions from electric power plants by 20 percent in the last decade, and utilities like Xcel Energy have embraced ambitious carbon reduction plans.

Major Minnesota businesses are taking part in conversations on the topic, too. Cargill, the agribusiness giant based in Minneapolis, has top officials collaborating with policymakers on how to address climate risks.

Minnesota cities have also adopted some of the strongest climate change mitigation plans in the country. In October, Rochester announced it is aiming to get 100 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030. In July, Minneapolis rolled out its Climate Action Plan, under which it plans to reduce carbon emissions by 15 percent of 2006 levels this year, and by 30 percent in 10 years.

Putting Minnesota in the spotlight

Clearly, Minnesota has already been enthusiastic in developing plans to fight climate change and mitigate its effects. So what does the Paris agreement mean for the state? It might be best to see it as an opportunity for Minnesota to assume a national leadership role in the fight against climate change, and as a key player in the new energy economy, according to Ellen Anderson, executive director of the Energy Transition Lab at the University of Minnesota, and a delegate to COP21.

“The Paris agreement reinforces and supports leadership in carbon reduction that’s cost-effective and represents a huge opportunity for Minnesota’s future as a renewable energy leader,” Anderson says. She predicts that Paris will open the floodgates for even more global investment in renewable technologies, and heighten demand for climate planning models like those advanced in Minnesota.

“Investment dollars are going to talk even when government decisionmakers don’t necessarily follow. … That growth will continue without regards to public policy decisions. I think a state like Minnesota has an opportunity to really benefit from this if we stay on the current path,” Anderson says.

“Minnesota has the opportunity to share its experience with other places around the world, how we’ve grown our renewable sector and how we’ve reduced emissions. … Those are good things that the agreement will put us more in the spotlight on going forward.”

According to Franken, Minnesota’s lack of fossil fuel resources and amount of brainpower means it’s uniquely positioned to take advantage of what he and others see as the coming new energy boom. “We don’t have coal, we don’t have oil, but we do have a great research university, we have brain people, we have wind, we have biomass. There are incredible opportunities in the renewable energy sector and I want those jobs to go to Minnesotans,” Franken said.

Of course, advocates insist there’s still a lot more work to be done on the state and local levels if the state, and the country, is to live up to the lofty Paris agreement. “I shouldn’t suggest that Minnesota has it all figured out and that we’re finished here,” Anderson says. “I think what this agreement will do is help accelerate efforts around the globe to find solutions.”

Four key points from Klobuchar’s newly released national-security platform

Sam Brodey — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 17:28:32 +0000

The terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have prompted top politicians, from Congress to the campaign trail, to go into greater detail about how they plan to keep the U.S. safe — and how they’d go about eradicating a major culprit of the terror resurgence, the Islamic State.

To that end, this week, Sen. Amy Klobuchar decided to air out her national security and counterterrorism strategy, publishing a 2,400-word post in Medium, the Internet self-publishing start-up. It’s the second time Klobuchar has posted to Medium her thoughts on a national security issue. In August, she wrote on why she supported the Iran nuclear deal.

While senators tend to have broader policy portfolios than House members, national security and terrorism have not been signature issues for Klobuchar, who has cultivated a profile in Minnesota and in the Senate for her work on consumer and economic issues as well as human rights. It makes it especially interesting then, that Klobuchar would now explain her national security platform, point-by-point.

Broadly, that platform is not controversial. Klobuchar laid out a moderate approach that has elements in common with President Obama’s strategy as well as with the platforms of more hawkish members of her party and the GOP.

Like President Obama, Klobuchar is supportive of intensified airstrikes against the Islamic State, use of U.S. special forces when appropriate, and eschewing American boots on the ground in favor of building up local forces and engaging allies in the region.

However, she did make a few points that put her at odds with the White House and fellow Minnesota Democratic congressmen. Here’s a look at some of those statements, and other interesting passages from her article.

Klobuchar: “I would also like to see a no-fly zone in Syria that would protect civilians. Years ago I called for a no-fly zone after visiting the region and I still believe it must be considered in order to help our partners in Syria who are standing up to ISIS.”

This is an interesting proposal from Klobuchar that puts her against the White House and the Pentagon, and more in line with those of defense hawks in the GOP and in her own party. Imposing a no-fly zone on a given area is one of the strongest projections of military power the U.S. can take while plausibly denying an outright state of war.

The no-fly zone is a relatively recent concept, and the U.S. and its allies have only moved to impose them only a handful of times: in Libya in 2011, Bosnia in 1993, and Iraq at various points since 1991. The Bosnia operation, which was officially under the banner of NATO, was considered a success, though several U.S. and allied planes were shot down along with Serbian aircraft.

In theory, a no-fly zone over Syria would create a demilitarized zone in the air, with the U.S. and allies intercepting, or even shooting down, aircraft that violate the terms of the no-fly zone. The goal is to halt the bombing campaign that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has utilized to consolidate power in the ongoing civil war, and give Syrians necessary cover to flee the country.

In practice, though, a no-fly zone could be messy — and set up unwanted, potentially tense situations with countries, like Russia, that likely would not buy in. Many observers suspect that Vladimir Putin would relish the chance to violate a no-fly zone and make the U.S. look weak. Beyond that, the no-fly zone could also lead to the U.S. military engaging directly with the Syrian air force, which some are loath to do.

President Obama has seemingly taken the strategy off the table, and the Pentagon has suggested the U.S. has the capacity to do it but that doing it would be unwise. But the policy has strong backers in the GOP, including Klobuchar’s Senate colleagues Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, both of whom are running for president. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose presidential campaign Klobuchar is stumping for, is also in favor of a no-fly zone.

In a statement to MinnPost, Klobuchar said that concerns about what Russia may or may not do shouldn’t enter into the debate on the no-fly zone. “From Sen. McCain to Secretary Clinton, there are people advocating for the U.S. to do more to protect the thousands of Syrians who are fleeing barrel bombs from Assad and the barbaric killings of ISIS,” she said. “I know there is some disagreement about the no-fly zone, but I think most people recognize that calls for a no-fly zone come from a common desire to protect civilians and defeat ISIS.”

“The bomb that ISIS claims took down the plane over Egypt — senselessly killing 224 people, most of them Russian families — reminds us that our country needs a continued and updated focus on airport security…recent reports still found gaps in our own airport security, which means that we must never rest on our laurels. We must be continually updating and improving our methods.”

Criticism of the Transportation Safety Administration has been at a low din for the past few years, with many questioning whether its security checkpoints at airports are effective at all. A steady trickle of tests has suggested they aren’t: one test made public this year revealed that undercover agents were able to slip 95 percent of prohibited items past TSA inspectors.

The bombing of the Russian plane in October has underscored for lawmakers, perhaps as strongly as at any point since September 11th, the need to improve the TSA. At a Congressional hearing this week, TSA official Joseph Terrell answered questions from lawmakers about how to shore up the vulnerable agency — and they reportedly weren’t happy with his answers.

It remains unclear how exactly Congress will be able to bolster the TSA, as Klobuchar has called for. She told MinnPost that one of the central elements of improving air travel security is “giving the TSA all of the tools it needs so that it has the capacity to update and improve our airport security.”

Klobuchar also said Congress would do well to pass policy to implement changes to the visa waiver program, under which nationals of 38 countries are granted visa-free entry to the U.S. It would put up additional barriers for passport holders from countries like France and Belgium, where the Paris attackers were from, to get to the country.

The House of Representatives already passed that bill by a large margin, though Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison voted against, arguing it was too broad and would make it harder for academics and journalists to come to the U.S. Klobuchar has co-sponsored the Senate companion bill introduced by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California.

“As I have learned during many hearings and in several meetings with FBI and local law enforcement, getting the [court] order isn’t the problem when the case is strong. Instead, new technology installed by the phone companies and other communications companies has made it technologically impossible to access communications of and data on many of the terror suspects. It is imperative to our national security that companies responsible for promoting this type of encryption work with law enforcement to ensure that legitimate counterterrorism investigations are not unduly hindered.”

Here, Klobuchar is, in a polite way, calling out tech companies like Apple and Microsoft who some believe are not adequately cooperating with investigations. In recent years, those companies have implemented stronger encryption technology, partly in response to the news that the National Security Agency was tapping into communications networks to collect individuals’ conversations and messages.

The tech companies say they’ve been forced to take stronger measures to protect user privacy, but the government says valuable counterterror data is being withheld as a result. A New York Times story from this year illustrates the case in point: pressed with a Department of Justice court order to turn over text messages in a criminal (not terror) case, Apple said it could not comply because of its encryption policy. Various legal battles are proceeding in court, and it’s not clear yet if the government or the tech sector has the upper hand.

For Minnesota politics-watchers, though, Klobuchar’s point here is interesting because it opens a rare, substantial fissure between Klobuchar and Sen. Al Franken. Franken, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, has carved out a niche for himself in the Senate as a tech and privacy policy wonk, publicly needling the NSA and elevating a privacy-oriented agenda.

In a July hearing, Franken suggested that law enforcement agencies were using scare tactics to convince lawmakers that meaningful counterterror information was being tied up by stubborn tech companies. “We haven’t seen any real data about how often encryption is thwarting investigations,” Franken said, adding that the DOJ should track “the number of times you run into technological challenges and therefore don’t seek a warrant for a wiretap.” DOJ officials responded by saying it’d be almost prohibitively difficult to do.

Klobuchar maintained the significance of the evidence Franken questioned. “I can tell you that federal and local law enforcement see encryption as a problem,” she said, citing a recent opinion from Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman and Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom claiming that encryption is a major public safety problem.

“Two of our best allies in Europe and countries key to our fight against extremism − Norway and Sweden − are without U.S. ambassadors. Both nominees for those ambassadorships made it through committee with both Republican and Democratic support and with no objections. Our nominee to Norway is a Minnesotan − Sam Heins − and that key European ally has now been without an ambassador from the United States for nearly 800 days!”

Being the good Minnesota booster she is, Klobuchar worked in a local angle to her national security platform: confirming the U.S. ambassador to Norway!

There hasn’t been an official U.S. ambassador to Norway since September 2013. In 2014, President Obama nominated George Tsunis, a major New York fundraiser for his campaign, but it fell apart when it became clear Tsunis didn’t know much about Norway. In May, Obama nominated Sam Heins, a prominent Minneapolis lawyer and Obama supporter, for the post, but Senate Republicans have vowed to block virtually all White House ambassador appointments to protest various foreign policy decisions.

It’s unclear if the vacancy in the ambassador’s chair in Oslo does much to harm our counterterrorism partnership with Norway — there is a career diplomat acting as interim ambassador — but the length of time it has taken Congress to confirm a new one is widely considered an embarrassment.

Aside from drawing attention to the plight of a Minnesotan, Klobuchar appears to be chiding Republican Senators like Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, urging them to get out of the way on diplomatic appointments for the good of national security.

Congress passed a long-term transportation bill for the first time in a decade — what's in it for Minnesota?

Sam Brodey — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 16:40:25 +0000

WASHINGTON — One of Washington’s favorite cans to kick down the road has finally found an off-ramp: after passing 36 short-term extensions, Congress passed a five-year plan to fund the nation’s highways and infrastructure. The last time it funded them for longer than two years? 2005.

Last week, President Obama signed the compromise bill, the so-called FAST Act, that provides $305 billion in federal money over the next five years for transportation projects. It had been negotiated for months, but passed overwhelmingly out of Congress last week as officials sought to put a law in place before highway funding ran out.

The bill won’t resolve all the questions surrounding transportation policy — for example, it does not raise the federal gas tax, which has been the same since 1993, even though there are Democrats and Republicans who want to raise it. Still, the law provides much-needed certainty to federal, state, and local transportation agencies, as well as businesses, in planning and executing projects in the long term.

How much does Minnesota get?

For Minnesota, there’s certainly enough to like here. For one, the state’s getting more cash: through fiscal year 2020, Minnesota is slated to receive just over $4 billion total from Uncle Sam for transportation, $3.4 billion in highway funding and $550 million in transit funding.

Federal transportation funding to Minnesota

In millions of dollars

Fiscal year	Highway funding	Transit funding
2015 (Current law)	$629.3	101.6
2016	661.4	106.4
2017	675.1	108.5
2018	689.7	110.7
2019	705.3	113.5
2020	722.1	115.9

To put that in perspective, Minnesota’s total transportation budget in 2014 — from the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) to the Metropolitan Council and beyond — was $5.3 billion, according to the Met Council. Federal funding — from the highway bill as well as other federal funding sources — made up 17 percent of that total.

State lawmakers still need to figure out a transportation funding plan, but with the numbers from the federal government set, at least one piece of the puzzle is in place.

So, where will all that fresh cash go? Most will go into the hands of MnDOT, the Met Council, and other transportation authorities around the state.

For highway spending, which is primarily the purview of MnDOT, that money will be funneled toward various programs: $895 million, for example, into block grants that authorities can use for highways, roads and bridges; or $167 million for a federal program designed to encourage states to ease traffic congestion and improve air quality.

While exact funding plans are not yet set in stone — and won’t be until Congress passes a bill to fund the government — this transportation bill will lead to simple, tangible improvements along with longer-term projects, says Serge Phillips, federal relations manager for MnDOT. The bill will finance a broad array of things, from basic highway maintenance and repair to more specific items like widening roadways to reduce traffic congestion, collecting better safety data on freight trucks, or simply buying more buses in Minnesota cities.

Federal money is also crucial for big-ticket highway projects, says Phillips. “Federal funding accounts for about 60 percent of our capital highway construction funding — that is for infrastructure, roads and bridges,” he explains. For MnDOT, $477 million of its $795 million total highway construction budget came from the federal government in 2014.

Setting an example?

For transit projects, the $550 million sum through 2020 will get funneled into a variety of funds, such as one for bus improvements ($26 million over five years), transit resources on Indian reservations (over $11 million), and rural transportation (about $1.5 million).

If you’re a public transit user in the Twin Cities, you might be wondering what this big bill does for long-awaited projects like the Southwest LRT. The short answer: it’s no silver bullet, but it’s a big help. For major projects, the five-year funding bill provides a rare commodity: stability from Washington. That will help projects like the Southwest LRT along, according to Adam Duininck, chair of the Met Council.

“If there are question marks about different pieces of Southwest coming together over the next year or so, knowing that the federal funding commitment is there in a long-term way helps build momentum toward Southwest and other projects,” Duininck says.

The federal government is a big part of light rail projects, Duininck explains, and could fund up to half of projects like the Southwest LRT or the proposed Bottineau Blue Line extension. Shoring up D.C. numbers, he says, will put much-needed pressure on legislators in St. Paul.

CC/Flickr/Drew Geraets

Met Council Chair Adam Duininck: “If there are question marks about different pieces of Southwest coming together over the next year or so, knowing that the federal funding commitment is there in a long-term way helps build momentum toward Southwest and other projects.”

“It was not that long ago that people looked at D.C. and said, no way they can get transportation, and then the workings of the bill came together,” Duininck says. “That’s a bipartisan bill, and here we’re working through the same dynamics, different parties in the legislature and a DFL governor. Is there a way for us to put together a package — something we can do that can make everyone happy, hopefully?”

MnDOT’s Phillips agrees that the stability offered by the bill is as precious a commodity as its money. Knowing what funding levels will look like for the next five years, at least on the federal side, gives state officials substantial room for long-term planning.

In pushing for a transportation plan over the last decade, lawmakers claimed that stop-gap transportation funding bills — which ranged from a few days to a year in length — rendered transportation authorities totally unable to develop plans for multi-year projects.

“I know this sounds bureaucrat-y, but the stability is really important,” explains John Schadl, a communications officer at the Met Council. “We have to negotiate complex financial deals with many different partners. If you can show partners you have a stable federal funding source, they won’t only continue with projects like Southwest but have more momentum going into other projects. That’s really not a small thing.”

Policy provisions, too

Beyond funding levels, the long, wide-ranging bill contains plenty of other provisions that will affect transportation and the economy in Minnesota.

For example, the bill requires government buses and rail cars to be made from 70 percent domestic material, up from 60 — which could give a boost to the Minnesota steel industry. It also sets aside $6.3 billion over five years for freight rail in all 50 states, with a requirement that 25 percent of the funds go to projects in rural areas, which advocates see as a plus for Minnesota.

Beyond that, Eighth District Rep. Rick Nolan, the only Minnesotan currently on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, included an amendment on the bill to allow logging trucks to use a 24-mile stretch of I-35 south of Duluth during wintertime, as opposed to Superior Street, which had been considered dangerous for the large trucks.

Nolan told MinnPost he “couldn’t be happier” about the final product his committee helped to produce. “I think it is an important and dramatic improvement in the U.S. transportation plan, in that it gives counties and states the long-term protection in what kind of money is available so they can do rational, intelligent planning,” he said. “It’s impossible to do your planning when you’re working with two-month and six-month extensions.”

In a press release, Sen. Amy Klobuchar took credit for several provisions in the bill aimed at helping Minnesota infrastructure, including one to improve safety at railroad crossings, one that expanded a grant program to combat distracted driving, and one that changed a grant program for teen driver safety.

“In Minnesota, we know all too well the importance of investing in our roads, bridges, and transportation systems,” said Klobuchar, referencing the I-35W bridge collapse in 2007. “This bipartisan, long-term bill will increase funding for Minnesota and give states and local officials the certainty they need to plan ahead for critical transportation projects.”

Transit officials and D.C. politicians weren’t the only ones pleased. Business leaders see the long-term transportation bill as an achievement that shores up some long-term stability for them, too.

“This is a big step for Congress,” says Bentley Graves, director of health care and transportation policy at the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. “It fills in a number of blanks in a concrete way for us… These are real dollars that go into real projects around the state, and this will help us move along.”

Bob Helland wants the DFL endorsement to take on Tom Emmer — but don’t call him a DFLer

Sam Brodey — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 14:00:00 +0000

Bob Helland lives in St. Paul, works in Minnetonka, and thinks the two-party system is broken and corrupt.

He might not exactly fit the mold for a DFL candidate in the Sixth Congressional District, but as of now, he’s the only one officially challenging incumbent Rep. Tom Emmer. And the 30-year-old is aiming to unseat the freshman Republican in Minnesota’s most conservative district with a mix of frank rhetoric and a willingness to court voters outside of the DFL’s traditional constituencies.

The fact that Helland doesn’t live in the district and calls himself a “progressive independent” before he calls himself a DFLer? For him, that’s not a problem.

‘I’m not a true DFLer’

Helland didn’t come from out of nowhere. Last year, he ran for secretary of state under the Independence Party banner, on a platform of refocusing the office on its business services responsibilities rather than its voting ones, and maintaining the office’s nonpartisanship.

Though Helland failed to gain much traction in the election — he captured just under 5 percent of the vote, far behind eventual DFL victor Steve Simon and Republican Dan Severson — his candidacy did not go entirely unnoticed. While the editorial boards of the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press gave Helland either passing or no mention, the Rochester Post-Bulletin framed it as a three-way race, and praised the young candidate.

Though it endorsed Simon, the Post-Bulletin wrote, “We liked what we saw in Helland. Often dismissed as a third-party candidate, the 29-year-old showed us a level of understanding that makes him a contender in the race. He’s not reaching for the obvious political vote.”

In a conversation with MinnPost, that much was clear: Though he is running for the DFL endorsement, Helland said a few things that aren’t likely to endear him to the party activists who populate the nominating convention, even if they may like his policies.

Helland says he wants to broaden the DFL tent, and claimed he’d court constituencies that past DFL candidates have ignored. “By definition of state law, count me as a DFL member. … I want to compete because I’m a progressive independent,” he says. “I want to put myself in the best position possible, getting as many endorsements and support from other parties, and get nonpartisans out there who feel there’s a distortion of the political system caused by the two-party system.”

Specifically, Helland said he’d court the backing of his former Independence Party — which lost major-party status in Minnesota after 2014 — as well as the Libertarian, Green, and the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis parties.

Helland added that an endorsement from a major party confers upon a candidate “huge privilege” and millions of dollars. “Corruption is a word I’m not afraid to throw around in the 21st century,” he said. “Does it compromise me that I may use these favors to win? No,” he said, adding he’d criticize the DFL where others might not.

When asked whether his suggestion that the two-party process — and, by extension, the DFL — is corrupt harms his chances with party activists, Helland said he’s just being straightforward. “It’s apparent to everyone I talk to that I’m not a true DFLer,” he explained. “I’m a progressive independent, and I’m going to challenge what the DFL is in the state.”

Helland said that he’s been received favorably at DFL events in the district and at the Wellstone Dinner he spoke at this fall. He added that he’s had candid conversations with DFL Chair Ken Martin and DNC vice chair and former Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak about his candidacy. “People want change and they want something different,” Helland said. “Not what the DFL has seen in CD6 over the past election.”

An unorthodox platform

Helland clearly projects an independent spirit: While some of his policy positions will be popular in the progressive base of the DFL, others are a bit unorthodox. On the appealing-to-the-DFL side of the ledger, he’s strongly supportive of government oversight of the financial sector. Using language from the Elizabeth Warren playbook, he hammered a bill Emmer introduced this year that would reform the Financial Stability Oversight Council, an independent board established in 2010 to guard against certain banking strategies believed to have hastened the financial crisis in 2008.

Helland claimed Emmer was directed by special interests to push a bill he, and the White House, believe would gut oversight of Wall Street.

Helland also takes a liberal approach to foreign policy, and refuted Emmer’s call to declare war on ISIS by arguing the U.S. does not need another open-ended Middle East conflict.

Beyond that, though, Helland’s platform is a bit more eccentric. On his website, he says his primary campaign issue is “representative government in accordance with the Constitution of the United States.” For him, acting on that issue appears to mean passing two new constitutional amendments, one to greatly expand the size of Congress and one to reduce lawmakers’ salaries.

Helland told MinnPost that his top three issues on the campaign trail would be human trafficking and labor exploitation, tax reform, and national security. It’s hardly the meat-and-potatoes stuff, like good jobs and health care and schools, that makes up your average congressional campaign platform.

It’ll be an uphill climb

Virtually no one, Helland and DFL officials included, believes the 30-year-old’s path will be easy, or even viable. The prognosis for any DFLer — much less a “progressive independent” like Helland — is grim in Minnesota’s most conservative district. Emmer won last year’s open seat contest by 18 points, and will enjoy a greater advantage next year as an incumbent.

With two high-profile contests in the 2nd and 8th Congressional Districts, the DFL will have its hands full. With finite resources, it is unlikely to divert them to the 6th District.

Ken Martin confirmed to MinnPost that he and Helland — whom he calls an “energetic guy with passion”— have spoken, but emphasized the party and the candidate are still “feeling each other out.” “I haven’t had a chance to talk with Bob at length about his campaign and what he wants to focus on,” Martin said. “I’m glad he’s in the race, I welcome him to the race, and if he’s the DFL-endorsed candidate, we’ll work hard for him.” In an email, Rybak said he and Helland had exchanged tweets, but nothing more.

Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District

Beyond that steep disadvantage, Helland faces another hurdle: He doesn’t live in the district. He lives in St. Paul, where he worked for years as a tax analyst with the Department of Revenue. Currently, he is working as a contractor in business analysis for Cogentix Medical, a medical device company in Minnetonka. However, Helland certainly has roots in the district: He grew up in Sauk Rapids, just north of St. Cloud, and graduated from St. Cloud State.

One might think being 80 miles down I-94 from CD6’s largest city could be problematic for a congressional bid. Helland said he has no definite plans to relocate, though he didn’t rule it out. He insists he can get the job done anyway: “I graduated from their schools, I worked for companies in central Minnesota — it’s not an argument that’s going to undercut my qualifications as a candidate,” he said. “If anything, people in the district will value someone who’s worked in very different and complex systems within government.”

His game plan

As the election year gears up, Helland figures to be a bigger presence on the trail in CD6. Though he filed his election papers months ago, his campaign apparatus is slowly getting off the ground. He says he has one person who is serving as both campaign manager and field director, and a few informal volunteers.

Helland has not yet filed a full quarterly report with the Federal Election Commission, but he admitted that fundraising has been a challenge. Donations to the campaign are listed on Helland’s website; only four people have donated to the campaign in the past two months. “We will need to reconsider where we're at with that,” he said.

Despite the obstacles, and his promise to antagonize the DFL if needed, Helland says he’s confident he can beat Emmer, precisely because of his unusual profile. “The DFL focused on DFL voters last year — that’s a failing strategy in CD6,” he said. “I’m going to be going to different groups of people, I might contact Republican Senate districts and say, 'Hi, I want voters to know I’m also in the race.' "

“The strategy is not what polls show, or what’s coming out now, but voters who haven’t voted in past elections, who weren’t turning out … I’m confident we’ll get a majority of people, if it’s a race between Rep. Emmer and I, that it’s Bob Helland they’ll want in office.”

Why the EPA is backing off on ethanol requirements, and why that has Midwesterners upset

Sam Brodey — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 16:58:48 +0000

WASHINGTON — Every good Midwesterner knows the secret to excellence, whether you’re raising prize-winning hogs or Big Ten basketball players: They have to be corn fed. So who can blame them if they want to same for America’s automobiles?

Well, this week, the Environmental Protection Agency wasn’t having any of it: On Monday, the agency announced long-awaited details of the Renewable Fuel Standard, the federal law that mandates the volume of biofuels, including corn-based ethanol, in the country’s energy supply.

The Renewable Fuel Standard is the reason why, when you go fill up your car, you might see a notice that your gas “may contain ethanol.” Blending ethanol into gasoline is one of the primary ways refining companies meet the federal standard.

And while the agency raised the amount of ethanol required in the nation’s energy supply compared to previous years, the new standard fell short of the total amount lawmakers envisioned for 2015 when they originally passed the law creating the standard in 2005.

To many in the country, the EPA’s move was good news — among the reasons for the lower target was reduced total consumption of fuel in the U.S. as a result of more efficient cars and other economic factors, as well as a reduced dependence on foreign oil, thanks to greater domestic production.

Not so much in the Midwest, where thousands of acres of cornfields feed the ethanol plants that produce a large percentage of the nation’s biofuel supply. Minnesota’s politicians and biofuel backers across the Midwest voiced their disappointment and concern after the announcement, casting it as a blow to the economy, the environment, and national security.

Once a beloved, bipartisan-touted energy solution, ethanol is increasingly on the ropes for federal support — but Minnesota and its neighbors are among the few, not many, protesting.

Ethanol policy: from a different era

In the mid-2000s, when the current foundation for biofuel policy was constructed, Midwesterners were hardly the only cheerleaders for ethanol. Then, the rationale for encouraging biofuel cultivation was clear. U.S. gasoline consumption was at its historical peak in 2004, with around 140 billion gallons consumed that year. Top exporters of oil were Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, countries on whom leaders in the U.S. — which was buying nearly two-thirds of its oil abroad — did not want to be so dependent. And climate change was beginning to emerge as a major issue.

Considered to be cleaner than fossil fuels, ethanol was touted as an alternative to foreign oil that would be a boon to U.S. farmers, help the environment, and bolster the country’s geopolitical hand. That’s partly why lawmakers were initially bullish in forecasting steady growth in ethanol consumption over the next few decades — in addition to strong lobbying from corn growers and Midwestern politicians.

In 2007, when it devised the initial standards, Congress required that, by 2016, the U.S. guzzle 22 billion gallons of biofuels. At the time, gas consumption was at record highs and there was no reason to believe it would taper off.

But that growth didn’t quite materialize, thanks to two phenomena few predicted. For one, at the beginning of the Obama presidency, U.S. consumption of gas began to decline in a big way. By 2014, the country was using as much petroleum as it did in 1997, despite the economy nearly doubling in size. The increased fuel efficiency of cars, along with the Great Recession and its lingering effects, are believed to be the main culprits.

U.S. gasoline consumption, January 2000 – April 2014

Demand for gasoline in the U.S. peaked around 2007, just as lawmakers were setting the Renewable Fuel Standard, when the trend in consumption pointed to continuous yearly increases. But soon after, gas demand plummeted and has not returned to 2007 levels.

At the same time, U.S. domestic oil production has increased since the tail end of the last decade, thanks to a major boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, techniques. U.S. wells are projected to produce 9.3 million barrels of oil every day this year, up from 5 million in 2008. Since 2011, the U.S. has been a net exporter of oil and natural gas, and in 2015 was the world’s top oil and gas producer.

The EPA, though it was meant to abide by Congress’ initial requirements, made the decision that the robust standard lawmakers envisioned was simply unrealistic. The new mandate requires that 18 billion gallons of biofuel be used by American automobiles in 2016. That would make one out of every 10 gallons of gas consumed in the U.S. from biofuel. But it’s 4 billion gallons short of what Congress envisioned back in 2007.

But as states like North Dakota and Pennsylvania profited from the shale boom, much of the Midwest remains as tied to corn-based biofuel as before — if not more so. As of August 2015, Minnesota produced 1.2 billion gallons of ethanol annually, making it fourth in the nation in production, behind only Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois. That’s an all-time high: In 2012, the state produced 800 million gallons of ethanol fewer.

Annual ethanol production capacity for top producers, August 2015

Midwestern states dominate ethanol production in the U.S., occupying the top 10 places in terms of production capacity.

Source: Renewable Fuels Association via Nebraska Energy Office

With crop prices slumping, however, farmers in Minnesota are finding growing corn to be increasingly a losing proposition. In February, MPR reported that that prices for bushels of corn had fallen by half in the last few years, and that Minnesota farmers have been losing as much as $300 on each acre of corn planted. Reduced demand for biofuel will mean reduced demand for the corn that is used to make it, which can only mean downward pressure on the crop’s price.

In states like Minnesota and Iowa, then, the biofuel mandate is as much an economic lifeline as ever. The ethanol industry supports many thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of economic output. And top agriculture companies operating in the Midwest have lobbied hard to keep the mandate intact: Biofuels industry groups spent a total of $158 million lobbying federal lawmakers from 2007 to 2013.

Because of that, biofuels have grown into perhaps the most untouchable regional issue in the country. Nearly every politician in the Midwest, regardless of party, supports a strong standard; in Iowa, where the industry is dominant, presidential candidates have historically been required to tout the program to have even a remote shot at that state’s first-in-the nation caucuses.

Ethanol’s critics

Outside the Midwest, ethanol isn’t always regarded as a panacea. With a relatively limited regional footprint, the fuel has come under fire from a diverse array of groups.

The oil and gas industry has lobbied heavily against the renewable fuel standard and biofuel subsidies, and advanced research critical of biofuels, as fossil fuel producers are wary of the growing biofuels sector cutting into their market share. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who represents Louisiana, a stronghold of the oil industry, has introduced some of the strongest anti-biofuel legislation.

Many environmental groups have grown disillusioned, too, because of concerns that biofuels aren’t as green as they were meant to be. Some studies have suggested that the biofuel cultivation and consumption process as implemented can be very damaging to the environment — including contributing to climate change — and that changes need to be made before biofuels present a clearly superior option to fossil fuels.

Public polling on the ethanol issue is murky: The ag industry and the oil industry each sponsor polls that they use to validate their points of view. But fiscal hawks on both the right and left have recently attacked the renewable fuel standard for being a major government subsidy. Tellingly, presidential candidates this cycle are not falling in line to support ethanol. In October — and in Iowa of all places — Jeb Bush said, “We need to get to a point where there aren’t winners or losers based on subsidies or mandates.”

And in Congress, top lawmakers have taken aim at the ethanol component of the standards. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania, have introduced legislation to repeal the ethanol requirement in the renewable fuel standard, arguing the program will remain viable if other biofuels are prioritized.

Particularly, many see promise in what’s known as next-generation biofuel, especially cellulosic ethanol, which is made from parts of plants that are not edible. Environmentalists and others have grown increasingly concerned that the cultivation of corn and other edible crops for fuel, and not food, drives up food prices and harms availability.

Cellulosic ethanol is more desirable because it won’t create competition with food plants, explains Anu Ramaswami, who studies renewable energy at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School. “You don’t want to have competition with food,” she says. “The food price issue is something that, the more and more cellulosic ethanol is used, that angle will go away. The thing with cellulosic ethanol is that we need to scale it.”

Indeed, the RFS mandate only requires that 230 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol be used as fuel in 2016 — 0.12 percent of fuel consumed nationally. That number is expected to rise as the technology improves, and Ramaswami forecasts it will one day supplant traditional ethanol.

Minnesotans line up behind ethanol

Though a bill to reform the fuel standards would likely garner bipartisan support, it’s still considered virtually dead on arrival, given the staunch opposition from Minnesota and other Midwestern representatives.

When lawmakers like Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake say that the Renewable Fuel Standard is a “lemon” and that “Congress can no longer justify a policy that props up the ethanol industry at the expense of taxpayers, consumers, the hungry, and the environment,” corn country representatives come rushing with an opposite set of talking points.

In statements to MinnPost, many Minnesota members of Congress touted ethanol as a critical asset in the American energy portfolio, one that will help fight pollution and climate change, boost the Minnesota and U.S. economies, and protect the country from foreign oil.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar has cast herself as a leading advocate for biofuels, and took partial credit for pushing the administration to boost the original standard it released in May. That announcement called for 17.4 billion gallons of biofuel in 2016, about 600 million gallons fewer than this week’s numbers.

“The Renewable Fuel Standard has helped create American jobs, drive innovation, and boost local economies across Minnesota and the country,” Klobuchar said. “I’ll continue to call on the administration to promote biofuels to the extent that Congress intended in the law.”

Sen. Al Franken, who serves on the Senate Energy Committee, said the government made the “wrong decision” and pledged to get the RFS “back on track.”

“I believe we’re on the cusp of a renewable energy revolution,” Franken said in a statement. “But this announcement sends the signal to our producers and to our ag communities that there’s no interest in making important energy investments. … While I’m glad they raised levels from what was proposed, these final numbers just don’t cut it.”

Representatives from Minnesota’s rural, corn-growing districts — Democratic and Republican alike — were predictably not pleased. Seventh District Rep. Collin Peterson, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said that the rule was still disappointing, but “the administration deserves credit for listening to our concerns and now needs to immediately start work on the numbers and get the program back on track. … A strong biofuels industry is an essential component of the rural economy.”

In a statement, First District Rep. Tim Walz echoed Peterson in crediting the administration, but added “Homegrown energy from the heartland is critical to eliminating our dependence on foreign oil and to maintaining our national security. … I will continue to look for ways to move us toward a clean energy future.”

Sixth District Rep. Tom Emmer hammered the EPA in a statement, saying “When farm income is down by 38% – the lowest level in a decade – it is not the time for the EPA to be diluting a law that provides farmers with better access for their goods, allows consumers more choices at the pump, and leads to a cleaner, more affordable, domestic energy supply.”

Looking ahead

Even if the corn belt and the rest of the country are at odds on the importance, effect, and proper role of biofuels, most everyone agrees that the Renewable Fuel Standard program is in need of some major changes. When it released 2016 standards on Monday, the EPA also retroactively announced standards for 2015, and, confoundingly, 2014. Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the Energy and Power Subcommittee, told Politico that this was a clear sign the program needs to be fixed.

Given the situation, it’s unlikely Congress will take meaningful action to reform the program anytime soon, so big decisions will continue to rest with the White House and the EPA — at least until 2017.

But ethanol’s cheerleaders in Minnesota and elsewhere may need to begin managing their expectations. “It has a place in the renewable fuels landscape,” Ramaswami says, “but it’s one piece of a larger puzzle, and it won’t be limitless.”

Correction: This article originally misstated total U.S. oil consumption in 2004.

With House passage of conference report, replacement of No Child Left Behind is all but assured

Sam Brodey — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 16:31:28 +0000

WASHINGTON — Rep. John Kline may now be able to retire from Congress a happy man.

On Wednesday night, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly — by a margin of 359 to 64 — to approve the Every Student Succeeds Act, the final version of a comprehensive reform of No Child Left Behind, the controversial law that has served as the foundation for federal K-12 education policy since 2002.

The vote was technically an approval of a conference report, the agreement worked out between House and Senate lawmakers to reconcile differences between the two versions of the law that each had passed this summer. But the bill has essentially cleared its last major hurdle: it now heads to the Senate, where it is virtually guaranteed to advance. It would then arrive at the White House, where officials have said the president is eager to sign it into law.

Kline, the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, has been a key player in the process. He authored the initial House version of the legislation, and also chaired the conference committee that resolved the two chambers’ differences, which were not insubstantial.

In a statement, Kline hailed the House’s vote, saying “We have a strong bipartisan solution that will replace a flawed law, improve K-12 education, and make a difference in the lives of children across the country… No Child Left Behind was based on good intentions, but it was also based on the flawed premise that Washington knows best what students need to excel in school.”

“This is not a perfect solution,” Kline said. “There never is.”

A long road

By late summer, the prospect of this Congress passing a new education law, even with so much work done, was dismal. Concerns centered around whether House conservatives would support a compromise bill more in line with the more moderate Senate bill, which received much more Democratic support than Kline’s bill. To complicate matters, a nascent conservative wing of the House GOP was on the brink of ousting former Speaker John Boehner, a key Kline ally and former Education Committee chair.

Yet, after the leadership drama settled, the conference committee — which announced its final agreement in November — seemed to offer at least one thing for various factions to like, and little for them to outright hate. Democrats, though many are worried about maintaining a federal role to ensure states remain required to help disadvantaged students, liked provisions that provided grant money for low-income schools and pre-kindergarten programs.

Republicans, many of whom felt the bill didn’t go far enough to pare back the federal role, still appreciated the significant devolution of power to statehouses. Members of both parties, above all, were eager to replace a 13-year old education law that virtually no one calls a success, and that the Obama administration had been dismantling piecemeal.

But the final vote tally, which saw 181 Democrats join 178 Republicans in voting for the bill, was even more lopsided than observers had anticipated. All of Minnesota’s representatives voted yes, and the 64 holdouts were mainly very conservative Republicans.

In all likelihood, a sight few envisioned should materialize in the next few weeks: Kline joining fellow legislators at the White House to witness Obama sign a K-12 education bill into law. Michael Petrilli, president of the Fordham Institute education think tank, is a major proponent of the bill, but in October, he put its chances of success at 25 percent, tops.

On Thursday, Petrilli sounded a different tone in an email. “Last night’s huge bipartisan vote was an enormous victory for Chairman Kline,” he wrote, “and for common sense.”

The long shot: Democrat Roger Kittelson enters CD2 race with focus on trade, single-payer health care

Sam Brodey — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 15:04:23 +0000

Roger Kittelson

The two-woman race for the DFL nomination in the Second Congressional District is now — at least officially — a three-person contest. This week, Roger Kittelson, a 59-year-old dairy industry professional from Goodhue, launched his bid for Congress.

The soft-spoken Kittelson is no doubt a long shot: The two current DFL candidates, Angie Craig and Mary Lawrence, have been on the campaign trail for months, courting district activists and interest groups, and raising piles of cash — in Lawrence’s case, over $1 million.

Kittelson, who currently works in Minneapolis as a dairy marketing specialist for a Chicago-based food company he declined to name, has only attended a few events, and only began considering a run after Republican incumbent Rep. John Kline announced in September that he would not run for re-election. The “supporters” section of his website is currently empty.

In an interview with MinnPost, however, Kittelson said his late entry into the race is no problem, and that he’ll run a grass-roots, volunteer-based campaign focusing on the issues he cares about most: namely, single-payer health care and international trade deals. “I believe I’m the most electable Democrat in the race based on the issues,” Kittelson said.

Little political experience

Kittelson has little previous political experience. He hasn’t run for office in the state of Minnesota since 1982, when he ran for the Minnesota Legislature. He was defeated by future GOP Speaker of the House Steve Sviggum.

Kittelson, who lives on a farm roughly 15 miles south of Red Wing, went on to build a career in the dairy industry, working as an adviser for the Department of Agriculture on dairy issues, and later in the private sector working as an ingredient buyer for a dairy company. In the 2000s, he moved to Wisconsin to take positions in the federal government and in the private sector, both in the dairy field.

While in Wisconsin, Kittelson made two runs for Congress in the solidly Republican Sixth District, which encompasses the west-central part of that state. In 2004 and 2008, he challenged longtime incumbent Tom Petri, and advanced to the general election in 2008. He would only raise $17,000, however, and was defeated by 28 points, even though Barack Obama carried the district.

Focusing on health care, trade

In the 2008 campaign, Kittelson ran on a platform of single-payer health care and ending the war in Iraq. Now that he is back in Minnesota, he says, “literally, the issues haven’t changed.” Still, he added, “This is a different race, this is a different year, the climate is different.”

That new climate, Kittelson explains, is due to several factors — primarily, that Obamacare had not panned out as expected, and that trade deals, like the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, have hollowed out the manufacturing sector of the country.

On the former, Kittelson says single-payer health care is the best way to lower health care costs for everyone, which he says have gone up under Obamacare. “We actually expected health care costs to go down and they’ve gone up,” he says. “It speaks strongly to the fact that the Affordable Care Act needs to be replaced, and one area I know we can save money is reducing health care costs and providing better health care.”

On the latter, Kittelson says he is “vehemently” opposed to TPP and past trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement. “We’ve lost business overseas that we’ve had here in the U.S. over the last 20 to 30 years. I know what manufacturing does for the community, when you lose manufacturing, you lose the small businesses. Manufacturing jobs are hard to replace,” he says.

“It would be to our best interest to repeal some of the deals we put together,” Kittelson said, including NAFTA, which established a free trade zone between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in 1994.

It’s an interesting mix of positions. On one hand, opposition to the TPP trade deal is perhaps the single most galvanizing issue among the progressive grass roots, encompassing concerns about jobs, climate change, and intellectual property. On the other hand, serious talk about single-payer health care all but died in 2009, when congressional Democrats failed to include it in Obama’s health care reform package.

Kittelson’s advocacy of the health care point is especially curious in light of his opponents’ deep backgrounds in the field — Craig as an executive for a medical device company and Lawrence as a Department of Veterans Affairs doctor.

Still, Kittelson insists that he brings to the table a seriousness to deal with those issues that he claims the two leading candidates lack. He says he does not see either of them “supporting a vote against TPP, nor do I see them trying to repeal current trade deals.” He added that neither also appeared to have interest in the issue of focusing on single-payer health care.

A campaign spokesman said that Craig does not support TPP, however. Lawrence says she is still reviewing the agreement but “… will not support an agreement that does not respect worker rights, human rights, environmental standards and … will not result in an increase in high-paying jobs in Minnesota's second congressional district.”

On the campaign trail

Kittelson says he’s spent the past few weeks talking to people in the district, and claims his conversations have borne out his policy agenda. “I consider the number one topic the Pacific trade pact, and number two single-payer health care. For most of the residents, number one is health care costs,” he says.

So far, he says he has visited with Scott, Goodhue, and Wabasha County Democrats. “I’ve done over the last two to three months a little bit of door-knocking, I’ve talked to union representatives who said they’d support me if I put my hat in the ring,” Kittelson says.

“We’re at the beginning stages of this. I know Angie and Mary have people committed — we’re seeking individuals focusing on the issues, trade deals, a single-payer health care plan, and ask them to get on our bus to the precinct caucuses.”

DFL Chair Ken Martin had no specific comment on Kittelson, but said the party is fielding “three excellent candidates.” “It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that there’s an additional entrance in the race,” he added. “I think everyone in the DFL is excited about the opportunity to pick up the seat.”

Kittelson says he will abide by the DFL endorsement, and if he wins it, he says “the money will come.”

“I’m not a multimillionaire, I don’t hang around multimillionaires,” Kittleson says. “I hang around farmers and workers and union guys. That’s the family I associate with. If I get a contribution from those groups I feel fortunate. …We’re not afraid of grass-roots building and that’s what we’re going to have to do.”

“We have a few volunteers who agree with my platform.”

Rep. Emmer has a novel idea: actually declare war before fighting one

Sam Brodey — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 15:33:46 +0000

WASHINGTON — This week, Rep. Tom Emmer moved to do something the United States Congress has only done 11 times in its history: pass an official declaration of war.

On Wednesday, Emmer introduced a joint resolution to the House of Representatives to officially declare war on the Islamic State, a move he says is in direct response to last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris. “This is an unprovoked act of war against one of our allies,” Emmer said. “The Islamic state has actually declared war on the United States and others.”

The freshman representative from the Sixth District says he wondered immediately after the Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed by eight ISIS-affiliated terrorists, what the U.S. response would be. On Monday, Emmer says, “I asked leadership what the plan was, and asked why we weren’t considering a declaration of war. No one said it wasn’t on the table.”

Emmer then, simply, put something on the table. His resolution simply reads: “Declaring that a state of war exists between the Islamic State and the Government and the people of the United States and making provision to prosecute the same.”

An exceedingly rare event

No member of Congress has moved to put forth a war declaration since 1941, when Congress approved six declarations of war on the Axis powers, marking the official beginning of U.S. involvement in World War II. The other formal declarations of war came in 1917, on the Central Powers in World War I, in 1898 on Spain, in 1846 on Mexico, and in 1812 on Britain.

In total, the U.S. has officially declared war on nine different states: Germany (twice), Japan, Austria-Hungary, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, Mexico, and Great Britain.

Since World War II, the U.S. has preferred to conduct its wars via Authorizations for Use of Military Force, laws that permit the president to use military force but are different from formal declarations of war. In Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, AUMFs were utilized.

While AUMF and declarations of war both approve the use of force, there are a couple of important differences between the two. Mainly, declarations of war automatically authorize a broad array of actions presidents can take on the homefront during wartime, from imposing restrictions on trade to using public land for military purposes. That kind of authority isn’t automatic with an AUMF.

Declarations of war have also been applied uniformly to established nation-states, while AUMF have more often been used, as a Congressional Research Service report put it, “for broad authority to use U.S. military force in a specific region of the world in order to defend U.S. interests or friendly states as the President deems appropriate.” So, while the U.S. went to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 under AUMF authority, that same authority applied to the fight against non-state organization al Qaeda in 2001.

Nothing for ISIS

The current fight against ISIS, which is primarily limited to airstrikes, has no updated AUMF or declaration of war underpinning it. The Obama administration says it has authority to carry out airstrikes based on the 2001 authorization to fight al Qaeda and the 2002 authorization for the Iraq War. Past attempts in Congress to deliver an updated AUMF for the president have fallen flat, and there’s little reason to believe one will succeed now. Republicans are reluctant to give more authority to a president they believe has the wrong strategy in the Middle East, and Democrats are wary of, yet again, authorizing broad military force in the region.

Beyond that, given that declarations of war have always applied to states and not non-state actors like al Qaeda, approving one could send the message that ISIS is a real state, which some in Congress might be reluctant to do. Emmer says we might as well treat it like one. “We have an organization that calls itself a state, occupies land, and by some estimates, has some 10 million people getting up every day under their rule,” he said. “They call themselves a state, we should treat them like a state.”

Even with a 13-year-old law as the foundation of the fight against ISIS, recent U.S. conflicts have been held up with less. The Korean War was not authorized explicitly by Congress, but was legitimized by the United Nations Participation Act of 1945, which permits the U.S. to intervene on the basis of U.N. Security Council resolutions. That law justified use of force in Panama in 1989 and in Bosnia in 1994, both not approved by Congress. Currently, there is no U.N. Security Council resolution against ISIS, though some world leaders are pushing for one.

As it stands today, Congress’ actions might not matter that much: according to the CRS, these days, executives have “welcomed support from the Congress in the form of legislation authorizing him to utilize U.S. military forces in a foreign conflict or engagement in support of U.S. interests, but has not taken the view that he is required to obtain such authorization.”

Emmer’s declaration of war — though he says it has been received favorably by his colleagues — is unlikely to pick up steam. But in a conversation with MinnPost, the congressman said he is seeking to send a message with his resolution. “The founders didn’t intend we have 536 Commanders-in-Chief…We have one Commander-in-Chief,” he said.

“Members of Congress can certainly be involved and consult, but it is up to the Commander-in-Chief to handle this,” Emmer said. “A declaration of war is simply telling him, Congress is with you. Go defeat this enemy — we’re behind you.”

Under pressure to respond to Paris attacks, Congress considers more restrictions on Syrian refugees

Sam Brodey — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 16:52:27 +0000

WASHINGTON — The terrorist attacks in Paris last week have reverberated soundly on this side of the Atlantic — and perhaps no more so than in Washington, where policymakers and elected officials are using the kind of anti-terrorist rhetoric not seen since the days after the 9-11 attacks.

Members of Congress are feeling pressure from constituents and the media to offer some kind of response to the Paris attacks that might make the United States safer, and Republicans — along with some Democrats — have fixated on one issue in particular: the millions of refugees fleeing the horrors of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Congressional Republicans, including Minnesota’s three GOP representatives, swiftly called for a tougher refugee vetting process and a suspension in the country’s resettlement of refugees from Syria, while President Barack Obama and many congressional Democrats have defended the system in place and spoken of the need to aid those victimized by ISIS.

For some, the idea has taken hold that ISIS and other terror groups are taking advantage of the refugee exodus by planting their operatives as refugees and sending them into western countries to carry out attacks. Evidence gathered thus far, though, indicates that none of the eight men who terrorized Paris last Friday went to Europe as refugees.

By most accounts, the U.S. vetting system for refugees is rigorous, and regularly takes up to two years. However, on Wednesday, House Republicans introduced legislation to make refugee vetting even tougher. The Republican bill is likely to pass overwhelmingly, and, according to Politico, may attract 60 Democratic votes.

(Update: As expected, the bill passed by a wide margin, with 47 Democrats joining 242 Republicans to vote yes. Reps. Nolan, Peterson, and Walz joined their three Minnesota Republican colleagues in support, while Rep. McCollum was the only member of the delegation to vote no.)

Currently, there are about 1,600 Syrian refugees in the United States, and only a few of those families were resettled in Minnesota. The White House says it plans to take 10,000 refugees over the next year.

Over 30 governors, both Democratic and Republican, have stated they would not allow resettlement of refugees from Syria in their states. (The State Department has said governors don’t have the authority to do that, and Obama called the moves “hysterical.”) Gov. Mark Dayton was one of the few governors to say he’d continue allowing Syrian refugees to resettle in his state.

Republicans seek more restrictions

That move, according to Second District Rep. John Kline, was a mistake. “We should, as a country, not be bringing them in, and Minnesota doesn’t need to bring in people where we have no idea what their backgrounds are, and making it less safe for us,” he said. “We spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help people in the region …we understand it’s very dangerous. It would be helpful if the president had a comprehensive strategy, and not just pick an arbitrary number,” Kline added, referring to the 10,000 Syrian refugees Obama said he wanted to admit.

Third District Rep. Erik Paulsen said in a statement that the U.S. has always been a welcoming and compassionate country, but claimed the evidence that terrorists are exploiting refugee programs can’t be ignored. “Given this very real threat, I believe it is appropriate to pause the admittance of Syrian refugees until we have certainty that refugee admission protocols will keep out those wishing to do us harm.”

In a statement, Sixth District Rep. Tom Emmer said he has cosponsored legislation to make the refugee vetting process stronger, and urged Congress and the White House to get behind them. “The number one role of the federal government is to protect the American people,” he said.

Obama announced Wednesday night, however, that he intends to veto any bill proposing changes to current refugee policy.

Democrats defend refugee resettlement in Minnesota and nationwide

On the Democratic side, Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison strongly condemned attempts to suspend refugee resettlement in the U.S., and called Dayton a “courageous leader.”

“To be fearful and worried about what happened in Paris is totally legitimate, we don’t want it to happen here and we should all be trying to make sure it doesn’t,” he said. But some, he said, “are taking us from being the country of Emma Lazarus’ poem, the land of the Statue of Liberty, and converting ourselves into someone else. Letting fear make us forget basic American values is a problem.”

Ellison, whose Minneapolis district is home to many refugees from Somalia, said the current vetting system is strong enough, and it can be strengthened even as the U.S. continues to accept refugees. Fourth District Rep. Betty McCollum agreed, saying that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are using advanced technology that wasn’t in place as recently as two years ago.

“It’s really unfortunate that this tragedy in France is being used to shut down a program that we’ve had in place for thoroughly vetting and screening refugees,” McCollum added. “What we should do is band together with our allies around the world to put ISIS out of business.”

First District Rep. Tim Walz said the public might not be aware how strong the current system is. “There’s the potential that there are some gaps that could be verified, but people need to recognize that the vast majority of people resettled have connections in America already,” Walz said, “and the great bulk is women and children; 2 percent are unattached males.”

In a speech delivered on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Al Franken said the U.S. can and should strike a balance between national security and meeting humanitarian obligations. “Rather than showing compassion and standing up for American values,” Franken said, “many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to close the door on people fleeing the most horrendous forms of persecution.” He added that Obama set a modest goal of 10,000 refugees, saying “We can and we should do more.”

A spokesperson for Sen. Amy Klobuchar told MinnPost that Klobuchar “is committed to the refugee program so long as each refugee goes through a vetting process and is deemed to be no risk to public safety.” In September, Klobuchar and other Senate Democrats called on the White House to do more about the refugee crisis and admit 65,000 Syrians.

Minnesota’s rural Democrats sounded notes of caution on the issue. Rep. Rick Nolan said refugees pose a risk “if they’re not very carefully and thoroughly vetted,” but added, “I think we have the capacity to do that. I’m not someone who wants to leave a 5-year-old orphan victim of war with no place else to go.” Rep. Collin Peterson would not say whether he supported Dayton’s decision, saying that policymakers and elected officials should “err on the side of caution.”

Military response weighed

Regardless of their stances on the refugee issue, members of both parties sounded galvanized by the Paris attacks to renew the effort to defeat ISIS. Certain to accompany the refugee debate is a discussion over a congressional authorization of military force, used in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Defense hawks intend to introduce a strong AUMF, but such measures have struggled to gain traction in recent years.

On Wednesday, Emmer went so far as to introduce in Congress an official declaration of war on ISIS, making it the first time a congressman has put one forth since World War II. It’s unlikely to gain much support.

There is also discussion, at least in the Senate, about travel visa policy. Currently, there are no visa restrictions for travelers from countries like France and Belgium, where many of the Paris terrorists were passport holders.

Ellison said that any measures that can be taken to make the United States safer should be taken, but emphasized this is a complicated problem that won’t be solved by administrative fixes, or by changing visa or refugee policy. “Legislation passed under fear,” he said, “is rarely good legislation. The answer is going to be found in diplomacy.”

Walz recalled a Wednesday hearing with former Iraq and Afghanistan ambassador Ryan Crocker, saying his message was clear: “Don’t play into [ISIS’] hands; don’t give up on our values, but make sure the system works."

“Refugees aren’t the enemy,” Walz said. “The enemy is ISIS. We don’t need a divided nation — we need to come together on this.”

Congress is very close to leaving ‘No Child Left Behind’ behind

Sam Brodey — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 16:41:13 +0000

WASHINGTON — After months of public uncertainty, congressional leadership turmoil, high-profile retirements and hard work behind closed doors, Congress is today where few believed it would ever be: on the doorstep of passing a major K-12 education bill for the first time in 13 years.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted to officially begin conference committee proceedings, and the bipartisan, bicameral group will meet to officially hammer out a compromise to revamp the No Child Left Behind education law. Top education policymakers, including House Education and the Workforce Committee Chair Rep. John Kline, will sit on the panel.

Over the summer, the House of Representatives and the Senate passed respective bills that would rewrite the law, which has served as the foundation for federal K-12 education policy since George W. Bush signed it in 2002.

The conference committee will begin discussions with much of the hardest work already completed: In the four months since each chamber passed its bill, the staffs of top education policymakers have been working out the blueprint of a potential compromise. With the details mostly cooked, it’s an opportunity for members of both parties to air out concerns and consider potential amendments.

The effort wouldn’t have gotten this far unless there was a good chance of it arriving at President Barack Obama’s desk. But there are serious obstacles, particularly in the House, along with vocal stakeholders looking to leave their fingerprints on a bill that could define K-12 education policy for the next decade.

What will change?

The details of a potential House-Senate compromise have not been released, but based on the reporting of education-focused publication Ed Week, we know about its broad contours.

One of No Child Left Behind’s least popular elements was its establishment of a fairly rigorous testing regime — it required students to be assessed annually in grades three through eight and then once in high school. The new bill would keep that schedule in place, but states will have much more freedom to decide what those tests mean than they did in past years.

The new law is also likely to maintain provisions requiring schools and districts to share their assessment data with government officials. That data has been used to shed light on achievement gaps between wealthy, majority white schools and low-income, minority schools.

So what will change? The compromise law is likely to take aim at unrealistic achievement goals and devolve decision-making on what to do about the lowest-achieving students to the states.

Under NCLB, assessments were a key component of Adequate Yearly Progress, a major element of the law that was designed to set clear achievement goals for schools. AYP eventually became loathed by both left and right for placing too much emphasis on standardized testing, fostering unrealistic expectations, and punishing schools for not meeting those expectations. Schools that did not meet AYP were forced to provide students the option and resources to transfer to another school, for example, and schools that repeatedly did not meet AYP faced firings or even closure.

The provisions became so unworkable that, beginning in 2011, the Department of Education began waiving states from core components of NCLB — like the requirement that 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014 — in exchange for agreeing to some conditions. Thirty-four states, including Minnesota, took advantage of the waivers, which were not explicitly built into NCLB. The compromise is certain to strike the most problematic ideas behind AYP from K-12 education law.

A key sticking point of any education compromise will be accountability provisions — in other words, how officials respond to low-performing schools and students. NCLB gave the federal government a lot of power in determining state accountability systems — it included a provision saying states would not have made AYP, and faced the requisite penalties, if they didn’t assess 95 percent of subgroups such as English language learners and low income students. All state accountability plans were subject to final approval from the Department of Education.

This compromise bill is certain to pare down the department’s role, as well as that of the secretary of education. According to initial reports, the bill will require state governments to intervene in the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools and the schools with the lowest graduation rates. But unlike before, it will be almost entirely up to the states to decide how they want to intervene.

Overall, the compromise may end up looking more like the Senate’s version of the bill, written by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, and Patty Murray, D-Washington. That bill, which included language on accountability, is considered more moderate, and enjoyed strong bipartisan support.

Sen. Al Franken, a member of the Senate's education panel, will join Kline on the conference committee. In a statement, Franken said people “across the country have been waiting for a long time for us to fix this law” and added he was glad to get “several key provisions included in a final agreement of the bill that will help improve education in Minnesota.”

The House’s version, sponsored and shepherded by Kline, is considered more aligned with conservative priorities, and contains a few wish-list items that are unlikely to make it into the conference bill, like so-called “Title I portability,” under which federal money for disadvantaged and underperforming groups goes to individual students, not schools. According to Ed Week, though, some policy pieces most desired by Kline — like more block granting of federal funds for math and science programs — will make it into the final bill.

Many hard-line Republicans didn’t consider Kline’s bill conservative enough, and it passed by only five votes in July.

Enough to like here

Observers and stakeholders from across the K-12 education world are hailing the progress of NCLB’s overhaul as a good thing, emphasizing that while not everyone will get what they want, it’ll be far better than the disjointed status quo, which virtually everyone dislikes.

In an interview, Kline told MinnPost that members of both parties are ready to put NCLB to bed.

“I don’t think there’s anybody alive who would argue this isn’t the largest intrusion of the federal government in K-12 education we’ve ever had,” he said. “There is virtually nobody who is happy with the status quo … we must move toward more local control and less federal government control.”

“Not everybody — perhaps not anybody — is going to be happy with everything that comes out of conference,” Kline added. “That’s how this works. It’s a give and take. We should have an Elementary and Secondary Education Act that replaces No Child Left Behind, empowers parents, returns local control, ends AYP … a lot of things we’ve been talking about on both sides will result from this process, and I feel pretty good about that.”

Without Title I portability and a handful of other items, the House and Senate bills aren’t terribly different and offer enough territory for compromise, according to Arnold Shober, an education policy expert at Wisconsin’s Lawrence University. Though he acknowledges the House bill is far more state- and local-oriented than the Senate bill, Shober says, “to the extent that the compromise bill preserves state language, it would be something most Republicans could be able to get behind.”

Republicans want to be in a position to say, he added, that their plan “ensures local school boards and state elected officials keep the Department of Education away for the most part, but acknowledges that some states weren’t looking at low-performing schools without a federal threat. A lot of Republicans could swallow that language.”

If the bill proceeds, then, those most likely to be disappointed are those on the left who want a strong federal government role in setting accountability mechanisms, and conservatives who envision an even smaller, weaker Department of Education than the one put forth by the compromise.

A hasty retreat of the federal government from K-12 education could have worrisome consequences, according to Scott Sargrad, an education expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “There’s still a really critical role that the federal government needs to play in enforcing the law and the civil rights of students. We don’t want to see a complete rollback of the federal role,” he said.

According to Sargrad, both the Senate and House bills didn’t do enough to ensure states and school districts address achievement for minorities, English language learners, low-income students, and other historically disadvantaged subgroups. “We hope to see that significantly strengthened,” he said. “It’s critically important that schools educate all students and if they persistently fail to do that, then districts and states should have a responsibility to step in.”

To Michael Petrilli, president of the right-leaning Fordham Institute education think tank, the compromise bill would put accountability fights where they belong — at the state level.

“The federal role in education has never been static. There had been a situation with clear overreach,” Petrilli says. The bill, he adds, strikes a “reasonable balance … [it] maintains the federal requirement that states continue to have accountability systems, but it also makes a very strong statement and says states are in charge, and shifts fights over accountability to state capitals.”

“I think it’s a good bill,” Petrilli says. “It’s the right bill at the right time.”

Not law yet

Whether members of Congress agree it’s the right bill remains to be seen. As a compromise bill, it gives room for members of both parties to take serious objection to what’s put before them. The drama is likely to center in the House of Representatives: 27 House conservatives voted against Kline’s initial bill, and more are likely to join them — perhaps many more. Not a single Democrat voted for that bill, but a compromise bill could pick up a large majority of their caucus.

This could be a crucial early test for the newly minted Speaker Paul Ryan. According to Petrilli, the fate of the bill depends on how badly Ryan and GOP leadership “want to demonstrate they can get things done,” even if it means risking a standoff with hard-liners.

“There’s certainly an argument to be made based on politics and policy that it’d help Republicans to have some accomplishments and this is low-hanging fruit … they can put a stake through the heart of No Child Left Behind,” he says. “It doesn’t go as far as most conservative members would like, but that’s how our democracy works.”

Whether Congress finally puts NCLB to rest may depend on whether Ryan abides by the so-called Hastert Rule, under which Republican speakers do not bring legislation to the floor unless it has the support of the majority of the party. A compromise would almost certainly pass the House with Democrats and moderate Republicans joining to vote yes — whether it can get a majority of the GOP is unclear. Ryan has previously said he would uphold the rule.

For his part, Kline says efforts are shaping up and that he’s confident the compromise has a path forward. “We will take this framework, which is a preliminary agreement, and move into conference, which will be an open process which will allow conferees their chance to speak up, so we’ll see what comes out. Any discussions that we’ve had have been serious and productive,” he said.

The political will exists for most House Republicans to push out the bill, according to Kris Amundson, executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education. “Nobody is hearing from back home, ‘we love No Child Left Behind, don’t change a word,’ ” Amundson says. “Members of Congress are very responsive to what they hear from back home, and they have been hearing for several years that No Child Left Behind is past its sell-by date.”

“That’s why I say there is a path out of the House,” she says. “If the Speaker invokes the Hastert Rule, I think it’s dicier.”

Of one thing, however, Amundson is sure: If the compromise becomes law, John Kline is to thank. “He’s clearly spending his political capital, so I give him tremendous credit for that. … If it gets over the finish line, it’ll be because of him.”

Your apps know where you are, but do you know who they’re sharing that information with?

Sam Brodey — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:39:11 +0000

WASHINGTON — If you’re swiping right on Tinder, the company knows where you are.

That’s kind of the point — you’re trying to find out who exactly is 0.5 miles away, after all. But Sen. Al Franken also wants to make sure you know that Tinder is taking your GPS data, and who else they’re sharing that data with.

On Tuesday, Franken introduced the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2015 in the U.S. Senate, which would require companies to get the consent of users before they share location data they’ve collected with third parties. The legislation — which Franken has introduced three times before — is also being branded as an anti-stalking, anti-domestic violence measure: it would ban smartphone apps that use location data to help stalkers find and harass victims.

Despite that broadly agreeable provision, it's still unlikely other elements of the bill will gain much traction in the Republican-held Congress.

In an interview with MinnPost, Franken explained, “the basic premise here is that people have a right to privacy, and this bill is about your location being tracked. You have a right to know who’s taking your location and if they’re sharing it with other people.”

Franken, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee for Privacy, Technology, and the Law, said the genesis of his law was testimony from the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, which told the story of a St. Louis County woman whose abusive partner used stalking software to discover she was seeking a restraining order. Franken said three-quarters of domestic violence shelters have reported use of stalking apps.

“It’s an incredibly large law enforcement problem,” Franken said.

Loopholes persist in privacy law

In a summary of his proposed legislation, Franken says that stalking apps are legal and brazenly market themselves to consumers, thanks to a so-called loophole in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 that lets companies gather and share GPS data with third parties. It’s why an app that might not need your location (a game, for example) requires your location anyway — so it can show you targeted ads that third-party vendors in the area have paid to run.

As any smartphone user knows, apps that collect location data will notify the user of that fact before use and give the user a choice to opt out. But details on whether or not that data is shared with third parties is often buried in the fine print, and Franken’s law envisions a notification that makes it more explicit to users. “We’ve actually worked with a lot of these stakeholders in this and crafted our legislation to be easy to comply with,” Franken said.

But the tech and advertising companies that rely on — and, increasingly, profit enormously from — this data have pushed back against the bill, arguing that it would have unintended consequences. In a 2014 story on that session’s version of the bill, the National Journal newspaper called GPS data collection the “golden goose of mobile advertising,” a $43 billion a year industry in total.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a digital advertising trade group, told National Journal that version of Franken’s bill could harm their industry as well as the larger app development industry. “The misappropriation of a user’s data for criminal activity is distinctly different from the legitimate commercial practices that consumers have come to expect and value; and, is responsible for much of the free or low-cost digital services and applications we enjoy today.”

Privacy watchdog groups, however, appear to be pleased. Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation said Franken has been a “great advocate” on privacy issues.

The proposed law “clearly has an enforcement authority and the transparency angles. Consent is also very important and the bill touches on all of these aspects.”

Path ahead is uncertain

For his part, Franken acknowledged that industry groups weren’t happy about certain provisions in his law, but said “there is real agreement on the stalker piece of it. That is going to be the easier lift.”

When asked why he didn’t separate the two topics and advance the anti-stalking measures in a separate bill, Franken said, “I’ve introduced it the way I’ve introduced it for a reason. When they’re taking your location, that’s a lot of sensitive information…this data can be used in a very sophisticated way that ultimately leads to a very troublesome violation of basic privacy rights.”

The bill will now head to the Privacy, Technology, and the Law Subcommittee, which Franken chaired before Republicans took over the Senate this year. The first iteration of his law cleared subcommittee in 2012 but did not get a vote on the Senate floor, and the 2014 version failed to advance.

It’s doubtful that a bill placing new regulatory restrictions on tech companies — even with a popular anti-stalking element — will get much play in the Republican Senate. Indeed, the bill has six co-sponsors, but all are Democrats, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin. “Some of my Republican colleagues have some issues with this,” Franken admitted. “I think they can be worked through.”

Ultimately, Franken said, the focus of the debate should be on the people most hurt by the misuse of GPS data. The millions of Americans who use a service like Facebook, he said, “have the right to say, ‘Gee, I don’t want you to do that,’ or, ‘Fine, I don’t care.’ A lot of people feel that way.

“I say you don’t have to care,” he went on. “You can sign onto anything that takes your location… Obviously, the stalker part affects people who have no idea that’s being done. That’s led to awful consequences of people being assaulted.”

Can the VA fire its way out of its problems?

Sam Brodey — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 16:50:53 +0000

WASHINGTON — “Zero-sum situation.” “Culture of bureaucracy.” “Doesn’t make sense in the 21st century.”

These were some of the harsh words that some members of Congress, including First District Rep. Tim Walz, have spoken recently over an agency many are well past fed up dealing with: the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

If you believe the headlines, Congress’ goal of improving the VA will be a monumental task: Over the past two years, the agency has weathered a lot of bad press, from reports of interminable wait times at hospitals to unfair medical billing practices to allegations of bureaucrats gaming the system for personal gain.

Those stories have prompted Republicans to hold up the VA, which operates a massive health care network that provides care to nine million veterans and employs roughly 250,000 people, as Exhibit A of federal government incompetence and complacency. In the past year and a half, they have put forth a raft of reforms aimed at streamlining the agency — or, depending on how you view it — placing punitive measures on VA employees.

Others, including many Democrats, dispute the idea that primary blame for the VA’s woes lies on its employees. Instead, they have favored a number of smaller, targeted reforms to do the heavy lifting to make the VA better without wading into union politics.

Members of Congress love to talk about honoring America’s veterans — but if the last months are any indication, they have a long way to go in figuring out the best way to do it.

Scandal upon scandal

Exactly how bad are things at the VA? If the past two years are a guide, very bad. The agency had a blockbuster scandal on its hands in spring 2014 when it was revealed that 35 veterans had died while waiting for care at a Phoenix, Arizona, VA hospital, and that officials had manipulated wait times to obscure the problem.

That scandal opened wider investigations from the White House, the FBI, Congress and the VA itself, which found similar problems nationwide. Top agency officials, including Secretary Eric Shinseki, stepped down as a result.

In the aftermath of the debacle, Congress and President Obama undertook a raft of measures aimed at helping veterans get care. Many were designed to help veterans circumvent problematic facilities, and one bill passed by Congress gave veterans more flexibility in going to non-VA doctors.

But problems with the institution persisted: In June of this year, it came to light that faulty billing practices at Minnesota and Wisconsin VA health facilities were confusing and putting undue financial burden on veterans. The entire Minnesota congressional delegation, joined by some Wisconsin members, sent an outraged letter to current Secretary Robert McDonald over the issue.

If that all were not enough, recently it was revealed that certain VA officials had maneuvered to create new jobs for themselves in different cities.

A government report charges that Kimberly Graves, a VA administrator from Philadelphia, persuaded a superior to leave a post in St. Paul, which she then filled. She received $129,000 in relocation fees — a move Rep. John Kline called “unconscionable … a clear violation of the public trust and blatant abuse of power.”

Graves failed to appear before the Veterans’ Affairs Committee in October and was promptly subpoenaed. Last week, she appeared before the committee in Washington and pled the fifth.

To lawmakers, it was textbook behavior from an agency that has circled the wagons. “It seems like the veterans administration has had this blank check — so they’ve gotten complacent and recalcitrant and unresponsive. Some heads need to roll,” Rep. Rick Nolan said.

Making firings easier

Many close observers of the VA agree that a negative culture has festered in the agency for years, with bad habits building up to create a bureaucratic mess unique in the federal government simply because of the immense size and scope of the VA.

To fix the problems, Republicans have taken direct aim at the public sector unions that represent VA employees, arguing that limiting their influence is perhaps the single biggest thing Congress can do to remedy the situation. Generally, Republican arguments on the effect of federal workers unions mirror their arguments on teachers unions: They believe that unions help protect subpar employees from being fired.

Rep. Jeff Miller, the Republican Veterans’ Affairs Committee chair, said last week that it is too hard to fire underperforming employees and too hard to hire new, eager ones. He said the most important thing the VA could do is “make it easier to discipline individuals who can’t or won’t do their jobs.” Since Shinseki stepped down as secretary last year, the rate of firings at the VA has slowed.

To that end, Republicans this year introduced legislation, the VA Accountability Act of 2015, aimed at giving top VA executive officials more authority to fire lower level administrative workers. It was co-sponsored by Kline, and passed the House with some Democratic support. In a statement, Kline — a former Marine and one of three veterans in the Minnesota delegation — said the law “would give the VA secretary new authority to fire corrupt or incompetent employees — putting the treatment of our veterans before bureaucrats.”

The bill, Kline said, “comes in response to the VA’s long and well-documented history of not holding problem employees accountable,” adding it would be a “significant step toward increasing oversight and transparency.”

Walz, along with many other Democrats, opposed the VA Accountability Act, saying it was purely partisan. At a Wednesday talk hosted by the Brookings Institution, he said “it doesn’t make much sense to strip workers of collective bargaining,” and that it’s the “only strength they have.” He added that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s weakening of public sector unions in that state has had a chilling effect on whistleblowers — like the ones who stepped forward this year to shed light on poor management, high workload and unsafe environments at the St. Cloud VA hospital.

On Thursday, Nolan spoke of a myth that “somehow because of federal employee protections and because of unions, it’s impossible to fire a federal employee. That’s just not true,” he said. “I think we need to leave those protections in place.”

Walz has emphasized the importance of unions that represent VA employees, but has signalled a willingness to work with his Republican colleagues on so-called accountability measures that may weaken the unions. “When I hear someone hasn’t been fired who should be fired, I’m madder than anyone,” he said.

“Whatever it takes to deliver the highest quality health care is the one we should choose. I don’t have an ideological dog that I’m tied to in this fight.”

Incremental improvements

For now, the likeliest scenario is that the VA will be improved incrementally, with lawmakers and the White House agreeing on noncontroversial laws, like one passed last year that expanded veterans’ access to care and hired more doctors and nurses for VA facilities.

Walz has been able to produce VA reform legislation that can earn support from both parties. In July, he introduced two bills: one that would require the VA to submit to an independent health-care audit every two years, and one to streamline how members of the private sector health-care industry operate at VA facilities.

And in the wake of the VA billing problem, Kline and Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced legislation aimed at reforming how the health-care system bills patients. (Kline’s bill will be considered in committee November 17.)

In October, Walz, along with Rep. Tom Emmer, introduced a bill to make VA internal reports more transparent and accessible to Congress and the public. That was introduced in response to their joint visit this fall to the St. Cloud VA.

Whether there will be a grand showdown between Congress and VA employee unions remains to be seen. While Obama is in office, it’s highly likely he will veto a bill like the VA Accountability Act of 2015 — if it even survives the Senate. “There will be those who don’t understand the issue who will see this as a proxy fight over public sector unions,” Walz said.

“If you’re looking for a silver bullet that’s gonna weaken public sector unions and fix the VA, you’re gonna be looking for a long time.”

Obama blocks Keystone pipeline, ending debate for rest of term

Sam Brodey — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 21:19:06 +0000

WASHINGTON — As his term enters its final year, President Barack Obama put to rest what is perhaps his most enduring political albatross: the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline.

With little advance warning or fanfare, Obama — flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry — announced the United States will officially reject the proposed pipeline that would carry vast quantities of crude oil from Canada through the American heartland to refineries in Nebraska, Illinois, and elsewhere. The 1,179-mile pipeline, Obama said, “would not serve the national interests of the United States.”

The pipeline has weighed on Obama for virtually his entire presidency: under federal review since 2008, the fate of Keystone has taken numerous twists and turns as Obama has sought to keep the powerful political forces at odds over the project at bay.

Republicans and the oil and gas industry had strongly backed Keystone from the get-go, claiming it would create jobs, lower the price of gas, and bolster American energy security. Democrats — fueled by a vocal grassroots backlash against the project — have questioned how many jobs the pipeline would create, while arguing it would have grave effects on the climate.

Keystone was a major issue in the 2012 elections, when Republicans used it to attack Obama’s record on the economy. On several occasions, congressional Republicans have tried to pass bills approving the pipeline; such an effort was met with Obama’s veto pen earlier this year. And, more often than not, Keystone was deployed as a litmus test for both sides to assess where their candidates stood on the economy and climate — and a weapon to bludgeon them if they didn’t take a position.

In Friday’s press conference, Obama sought to downplay the importance of the pipeline, saying it played an “overinflated role in our political discourse.” Keystone, he said, is “neither a silver bullet for the economy nor an express lane to climate disaster.” Indeed, a State Department report found that the pipeline would support 42,000 temporary jobs but only create 35 permanent ones, and numerous experts have observed that Canadian oil has many other methods of getting to market in the absence of Keystone.

Congress reacts predictably

But in Congress, the day’s news was an opportunity to revisit the past eight years’ talking points. Minnesota’s members of Congress reacted predictably, with Republicans taking the White House to task and some Democrats — but not all — applauding the news.

Third District Rep. Erik Paulsen said in a statement he was “disappointed that a project that would support thousands of U.S. jobs, increase safety for Minnesota communities, and add billions of dollars to the American economy will be blocked,” adding it fell victim to “politics as usual in Washington.”

Second District Rep. John Kline echoed Paulsen’s disappointment, adding that the pipeline would have “free[d] up transportation infrastructure in Minnesota, opening our rails to ship other products and crops produced in our great state.”

Sixth District Rep. Tom Emmer had perhaps the strongest words on Friday. In a statement, Emmer argued Obama sided with special interests over the will of American people, the Canadian government, and Congress. “The Keystone XL pipeline would be a safe and efficient means of transporting up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada to the United States daily…This decision puts American industry and consumers at a competitive disadvantage and the President knows it.”

For progressive Democrats like Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison, Obama’s decision is “great news for our climate, which means it’s great news for all Americans.”

“The pipeline would have endangered our land and water, and the fuel flowing through it would have been a major contributor to climate change,” Ellison said in a statement. “Rejecting Keystone is a step toward a safer planet for us today and a safer planet for our kids tomorrow.”

Ellison’s Progressive Caucus colleague, Eighth District Rep. Rick Nolan, took a different view of Obama’s announcement. In a statement, he said he was “disappointed in today’s announcement… The bipartisan, compromise legislation passed by the Congress earlier this year would have put an end to almost seven years of gridlock, [and] required Keystone to comply with tough U.S. environmental protections.”

Nolan, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the current oil transportation infrastructure is harmful and dangerous. “We’ve got to find a safer way — and more environmentally friendly — way to transport this oil. And in my judgment, and in the judgment of many, pipelines made with American iron ore and steel are the best way to do it,” he said.

In a short statement, Sen. Al Franken didn’t exactly cheer the decision, saying that he would respects the government’s review process, though he added that took too long. “Since that process determined that the project is not in the national interest, I agree that it should not move forward,” he said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar suggested in a statement that it was time to move on: “Now that the administration has made a decision, it is time for Congress and the administration to focus on making long-term investments in American infrastructure and saving energy costs by passing both the pending energy bill and the Senate-passed infrastructure bill.”

Friday’s announcement effectively puts Keystone to bed for the rest of the Obama presidency, but if a Republican wins the White House next year the Canadian oil company TransCanada can apply again to build Keystone.

The 118th Congress may be a bit less Minnesota Nice

Sam Brodey — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 20:50:16 +0000

You might want to sit down for this one, Minnesota: your clout in the U.S. House of Representatives is almost certain to decline in the next decade of this century.

According to a report released Wednesday by the University of North Carolina Population Center, the 2020 Census — which determines each state’s representation levels in Congress — will almost certainly lead to a shift in the balance of power toward states in the South and West, and away from states in the Northeast and Midwest.

By their projection, the losers include Minnesota, which would send only seven representatives to Washington, as opposed to the eight it has sent there since 1963. It is one of eight states that UNC experts project will shed a congressional seat after the next census: Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Rhode Island join as likely seat losers.

Fast-growing states in the South and West, like Texas, North Carolina, and Florida, are expected to add to their growing congressional delegations. Under these projections, Congress in 2022 could have twice as many North Carolinians as Minnesotans. Through the first decades of the 20th Century, the two states had equal congressional representation.

Flashback to 2010

The UNC report should revive Minnesotans’ memories from the days before the 2010 Census, when many believed the state would lose a congressional seat. In 2009 and 2010, some fretted openly about the prospect of losing a seat, with officials claiming it could come down to a margin of a few hundred people.

Ultimately, Minnesota retained its eight seats even as states like Ohio and New York lost more than one. The North Star State may not be so lucky this time, however. Its 2014 population was estimated at 5,457,143 by the Census Bureau, and the Minnesota Population Center anticipates that the state’s 2020 population will be 5,687,161. A gain of 200,000 residents may simply not be enough to hang on to a seat in the 435-member House, where a state like Texas (current population: 26.9 million) is expected to have five million more residents in 2020 than it did in 2010.

How might Minnesota’s congressional map look when the demographic dust has settled in 2020? It’s early to tell, but it’s likely that substantial movement will happen in the vast, sparsely populated 7th and 8th Congressional Districts that take up much of Minnesota’s western and northern areas. In 2010, 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson was expected to get the short end of the stick, with many believing his district would merge with that of then-Rep. James Oberstar.

Losing a seat might particularly hurt for DFLers: in addition to potentially losing a blue seat, the states expected to win big in the next round of reapportionment are swing states (Virginia), safe red states (North Carolina), and Texas.

With Politico interview, Franken embraces national role as key Democratic fundraiser

Sam Brodey — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 15:58:04 +0000

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday morning, Washington woke up to a rare sight: Senator Al Franken gracing the front page of Politico, the daily bible of the D.C. establishment.

As Franken will tell you — and the D.C. press corps knows well — the junior senator from Minnesota has been notoriously reluctant to seek out or respond to the attention of the national press. But that could change: Franken, bolstered by a big re-election victory in 2014, may finally be seeking the spotlight in a new role — as a leading fundraiser, cheerleader, and all-around asset for the Democratic Party.

The thrust of the Politico story was that Franken’s mission is simple: to return the Senate to Democratic control. But Franken’s message is less striking for what it says than where he chose to deliver it — in a D.C.-focused publication few Minnesotans probably read.

So why is Franken raising his national profile — and why now?

A weight lifted

In an interview with MinnPost, Sen. Franken cautioned against reading too much into his decision to grant an interview to Politico. (He added: “I didn’t expect I’d make the cover.”)

“I realized when I was doing an interview to Politico that was focused on what I’m doing this cycle for my colleagues and for other Democrats who are running for Senate that’s what it’d be about and that’s what people would take from it,” Franken said.

Franken simply emphasized his long-running history of politically and financially supporting other Democrats: “It’s really about something I’ve done before I ran for office, which is help like-minded people get elected,” he said.

That point is true enough: in 2005, Franken established his Midwest Values PAC as a conduit for receiving and contributing campaign dollars. He says he was fundraising for Democrats as far back as 1994. Since its inception, Midwest Values has raised over $5 million for other Democrats, and since becoming a senator, Franken has traveled the country appearing at fundraisers. He’s long been sought after by candidates nationwide, owing to his celebrity status in the worlds of politics and entertainment.

Even for a relatively active member of the fundraising circuit, Franken — as the Politico story promised — figures to have a banner year in 2016. For one, a major personal weight has been lifted off his shoulders: after spending much of his first term in the shadow of a close, 300-vote victory over Norm Coleman, Franken cruised to a 10-point re-election victory in 2014. The electoral microscope is off him until 2020, and he can devote substantial energy toward raising cash not for himself, but for other people.

The 2014 victory, Franken suggests, gives him more credibility when campaigning for Democrats around the country. “It’s about the values I campaigned on, and I won by a sizeable majority by being true to myself…It’s really about continuing the values I’ve talked about in this last campaign, and the work I’ve been doing,” he said.

Because of that, it was an ideal year for Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee brass to recruit Franken as a top fundraiser. “Every new DSCC chairman comes to me, and maybe doesn’t know that I did this in ‘12 and ‘10 as well,” Franken said. Montana Sen. Jon Tester, the current DSCC chair and Franken’s neighbor in the Hart Senate Office Building, came to him this year. “He said, ‘Will you do it?’ and I said, ‘Yep,’ ” Franken said.

Already hitting the circuit

The renewed focus of a proven fundraising pro like Franken already appears to be paying off for the Democrats, as the senator has logged some serious miles — and dollars — so far. In October, he and David Letterman co-hosted a New York City fundraiser for Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who is running to unseat vulnerable incumbent Sen. Mark Kirk. Franken heads to Reno and Las Vegas this weekend to fundraise for Catherine Cortez Masto, who is angling to succeed outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

In the first six months of 2015, Midwest Values PAC raised $446,973, putting Franken on pace to surpass his 2012 effort, when he raised $1.6 million for Democrats. He’s parceled out $91,000 in campaign contributions, most of which went to vulnerable Senate Democrats, like Colorado’s Michael Bennett, and challengers with real potential to win seats, like Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, Ohio’s Ted Strickland, and Duckworth.

While Democrats have a much more favorable electoral map in 2016 than they did last year, taking the Senate will require nearly all key races to go their way. Republicans must defend 24 seats to the Democrats’ 10, several in blue states or states that could go either way, like Florida and New Hampshire. It’ll be a tall order — Democrats need a net gain of five seats to secure the chamber — but Franken is optimistic. “They have vulnerabilities enough that we should be able to take it back,” he said.

Same old Franken

To plugged-in Minnesotans, it’s still the same Franken, though a bit more unburdened, according to Jim Meffert, a Democrat who ran for Congress in the 3rd District in 2010. “He’s been all over fundraising for people. He does like that lower profile with fundraising, he doesn’t like sound-bite stuff. He may be asked more and he may say yes more,” Meffert said.

According to Jeff Blodgett, founder of Wellstone Action and a Franken ally, Franken is valuable because of “his ability to draw in people at events and excite Democratic base voters,” adding that he’s only surpassed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in that category. “Now that he is in his second term, it looks like what is new is that he is thinking about his national role as a senator who can lead, shape politics, and shape policy,” Blodgett said.

Perhaps Franken is thinking about that, but he wouldn’t say so explicitly. He told MinnPost that he isn’t planning to do too many more national interviews than he did before. The Politico interview is the exception that proves the rule, he said, adding it was “just to get them off my back, finally.” After an aide interjected with a correction, he later clarified: “they asked at the right time.”

According to Blodgett, “Al has done a fantastic job of staying focused like a laser on Minnesota, and I can’t imagine that will change too much… I also think he can do both things: fight hard on Minnesota issues and be a national figure. The difference now is there is little risk from criticism that he is spending time outside of Minnesota to help other candidates.”

In the end, Americans in the other 49 states will probably get to see more of Franken, but they’ll see the wonky senator Minnesotans have come to know over the last seven years. Appearing on CNN Tuesday afternoon, Franken delved into details on data policy. The host goaded him to do an impression of Donald Trump, but he turned it down.

In Ryan speakership, Republicans and Democrats see chance for a fresh start

Sam Brodey — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 16:07:17 +0000

WASHINGTON — An October filled with drama on Capitol Hill wrapped up, improbably, with something resembling a coronation: on Thursday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan was elected the 54th Speaker of the House of Representatives with much pomp and little left to chance.

The Wisconsin Republican and one-time vice presidential nominee ascended to the House’s top spot after outgoing Speaker John Boehner suddenly announced his resignation, and his heir apparent, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, withdrew his candidacy for speaker at the last minute.

The only person who could lead the GOP conference out of the wilderness was, by near unanimous consensus, Ryan. At first Ryan made it well-known he’d prefer to pore over tax policy on his Ways and Means Committee than take the Speaker’s gavel, spending October fending off courtship from Republicans nationwide to step up.

But in spite of Ryan’s initial refusal to even consider the job, Thursday’s outcome wasn’t all that surprising. After extended entreaties from members of his caucus, Ryan made it clear that he would only enter the race if he had the overwhelming support of his conference — particularly its far right wing. After some initial doubt, Ryan won over the conservatives who sank Boehner, the so-called House Freedom Caucus, by agreeing to some of the conditions they laid out, particularly some procedural rule changes.

A clean slate

After a roll-call vote and remarks from Boehner, Ryan, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the halls of the capitol buzzed with excitement for the new, 45-year-old speaker. In the Minnesota delegation, Republicans gleefully welcomed the dawn of the Ryan Era — perhaps none more so than Third District Rep. Erik Paulsen.

Paulsen is probably the Minnesotan with the closest connection to Ryan: Paulsen serves on the Ways and Means Committee Ryan chaired, and both share a wonky inclination for tax, trade, and health care policy. When Paulsen arrived in Congress in 2009, he was a regular workout companion of Ryan, who’s known for his devotion to the P90X fitness routine.

As he lined up off the House floor to take a picture with the new Speaker, Paulsen remarked that he was surprised at the turn of events that landed Ryan in the speakership. Still, he said that Ryan is “the one person that could fill this position and do it really well, and unify both the Republican conference and potentially the House and get things working again.

“I do think he’s gonna be able to bridge a lot of the divides that exist around here…I’m really optimistic and encouraged,” Paulsen added. “It’s exciting.”

Sixth District Rep. Tom Emmer shared Paulsen’s enthusiasm: “I think Paul said it best in his speech…we’re going to wipe the slate clean and move forward,” he said. “This is all about a process and then meeting the obligation we owe to the American people.”

Emmer was quick to add, however, that “we should manage expectations, because this is a big job and this isn’t someone who said, ‘I wanna be this guy.’ This is someone who was literally drafted into it.”

Democrats: gracious, but skeptical

For the most part, Democrats played the part of gracious minority on the House floor Thursday. Though 184 Democrats cast votes for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, they dutifully stood for applause lines in Ryan’s speech, and Pelosi delivered warm remarks before handing Ryan the gavel.

“What was interesting to me,” Emmer said afterward, “is that Democrats seem to be as genuinely excited about a fresh start as Republicans.”

Within the Minnesota delegation, that rang at least somewhat true. Fourth District Rep. Betty McCollum, who served on the House Budget Committee when Ryan chaired that panel, said she assumed Ryan would conduct himself in the same way Boehner did: “respecting everyone’s election certificate” and with an open door to every member, regardless of party.

McCollum added hoped Ryan’s remarks on the importance of a “respected minority” referred to Democrats, not conservative Republicans. “I think we have a lot of good ideas and things to bring to the floor,” McCollum said. “If he has challenges within his caucus, we’ve shown that we’re willing to find the common ground to move this country forward.”

In a statement, Rep. Tim Walz congratulated Ryan, and said he “look[s] forward to working with him on the issues that matter most to southern Minnesota.”

Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison didn’t sound especially excited to be under new management, saying in a statement that the new speaker should focus on affordable housing, child care, medical research and more. “Paul Ryan may be the Speaker of the House now, but the better choice is the person who will do those things, and that’s Nancy Pelosi.”

Boehner’s obstacles aren’t going away

Though Thursday’s ceremony was mostly about Ryan, there were plenty of tributes to Boehner from both sides of the aisle. Referring to the Wednesday budget deal that averted a shutdown and debt default, McCollum said, “This country owes a debt of gratitude for the leadership John Boehner showed.”

The circumstances of Boehner’s departure — chiefly, an inability to unite the moderate and conservative wings of his conference — couldn’t help but cast a shadow on Ryan’s ascent.

Ryan himself acknowledged the House’s fissures in his speech. “Let’s be frank,” he said, “the House is broken. We’re not solving problems, we’re adding to them.” Members from across the ideological spectrum praised Ryan’s stated intent to bring the House back to so-called “regular order” — where legislation works its way to the floor via the committee process, and real budgets are passed instead of stopgap continuing resolutions.

But it’s unclear if procedural realignment will be enough to fend off the forces that drove Boehner out. Paulsen admitted Ryan is “going to have some challenges…there’s still gonna be a handful of folks who are gonna want to throw rocks, but by and large, a lot of people want to give him a shot.” Nine conservative Republicans declined to vote for Ryan, and 167 Republicans voted Wednesday to reject the bipartisan budget deal — which was similar to a plan Ryan advanced in 2013.

Among Minnesotans, Ryan may receive some benefit of the doubt by virtue of some shared Midwestern pride. He hails from the southern Wisconsin town of Janesville, about 150 miles from Minnesota’s southeastern corner, and is the first Badger Stater to hold the Speakership. (Meanwhile, the last Minnesotan to even whiff the speakership was Harold Knutson, who was the Republican whip from 1919 to 1923.)

Though Paulsen is a big Ryan fan, he admitted he could improve. “Now we gotta make him a Vikings fan,” he said. “That’s my only goal.”

Boehner’s swan song: House approves two-year budget deal

Sam Brodey — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 14:55:03 +0000

WASHINGTON — In governing, you can’t always get what you want. On Wednesday afternoon, however, members of Congress got what they could: a bipartisan deal to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling — staving off crisis politics on Capitol Hill through September 2017.

The so-called Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 sailed through the House of Representatives, 266 to 167 — 187 Democrats and 79 Republicans voted in favor — after being announced by outgoing Speaker John Boehner and congressional leaders early in the week.

The deal, which would raise the debt ceiling and end the four-year-long sequester by lifting caps on both defense and discretionary spending, among other things, is basically Boehner’s swan song. He negotiated the deal along with other top lawmakers from both parties, as well as the White House.

Wednesday’s vote, as Boehner puts it, “clears the barn” — sparing incoming speaker Rep. Paul Ryan and other members from contentious budget politics in an election year. It’s as close to a clean slate as Capitol Hill has seen in some time, and is being hailed by proponents as an example of governing through compromise.

In the Minnesota delegation, each of the five Democrats voted to support the bill, while Second District Rep. John Kline was the only Minnesota Republican to join them. Reps. Erik Paulsen and Tom Emmer joined the majority of the GOP conference in voting against it.

But on Wednesday afternoon, even members who voted yes found plenty to dislike about the bill, and the circumstances of its passage.

Eighth District Rep. Rick Nolan, for example, took issue with what he called an exclusionary negotiating process that ignored committees and rank-and-file members. “At some level, you start to say, what are the rest of us doing here?” he asked. “Are we there for the photo ops?”

Nolan, who served in Congress in the 1970s, said he “served in a time where the full Congress was involved in this process…now everything’s done by the Big 2 or Big 4. What’s most concerning is so many members of Congress seem quite comfortable with it.”

Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison, along with fellow progressives, called the budget a bare-bones mechanism that merely keeps the lights on, without providing any vision. “We’re not making new progress as a nation, we’re not taking care of the problems the nation is facing, we’re just averting disasters,” he said. “People should see it as, we’re doing the best we can with people who are absolutely hostile to government.”

In a statement, Kline said the agreement was “far from perfect,” but added “it provides needed certainty along with entitlement reforms to keep the federal government on track to save taxpayers more than $2 trillion.”

Indeed, the budget deal featured give-and-take for Republicans and Democrats. The deal would raise non-defense discretionary spending by $80 billion, which Democrats like. They were also pleased with language that prevents an imminent hike in Medicare premiums and cuts to Social Security benefits.

Meanwhile, the entitlement reforms Kline mentioned, like tweaks to how Social Security benefits are received, have been desired by the GOP for years. Members of both parties were pleased with increased defense spending.

‘Conditioned to mediocrity’

Top congressional leaders hailed the passage of the deal as a testament to the health of bipartisanship in the legislative branch. The deal, according to the House’s number two Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer, “shows what is possible when Democrats and Republicans work together to get something done.”

In a statement, Fourth District Rep. Betty McCollum echoed Hoyer: “This bipartisan agreement circumvents the irresponsible and dangerous stranglehold imposed by Tea Party extremists,” she said. The deal “shows that the American people are well-served when Republicans and Democrats work through their differences and achieve compromise.”

Outside the House chamber on Wednesday afternoon, that kumbaya moment hadn’t quite materialized. Lawmakers were at odds over whether the budget deal represented a breakthrough in compromise-oriented governing — or whether it was merely symptomatic of a system that continues to be broken.

The last two years of congressional dysfunction have skewed perceptions of what passes for bipartisanship, according to Ellison. “We are getting conditioned to mediocrity. What we think is a good budget is basically a keep-the-lights on budget. We’re getting stockholmed over here.”

Sixth District Rep. Tom Emmer declined to speak to MinnPost, but explained in a statement that Congress was not addressing long-term concerns like the federal debt. The bill, he said, “circumvented the legislative process and cut out the input of the American people…I am optimistic that with changing tides in Washington, we can advance policies through an open and transparent committee process.”

The budget bill will now be sent to the Senate, where it should receive considerable support, even as presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul vowed to filibuster it at a GOP debate Wednesday night. Boehner’s last day as speaker is Thursday, and the federal government is expected to hit its borrowing limit next week, so time is of the essence.

Without Boehner’s departure, the deal likely would not have been possible, Nolan said. “On occasion,” he laughed, “chaos offers opportunities that may have not otherwise existed.”

What the latest fundraising reports tell us about the very different campaign strategies of Angie Craig and Mary Lawrence

Sam Brodey — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 16:11:24 +0000

All the drama in the Second Congressional District is on the Republican side. Since Rep. John Kline announced his retirement in September, local politicos have focused on which Republicans would — and would not — jump in the race to replace him.

Meanwhile, the DFL race has been stable, with the two candidates — Mary Lawrence and Angie Craig — plugging along since early in the year. Attention has been sparse, to say the least. So what’s going on with the 2nd District DFL race?

Reports from the Federal Election Commission — the most recent of which were released Oct. 15 — tell a story of two evenly matched candidates jockeying to represent their party in this toss-up, open seat contest that’s high on the lists of national Democrats and Republicans alike.

But Craig and Lawrence are taking different approaches to the race: Craig has sought to energize the grassroots and cultivate a diverse donor base, while Lawrence has aimed to build establishment contacts and tap into her personal and professional network.

Lawrence’s big-dollar strategy

Thus far, Lawrence — an ophthalmologist who used to work for the Department of Veterans Affairs — has raised an impressive $1.5 million. Currently, she has about $1.2 million at her disposal, almost double what Craig has on hand.

Mary Lawrence

Much of that cash comes from her own pocket: Lawrence has made loans totaling roughly $1.1 million to her own campaign. But she has also found success in tapping into her and her husband’s expansive professional and personal network. Jim Lawrence has had a lengthy, successful business career, which has included stops at General Mills, Unilever, Rothschild, Pepsi, Northwest Airlines, and Bain and Company. With other Bain alumni, Lawrence founded LEK Consulting, which has grown into a global consulting firm with more than 1,000 employees in 21 offices around the world.

FEC records show that the Lawrences’ network has stepped up so far: $27,250 came from current employees of companies where Jim has worked. Lawrence also raised $226,405 from contributors outside the state, including many from the New York City metro area, where her husband built a successful business career.

That out-of-state cash could serve as an important cushion for Lawrence, according to Darin Broton, a communications strategist who has managed DFL campaigns in CD2 before. “Mary attracts a whole different group of folks from C-suite America that she can tap into,” he said.

“If you look at the folks who have written her checks … there are a lot of folks … at major Fortune 500s who have never given money to Democrats in the state, or even Republicans.”

Mark Warren, manager for the Lawrence campaign, pushed back against the idea that she is focusing on big donors. "Dr. Lawrence is making her case directly to the voters," he said. "People are getting to know her and she's getting a great response. … Donors are coming on board and we're continuing to raise money."

Lawrence has also benefited from the most basic support network there is: her family. Her husband and three sons each gave the maximum $5,400 per person — maxing them out for both the primary and general elections — amounting to a total of $21,600 under her own roof.

Craig aiming for a diverse donor base

Angie Craig, for her part, has been no slouch: She entered the race later than Lawrence, but has raised $834,867, and has roughly $633,000 on hand. FEC reports show the former executive at Twin Cities-area medical tech firm St. Jude Medical has courted small, medium and big-dollar donors alike.

Angie Craig

Like Lawrence, she’s plugged in to a familiar network: St. Jude is a large Fortune 500 company, and so far, it has stepped up for Craig: She has received nearly $100,000 in contributions from St. Jude employees, from attorneys to vice presidents to the CEO.

But in the small-money race, Craig clearly has Lawrence beat. A key way to measure grassroots, small-donor support is to check candidates’ contributions from ActBlue, a Democrat-affiliated organization that acts as a conduit for Democrats’ campaign cash nationwide. Interested people can go on the site, pick a candidate or candidates, and use ActBlue as a one-stop destination for their political contribution needs.

Users of ActBlue sent $264,700 to Craig so far, giving as much as $2,600 or as little as $25. (Most contributions were in the $250 to $500 range.) Lawrence, on the other hand, received $86,625 from ActBlue users.

In a statement, Craig said, "My whole fundraising focus has been on engaging a grassroots base. A committed, engaged, and motivated party base are essential to winning next November and every area of our campaign reflects that."

Craig’s ActBlue advantage doesn’t necessarily signify greater strength, according to Jim Meffert, a consultant who ran against Rep. Erik Paulsen in the 3rd District in 2010. “[Craig] seems to be doing a better job of getting smaller contributions. … Lawrence seems to be relying on personal contacts and any money available regardless of where it is from. Ultimately, they will need to use both strategies.”

Self-funding the name of the game

One striking thing about both Craig's and Lawrence’s fundraising rolls is that both have struggled to get big-name, big-money DFL donors in Minnesota on board with their campaigns thus far. “I’m concerned Mary hasn’t raised a lot from Minnesota folks who are usual suspects,” said Broton, the DFL campaign hand in CD2. He added, though, that “Angie has not done a great job in hitting traditional DFL donors in the state.”

It is likely not for lack of trying, though: observers say big donors are likely staying on the sidelines until the DFL names a nominee, and/or when the GOP side of the race becomes clearer. “I think a lot of folks are waiting to see where the dust settles on the DFL side,” Broton said, adding that “there’s still a lot of donors waiting to be introduced to either Mary or Angie.”

There’s also a sense that donors may be wary of the deluge of outside cash that will flow into the district in the general election. “Depending on who you listen to, it’s either the number one race, the number three race, the number five race in the country,” said DFL State Rep. Joe Atkins, who mulled entering the race after Kline’s retirement but ultimately did not. “There’s an expectation we will see an open spigot of money if the race turns out to be as close as some think it’ll be.”

Since the beginning of the race, Lawrence has sought to fill in the gaps with significant self-loans to her campaign during each quarter. In the third quarter, FEC reports show Craig decided to do the same, lending $375,000 to her own campaign.

As to why Craig decided to self-fund this summer, Meffert suggests that she may have gotten donors asking questions about her fundraising hauls. “She probably got tired of getting questions about Lawrence’s money,” he says. Speaking with the National Journal, Craig said her campaign would continue to work to raise money, but suggested self-funding yields important resources. She told MinnPost that she wants to show supporters "that I'll have the resources we need to win."

A look at both candidates’ relatively weak fundraising summers suggests another reason both took out sizable loans: momentum — or at least, the appearance of it. After coming out of the gate with strong numbers, dwindling fundraising numbers, even if it’s a natural phenomenon at this stage, don’t play well — especially now that CD2 is a national priority for both parties.

Second District Democratic fundraising

As of the third quarter FEC reports, Mary Lawrence had more cash on hand than Angie Craig, but much of that cash was from sizeable loans made by Lawrence to her campaign.

Source: FEC

All about the delegates

Though it’s definitely early (the DFL nominating caucuses are still six months away) observers are quick to emphasize that neither approach — Lawrence’s courting of big money, big name Democrats and Craig’s greater emphasis on small donors — is superior, and that Craig and Lawrence could be locked in one of the more competitive contests in recent Minnesota history.

Broton says that Lawrence’s strategy could boost her establishment credentials but turn off progressive activists. “It’s an open seat now, and one could argue that the quality of candidates on the Republican side is pretty weak, and a lot of Democrats are seeing an opportunity to pick a very progressive candidate to run down there,” he said. “I think Mary’s contributions from Pepsi or General Mills … having CEOs of some of these Fortune 500s is not going to help her win over progressives.”

At this point, it’s all about appearances and communicating to DFL nominating delegates that you’re serious, according to Meffert. “There are some people who look at it and see that the only way to win is to have money … call it electability,” he says.

According to Atkins, it’s close. “My sense is that, from delegates, that they are very interested in both candidates.” He stressed, however, that they’re less interested in the money game than electability at this point.

Another key piece, which Atkins and others mentioned, is that the expectation on both sides is that outside cash will flood into CD2 — so the eventual money picture will look much different. On the DFL side, Broton says that whoever gets the blessing of powerful national Democratic organizations — such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Commission and EMILY’s List — will not only benefit from those organizations’ vast cash resources, but also their connections to progressive PACs in Washington and big donors nationwide.

Observers agreed that the next few months will be critical: Craig and Lawrence will have to maintain their strong fundraising numbers going into the DFL caucuses while putting in the work with activists. Broton called the balancing act a “double-edged sword.”

“We’re entering the process where both candidates need to decide their game going into the precinct caucuses and how to get folks excited,” he said. “But you have to raise money and show viability, so [you] can get blessings from the DCCC and others important in the race going forward.”

Alepocalypse now: Should craft-beer drinkers be worried about the merger of the world’s two largest macro-brewers?

Sam Brodey — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 15:24:03 +0000

CC/Flickr/Michael Kappel

Research shows people are increasingly opting for craft brews— they represented 11 percent of U.S. beer market share in 2014, up from 4 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, AB InBev’s market share declined from 50 to 45 percent last year.

WASHINGTON — If you’re one of the growing number of Americans who is pushing aside Bud Light and Miller Lite for a craft brew like Summit Extra Pale Ale, then you may have reacted to the news that the world’s two largest beer companies are merging with a resounding “meh.” If you stay away from the mass-produced suds and prefer the good stuff, it wouldn’t affect you, right?

Well hold on to your monocles, craft beer drinkers. Some people in the beer industry, along with regulatory watchdogs in Washington, are raising concerns that the mega-merger of Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev and U.K.-based SABMiller could have adverse effects on beer drinkers of all stripes. Shortly after the $104 billion acquisition was announced earlier this month, outlets like Fortune immediately explained why it would be bad for beer drinkers, and in Congress, the ears of antitrust watchdogs perked up.

Last week, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee — the top two lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights — announced they will hold a hearing to investigate antitrust issues and potential economic impacts on smaller beer producers, primarily the rapidly growing craft beer sector.

“The proposal to merge the world’s two biggest beer producers raises serious antitrust concerns for the $100 billion a year beer industry,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “It is critical that we examine this deal closely to see how it will affect the price of a pint, and if it will harm the craft brewers that are serving up world class beers and jobs across the country.”

Mergers like this one certainly deserve regulators’ scrutiny: the new, so-called “beerhemoth” would produce one of every three beers consumed in the world, and theoretically, it would own 70 percent of beer market share in the United States.

Opinions in the craft beer community are somewhat divided as to what effect the merger would have, but regardless: drinkers of Bud and Summit alike should be paying close attention to the biggest beer deal in history.

Distribution concerns

brewersassociation.org

Bob Pease

For many craft brewers, the key concern raised by the merger is how it might affect small brewers’ access to markets, according to Bob Pease, the CEO of the Brewers’ Association, a trade group that represents about 2,800 small and independent craft brewers.

Since the end of Prohibition, alcohol distribution in the U.S. has generally taken a three-tiered structure: producers sell their wares to wholesalers, who distribute them to retailers, who then sell them to the consumer. Increasingly, however, major producers — like AB InBev — have aggressively moved to acquire distributors. The distributors owned by the biggest producers naturally tend to push their wares over those of competitors.

That’s the sticking point for Pease: “It’s vital for the success of the independent small brewer to have access to the market, and to access that market, we need a competitive, independent middle distribution tier,” he said. “If AB InBev owns a distributorship in a certain state or market, they’re going to show preference to AB InBev brands in that distribution house.”

It is not legal in every state for producers to own distributors, but in about 20 states these arrangements are accepted. According to Pease, AB InBev owns 14 distribution operations in 10 states, including in major markets like Los Angeles and New York. In Minnesota, the three-tiered system is strict, and brewers cannot own distributors.

The markets in states like California and Colorado are illustrative in understanding the effect that increased AB InBev buying power has on beer distribution. In those states, the company has snapped up several independent distributors. “That usually means that my members’ viable distribution options go from two to one, and that’s not good,” Pease said. “It’s hardly a competitive situation.”

“So what?” you might think, if the merger makes Bud Light more prevalent in your local shop than it was before — the market demand for craft beer is impossible to ignore. Research shows people are increasingly opting for craft brews— they represented 11 percent of U.S. beer market share in 2014, up from 4 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, AB InBev’s market share declined from 50 to 45 percent last year.

However, Pease explains that a merger could hurt small brewers because AB InBev’s distributors may give preference not just to their biggest brands, but to the craft brands they also own. In recent years, AB InBev has swooped into the craft sector, acquiring popular brands like Chicago’s Goose Island. “If AB InBev owns a distributorship and is able to put their now ABI-owned craft beers in that distribution house, it’s a reasonable assumption that those beers could be sold for less than for small, independent brewers to retail,” Pease says.

Effects limited in Minnesota

Some craft brewers, however, are not especially worried about how the merger will affect their businesses. Count Mark Stutrud, president and founder of Summit Brewing Company in St. Paul, among them. “This merger is more of a global play than anything,” he said, adding that it primarily strengthens AB InBev’s hand in Latin America and Africa, where SABMiller is a leading brewer.

According to Stutrud, “The impact on the U.S. craft market should be minimal. The impact on the distributor level should also not be that significant.” He argued the biggest recent move in the beer industry came in September, when Heineken purchased a 50 percent stake in popular California craft brewer Lagunitas. Still, Stutrud praised the senators’ focus on the craft business. “It is good to see Sen. Klobuchar take part in the antitrust hearings and her interest in protecting American craft breweries,” he said, “but ultimately it is up to us to keep our businesses strong.”

The Brewers Association’s Pease agreed with some of Stutrud’s assessment, saying that, “on the surface, the ABI-SABMiller deal is more for market access for ABI in Latin America, Africa, India, and China.” He added, however, “there is definitely a concern from our end on distribution and access to market.”

Craft beer’s growing importance

Klobuchar and Lee’s initial concerns aside, many of the key details of the acquisition still need to be hammered out. The deal hasn’t been made final yet, and a hearing in the Senate will likely not happen until that falls into place. Also, the Department of Justice is likely to be the entity with the most influence over what, if any, antitrust action is taken regarding the merger.

Many observers believe that regulators will force the future AB InBev-SAB Miller to sell off the latter’s MillerCoors division over antitrust concerns. On paper, the beer giant would own some of the country’s most popular beers, like Bud Light, Miller Lite, Coors Light, Corona, Beck’s, and Natural Light. To keep the beer market competitive, the MillerCoors division would most likely have to be divested.

The craft brew industry’s allies in Congress, including 3rd District Rep. Erik Paulsen, are promising scrutiny on the merger to ensure fairness. “The rise of craft brewing in Minnesota has meant the creation of thousands of jobs, [and] more than a billion dollars of economic impact,” Paulsen said in a statement. “The merger between Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller should be scrutinized to make sure it complies with American antitrust laws and ensures our craft brewers are competing on a level playing field.”

The fact that national politicians like Klobuchar are quick to mention the craft industry — a $20 billion business in 2014 — in describing their concerns about the deal is itself a win, according to Pease. “It’s really gratifying to us to see that Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Lee are aware of the economic impacts our members are making and that there needs to be a level playing field,” he said.

In a statement, AB InBev said as soon as it and SABMiller agree on a final deal, it “look[s] forward to working with U.S. regulators to resolve any regulatory considerations promptly and proactively.”

While craft brew advocates and producers may have different thoughts about how the beerhemoth will impact their business, it remains to be seen if AB InBev can win perhaps the most important battle: public perception.

If the acquisition continues to be compared to recent deals in the airline industry — which were touted to deliver lower fares and increased choice but really did neither — it could face consumer backlash.

That reaction could worsen if access to increasingly popular craft beers is curtailed, or if those beers become pricier, even if it’s only in some places. “Never underestimate the power of the beer drinker or the consumer…this American craft beer renaissance has been driven by the beer drinker,” Pease said.

“It’s probably best to leave it at that.”

In Washington, a day to honor Walter Mondale’s legacy

Sam Brodey — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 15:29:48 +0000

WASHINGTON — Minnesota’s favorite elder statesman, Walter Mondale, was the man of the hour in the nation’s capital on Tuesday, when many bold-faced names from the worlds of Minnesota and Washington politics converged to pay tribute to the former vice president’s career and legacy.

Those people included the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, the current vice president, Joseph R. Biden, Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, Gov. Mark Dayton, 8th District Rep. Rick Nolan, prominent academics, lawmakers, and a cavalcade of advisers and officials from the Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama administrations.

A day filled with praise, from a panel at the George Washington University to an evening banquet at the Four Seasons, seemed to confirm what many Minnesotans already believe: The man they affectionately call “Fritz” isn’t just a state treasure — he’s a national one.

The vice presidents' club

The day — the culmination of a yearlong University of Minnesota initiative honoring the 87-year-old Mondale — began with a lively, wide-ranging conversation between Mondale and Biden. The two men primarily reflected on how immensely the vice presidency has changed in the last few decades.

For most of American history, of course, the vice presidency was a punchline — constitutionally ill-defined, it was at best a presidential warm-up act; at worst, as onetime veep John Nance Garner famously put it, it was no better than “a warm bucket of spit.” To many historians — not to mention many of those present in the audience — Mondale was the first truly consequential vice president, and redefined the office for the modern era.

Mondale was the first vice president to enjoy virtually unlimited access to the president, play a major role in shaping domestic and foreign policy — even the first to have an office in the West Wing. President Jimmy Carter, a D.C. outsider, relied on the three-term Minnesota senator’s knowledge of the workings of the Capitol.

Biden, who credited Mondale for laying the groundwork for future vice presidents, was an appropriate foil at the talk: Biden, like Mondale, was a creature of the Senate, and rose to chair the Foreign Relations Committee, also like Mondale. Obama’s veep calculus mirrored Carter’s, too — to add some congressional and foreign policy gravitas to his candidacy.

Both vice presidents spoke reverently of the office and emphasized the honor of serving the president. They agreed, however, that there is an important balance of power to be achieved in the president-vice president relationship — and both felt former vice president Dick Cheney wielded too much power over the George W. Bush administration. Not a few eyebrows were raised when Biden declared: “I like Dick Cheney, for real.” Mondale countered that Cheney tried to cultivate a “privileged sanctuary” out of the office and said the Cheney years were “bad days in the history of the vice presidency.”

Recalling the good times

After the Biden-Mondale panel — the first of the day — much of the Biden-hounding press corps departed and guests settled in for a day of exploration of various parts of Mondale’s legacy, from foreign policy to civil rights to national security. Through each talk ran a common thread: Mondale’s foresight as a thinker, skill as a statesman, and generosity as a mentor and friend.

The panelists were a combination of professors, advocacy leaders, lawmakers, and old Mondale allies. U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Dianne Feinstein praised Mondale’s commitment to transparency in the U.S. intelligence apparatus; civil rights leaders Andrew Young and Josie Johnson touted Mondale’s advocacy of the Fair Housing Act, among other things; a quartet of former Carter administration officials commented, naturally, on what they saw as the criminally underrated foreign policy achievements of Carter and Mondale.

There were good nuggets of political lore, too: The audience roared at the tale of Mondale, visiting the British prime minister shortly after the election, breaking out into the song of the ruling Labour Party, prompting hours of singing and the imbibing of a bottle of Winston Churchill’s port wine.

Carter, Mondale

The praise for the Carter-Mondale White House was effusive at a banquet Tuesday night in Washington, where the 39th president sat for a moderated discussion with Mondale. The 91-year-old Carter, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in August, was cracking jokes and animatedly recalling his and Mondale’s time in the White House.

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Carter: “Fritz was an expert on what was going on in Washington … as far as I know, he was almost like another president.”

Carter detailed how he sought to elevate the office of the vice president, and how Mondale was the ideal person for the job. “As a Georgia peanut farmer, I needed a lot of help, and I thought the vice president would be best to give me the help I need,” Carter said. “Fritz was an expert on what was going on in Washington … as far as I know, he was almost like another president.”

“What Fritz and I did together was historic,” Carter added. “It changed the basic structure of the executive branch of government to bring the vice president in as a full partner.” Biden, speaking again at the banquet, would repeatedly praise the Carter-Mondale administration’s thoughtful philosophy of government, and credited them for the close relationship he enjoys with Obama.

Franken and Klobuchar added to the night’s banter. “There’s a vice presidency pre-Mondale and a vice presidency post-Mondale,” Franken said. “That’s a testament to Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter. Think of all the strong vice presidents we’ve had since then: Joe Biden, Al Gore, and of course, Dick Cheney.”

Klobuchar, whose first D.C. job was an internship for Mondale, told a favorite story of how the vice president made her inventory every piece of furniture in the office. Despite that old-school lesson in hard work and paying your dues, Klobuchar said that Mondale was remarkably forward-thinking.

“He was always ahead of his time,” Klobuchar said. The most important thing he ever did, she said, was he “stood up in Minnesota and said his presidential running mate was Geraldine Ferraro.”

About that ’84 election

In short supply, naturally, was mention of Mondale's electoral shortcomings: his and Carter's failure to win re-election in 1980, and his landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election. (Mondale would only carry Minnesota and D.C. in that lopsided contest.) And in many parts of the country, the Carter-Mondale years aren't remembered as a pinnacle of American leadership, but a nadir.

Klobuchar would still credit Mondale, saying it wasn’t easy for him to run against Reagan in 1984 knowing most people were predicting Reagan would win. In 2002, when Mondale came out of retirement to replace Paul Wellstone on the DFL ticket after Wellstone died shortly before election day, she said he ran “with grace, and good purpose, and for the right reasons.”

The grace of Mondale in the face of electoral defeat was an interesting backdrop for two lengthy appearances from Biden during the events. The vice president, of course, has been publicly mulling a presidential run for months now, and is reportedly near a decision. The situation was barely mentioned, but it was hard to miss several instances in which Biden seemed to refute Hillary Clinton — for example, his repeated declarations that “Republicans aren’t the enemy” versus Clinton’s debate-night comment that she’d made an enemy out of the GOP.

Fritz’s night

Biden speculation aside, the day was undoubtedly about Mondale, and along with the wine and steak, there was a heaping serving of nostalgia for a time when progressives stood on principle and told the truth, political consequences be damned.

Mondale, who reportedly was not terribly enthusiastic at first about the idea of a day in D.C. to honor him, seemed at times taken aback by the outpouring of affection for him. At the dinner — where the diners were not only Minnesotans — Franken declared: “In Minnesota, we don’t like Walter Mondale. We love Walter Mondale.”

The room roared its approval.

Lefse behind: As White House and Senate GOP face off, Norway ambassador nominee Samuel Heins waits

Sam Brodey — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 14:42:22 +0000

CC/Flickr/Dan Lundberg

The U.S. Embassy in Oslo has been without an official ambassador since September, 2013. Robert Bradtke is the American currently in charge in Oslo as de facto ambassador.

WASHINGTON — In the ongoing political war between the White House and some Senate Republicans, Minnesotan Samuel Heins is caught in the crossfire.

Samuel Heins

Heins, a Minneapolis lawyer and Barack Obama supporter, was nominated by the president in May to serve as U.S. ambassador to Norway — a post that has sat vacant for two years. But a handful of Senate Republicans are vowing to block executive appointments in many departments, including several ambassadorships like Norway.

Earlier this year, Heins appeared to have an easy path to confirmation. He was a welcome choice after Obama’s initial nominee, New York Democratic megadonor George Tsunis, withdrew his bid in December 2014. Earlier that year, Tsunis’ candidacy was tarnished by a painful committee hearing in which he made several misstatements about the country and its politics.

There were no doubts as to Heins’ qualifications: he built a distinguished career as a lawyer in Minneapolis, and serves on the boards of several area nonprofits, including the Center for Victims of Torture. He was also a top donor and bundler for Obama campaign contributions, gathering at least $1 million in campaign cash in 2012. (Heins served on MinnPost’s board from 2009 to 2011.)

In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Heins touted his Minnesota background, and said residents think of themselves as “honorary Norwegians.” Minnesota is home to the country’s largest population of Norwegian-Americans — fitting, then, that he be appointed to the post.

Senate vs. White House

Unfortunately, Heins is at the mercy of two institutions that don’t much like each other these days: the Republican-controlled Senate and the White House. In the Senate, even one member — especially a member of the majority — can have an outsize effect on the confirmation process. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far only leveraged his power to overrule the objections of members of his party in order to advance one appointment: that of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, whose confirmation was delayed by some Republicans earlier in the year.

Other appointments, though — including ambassadorships — appear to be fair game for Republicans who have a score to settle with President Obama. Freshman Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, says he will block Heins’ confirmation, as well as those of two other ambassador nominees, until the White House investigates an incident in which the Secret Service leaked embarrassing information about Congress’ top presidential watchdog, Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah. Meanwhile, Texas Republican and presidential candidate Ted Cruz has said he will block any State Department-related appointments because of his dissatisfaction over the Iran nuclear deal.

Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar have vowed to move Heins’ appointment in the face of GOP opposition. In a statement, Franken touted the shared political, economic, security, and cultural ties between the U.S. and Norway, and said Minnesota is emblematic of their bond. “Sam Heins is an excellent choice for the job of Ambassador to Norway,” he said, “and I’m disappointed that his nomination is being unreasonably held up in the Senate.”

Klobuchar has been one of the most vocal backers of Heins. “I have no doubt Sam Heins would be a great fit for this position and would help sustain and strengthen the bonds between the United States and Norway,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “I have been calling on my colleagues to bring his nomination up for a vote and I will continue working until we fill this important post.”

While Senate Republicans appear content to play a longer game, the administration is running out of time. Heins and other appointees would only have over a year to serve even if they were confirmed tomorrow: ambassadors appointed for political reasons — as opposed to career diplomats — typically step down when the president they backed leaves office.

Norwegians so upset they’re considering mentioning it

Meanwhile, others worry about the effect an extended vacancy in the ambassador’s chair might have on the U.S. relationship with Norway. The countries are historically strong allies, but the Tsunis debacle angered some Norwegians. Two career foreign service officers have served as de facto ambassadors to Norway since September 2013, when the last official ambassador stepped down. Robert Bradtke is the American currently in charge in Oslo.

To Roger Moe, the former gubernatorial candidate and DFL Senate majority leader, the situation is harming U.S.–Norway ties. “I think Norway perceives it as a slight,” said Moe, who is of Norwegian descent and is active in the Norwegian-American community. “They don’t say it or are very diplomatic about saying it, but I think they feel they’ve been a strong partner with the U.S., and here’s a situation where there is no reason they shouldn’t have an ambassador in place, and it hasn’t happened.”

Heins is more than qualified, Moe said, and his appointment shouldn’t be injected with partisan politics. “Here you have someone who has been through the process, approved by committee, the whole works, and is being held up for reasons that aren’t related to Norway!”

Heins did not comment, citing the ongoing confirmation process.

Senate Democrats' gun-control push is doomed from the start — so why bother?

Sam Brodey — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:38:44 +0000

The first thing you should know about Senate Democrats’ soon-to-be-revealed gun control plan is that it isn’t going anywhere.

Nevertheless, last week, a group of Democratic senators — including Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken — stood on the steps of the Capitol, vowing action and spelling out their principles in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Roseburg, Oregon. The senate’s number two Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, promised to introduce a gun safety bill and advance it by any means necessary.

Simple math and recent history are enough to establish that it will be a futile exercise. Any Democrat-introduced gun legislation is unlikely to gain any traction in the Republican-held Senate. Even when the Democrats held the Senate in 2013, and in the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, they weren’t able to get background check legislation passed.

What’s the point of all this, then? To answer that, it’s best to drop the assumption that Democrats’ goal is to pass one bill: from putting heat on Republicans to spotlighting other policy to simply letting people know they are serious about gun legislation, there are a number of reasons Democrats see the push as worth their time.

Policy goals

While the entire gun legislation hasn’t been revealed — top Democrats say they are waiting for the “right time” — past bills serve as good clues as to what this package may contain.

Broadly, it is likely to contain what proponents often describe as “common sense” gun legislation: for example, prohibiting guns from being sold until background checks are completed. (Current law allows sale 72 hours after a background check is requested.)

It will have elements of the 2013 bill, often referred to as Manchin-Toomey after its Democrat and Republican sponsors. That bill’s prospects were good: it had bipartisan backing, the vocal support of President Obama, and a Democratic Senate — yet, in the end, it fell short of passage by just a few votes. Four Democratic Senators facing tight re-election battles defected to vote no.

It was seen as a historic low point for gun control, but proponents say its central ideas — expanding background checks and closing loopholes — remain popular.

The bill is also likely to include a provision to make it harder for those convicted of various types of domestic violence and stalking to obtain a firearm, which was the focus of a bill that Sen. Klobuchar has introduced in the Senate before.

A longer legislative effort

Minnesota’s Democratic senators are realistic about the current bill’s grim prospects, but view this push as the first step in a longer effort to pass gun legislation. “I don’t think anyone is naive about getting this done,” Klobuchar told MinnPost. “The things we’re putting together have been considered before and have some Republican support…we’re trying to be pragmatic. We acknowledge we can’t get everything done.”

In particular, Klobuchar said her domestic violence and stalking provision has bipartisan support, and said discussion on this larger package may help move her bill separately.

In a statement, Franken said, “I sincerely hope that the recent string of horrific shootings will give Congress the political will to address gun violence in this country,” adding that he hopes their policy will receive Republican support, like Manchin-Toomey did in 2013. “We have to pass common sense reforms to prevent firearms from getting in the hands of the wrong people.”

Klobuchar said her party’s push is not symbolic. “I think these are common sense proposals and I don’t think it’s symbolic when over 80 percent of voters and gun owners support some kind of background check,” she said.

Republican plan focuses on mental health

Meanwhile, Republicans haven’t been particularly aggressive in countering the Democrats’ efforts so far. Instead, they’ve preferred to shed light on their own new gun safety measure, which is almost certain to advance over the Democrats’ package. The legislation, introduced by the Senate’s number two Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, is aimed at strengthening mental health programs. Proponents are branding it as an appropriate response to recent shootings in which mental illness is believed to have played a role.

The bill, backed by the National Rifle Association, has some bipartisan support, but Franken suggested it was problematic. He said it “contains several provisions that would roll back reasonable gun protections already in place. That’s not what we should be doing to address the crisis.”

For example, one section of the bill would void a standing law preventing individuals who were involuntarily committed to a hospital for mental illness from purchasing a weapon. Broadly, some individuals with severe mental health problems would have their records expunged from the firearm background check system under Cornyn’s law.

Klobuchar said she was continuing to review the proposal.

The mental health bill also plays into what critics are calling a new favored talking point from the NRA: casting the solution to mass shootings as addressing mental health issues, not gun control. Many Democrats say both are equally important.

Political dimensions

Rich Keiser, professor of politics at Carleton College, agrees that the Democrats’ gun control push is unlikely to go anywhere, but argues that going through the motions could yield dividends — for both parties.

Electoral politics certainly play a role: Democrats seem to like the idea of putting Republican senators they are targeting in 2016 — such as Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — on the record on gun issues, Keiser said.

Keiser added that, for senate Democrats, the push is “an opportunity to once again reiterate in strong terms their support for some sort of action — actions they’ve called on before but are reiterating they’re still on board with and still working hard.”

Senate Republicans, Keiser said, will get the opportunity to show their constituencies that they continue to oppose any gun control measures.

While the gridlock might be frustrating to many, he said this is how the system was set up to work. “It’s good for democracy in that some of the most important parts, particularly the interest groups, get to show that they are really aggregating the view of their constituents and supporters and are articulating it, and members of Congress look like they’re doing something,” he said.

Still, Keiser added ruefully: “Nothing will change.”

Activists running out of patience

While Keiser maintained that the Democrats’ action is a chance to show advocacy groups they are doing their jobs, there’s reason to believe that those groups are running out of patience, even with their closest congressional allies.

After last week’s press conference, Dan Gross of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence released an unmistakably angry, frustrated statement. Though he praised what Democrats had to say, Gross stressed that talk won’t cut it anymore. “We want to see those words followed by action,” he said. “It can’t stop by simply launching a campaign to build public support and, as they put it, ‘ramp up pressure on Congress.’ They ARE Congress!”

“We need a bill NOW and a vote NOW.”

To be sure, it’s not like gun control advocates have a home anywhere but the Democratic Party, but they can put heat on their Democratic allies. In the past, gun control activists have hammered Democrats, such as North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, with ad campaigns criticizing their votes against gun legislation.

Franken aides said they understand and empathize with the frustration of activists, but emphasized that Democrats have to face reality: they hold nine fewer Senate seats than they did when Manchin-Toomey failed. Still, they acknowledged that despite having a “smaller toolbox,” Democrats are considering all options to advance gun legislation.

The reaction to this latest gun push — which has the potential to be the most serious one since Manchin-Toomey — suggests expectations are higher than ever for advocates of gun control. The frustration and anger among those in the gun control activist community is palpable. Whatever happens, Democrats will have to assure them they have their interests at heart while credibly explaining there isn’t much they can do — at least until they retake control of Congress.

Until then, Democrats will have to wait for their moment to move this bill forward in its modest mission. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer told reporters that it could be later this year, or next year. With Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell controlling the Senate floor, it’s highly improbable he’d allow his party to be forced to vote on the bill, as much as Democrats want to put them on the record.

As unsatisfying as it may be, Democrats and gun control advocates will have to settle for a long game. “I understand that frustration,” Klobuchar said. “We’re trying to look at more pragmatic things we think we could pass. It won’t happen overnight but we want to get it moving.”

Rep. Keith Ellison on why he's backing Bernie Sanders for president

Sam Brodey — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 20:00:08 +0000

Keith Ellison is, officially, feeling the Bern: today, the Fifth District representative announced he is formally endorsing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president.

“He is a very, very strong candidate,” Ellison said in a phone interview with MinnPost. “He and I share a really strong vision in terms of how working and middle-class people can be successful. I plan on helping Bernie out and campaigning for him.”

Ellison named a variety of issues upon which he and Sanders agree — primarily, raising the minimum wage, ending mass incarceration and fighting the oil industry. On one of Sanders’ biggest obstacles — his proud identification as a socialist — Ellison pushed back: “People will go based on substance and not labels. Republicans will try to make distractions about labels. … Bernie has never run away from his belief system,” he said, adding that the late Sen. Paul Wellstone shared the same quality.

Could Sanders compete in a general election against a Republican like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush? “I think Bernie’s going to stack up well,” Ellison said. “People respect authenticity.”

That being said, Ellison did not say that Sanders was a lock for the nomination: He said that he believes the Vermonter is a legitimate candidate, but also acknowledged that, even if he doesn’t win the nomination, Sanders’ candidacy presents a major opportunity to advance progressive issues.

Thus far, Ellison and Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona — co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — are the only members of Congress to formally endorse Sanders. (Sanders is the only Senate member in the group of progressive lawmakers.) Ellison said more congressional progressives may jump into the Sanders camp: He says he’ll tell people, “If you think Bernie’s values line up with yours, support him.”

Meanwhile, the party’s front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has racked up the endorsements from prominent Minnesota Democrats. Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Tim Walz have endorsed her. Rep. Betty McCollum is all but certain to join them. Earlier in October, the Clinton campaign released a list of their Minnesota supporters, which included bold-faced names in the state party establishment, like Gov. Mark Dayton and Lieutenant Gov. Tina Smith.

Recently — and perhaps prompted by Sanders’ strong poll numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire — Clinton has come out with progressive stances on issues important to the party base. Last week, she voiced her opposition the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal — a top issue for the progressive movement right now, and something Sanders and Ellison have worked very hard to defeat. In September, Clinton also announced she would oppose the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Over the summer, Clinton went to Capitol Hill and met with Ellison and the Progressive Caucus; afterward, Ellison told MinnPost that Clinton was “speaking our language.” More than two dozen members of the caucus have officially endorsed her candidacy.

Why not get behind Hillary, then? Ellison was diplomatic, and had only good things to say about the former secretary of state: “She’s doing some good things, and at the end of the day, I’m supporting the Democratic nominee.” He emphasized, however, that his support of Sanders is a conscience decision, and he made clear that he believes Sanders to be the strongest candidate for the working and middle classes.

Sanders and Ellison have a history and a shared vision, so it’s not a shocker the congressman will back his Senate colleague. “Bernie is a friend of mine,” Ellison said. “Bernie is a warm guy. He is a straight shooter. … He has a very broad breadth of support.”

Tomorrow night, Sanders will get a chance to address his biggest television audience yet when he, Clinton, and the other Democratic presidential contenders take the stage for the first Democratic presidential debate. Ellison says he’ll be watching.

The fight for the soul of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus

Sam Brodey — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 16:04:49 +0000

If you’re running for political office in America, camo is a good look. If a candidate can pull it off, it communicates that he or she is humble, earthy, in touch with the spirit of Real America. And if you can’t pull it off, you’re bumbling, a city slicker, an instant punchline — ask John Kerry.

The 1,000 congressmen, lobbyists, and assorted D.C. types assembled in a Washington ballroom one night in early October, it’s safe to say, have all pulled it off. The occasion: the annual banquet for the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus, a voluntary club of congressmen who advance the interests of America’s hunters and fishermen in Congress.

It wasn’t your typical D.C. banquet affair — most of them don’t raffle off specialty rifles and crossbows alongside cruises — but then again, the Sportsmen’s Caucus isn’t your typical caucus. Most congressional caucuses are symbolic and rarely active. At nearly 290 members — a majority of the entire United States Congress — the Sportsmen’s Caucus is by far the largest on Capitol Hill.

The theme of the dinner was “Honoring Sportsmen and Women: America’s True Conservationists.” For many members of the caucus — including its co-chair, Rep. Tim Walz — preserving America’s natural environment and animal habitats is the key focus of the caucus.

To the lobbyists and industry representatives present, however, the event is something like hitting the jackpot: access to scores of members of Congress, from both parties, from impressionable freshmen to seasoned vets, all gathering in one room around a shared interest. The “title sponsors” of the banquet — those who forked over the most cash to the foundation — were the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Vista Outdoor Inc. Respectively, they are the country’s second-largest gun lobby and one of its largest ammunition manufacturers.

The banquet is a distillation of the tension at the heart of the Sportsmen’s Caucus: it pursues a stated mission of conservation, but expanding hunting opportunities is good for retailers, and good for gun manufacturers — and gives the latter an opportunity to burnish its image as standard-bearer of a time-honored American tradition. Not to mention easy access to sympathetic ears in Congress.

That access comes in the form of numerous opportunities that exist for gun industry representatives to interact with caucus members. The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation — the nonprofit charitable group that holds the banquet and provides research and other services to the caucus — is heavily supported by the gun industry. It’s come under scrutiny from pro- gun-control activists for being too cozy with the gun lobby and pursuing an explicit political agenda.

Some in the caucus — like Walz — admit that this kind of gun politics has undermined the caucus’ work in the past. In the face of increased scrutiny of the gun lobby — and its increased power and influence — can the Sportsmen’s Caucus separate the volatility of gun politics and the gun lobby from its mission of conservation and hunting tradition? Does it even want to?

A conservationist caucus

The biggest extra-curricular club on Capitol Hill began in 1988, established by a Democrat, Rep. Lindsay Thomas of Georgia, and a Republican, Rep. Richard Schulze of Pennsylvania. The idea was to focus on traditional issues hunters and fishermen cared about: public land access and conservation of those lands to ensure availability of game to hunt and fish.

Seventh District Rep. Collin Peterson, a longtime caucus member and former co-chair, says it was formed partly out of sportsmen’s desire to influence environmental policy. “People back at that time thought the environmental people had too much say about things, and conservation people who were more interested in wildlife and hunting weren’t being listened to,” he says.

Shortly after the caucus was founded, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, was established to serve as a resource for members of the caucus: providing research, connections with the hunting and fishing industry, and a way to raise tax-exempted money for caucus activities.

The caucus and the foundation are separate entities, but they have steadily grown together in the years since their foundings. Both have worked hard to expand the sportsmen’s legislative focus beyond Washington: beginning in the 1990s, congressional leaders worked to establish legislative caucuses on the state level. Today, the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses is active in every statehouse except Rhode Island and Hawaii. 33 governors are members of the Governor’s Sportsmen’s Caucus.

In Washington, 286 lawmakers — 61 senators and 225 House members — count themselves as members of the Sportsmen’s Caucus. Its leaders, members, and sponsors laud the bipartisan composition of the group at almost every opportunity: they routinely refer to it as the “most bipartisan group on the Hill,” and as a healthy antidote to the partisan antipathy that dominates Washington.

For the most part, the praise is not unfounded: about 50 congressional Democrats are members, and the leadership is divided equally among the parties. Among the Minnesota delegation, Democratic Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar are members, as are Republican Reps. John Kline, Erik Paulsen, and Tom Emmer. Along with Walz and Peterson, Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan is a member.

Mixed legislative focus

There might be no other caucus that is quite as reflective of the whole legislative branch than the Sportsmen’s, says Walz, who has served as one of four co-chairs of the caucus since the beginning of 2015. “The caucus includes people who would characterize themselves as environmentalists, and then there are other people who characterize themselves as deer hunters — straight up,” Walz says.

For the most part, members of the caucus broadly agree on key conservation issues. Walz and other members frequently classify conservation as the most important thing they focus on. In his chairmanship, Walz has sought to put a special focus on how outdoor activities from hunting to hiking benefit local economies.

Since 2011, the centerpiece of the Sportsmen’s Caucus’ agenda has been the so-called Sportsmen’s Package, a bill containing a collection of the group’s most desired items. Members of the caucus have introduced versions of the legislation in the past three Congresses; none have passed.

Broadly, the package focuses on specific policy points that would benefit hunters, fishermen, and their associated industries. There isn’t much in the way of substantial conservation measures, but there are several items that would give hunters more opportunities to hunt while facing fewer restrictions and penalties from the government.

A top-line item in the bill, for example, would give states more power to build shooting ranges on public land. Another section mandates that lands managed by certain federal agencies be automatically open to hunting and fishing unless specifically closed. Another directs federal funds to improve access to hunting areas that are difficult to get to. The two most conservation-oriented components of the bill would simply reauthorize existing government conservation programs, like the National Wetlands Conservation Act.

Perhaps the most contentious item in the package — and the first one listed on the foundation’s website — is anathema to many advocates of the environment: it would strike Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on the use of ammunition and fishing tackle that contains lead. It would also prevent the government from setting future lead content restrictions in most cases. Environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, questioned why a bill that would make the use of lead more prevalent would be promoted by a group ostensibly interested in environmental conservation.

Beyond that, a report from the nonpartisan, in-house Congressional Research Service called the bill’s language relating to use of public lands “imprecise” and said it could “allow any activity related to fishing, hunting or wildlife conservation to be conducted in wilderness areas.” Each version of the Sportsmen’s Package has been endorsed by various gun industry groups, including the National Rifle Association.

According to Walz, arguments within the caucus over topics like lead and the usage of federal land are some of the most heated ones they have. But he emphasizes it’s a positive process. “When we write our Sportsmen’s Bill, there’s some good, healthy tension about what should be included,” he said. “It’s how I think people would like to think all legislation is done…It brings us together around a common cause: we work together, fashion legislation, and then usher it through the process.”

Wading into gun policy

Beyond the items that would simply give sportsmen more opportunities to use guns, ammunition, and fishing tackle, the Sportsmen’s Package isn’t exactly laden with controversial gun policy. While not everyone would agree that opening up more public lands to gun use is a good thing, it’s hardly as charged a topic as, say, a ban on assault weapons.

But there’s no denying that, at times, members of the caucus — and the foundation that provides them with research — has advanced a pro-gun agenda on those more contentious points.

On the foundation’s website, there is a walk-through of the caucus’ official history: it lists a 25-year record of successes, many of which were also clear victories for the gun industry.

On the federal level, the foundation praised caucus members for helping pass the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005. The law, which protects firearms manufacturers from litigation when their products are used to commit crimes, was hailed by the NRA as the most significant pro-gun law in 20 years.

The leanings of the foundation are further illuminated by the research it publishes to advise state legislators through the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses. On the topic of assault weapons bans, analysis from the foundation came down strongly against them. “Such bans/limits come at high costs to firearm manufactures and consumers, with little to no evidence these measures reduce crime," the official paper said.

The price of gun politics

At times, this special focus on gun policy appears to detract from the caucus’ ability to achieve its overall goals. Take the story of last year’s Sportsmen’s Package, which got derailed partly because of the lightning-rod effect of gun politics.

In July of 2014, the package had picked up 46 co-sponsors in the Senate and was expected to have plenty of votes to secure passage. As it advanced, however, senators attached nearly 100 amendments to the bill. Some were relevant to sporting — like one addressing the length of red snapper fishing season in the Gulf of Mexico — but others, like one that would have voided the District of Columbia’s strict gun control laws, were not.

To spare vulnerable members of his party from a vote on gun control in an election year, then-majority leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, pushed the bill for floor consideration without amendments, effectively killing it.

Senators from both parties, many of whom lined up to initially support the bill, descended into partisan finger-pointing over what went wrong. Looking back, Walz said that “two senators decided to make a gun issue on an obscure piece that I don’t think fit…one senator can change the whole dynamic.”

The law has been re-introduced in both chambers this year, and the House version received a mark-up in committee last week — a key step on the way to consideration on the floor. Caucus members say they are determined to pass it this year.

Guns, firms and meals

In some ways, the caucus’ advocacy of gun rights makes sense; after all, the hunter can’t claim that trophy buck without access to plenty of ammo and the right to bring her rifle into its habitat. But to some advocates, the closeness between the caucus and the industry, fostered by the Congressional Sportmen’s Foundation, is unseemly.

Po Murray of Newtown, Connecticut, is one of those advocates. She was a parent at Sandy Hook Elementary School who helped start the Newton Action Alliance, a gun-control advocacy group, after the horrific school shooting occurred there in 2012. “It’s deplorable that members of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus would wine and dine and rub shoulders with gun executives,” Murray said.

Connections between the nonprofit Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation and the broader firearms industry run deeper than an annual banquet, however. The activities of the Foundation — research, speaker series, etc. — are underwritten by a long list of sponsors connected to the industry. They also contribute to the slate of fundraisers and recreational events that the foundation holds every year, such as the Annual Congressional Shootout, a welcome reception for new members of Congress, and a “Changing of the Guard” dinner to introduce new caucus leadership.

A New York Times report from 2013 showed the foundation touting to potential donors the rewards of contributing, suggesting a significant return on investment through access to legislators. That pitch continues to resonate: during the 2012-2013 fiscal year — the most recent year for which records are available — the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation collected over $3.5 million in contributions.

Sponsors may also get the opportunity to give informational presentations to members of Congress through the foundation. In April of this year, a representative from the American Suppressor Association, a trade group for manufacturers of devices that make gunshots quieter, gave a CSF-hosted “Breakfast Briefing” to members. He made the case that silencers — which reduce ear-damaging noise for hunters but were also favored tools for gangsters and spies — get an unfairly bad rap, and went on to detail the lengthy, bureaucratic regulatory process in place for purchasing them.

Jeff Crane, president of the foundation, said before the presentation that “there are some real threats not only to this industry, but to our gun culture that we continue to see potentially coming out of the federal government…we’re gonna ask you as members of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus to take a look at this issue.” The policy suggestion framing the industry talk was clear.

This kind of activity is common and totally legal, according to Matt Rumsey, senior policy analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit that focuses on government transparency. “There are pretty clear rules about what they’re allowed and not allowed to do,” he says, most of which have to do with usage of additional government resources toward caucus or foundation activities. There’s no evidence that the Sportsmen’s Caucus or Foundation has violated any of these rules.

In a statement, the National Shooting Sports Foundation said that, like many other industries, they “openly work on Capitol Hill in a truly bipartisan way to represent their interest in preserving and protecting their hunting traditions,” adding that caucus members view the foundation as a “valuable resource.” A Walz spokesperson said in a statement that “interacting with folks who are experts in a variety of different issue areas is something members of Congress do every day as they weigh how policy decisions impact the lives of Americans.”

Gun-control activists aren’t buying it. “It seems like a clear conflict of interest to me,” says Ladd Everitt with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “Why we’re in this predicament…is because these guys want a free lunch and a free shoot,” he says, adding that the focus of the caucus would look much different if they were only interested in recreational shooting.

That point is a favored one for the gun lobby’s most vocal opponents in Congress, including Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat. He told the New York Times that the gun lobby’s “association with the Sportsmen’s Caucus plays up this mythology that they speak for sportsmen when, increasingly they don’t…they represent views that help gun manufacturers.”

Murphy told MinnPost that an overwhelming majority of gun owners support background checks, something the NRA opposes. (The Sportsmen’s Caucus doesn’t have a clear position on the issue.) “Hunters in my state don’t want criminals owning guns,” he said. Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence played up the disconnect between hunters and the lobby: “For a group of moderate gun owners just interested in hunting and recreation, there is no institution to turn to right now in the pro-gun movement to forge that type of relationship,” he said.

Members deny undue influence

Tim Walz has a solidly pro-gun record in Congress: the NRA, which assigns a letter grade to each member, gave him an A. In a lengthy conversation with MinnPost, however, Walz was frank about the role of gun politics in the caucus and how it relates to its broader mission.

“We’re not shying away from it…but we won’t lose the Sportsmen’s Caucus over a fishing rod. We do lose it over guns sometimes,” he said.

Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation

Rep. Ron Kind, center, dismisses the idea that the gun lobby exerts an undue influence over the caucus.

Walz also disputed the basis of Murphy’s claim that the NRA doesn’t represent sportsmen. “No doubt, the NRA is loud and has a place that is well known…but sportsmen fall across that spectrum,” he said. “This is part of what’s hard about this…everyone gets grouped together. If you have a gun position it’s either this position or that position, there’s no room on the continuum.”

Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat and former caucus co-chair, echoed Walz’s statements, and said the group is hardly captive to special interests. “I’ve never seen the gun lobby trying to exert undue influence or try to drive an agenda with the caucus,” he said. “We’re very protective of it… it would be wrong for any interest group, let alone the NRA, to co-opt the purpose of having the Sportsmen’s Caucus.”

Kind added that diversity of viewpoints was key to the health of the group. “We don’t pre-screen any of this… all the more reason we have to get together, to listen to each other, and focus on the common ground that does exist.”

“You need counterintuitive coalitions to get to a common goal,” Walz said.

Pushing back

Indeed, some caucus members push back openly against the gun lobby’s influence on the group.

Sen. Al Franken is one of a handful of Senate Democrats in the caucus, and in a statement he emphasized his support of “responsible gun ownership” and Minnesota’s “long tradition of hunting and recreation.”

Eighth District Rep. Rick Nolan is perhaps one of the most liberal members of the caucus. He is a lifelong hunter and a self-described Second Amendment supporter, but he has been a bête noire for the gun-industry supporters of the foundation. Nolan has an F rating from the NRA for his support of various gun control measures like extensive background checks. The gun lobby spent millions trying to defeat him in 2014, and Nolan even says the NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, spent several days in his district for that exact purpose.

Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation

Former Florida Rep. Steve Southerland with Reps. Rick Nolan and Tim Walz at the Congressional Shoot-Out and Industry Challenge in May 2015.

Nolan is as much a fan of the caucus as anyone, but as a progressive, he has a unique vantage point from which to give his take on the group’s politics. “One of the reasons why I like to become a part of the Sportsmen’s Caucus is to push back,” Nolan said. “It’s not all about having assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, we need public land set aside to conserve for hunting and fishing.”

“You can have all the guns you want, but if there isn’t any wild game out there, what are you gonna do with the sporting goods?”

History, tradition, heritage

There was no wild game on hand at the Sportsmen’s Caucus annual shoot-out this May, but there was plenty of trash talk: the popular event pits Republican and Democratic members against each other in a test of their marksmanship skills.

Introducing the Democratic team, Walz said “there’s fewer of us but we’re straighter shooters.” Ultimately, the Republicans would prove straighter, winning the competition, but Walz earned “Top Democratic Gun” honors. “Folks make up their mind that they don’t know you,” he told MinnPost, “so they assume because you’re a Democrat and you voted for health care…then you go out there and they’re like, ‘oh god, he can shoot.’”

The shoot-out illustrates something important: sure, the caucus works on conservation, it gets wrapped up in gun politics, but it’s really a club at heart. Most members just like hunting and fishing and being outside. They kind of like doing that stuff together, too. When they wax poetic about how hunting is deeply embedded in America’s DNA — which they do often — they truly believe it.

But the way hunters talk about hunting rights — history, tradition, heritage — is very similar to the way gun rights advocates talk about Second Amendment rights. In that sense, it will be very difficult for people like Walz to untangle the politics of guns from the politics of outdoor sports, even if they might want to.

Members say Walz is up to the task: “Tim is a unifying force and someone who’s able to pierce the intense polarization and partisanship that seems to define Congress,” Ron Kind says. “He is literally a straight shooter — he’s also one of the best shots we have in the caucus.”

Whatever the obstacles may be, the Sportsmen’s Caucus will keep plugging away at its legislative agenda. At the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation’s “Welcome to Congress” reception earlier this year, president Jeff Crane stood in front of members new and old and delivered the best pitch he could.

“When I think about what unites the East Coast and the West Coast with the heartland, Republicans and Democrats, it’s truly these issues of hunting,” he said. “We have come so close. It’s time to close this deal…we’re gonna fight like hell to get it done.”

Could a John Kline ‘caretaker’ speakership be the solution to House Republicans’ leadership dilemma?

Sam Brodey — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 21:47:04 +0000

Rep. John Kline

WASHINGTON — For the second time in three weeks, Congress has been shaken by unexpected political earthquakes: first, the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner, and second, today’s sudden announcement that his heir-apparent, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, would withdraw his candidacy for the speakership.

When McCarthy announced his decision during a closed-door meeting to elect the GOP speaker nominee on Thursday afternoon, members were visibly shocked and shaken. The party faces a full-fledged leadership crisis, and it is now digging deep for a solution.

One name thrown out as a potential answer to the Republicans’ problems: Second District Rep. John Kline.

In the hours after McCarthy’s decision, members of Congress, the media and political observers threw out an array of potential replacement candidates for McCarthy as the House’s next speaker. But over the course of the afternoon, an unusual idea gained traction: electing a member who has already announced his or her retirement to serve as an interim, or “caretaker” speaker to hold the role until the end of 2016.

Only a handful of GOP representatives are retiring, and Kline is perhaps the most powerful and well-liked among them. In a brief statement, a Kline spokesperson did not dismiss the possibility, saying only: “Congressman Kline is confident House Republicans will select someone who can do what’s best for our country and this institution.”

The spokesman also confirmed that Kline has been approached by other members of Congress about running for speaker. He did not say whether Kline was considering the proposal.

For disgruntled members of a fractured, historically rebellious House Republican conference, the idea of an old hand like Kline, now unburdened by electoral considerations, getting the House in order is no doubt an appealing one. According to BuzzFeed News, top House Republicans have broadly endorsed the idea of a “caretaker speaker.”

The argument goes like this: Get someone like Kline — experienced, well-liked — to pick up the gavel while the House GOP sorts out a way forward. That would allow Boehner to depart at the end of October as planned, while a speaker slated to leave at the end of 2016 would have a free hand to guide must-pass legislation — like transportation funding and raising the debt ceiling — through the chamber.

The full slate of leadership elections could occur as late as the end of next year. For now, Boehner has postponed leadership elections indefinitely — meaning his expectation to retire at the end of October could be dashed. Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan is considered the most desirable candidate for speaker by many in the caucus, but he has repeatedly declined to run. McCarthy said that Ryan would make a “fantastic speaker,” and Boehner reportedly called Ryan several times to urge him to run.

Few other names have been floated as viable candidates for full-time speaker. McCarthy’s potential opponents — primarily Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Daniel Webster — are seen as perhaps too conservative to win over enough of the House GOP. Kline is seen as the kind of member who could potentially secure 218 votes, the threshold needed to win a speakership election.

If Ryan is the only Republican who could plausibly win over the establishment and conservative wings of the House GOP, his failure to enter the race could prompt more members to endorse the idea of a caretaker speaker.

It’s important to note that even Capitol Hill veterans were shocked by the news, and the situation is very much in flux.

How in flux? Mitt Romney is being floated as speaker candidate. The position, after all, does not technically need to be held by a sitting member of Congress.

The Boehner and Duncan retirements might be just the excuse Congress needed to do nothing about education policy

Sam Brodey — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 15:38:17 +0000

WASHINGTON — Everyone knew that getting an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind education law signed would be hard: These days, the idea of the House and Senate agreeing on a compromise bill that would get the president’s approval — and on a lightning-rod topic like K-12 education — seems doomed to fail.

But leaders of the effort to retool the 2002 law, like 2nd District Rep. John Kline, who is chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, have remained optimistic in the face of long odds. In the past two weeks, however, developments in Washington have emerged to make their task even harder, or at the very least, more volatile: the resignations of House Speaker John Boehner and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

To briefly recap: Back in July, the House and Senate passed respective versions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Law, also known as No Child Left Behind. The Senate bill — which passed by a relatively wide margin — is thought to be closer to what the president might support than the House bill, which narrowly advanced on a party-line vote.

Kline was named chair of the bicameral, bipartisan committee that will meet to negotiate differences between the bills. While members of the conference have not been announced, the staffs of Kline and other key lawmakers have reportedly been at work since summer on a compromise.

This is the closest Congress has come to overhauling K-12 education policy since No Child Left Behind was passed in 2002. (It technically expired in 2007.) Despite that, education experts and policy-watchers agree that the chances of success are now dwindling — and fast — because of Boehner’s retirement and a number of other factors.

Testing a new speaker

In Boehner — the last member of Congress remaining to have helped write the original NCLB — Kline undoubtedly loses a formidable ally. But the issue is less that Boehner would have moved the education bill and more that his successor may avoid it like the plague, according to Arnold Shober, an education policy expert at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.

The man likely to be the next speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, is broadly well-liked but not a darling of the Tea Party right, which has cast him as Boehner 2.0. If he is elected, McCarthy will be tested from the get-go by the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 conservative representatives who led the charge for Boehner’s ouster.

The education package, Shober says, “is a huge bill … it has lots of marks of the federal government that these conservatives aren’t very happy with.” It may be an ideal opportunity for conservatives to push McCarthy’s limits by attaching conservative policy favorites, like an expansion of school-choice vouchers, and daring him to blink.

In any case, Shober says, House conservatives are too emboldened by Boehner’s departure to agree to anything resembling a moderate compromise with the Senate and the White House. And in the unlikely scenario that McCarthy is upset and someone like Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz becomes Speaker, well, forget it.

On the other hand, if the bill advances out of a conference, it will present an important opportunity for McCarthy, or whoever the next speaker may be, to demonstrate that he — and the GOP — can lead, according to Michael Petrilli, president of the Fordham Institute, a right-leaning education think tank in Washington. McCarthy, he says, would pick up the gavel with a record of knowing how to get bills through the GOP conference.

Petrilli says McCarthy was active in getting the House bill passed in July. “The base doesn’t want to compromise, but there’s a strong argument that going into the election, [McCarthy] can demonstrate that Republicans can get stuff done,” he says.

If McCarthy has to rely on Democratic votes to do that — a near certainty with this piece of legislation — it could doom him, Shober says. “One of the gripes about Boehner was that he was willing to borrow Democratic votes to pass legislation … if they have a new speaker that does the same, it won’t make conservatives any happier, and you might see a new speaker election.”

Is there any chance Boehner might take up education — and help his old pal Kline — as part of his so called “barn-cleaning” before he leaves Congress at the end of October? Unlikely, Shober says: “Boehner hasn’t attached much of his own speakership to the legacy of that bill. … I think it’s important to him, but I’m not sure it’s on the top of his list for this month.”

Duncan’s departure a wildcard

In the middle of all this, the White House is losing its top education policymaker: President Barack Obama’s longtime education secretary, Arne Duncan, announced his resignation last Friday. Observers agree that his departure won’t affect congressional dynamics as much as Boehner’s, but it could make things more interesting.

In his nearly seven years on the job, Duncan became something of a bogeyman for elements on both the right and the left: The former disliked his emphasis on the federal government’s role in education policy, while the latter felt betrayed by his enthusiastic support of charter schools. He also earned both praise and criticism for his decisions to waive states from certain provisions of No Child Left Behind, slowly dismantling the law while Congress continued to dither on a response.

Shober says there are two ways Duncan’s retirement could shake things up: For one, he was so disliked by some conservatives that his departure could free up some space for them to get behind certain policy points, like strong testing requirements, that were sullied in some corners simply by being associated with the secretary.

Kline and other GOP leaders could also use Duncan’s retirement to rally conservative support. According to Shober, the administration’s piecemeal dismantling of No Child Left Behind was a source of anger and disappointment on the right. “Kline could say, ‘look, Duncan the waiver king is gone, and now we can re-authorize this bill to say it’s not waiver-able. We can guarantee that Duncan’s successor can’t shoot holes in our bill.’”

John B. King, deputy education secretary, was named as acting secretary by the president — he’ll take over after Duncan departs the office at the end of the year. The jury is out on how King might differ from Duncan: The two share a support for charter schools, but as New York state's top education official, King pushed a high-stakes testing regimen that Obama is increasingly looking to pare down.

Too many obstacles?

At this point, of course, these scenarios are hypothetical; the House and Senate conference members haven’t even been named. After that happens, they will then have to meet and agree on a compromise to send to each chamber, before we can assess a showdown between conservatives and a new speaker. (Though it’s likely the staffs of key players will have already done much of the work by then.) Many observers agree that the barriers to a compromise arriving at Obama’s desk — let alone him signing one — are just too great.

A compromise bill would likely have elements that would make a yes vote a difficult ask even for less conservative House Republicans. The White House has repeatedly said that it wants any bill to maintain accountability provisions that codify focuses on low-income and minority students and schools. According to Kevin Welner, director of the nonpartisan National Education Policy Center, “the House was never going to agree to anything that would be acceptable to the Senate, let alone to the president.”

Election-year dynamics will play a major role, too — and even top lawmakers like Kline have acknowledged that the closer Congress gets to 2016, the less likely it is to pass the bill. Presidential politics has a sweeping effect that causes members of Congress to dig in their heels on ideology, and backing a compromise with Obama could give ammunition to the opponents of Republicans facing primary challenges.

“It’s a big bill and I’d be surprised if they took it up next year if they don’t take it up in the next couple of weeks,” Shober says.

Welner says that with Boehner’s departure, “the chances of passage probably went from below 10 percent to further below 10 percent.” Petrilli says it’s always safe to bet against Congress getting something done, but thinks there’s a 25 percent chance it can pass ESEA.

Kline and allies remain optimistic

Kline and his Senate counterpart, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, have remained publicly determined to push a law through Congress. Kline said in September he is confident they will send a bipartisan bill to Obama’s desk by the end of the year. And while Kline himself is retiring, it will be at the end of 2016 — possibly giving him an advantage, Shober says. “He has [more] flexibility in this bill than if he were running for re-election … he may be able to patch something together.”

But as Boehner’s speakership illustrated time and again, Congress has tended to govern by crisis politics, only taking up important issues if an ominous deadline or cliff loomed. The same set of structural obstacles that dogged Boehner will face the next Speaker. With education policy there’s no deadline or cliff on the horizon — or ever. “It’s eight years overdue,” Shober says. “No one’s breathing down their neck.”

It’s about time for the American public to start doing just that, says Mary Cathryn Ricker, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. If Congress fails to pass the law, “it looks like education is such a low priority that there are elected officials willing to play politics on this and not make any progress at all,” Ricker says.

“We need to say, ‘enough!’ We expect Congress to model for us that you know how to get things done.”

In style — and campaign cash — Minnesota House Republicans are close to speaker-candidate McCarthy

Sam Brodey — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 15:43:31 +0000

WASHINGTON — The succession of House Speaker John A. Boehner will, in all likelihood, be swift and tidy. In the days since Boehner suddenly announced his resignation, only one name has been floated as a serious replacement: the GOP Majority Leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California.

McCarthy, a five-term representative from the deep-red interior of central California, is well-known for his rapid rise to House leadership — he would be the least experienced speaker, in terms of years served, since the 19_th century.

Part of the reason why McCarthy has gotten so far so fast is that he is broadly well-liked among the different wings of the fractious GOP conference, from moderates to the far-right Freedom Caucus. People like his affable disposition and eagerness to listen, but they also like his money: McCarthy has put together one of the most prolific fundraising operations in Congress, giving millions and millions of dollars to House candidates over the years.

Campaign cash

Minnesota’s three Republican representatives have all benefited from McCarthy’s fundraising largesse at some point. Sixth District Rep. Tom Emmer has received a total of $15,000 from McCarthy’s leadership PAC: $10,000 for his campaign in 2014, and already $5,000 toward his re-election bid next year.

Third District Rep. Erik Paulsen has received a total of $13,779 from McCarthy, going back to 2008, when Paulsen first ran for Congress. McCarthy’s biggest single contribution was in 2010, when he gave $6,280 to Paulsen’s campaign. Second District Rep. John Kline has received less from McCarthy, benefiting more from the even vaster fundraising operation that Boehner built. But in 2014, McCarthy passed along $5,000 to Kline’s re-election campaign.

McCarthy was also generous with former Sixth District Rep. Michele Bachmann, giving her a total of $3,000. Bachmann was one of 10 Republicans McCarthy gave to in 2006, which was the first time he ran for Congress. That early generosity tapered off as McCarthy rose through the ranks: he stopped giving to her after 2008, even as he expanded his fundraising operation.

Of course, campaign money doesn’t buy loyalty, and top party leaders routinely spread cash around to members of the conference. (Last cycle, Boehner gave $5,000 to North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, who filed a rogue motion to unseat the Speaker back in July.)

Our kind of Republican

The potential bond between McCarthy and the Minnesota Republicans goes deeper than fundraising ties, however. At their roots, they are all similar types of Republican. None is particularly an ideologue: the conservative Heritage Foundation, which scores members of Congress on key votes, gives McCarthy a 63% conservative rating — right near the middle of the pack of House Republicans. Emmer scores the exact same; Paulsen and Kline rate 59%.

If McCarthy is to navigate his fractious conference and the hard-line conservatives that did in Boehner, he’ll need to lean hard on the Minnesota Republicans. On key votes, they have resisted the anti-establishment tide within their party to help spare Boehner and McCarthy embarrassing defeats.

Earlier this year, for example, Emmer, Paulsen, and Kline numbered among the 75 House Republicans who voted to pass a homeland security funding bill free of language to roll back President Obama’s immigration executive actions. That group — just one third of the House GOP — joined with Democrats to pass the bill and avert a government shutdown.

Leadership elections will take place on October 8. In addition to electing a speaker, Republicans have other big decisions to make, like who would replace McCarthy as Majority Leader.

For now, there is little reason to believe Emmer, Paulsen, and Kline will not back McCarthy. On Tuesday, Kline said that he planned to support McCarthy, saying they had a good working relationship forged during Kline’s tenure as chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Emmer did not provide comment. Paulsen said he does not comment on leadership races.

Minnesota’s Second District: Where are the candidates?

Sam Brodey — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:39:14 +0000

CC/Flickr/USFWS Mountain-Prairie

An open congressional seat is a rare opportunity, yet, so far, a crowded field of top-tier candidates has failed to materialize.

When Rep. John Kline announced his retirement from Congress earlier this month, he created a rare thing: an open Congressional seat.

Political talents can wait for generations until a long-serving incumbent leaves office — with Kline’s departure, Minnesota politicos and press assumed ambitious candidates from both parties would pounce on this special opportunity. Kline had held the seat on lockdown since 2002 — wouldn’t scores of politicians come forward to run?

Not really: the packed field many imagined has failed to materialize. In the weeks since Kline’s retirement, several high-profile Republicans in the district have declined to run for the seat, leading some to doubt if the GOP can keep the district in their hands. It also backs up a broader, nationwide trend: for top talent, the prospect of running for Congress is no longer an appealing one.

McFadden, Pawlenty, Thompson rule it out

The state of affairs in CD2 today is a stark departure from what it was in the days immediately following Kline’s announcement, when a number of state legislators, past candidates, and other prominent Republicans left the door open to a congressional run. Then the dominoes began to fall.

State Sen. Dave Thompson of Lakeville, who sought the GOP nomination for governor in 2014, said he would not run. Former U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden, with more name recognition than nearly every other potential GOP candidate, ruled out a run. Former judge and Minnesota first lady Mary Pawlenty, who would have benefitted from the political and fundraising connections of her husband, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, similarly chose not to seek the seat. Other viable candidates, like state Rep. Steve Drazkowski and state Sen. Eric Pratt, declined to run.

So far, the only declared Republican candidates are David Gerson, a Tea Party conservative who’d challenged Kline before, and former State Sen. John Howe, who is promising to be as conservative as possible while remaining electable. Thus far, no Republican has officially entered who could credibly carry on the establishment mantle of Kline, who is known to be close to (now outgoing) Speaker John Boehner. Before Boehner announced his resignation, both Gerson and Howe said they would not support him.

The slow filling of the CD2 field is a far cry from how past open-seat contests in Minnesota have unfolded. In the safely Republican 3rd District in 2008 and 6th District in 2014, the eventual winners surfaced shortly after the seat became available. Tom Emmer announced his bid a week after Michele Bachmann announced her retirement, and Erik Paulsen was essentially the ordained successor of Jim Ramstad.

On the Democratic side, two candidates — Angie Craig and Mary Lawrence — had been in the race before Kline’s announcement. Craig, a medical technology executive, and Lawrence, a former VA doctor, have raised quite a bit of money — Craig through fundraising, Lawrence through a large personal loan to her own campaign — despite not coming up through the state legislature or DFL party infrastructure. Neither has previously held elected office.

But Kline’s sudden retirement was expected to prompt other, more prominent CD2 Democrats to re-evaluate their chances, now considering facing a lower-profile, primary-scarred Republican instead of a powerful incumbent. State Rep. Joe Atkins, for example, was floated as a strong, experienced potential candidate. He hinted at a run, but is now saying he’ll keep his options open, and may not run at all.

The job nobody wants

In announcing their not-runs, CD2 Republicans have generally trotted out the boilerplate: “it’s not the right time for me,” said Pratt; Drazkowski said he could do his “best job” serving back in Minnesota.

State Rep. Pat Garofalo was more candid: “I’d rather stick a fork in my eye,” he said.

Looking deeper, there are a number of factors that might have potential candidates reaching for the flatware instead of considering a run for Congress. First and foremost, the district is such a toss-up that campaigning there will require enormous energy and money — not to mention a willingness to withstand the scrutiny of the party committees and super PACs salivating over a rare open-seat contest. One Democratic challenger, Mary Lawrence, already has a million dollar war chest. Some would-be candidates see a year ahead filled with constant fundraising, attack ads and national attention, and say, “No thanks.”

But say you withstand all that and actually win the seat. Great — but you’ll have to do it all over again two years later. The district won’t be a safe one for either party any time soon, and for a new representative, the incumbent’s advantage will be weak. (Chip Cravaack could tell you as much.) Because of fundraising pressure, campaign activity in these marginal seats tends to start earlier, too.

Running for CD2 — from either party — would basically be a perma-campaign, says Steven Schier, professor of political science at Carleton College. For a CD2 representative, for most of your career — however long it lasts — “you’re a piñata,” Schier says. “You’ve gotta really want it.”

Drazkowski told MinnPost that running now is basically a “four-year commitment because of how close the numbers lie in the district…no doubt, that’s part of the equation that people think about.”

Beyond that, for many would-be candidates, being a member of Congress just isn’t worth the trouble anymore. The travel back and forth each week and the time away from family is punishing: Dave Thompson cited it as a major reason why he chose not to run, and Kline mentioned it was a factor in his decision to retire.

If the travel were worth it, that would be one thing — but Congress’ dysfunction, constant campaign pressure, and dismal public perception are prompting political aspirants to make their marks elsewhere. Nationwide, parties are having trouble recruiting top-level candidates to run for U.S. House seats, with many preferring to run for local or state-level offices where they might have a greater impact.

Without a doubt, Schier says, “the U.S. House position is less attractive now than it used to be. It’s not as satisfying a job as it used to be.” Thompson echoed that: “the thought that it’s not as appealing a job as it used to be, that’s possible,” he said, but added it wasn’t his main concern.

Drazkowski recalled a meeting with a supporter: “She said, Draz, we wanna keep you here because you’ll get lost and they’ll change you in Washington. That’s what some people certainly think of Washington.” It was a part, albeit a small one, of his decision, Drazkowski said.

Parties confident

Minnesota politics-watchers are confident more candidates will come out of the woodwork soon. Because of the district’s competitiveness, selling potential candidates — and more importantly, their families — on a run could just take more time than in safer districts.

Some viable candidates could join Howe and Gerson in the race, including former state Sen. Ted Daley and former state Rep. Pam Myhra. (Former U.S. Senate candidate Kurt Bills didn’t close the door on a run, either.) The establishment could line up for Daley, a Gulf War vet and active Army Reservist whose center-right profile and military background casts him in the Kline mold.

But those who watch the district acknowledge that its GOP establishment has drifted rightward in recent years. Relative moderates, like Rep. Pat Garofalo, declined to run. Broadly, the politics of the Republican Party have moved to the right since Kline was elected, says Carleton’s Schier. “That’s evident among activists in the 2nd District…if someone like Gerson is the nominee, they’ll have trouble being competitive.”

Outwardly, both state parties are projecting airs of confidence. DFL chairman Ken Martin said that “the tide is blue in CD2.” State GOP chairman Keith Downey acknowledged that the competitiveness of the race might be causing some candidates to take longer to make a decision, but added no one should be concerned about it. “It takes a toll and people weigh the costs…people don’t enter it lightly anymore,” he said.

“Congress is one of the best jobs in politics, you’re in the middle of the most important issues, it’s a dynamic body,” he said. “But it’s also one of the toughest, if not the toughest.”

“I’m not surprised at where we’re at…I’m confident we’ll have an outstanding candidate.”

‘Shocked, sad, and a little bit angry’: Rep. Kline reflects on Boehner resignation

Sam Brodey — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 19:30:11 +0000

WASHINGTON — When Speaker John Boehner walked into a closed-door meeting of the House Republican conference to announce his resignation, his colleagues were shocked — including his close ally and friend, Second District Rep. John Kline.

“When the Speaker got up and conducted routine business and then made this announcement, I was shocked as was everyone in the room,” Kline said in a phone interview Friday afternoon. “I was shocked, sad, and a little bit angry in one big, roiling burst of emotion.”

With a potential shutdown ahead and a leadership coup bubbling in his party’s conservative wing, an upbeat Boehner said in a press conference that he decided Friday morning to resign and spare the House a difficult few months. He said he had initially planned to retire at the end of the year, but hastened it Friday, a day after Boehner — a devout Catholic — met with Pope Francis in the Capitol.

In the hours since Boehner’s decision went public, reaction from across the political spectrum has been swift. Longtime allies and even erstwhile opponents — like President Barack Obama and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid — expressed their admiration for Boehner and praised his honesty and 25-year service in the House. Kline, along with fellow Minnesota Republicans Erik Paulsen and Tom Emmer, called Boehner’s decision selfless and courageous.

Meanwhile, Boehner’s bitter rivals within his own party took the opportunity to gloat. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gleefully credited conservative, anti-establishment activists with Boehner’s ouster and accused the speaker of cutting a deal with Democrats before he leaves office. Kline called that kind of criticism “sad.” There was a “small group of colleagues who were not happy with his leadership, in large part because they don’t understand what the obstacles are,” he said.

Kline emphasized that Boehner got a lot done given those obstacles, which include a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic Senate for most of his five-year speakership. “John Boehner has provided steady and thoughtful leadership for his time as speaker dealing with tough circumstances,” he said.

Boehner's critics are in for a rude awakening, Kline said. “People are frustrated and they took it out on John Boehner because he’s a visible leader…they’re gonna find out, whoever takes the position, they’re going to have the same issues to deal with.”

Speaking with MinnPost shortly before Boehner’s 1 p.m. press conference, Kline said he hadn’t talked with Boehner since the news broke. “I sent him a text on his cell phone with a couple words of encouragement,” Kline said. “It’s a very, very big day. I’ll talk to him over the coming days and weeks. We are pretty good friends and we’ll have the chance to have a glass of wine.”

Kline said he was confident that Boehner will continue working hard during his remaining five weeks in Congress: “He may be able to get some things done and clear some things out of the way,” he said.

One thing he might clear? A government shutdown: Boehner is reportedly likely to push a resolution to fund the government that includes funding for Planned Parenthood, which would survive a conservative revolt with moderate and Democratic support. Capitol Hill press quickly concluded Boehner’s move is certain to avert a shutdown next week.

Aside from being a friend of Boehner, Kline may have special insight: he’s looking at a big to-do list before his own retirement at the end of next year. Some politics-watchers in D.C. joked that if Boehner or Kline retired, the other would soon follow suit. Indeed, Kline announced his retirement September 3rd, three weeks ago.

Playing politics with the pope? Nope.

Sam Brodey — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 15:19:38 +0000

WASHINGTON — A presidential inauguration, a State of the Union, and a high-profile state visit rolled into one — that’s how people in Washington were describing Pope Francis’ historic visit to Congress on Thursday.

Without a doubt, the much-anticipated day delivered: the pontiff entered a packed House chamber to a raucous, extended standing ovation from the lawmakers, dignitaries, and government officials assembled. Several members called it the most remarkable event they’d witnessed in their congressional careers.

Speaking softly for about 50 minutes in English, Pope Francis didn’t shy away from political issues. More often than not, even on controversial topics, he was met with applause from the entire chamber — a rare sight on Capitol Hill. But some parts of the address elicited clearly different responses from the Republican and Democratic sides of the chamber.

Beyond the event’s huge historical significance, the main thing that Minnesota’s members of Congress agreed on after the speech: it’s not worth trying to paint Pope Francis’ politics into a corner — and that’s not the point, anyway. The overwhelming takeaway from members, at least on the surface, is that Francis’ address was a moral pep talk for a nation navigating trying times.

Controversial issues

The American pundit class has long scrutinized this pontiff’s political beliefs, and in his address, Pope Francis offered a number of controversial items that partisans could potentially run away with in either direction: the importance of welcoming refugees and immigrants, safeguarding the environment from pollution and climate change, a vague defense of traditional families, and protecting life at all stages.

That last item provoked the most partisan audience reaction of the speech: Francis’ declaration that the Golden Rule “reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development” was met with vigorous applause from Republicans. But his next sentence — that this belief has led him toward advocating “the global abolition of the death penalty” — got Democrats on their feet. It was a stark moment in a speech notable for its quiet, rapt, often visibly emotional audience — a far cry from the usual chattiness of the House floor.

Can’t pick and choose

In an interview after the speech, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who was part of the handful of senators who escorted the Pope to the House chamber, wrote off attempts to place him on the political spectrum. “I think it’s based on his own beliefs and the Bible…I don’t think you can paint it into any one box,” she said, adding that Francis seemed to almost welcome defying Americans’ political expectations.

In their comments about the address, Minnesotans in Congress acknowledged the often political nature of the address but refused to frame it as a political speech. Rep. Tim Walz, who was raised Catholic, emphasized that the Pope’s speech was not like a State of the Union address where members make a show of standing or sitting based on partisan applause lines. “I stood on all the issues,” Walz said. People sometimes pick and choose elements from speeches like this as they please, he said. “I got the distinct feeling on this that you don’t get to do that. This Pope challenged us to look at all the issues.”

To Rep. Keith Ellison, who was raised Catholic and attended Jesuit high school before converting to Islam, Pope Francis’ speech was about values, not politics. “Some people interpreted it politically, but I don’t think the speech itself was political,” he said. “He didn’t speak on one specific policy, he talked about a value system. You saw Republicans get jazzed about ‘protecting life’ — and then he goes and talks about the death penalty. He’s talking about human dignity.”

Rep. Rick Nolan, one of the delegation’s three practicing Catholics, echoed Ellison on that point, saying the address was “more of a values speech than a political speech. There are many ways to help the poor, fulfill the common good,” he said. “I thought it was well balanced, well presented. He wrapped it up with something I’ve always believed: the Golden Rule. That’s pretty nonpartisan.”

Common ground

Still, while the politics of Pope Francis and the Church are complicated and defy easy categorization, members of the Minnesota delegation — whether they intended to or not — pulled takeaways from the Pope’s speech that dovetailed with their political philosophies and issue positions.

Ellison, for example, emphasized the Pope’s vigorous advocacy for environmental protection and religious tolerance. Klobuchar emphasized his call for lawmakers to find common ground. Rep. Tom Emmer lauded the speech as a celebration of America. Nolan applauded the Pope’s focus on caring for the poor; Rep. John Kline did so as well, but emphasized that the American system has worked to help the poor. (The pontiff has made clear his criticism of western capitalism.)

After Francis’ papal Fiat and his motorcade departed on Thursday afternoon, however, good vibes and optimism were the prevailing forces on Capitol Hill. Walz said lawmakers left the chamber “invigorated” by Pope Francis’ words and message, even as a shutdown looms on the night of Wednesday, September 30. Even lawmakers who have been pessimistic on the prospect of avoiding avoiding a shutdown, put the doom and gloom aside — at least for the day.

“The Pope can help bridge gaps between us,” Ellison said, saying his words were a call to compromise as much as a call to action. “He kept saying I wanna have a conversation — he’s not trying to boss us around. He wants to get us talking about these vexing issues.”

“There was a sense of thankfulness,” Walz said. “He hit on some of most difficult challenges facing this world from hunger to climate to violence…with humility and courage. This is the stuff families are afraid to talk about at Thanksgiving because it’s too tough.”

As Pope Francis’ historic visit fades, with a shutdown — and now a leadership battle — looming, lawmakers face an immediate test of whether they can make the pontiff’s call for civility and fraternity a reality.

If Schoolhouse Rock remade ‘I’m Just a Bill’ today, it would be depressing

Sam Brodey — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 14:40:11 +0000

In 1976, Schoolhouse Rock made an adorable, iconic character out of a pathetic scrap of paper with one signature tune. “I’m Just a Bill,” which explained how a bill becomes law in Congress, has become a touchstone of civic education for generations of American schoolchildren.

Unfortunately, though, years of congressional dysfunction have rendered the song so antiquated that it may no longer be useful. A version updated to reflect the political environment of 2015 would probably poison politics for a generation of American children.

These days, the big story is less how a bill becomes a law, but more how a divisive issue becomes a government shutdown: the possibility of a shutdown as conservatives push for federal action on the Planned Parenthood videos is just the latest example.

With four legislative days until the government runs out of funding — and the possibility for weekend negotiations in D.C. — it’s a good time to ask: in what ways is the Schoolhouse Rock classic a relic of a time when Congress actually worked? Let’s start at the beginning:

ABC

Where do bills come from?

At the beginning of the song, Bill claims that his origins are humble. He began as an idea, when constituents called their congressman — in this case, one Rep. McCoy — to express the belief that there should be a law requiring school buses to stop before railroad tracks. Bill then explains that McCoy just sat down, wrote the bill, and introduced it to Congress, officially making Bill a bill.

Simple, right? Not really. In fact, this segment is one of the song’s grossest mischaracterizations of the legislative process.

The first big problem here is that constituents are hardly the main wellspring of legislative ideas: business interests, advocacy groups, media coverage, and even other members can all spur a member of Congress to write a bill. It’s tough to precisely break down where bills come from, but it’s safe to say that most of them aren’t born after a few constituents sound off on a bored intern working the phones.

ABC

Who writes them?

Beyond that, lawmakers hardly ever sit down and just crank out a bill by themselves, like McCoy does — try being a sophisticated policy wonk in several different areas when you have to spend four hours a day on the phone asking people for money.

But even before political fundraising became all-consuming, members of Congress have relied on their legislative staffs — the overworked, underpaid twenty- and thirty-somethings who develop specific areas of expertise needed to make good policy. Important, too, are the legislative counselors, lawyers who can actually communicate that policy in the legalese in which bills have to be written.

Also left out of Schoolhouse Rock: the influence of lobbyists. Depending on the size and topic of the legislation, dozens — sometimes even hundreds — of lobbyists will be involved, petitioning lawmakers to tweak language and policy points in a bill. The appropriations bill passed last year to fund the government through September 30th of this year, for example, had a whopping 880 lobbying clients.

Some members are more hands-on than others, of course, and all of them have the final say over the would-be laws to which they’re attaching their names. But an accurate Schoolhouse Rock song would show a lot more than smiling congressmen: tired staffers working late at night to workshop a bill, grizzled lawyers poring over it the next day, well-compensated lobbyists disputing minor points of language — these people are all just as important, for better or for worse, to the process.

ABC

Committees: ‘A waste of time’

Having been duly dreamed up by constituents and created by Rep. McCoy, the next step in Bill’s journey is the committee process, a critical stop on the path from bill to law. Slumping outside the door of the committee chamber, he explains that key congressmen are discussing and debating him. Only if they can agree and present a satisfactory version of him to Congress will they bring him to the floor.

In theory, it’s how the committee process is supposed to work, and the way it worked for decades. But in recent years, committees have proven unable to get even basic tasks completed, like funding the nation’s highways for longer than a year.

Why? The short answer is that, since the 1990s, the balance of power has gradually shifted toward party leadership and away from committees. In the 1970s, when Bill was introduced to American kids, the chairmen of powerful committees like Appropriations and Ways and Means were the titans of Capitol Hill.

Today, thanks to a number of factors — campaign cash, emphasis on issue messaging, the constant news cycle — party leaders decide what goes to the floor for consideration. And they have a lot of sway in getting members to vote leadership’s way.

Unsurprisingly, this has led to big attendance problems: many members of Congress have a hard time showing up to important committee hearings. A current member, writing anonymously in Vox, called committees “a waste of time.” “Why develop any expertise as a committee member if your decisions will only be overridden by party leadership?” asks the member.

Bill does get one thing right here: most bills’ final resting place is committee. Out of the 5,654 bills introduced in the 114th Congress so far, 311 have made it out of committee and onto the floor of a chamber for consideration. That’s roughly five percent.

ABC

There’s a lot more to it

Slow down there, Bill: in the span of a few seconds, the song dashes through a good chunk of the legislative process while glossing over some important details. Bill says he is being put to a vote in the House of Representatives, then in the Senate, and then he’ll be sent to the White House to be signed by the president.

Bill explains that even if the whole Congress supports a law, the president can still veto it. That’s true, but then Congress can override that veto with enough support. “By that time, it’s very unlikely you become a law,” the kid says. Here, Schoolhouse Rock isn’t wrong: it’s rare for a bill to survive after a veto: the last one to do so was in 2008, when a Democratic Congress pushed a Medicare expansion past the Bush White House.

Schoolhouse Rock, being a program aimed at children, is not heavy on the details, but a presidential veto is hardly the only thing that can go awry after a bill is put to a vote. For one, there’s the amendment process: on many bills, members — sometimes at the direction of leadership — can place amendments to the bill to be voted on before the main bill is considered. As we saw earlier this year with the Confederate flag amendment on a key appropriations bill, amendments have the power to throw a wrench into the process.

In the byzantine Senate, there are even more ways a bill can be expedited or blocked — none of which, shockingly, merit mention in Schoolhouse Rock’s tale. Of course, there’s the filibuster: if 41 senators decided they do not like Bill, they could stall a vote on him. There’s also reconciliation, a maneuver used to pass major budget and taxation measures that only requires a straight majority of senators to support it. It may not apply to Bill, but reconciliation is famously the vehicle used to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010 — a move denounced as inappropriate by many conservatives.

Maybe Bill doesn’t need to get into the weeds here, but an updated version for 2015 should at least include some senators squabbling over the finer points of parliamentary procedure, or a minority of lawmakers killing a bill most senators support. It may not inspire children to public service, but it’s accurate.

ABC

There’s a happy ending here for Bill, who becomes a Law. Sadly, it’s a fiction: in reality, Bill probably wouldn’t even be a bill in the first place. The federal government virtually never makes laws setting rules for vehicles on the road. That’s the job of state government.

Schoolhouse Rock, unfortunately, did not make a song about federalism.

Fate of education bill rests with conference committee — if Congress can remember how a conference committee works

Sam Brodey — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 14:50:59 +0000

WASHINGTON — Getting both chambers of Congress to pass a bill these days is a rare occurrence. But successfully pushing a law through conference committee — where members from both chambers meet to hammer out their bills’ differences — is even rarer.

How rare? Since Barack Obama took office, Congress has passed hundreds of bills, but only 24 times has a conference committee convened and successfully achieved its goal.

And now, Rep. John Kline hopes to make a re-write of federal education law — replacing the Bush-era ‘No Child Left Behind’ law — successful conference number twenty-five. Back in July, both chambers of Congress passed different versions of an education bill, so now Kline will chair a conference committee to resolve the differences.

That is, if Congress can even remember how a conference works.

In a meeting with reporters shortly after the recess ended, Kline said that the conference has not officially started — in fact, the other members of the conference have yet to be named. He also acknowledged that the relative rarity of the conference committee is a factor in how quickly the process moves, too. “We’re out of practice on conferencing around here,” he said. “We’re relearning the skills. The last time Education and the Workforce had a conference was 2008. We’re pretty rusty.”

For the bill to make it to the president’s desk, Kline will have to navigate what will almost certainly be a contentious conference. It will be comprised of a handful of representatives and senators from both parties, and they will all have to agree on a compromise bill — one that not just their respective caucuses can support, but one the president can get behind, too.

For the moment, the conference appears to have been placed on the backburner as lawmakers returned from the August recess to confront a slew of challenges, including the funding of the government, long-term transportation funding, and the debt limit.

But overall, Kline was optimistic about the ability of the conference to complete its work soon, saying he and the Senate education bill’s sponsor, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, believe they can get something to Obama’s desk by the end of the year.

Enter the election

Thanks to the election 14 months away, however, the two lawmakers face a very tight timeline: presidential election years are dreaded by lawmakers for the chilling effect they can have on ambitious pieces of legislation. “We want to get a bill to the president this year, not this Congress,” Kline said, adding that “presidential campaigns consume everything” and that legislating becomes more difficult the closer Election Day is.

As a large, complicated, and important law, the No Child Left Behind revamp was naturally destined for conference committee, where Congress’ most significant bills tend to go. Landmark bills — the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the original No Child Left Behind Act — all passed through conference committees. In those days, it was a routine procedure, not a rarity.

If the committee is thwarted by Congress’ packed to-do list and presidential politics, it won’t only be a blow for education reform and the would-be reformers. It would be one more piece of evidence for the growing group of people who believe Congress is increasingly unable to accomplish its most important tasks.

As U.S. considers admitting more Syrian refugees, will Minnesota be a top destination?

Sam Brodey — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 16:09:08 +0000

Minnesota has long been a home for those fleeing hardship and seeking opportunity. So when President Barack Obama announced last week that the United States would take in an additional 10,000 refugees displaced by the brutal civil war in Syria, it was natural to wonder: would they be settling in the North Star state?

The administration said the refugees would arrive over the course of the next fiscal year — which would rapidly swell the current Syrian refugee population in the U.S., which numbers about 1,600. Several Minnesota members of Congress hailed Obama’s announcement, and two in particular — Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Keith Ellison — have been pushing for an aggressive response for months.

Minnesota state officials and nonprofit leaders say they do not anticipate a large number of Syrians to arrive overnight — or even in the next year. But Minnesota’s history of accepting refugees, along with a range of quality of life factors that could appeal to Syrians, might make Minnesota a leading destination for Syrian refugees — if not now, then several years from now.

Minnesota: history as refuge

While Minnesota has welcomed foreign migrants since its founding as a state, it has only grown into a top refugee resettlement destination in the past 50 years or so. In the late 1970s, many Vietnamese and Cambodians facing post-war political persecution — some dubbed “boat people,” after the makeshift rafts they used to escape — fled to the U.S.

Millions left, and roughly 4,000 ended up in Minnesota. Walter Mondale, who was vice president at the height of the crisis, played a major role in pushing the U.S., and the international community, to aid the refugees.

Shortly after, in the 1980s, Minnesota began to accept large numbers of Hmong, an ethnic minority in Southeast Asia that faced persecution after the U.S. wars in the region ended. They were re-settled all over the country, but an estimated 65,000 Hmong live in the Twin Cities area, which is often called the capital of Hmong culture in the U.S.

Most recently, Minnesota has been a magnet for Somalis, who first arrived in the Twin Cities as immigrants in the 1980s and then as refugees in 1993, after that country’s still-ongoing civil war began. It’s estimated that nearly 90,000 ethnic Somalis now reside in Minnesota.

Recent trends

True to its history, Minnesota continues to be a top destination for refugees resettling in the United States. According to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, Minnesota received 2,232 refugees from 24 countries during fiscal year 2014. Nearly half of those refugees arrived from Somalia, and a third, from Myanmar, nearly all belong to the Karen ethnic group, which faces persecution from that country’s regime. The other refugees hail from nations including Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Ukraine.

Countries of origin for refugees settling in Minnesota, FY2014

Source: Office or Refugee Resettlement

As of August 31 of this year, 1,948 refugees have arrived in Minnesota, putting it on pace to equal or surpass last year’s figures. Only a trickle of refugees from Syria has arrived in the state so far, as the Star Tribune reported last week.

U.S. Destinations for Syrian refugees, 2012–2015

According to federal reports, since 2012 the U.S. has accepted more than 1,500 Syrian refugees. Top destinations for the refugees include highly populated states like Texas and California, as well as states with large established Arab communities, like Michigan.

Source: Office or Refugee Resettlement and Refugee Processing Center

In 2014, Minnesota did not crack the top ten states in terms of raw numbers of refugees received: populous states like Texas (7,214), California (6,108) and New York (4,082) are their most common destinations. But Minnesota punches far above its weight when you look at the numbers on a per capita basis. It took in 0.41 refugees per 1,000 residents, while Texas took in 0.26, California 0.15, and New York 0.2. Minnesota’s rate was about twice that of the U.S. as a whole of 0.22 refugees per 1,000 people.

Only a few states took in more refugees per capita than Minnesota, but they tended to be sparsely populated — Vermont, South Dakota, and Idaho, for example.

Though they are usually resettled to a specific place, refugees are free to relocate themselves if they wish. Data collected by the Office of Refugee Resettlement indicates that Minnesota is, far and away, the most popular secondary destination. In 2012, 2,133 refugees arrived in Minnesota from within the country — more than double the amount from the next most popular state, Florida. Only 107 refugees left Minnesota for another state.

An ideal destination

So why has Minnesota become such a home for international refugees? It’s not the weather: experts say the most important pull factor is the existence of a powerful, humanitarian nonprofit sector in Minnesota. These NGOs play a huge role in the resettlement of refugees: while it’s up to several federal government agencies, including the departments of State and Homeland Security, to decide who can come to the U.S., they rely on the private sector to facilitate some of the most important aspects of relocation.

To that end, the State Department contracts with a number of voluntary agencies to ensure refugees have a way to obtain housing and other resources once in the country. Minnesota happens to have several top-tier agencies — Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities, for example — that are actively involved in resettling refugees to Minnesota.

For now, these organizations appear to be letting other states take the lead on resettlement. Catholic Charities of the Twin Cities told MinnPost they aren’t involved in Syrian refugee cases at this time, and others told the Pioneer Press that they did not expect many Syrians in the foreseeable future, saying that other states have more resources to take on their cases.

State officials also told the Star Tribune that Minnesota may not be a major refugee destination due to its lack of an established Syrian-American community. (Syrians, who have lived in the U.S. since at least the late 19th century, have traditionally migrated to the New York City area, Boston, and Detroit.)

The right conditions

That being said, these organizations may get involved in resettlement down the road — especially if the government allows more refugees into the country. Simply put, Minnesota is an exceptionally good place for refugees, explains Ryan Allen, an associate professor and refugee policy expert at the University of Minnesota.

In deciding where to place refugees, agencies look for areas with strong local job markets, sufficient space in quality school districts, affordable housing, and a decent public transportation infrastructure. The Twin Cities area, Allen says, scores high in all of these categories.

And while few Syrians call the Twin Cities home, Allen says that the wide availability of Muslim places of worship — thanks to the large Somali community — could be an important draw for Syrians. Given that far more refugees arrive in Minnesota from within the U.S. than depart, it’s possible that secondary migration to the state could occur later on, too.

Overall, Allen says, “the Twin Cities are well-positioned to do its part in resettling Syrian refugees.”

Minnesota representatives call for action

Given the state’s history and current status as a home for refugees, it makes sense that a few of Minnesota’s national politicians have led the push for the U.S. to accept more refugees from Syria — though none have explicitly called for Minnesota to be a major resettlement location.

Before the current crisis was leading the news here, Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, sent a letter to Obama saying that the U.S. “must also dramatically increase the number of Syrian refugees that we accept for resettlement,” calling it a “moral obligation.”

Rep. Keith Ellison, whose Fifth District is home to most of Minnesota’s Somalis, also sent a letter to Obama, shortly before the administration announced the ramp-up in refugee admission. “Now, more than ever, we need to live up to our history by increasing the number of Syrian refugees allowed to resettle in the United States,” Ellison wrote.

Minnesota members of Congress had mixed reactions to the number that the White House announced. “Ten thousand is not enough,” Ellison said in a statement. “Aren’t we the people who say, ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’? We must do more for families who are not safe in their own homeland.”

To other representatives of both parties, the refugee crisis is a moment of reckoning — for the other party. “The U.S. should certainly resettle more refugees, including Syrians, but this Republican Congress will make that very difficult by refusing to appropriate the necessary funds to ensure our national security through that process,” said Rep. Betty McCollum in a statement.

“The tragic images of Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives is a moment of reckoning for President Obama’s overall strategy in the Middle East and North Africa,” said Rep. Tom Emmer. “With no notice in Congress, the President announced an increase to 10,000 refugees in a press conference. At this time we need more information, specifically, what this number will do in terms of refugee caps, funding, placement and resettlement.”

Indeed, while the President can direct his administration to take in more refugees, Congress decides how funds are allocated to the agencies that carry out resettlement. It’s unclear how that will shake out: refugee resettlement is a very costly, time-consuming process, involving months — and sometimes years — of security background checks and other logistics. “There is no group of immigrants coming to the U.S. that are more scrutinized than refugees,” the U of M’s Allen says, adding that the vetting process can be “sophisticated and overbearing.”

Because of that, he says, “it’s hard to see that we could substantially increase the number of refugees quickly,” though he didn’t rule it out.

Allen says the upcoming political debates, and logistical wrangling, will be a challenge. In any case, he says that Minnesota can be counted on to play a big role. “Minnesota is a state that is aware of humanitarian crisis and will step up and do its part…I’m not suggesting other states aren’t, but Minnesota has always been attuned to humanitarian issues, and has a long history of taking that very seriously.”

How Tim Pawlenty came to be everyone’s favorite failed presidential candidate

Sam Brodey — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 16:02:08 +0000

Just about four years ago, Tim Pawlenty ended his presidential bid after a disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa Straw Poll. It was an embarrassing defeat for the two-term Republican governor of Minnesota, whose campaign initially had inspired high hopes and expectations from conservatives and the GOP establishment alike.

He’s kept a relatively low profile since. Recently, however, Pawlenty has re-entered the national consciousness in a unique role: as America’s favorite failed candidate. The political class has held up Pawlenty’s doomed candidacy when talking about any candidate with sinking chances: news outlets like Slate and the Associated Press run stories with headlines like, “In Iowa, Pawlenty’s Short Campaign Still Casts Long Shadow.” Republicans grimly consider who among them will go down in history as the “next Tim Pawlenty.”

History, of course, is littered with the remains of failed presidential candidacies. What makes Pawlenty’s so special?

The short answer: so much went wrong with Pawlenty’s campaign that his example applies to many different situations — and it is especially resonant this election cycle.

Don’t believe the hype

Pawlenty entered the Republican primary in May 2011, after years of hype surrounding his potential candidacy. He was said to have it all going for him: young and energetic, he was a two-term Republican governor of a historically progressive state, who more or less stuck to his guns as a fiscal and social conservative. He was billed as the kind of guy who could win support from both the conservative base and the moderate establishment in the GOP primaries, then go on to mount a formidable challenge to President Barack Obama. Upon entering the race, Pawlenty was hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the candidate with the best chance to beat Mitt Romney. “Is America Ready for President T-Paw?” the paper asked.

America, as it turned out, was not ready. The man Minnesotans might remember as an enthusiastic, everywhere-all-the-time governor was a dud on the campaign trail, unable to translate his plainspoken, Midwestern message into enthusiasm from voters. His fundraising stalled out, but his team wagered that if they just made a strong showing at the Iowa Straw Poll, it could propel Pawlenty through autumn and into the caucuses.

It was not to be: Pawlenty finished behind a fellow Minnesotan, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul in the straw poll. He ended his campaign the next day, saying he had no “path forward.” After raising several million dollars over the summer, his push to win the electorally insignificant Straw Poll left the campaign $400,000 in debt.

To observers, Pawlenty’s saga illustrates a few broadly applicable lessons, which over time have made his name synonymous with political mediocrity. Primarily, Pawlenty stands out as a prime example of the candidate who looks good on paper but lacks personal appeal. He had an undoubtedly impressive resume and could theoretically appeal to many GOP constituencies, but he didn’t.

The establishment hype surrounding his candidacy makes his example starker, too. Not many were surprised when Herman Cain — the pizza mogul who briefly led the primary polls — ended his presidential bid. But Pawlenty sagged under the weight of high expectations both within and without the Beltway, and made his fall all the more dramatic.

Connections to 2016

Those things might apply to any election cycle, but the particular brand of Pawlenty’s failure also appeals uniquely to 2016, and that’s in large part because of Scott Walker. The two men have plenty in common: both are two-term conservative governors of blue — or at the very least blue-ish — states, and both had working-class Midwestern upbringings. Their candidacies were centered on the notion of straight talk, D.C.-outsider status, and the idea that conservative governance can win elections in blue America.

No surprise, then, that since at least the beginning of the year, the press has held up Pawlenty as a cautionary tale for Walker, comparing the two at every turn. In February, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell called Walker the “Pawlenty of this group,” and as Walker’s standing in the polls has steadily plummeted, it seems an oddly prescient observation. In Iowa, a must-perform state for Walker as it was for Pawlenty, a Republican told MSNBC, “Not since, well, Tim Pawlenty has a candidate so hyped or seemingly invincible had their bubble burst in this way.”

Earlier in the summer, Slate ran a widely-shared story suggesting Walker is “Tim Pawlenty 2.0.”

“Walker,” Jamelle Bouie writes, “appears tailor-made for a Republican presidential primary — an ideal blend of mainstream experience and conservative politics. But in his months as a presidential candidate, Walker hasn’t been the dark horse we expected.” Substitute “Pawlenty” for “Walker” in this paragraph, and the effect is basically the same.

That said, Walker isn’t the only candidate this cycle who gets slapped with the Pawlenty parable anytime things go south. The Daily Beast brought up Pawlenty’s money troubles in a postmortem on Rick Perry’s 2016 campaign, which ended last week. The Associated Press ran a story in April on the chilling effect Pawlenty’s ill-fated effort is having on the 2016 field in Iowa. “GOP operatives now whisper his name as a way to discredit their opponents — and scramble to deflect any comparisons to their own candidate,” Julie Pace writes.

Too soon?

Ironically, however, the Pawlenty lesson that could resonate most in this crowded field is: don’t drop out. After he bowed out in August 2011, the GOP flirted with a number of longshot candidates — Bachmann, Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum — before finally settling on Romney. At the time, many felt that if Pawlenty had stuck it out just a little longer, he could have seriously challenged Romney.

In the New Republic, Isaac Chotiner summed up the sentiment months later, writing, “It seems possible that Pawlenty badly miscalculated…were he still running, [he] would have had a better chance than everyone else (minus Romney and perhaps [Rick] Perry) of winning.” Perry’s bid, of course, turned out to be a disaster. Candidates weighing their options this cycle — who, unlike Pawlenty, benefit from super PAC millions and a changed campaign finance landscape — may ultimately find this Pawlenty lesson most instructive.

Still, for a guy supposedly so toxic, Pawlenty is sought after on the airwaves and in print as an outside expert on the GOP primary. He’s been quoted everywhere from National Public Radio to the Chicago Tribune to Bloomberg, weighing in on Walker, the Donald Trump Phenomenon, and the overall state of the race. And while he may not hold elected office, he has one of the best jobs in D.C.: he is CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable, a powerful organization that lobbies for banks and financial service providers.

As the race goes on — and more candidates drop out — Pawlenty will likely continue to be held up as Exhibit A of primary failure. It doesn’t seem to bother him, and he’s appeared to brush off the fact that his 2012 campaign is a punchline. (Pawlenty did not respond to requests for comment.)

In fact, Pawlenty might even embrace it. In public appearances, his go-to line is that his candidacy was “shorter than a Kardashian marriage.” In a GOP primary that sometimes feels more like a reality TV show than an election, Walker and his fellow candidates will try to avoid Pawlenty’s fate.

Rep. John Kline's retirement has created the rarest phenomenon in modern politics: a true swing district

Sam Brodey — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 14:15:00 +0000

When Second District Rep. John Kline announced his retirement last week, he didn’t sugarcoat the decision’s implications for the Republican Party: in a conference call with reporters, he repeatedly referred to the district he represents as a “swing district.”

Rep. John Kline

Whether he meant to or not, Kline underlined a harsh political reality for Republicans: that a once reliably safe seat is now a toss-up. He’s not wrong. By most metrics, Minnesota’s 2nd congressional district is a true swing district — a rarity in a time when partisan redistricting has steadily eliminated competitive districts from the political landscape.

A brief look at CD2’s electoral history proves its place in the political middle. In 2014, the district narrowly voted for Senator Al Franken over GOP challenger Mike McFadden — even though McFadden is a native of the district. Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton lost CD2 by three points that year.

In 2012, CD2 voted for President Barack Obama, albeit by just a couple hundred votes. It voted for Sen. Amy Klobuchar by a wide margin.

Through it all, though, Kline — who was elected to Congress in 2002 — maintained a tight grip on the district. He never really experienced a close election after arriving in D.C.: his lowest margin of victory was eight percent, in 2012. Not even the attention that accompanied Bill Maher’s “Flip a District” campaign could turn Democrat Mike Obermueller into a viable challenger in 2014.

Minnesota Secretary of State

Minnesota’s second Congressional district cover the suburbs south of the Twin Cities and extends into Southeastern Minnesota.

Despite the partisan evenness of the district, and the certainty of high Democratic turnout in a presidential election year, most election handicappers rated CD2 as a safely Republican seat before Kline announced his retirement. That, of course, has changed.

Now, two major electoral prognosticators rate CD2 as one of a select few toss-up districts in 2016. The Cook Political Report lists 14 total toss-up races, six of which, including CD2, are open seat contests. The University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato, who runs the Crystal Ball blog, counts CD2 as one of 16 toss-ups. (Cook, which also rates the partisan leanings of congressional districts, gives Republicans a two point advantage in CD2.)

The CD2 race also promises to be the most competitive contest in Minnesota. Perennial Republican target Rep. Collin Peterson’s seat is ranked “likely Democratic” by Cook and Sabato, even though his Seventh District is solidly Republican. (It voted for Mitt Romney in 2012; it has a Cook rating of R+6, making Peterson the House Democrat with the most conservative district.)

Eighth District Rep. Rick Nolan, who is expected to face a tough re-election fight next year, still has a seat classified as “leans Democratic” by both Cook and Sabato. First District Rep. Tim Walz’s seat is not rated as competitive by Cook, but Sabato puts him in the “likely Democratic” column. (Cook does give Republicans a one point edge in the 1st.)

These handicappers don’t bother to analyze the vast majority of House races: for close to 90 percent of contests, one party has a clear, insurmountable advantage. The fact that CD2 is one of just a few truly toss-up races — a group that comprises just three percent of all House contests — means that a disproportionate amount of time, attention, and money will be spent on this race.

To be sure, one congressional seat is not awfully significant in the larger scheme of things, and the electoral math — at least in the House — is still strongly in the Republicans’ favor. That chamber consists of 247 Republicans and 188 Democrats, so Dems would have to pick up 30 seats to regain control. That isn’t likely.

On the other hand, it’s rare these days for a bonafide Democratic pickup opportunity to present itself. Kline’s retirement represents a solid chance for Democrats to chip away at their historic deficit in the House of Representatives.

Voting rights’ next frontier: 16 year-olds?

Sam Brodey — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 14:32:46 +0000

In most U.S. states, a typical 16-year-old can drive a car, get married, hold a job and pay taxes on the income they earn from that job. Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison believes there’s another thing 16-year-olds should be allowed to do: vote.

Rep. Keith Ellison

Last week, Ellison tweeted, “I think the voting age should be lowered to 16. What do you think?” It wasn’t the first time he had expressed his view about the voting age; he did so in 2012, also on Twitter.

Speaking with MinnPost last week, Ellison says he was inspired to take up the cause a few years ago, recalling a visit with high school students in Minneapolis. “One of the students said to me, ‘How come we can’t vote? We pay sales tax and payroll tax.’ I said, it makes a lot of sense to me. What could go wrong if 16-year-olds could vote? A lot could go right.” Continued visits with high school students have shored up that point of view: Ellison says he is frequently impressed by the knowledge of high school students, adding that they sometimes know more about the issues than adults.

It’s hardly common for federal-level officeholders to push for lowering the voting age; Ellison mentioned some state legislators who share his stance, but not any members of Congress. But supporting a policy like this is characteristic of the five-term congressman from Minneapolis, who is a vocal advocate for voting rights and has supported an array of policies aimed at expanding the franchise. In the past few months, Ellison has introduced a get-out-the-vote initiative, entitled Voters First, and he has also sponsored legislation that would establish same-day voter registration and ban voter ID laws nationwide.

Who would benefit?

Some say that lowering the voting age, like other turnout-boosting practices, will disproportionately benefit Democratic and progressive candidates at the ballot box. Eric Ostermeier, who studies politics at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, has researched these kinds of get-out-the-vote policies, and says the raw numbers back up the Democratic advantage.

Roughly eight to nine million people would be eligible to vote if the minimum age were lowered to 16. According to Ostermeier, Americans aged 18 to 24 disproportionately support and identify with Democrats over Republicans. Forty to 50 percent of this demographic identifies as Democratic, a third identifies as independent, and about 20 percent are Republican. If what Ellison is proposing becomes law, he says, “it would be a boon to Democrats.”

Ellison disagrees with that line of thinking, saying that young people are ideologically diverse and often support conservative viewpoints. He also brought up the practice of same-day voter registration, a “progressive” measure that Minnesota has had in place for decades. “They think it will help Democrats … well, in Minnesota, we’ve had Republican governors, independent governors, Republican governors,” Ellison says.

Slim chances

Regardless of whom it would help — if anyone — most observers believe a lowering of the voting age is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Doing so nationwide would require an amendment to the Constitution. That happened in 1971, when Congress ratified an amendment to lower the voting age to 18, largely in response to the influential student activist movement of the 1960s.

So far, states and local governments have tested the waters on younger voting ages to some degree. Nineteen states allow 17-year-olds who will be 18 by the date of a general election to vote in primary contests for federal or gubernatorial elections. In Minnesota, these 17-year-olds may caucus for presidential contests, but cannot participate in any others.

Some cities have extended full local voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds. Takoma Park, a Maryland suburb of Washington, instituted voting for 16- and 17-year-olds in municipal elections in 2013. The new voters voted at twice the rate of people over the age of 18 — which seemingly runs counter to the idea that lowering the voting age wouldn’t make much of a dent in turnout.

Minnesota could independently lower the voting age in nonfederal races if voters approved an amendment to the state constitution. Ryan Furlong, spokesman for Secretary of State Steve Simon, says that the secretary “supports existing law that requires a U.S. citizen to be at least 18 years old on Election Day to vote, but [he] is always open to exploring ways we can increase civic engagement with young Minnesotans.”

Ellison did not mention any specific action he would take on the voting age, saying instead that it would require a “movement” on the part of teenagers.

“You create a constituency if you have the vote,” he said. “People are very concerned about women, black people, labor, business … but there’s no concern about the teenage vote. If they can vote, we have to be concerned.”

“Sixteen-year-old students need to raise their voices,” Ellison said. “A lot of people beyond [them] could benefit from their vote.”

Between budget deadlines, the Iran deal, and, oh yeah, abortion politics, Congress’ fall session will be a doozy

Sam Brodey — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 11:00:00 +0000

There was already reason enough to be pessimistic.

In July, before members of Congress departed Washington for the August recess, First District Rep. Tim Walz sat in his office and explained that “a perfect storm of bad” was gathering to greet lawmakers upon their return in September. A confluence of fiscal deadlines, including government and transportation funding, along with a vote on the Iran deal, loomed on the horizon — a brewing hurricane fueled by congressionally manufactured crises, Walz said.

A shutdown of the federal government was not out of the question.

And then, the Planned Parenthood videos were released — the covert footage purporting to show officials from the group describing the sale of fetal body parts for research. Conservatives exploded in outrage, and some in Congress say they will not vote for any bill to fund the government that contains taxpayer money for Planned Parenthood.

So to a schedule already packed with tight deadlines and plenty of disagreements over funding priorities, expect Congress to add a big dose of abortion politics. Things could get rough.

Government funding and Planned Parenthood

What Republicans and Democrats have known since the winter is that they’d have to agree on a way to fund the government by the end of September, when the fiscal year ends. In recent history, arriving at spending agreements has proven very difficult, with Congress inching dangerously close to shutdown territory several times. Since Obama took office, the government has shut down once, for 16 days in 2013.

Before the Planned Parenthood videos were released, the funding battle was shaping up to be contentious as usual, but conservatives are now galvanized to defund Planned Parenthood of taxpayer dollars. Planned Parenthood receives over $500 million from taxpayers annually, but since 1976, it has been illegal for any government money to go toward funding abortion procedures — the federal money the group receives is directed toward services like STD screenings and contraception.

While they share outrage, Republicans are split over what the best approach toward defunding Planned Parenthood should be. A handful of congressional Republicans, led by two presidential candidates, Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, have drawn a hard line, saying that they refuse to vote for a spending bill that contains any funding for Planned Parenthood.

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have repeatedly stated that they will not accept a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood (or for any other reason). The GOP caucus overwhelmingly favors defunding Planned Parenthood, but many would prefer to hold a series of congressional investigations into the group before doing so — thus ensuring the issue is not tied to funding the entire federal government.

REUTERS/Dominick Reuter

The GOP caucus overwhelmingly favors defunding Planned Parenthood, but many would prefer to hold a series of congressional investigations into the group before doing so.

Sixth District Rep. Tom Emmer said on Tuesday that he favored that course of action. “When it comes to Planned Parenthood, from my perspective, they've lost our trust,” Emmer said, calling the group's behavior “unconscionable.” “We need to follow through on an investigation to figure out what's happened, and why it's happened.” He says he plans to co-sponsor a standalone bill to defund Planned Parenthood, to be introduced in the House at some point soon.

Speaking with MinnPost on Thursday, 8th District Rep. Rick Nolan said a government shutdown is entirely within the realm of possibility. “I, for one, will support Planned Parenthood,” he said. “It’s not a good reason to shut down the government.” Nolan’s DFL colleague, Rep. Keith Ellison, has also voiced his support for Planned Parenthood.

This injection of abortion politics complicates what was a relatively promising budgetary situation. Initially, it had seemed like some bipartisan compromise was possible, with Republicans easing some domestic spending cuts in exchange for increases in military spending. If more conservatives in the GOP put down their feet on abortion, that might force leadership to strike a deal with Democrats to avoid a shutdown.

Nolan echoed that sentiment, saying that Boehner should spearhead a deal between moderate Republicans and Democrats if the Planned Parenthood controversy imperils the funding process. “I’m reasonably optimistic that cooler heads will prevail as a result of collaboration between Boehner, moderate Republicans, and Democrats,” he said.

Shutdown or no, the most likely final outcome here is a continuing resolution, a short-term spending bill that would basically extend current levels of funding into the next fiscal year. Ironically, Congress had been inching closer to approving several new, multi-year appropriations bills through the regular process by which government spending had been authorized for decades. An interior appropriations bill, for example, was hours away from a vote on the House floor until a GOP leadership-pushed amendment related to the Confederate flag killed it. The last time comprehensive spending bills were passed separately to fund the government was in 1995.

Nolan said Congress’ continued reliance on continuing resolutions is unacceptable. “It’s no way to run a business, and no way to run a government.” For his part, Emmer suggested his Democratic colleagues were being pessimistic about the appropriations process by saying that a continuing resolution was most likely. "I don't know if that's the case," he said.

Iran deal all but sealed

Also looming in September is the fate of the Iran nuclear agreement, and depending on who you ask, also the fate of Obama’s foreign policy legacy, as well as the stability of the Middle East.

In the last six weeks, the deal has dominated headlines, with its backers and opponents battling to win the war of public opinion and sway lawmakers on the fence. The White House launched an all-out effort to persuade members of Congress to support the deal, while some advocacy groups — particularly pro-Israel and conservative organizations — have flooded the airwaves with ads and promised to meet with each member of Congress.

Earlier in the year, congressional leadership agreed to put the deal to a so-called motion to disapprove, so lawmakers are voting yes or no on a resolution to reject the deal. Since Obama would veto such a resolution, opponents needed to ensure that fewer than 34 senators would support the deal to bypass his veto pen.

Their hopes were dashed last Wednesday, when outgoing Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski became the 34th senator to support the Iran deal. Only three Senate Democrats have come out against the deal so far. (Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar have publicly stated their support for the deal.)

REUTERS

The White House appears to have the votes to protect the agreement worked out by Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and representatives of Russia, China, Germany, France and the UK.

With the momentum firmly on their side, the deal’s backers are now angling to prevent the resolution of disapproval from even receiving a vote in the Senate. If seven more senators support the deal, the yes camp will number 41 — enough to filibuster a vote and spare Obama from flexing his veto muscle. (Nine senators remain undecided.)

Still, there are major political ramifications for a yes or no vote on the deal, even if its passage is virtually assured at this point. In the House, stances on the deal have split along party lines thus far. The three Republicans are against it, while four out of the five Democrats are in favor. Peterson officially remains undecided, but in an interview with Fargo-Moorhead station KVLY, he sounded skeptical. “I’m having a hard time getting myself to a point where I can support this,” Peterson said, adding that he was personally offended by Obama’s suggestion that rejecting the deal is tantamount to war with Iran.

Congress has until September 17 to vote on the deal.

Debt ceiling rears its head

Once members of Congress navigate all of this, there remains one last, major hurdle before the end of the year: the debt ceiling, or, if you prefer, the “fiscal cliff.” At some point in November or December, the federal government is expected to hit its borrowing limit of $18 trillion. Before that happens, Congress will need to vote to raise the limit — if it doesn’t, it risks a default that could potentially do serious damage to the economy.

In 2011 and 2013, Congress avoided defaulting on the debt by raising the ceiling, but not without consequences: the 2011 agreement resulted in the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. The credit agency Standard & Poor’s also downgraded the U.S. government’s credit rating for the first time ever as a result of the fiasco.

The debt battle is secondary to more immediate concerns, but the parties have begun some preliminary posturing. Democratic and Republican leaders are on record expressing their intention to avoid a debt fight, but conservative groups want the GOP majorities in both chambers to use the situation as an opportunity to secure broad entitlement reform and more long-term spending cuts.

It’s possible hotter heads could prevail on the debt issue, with lawmakers under pressure to play to their bases so close to a presidential election year. Rep. Walz says that, typically, this causes inaction in Congress by January of the election year. “I think that may be October this year,” he said. “This could get really ugly.”

Transportation, education ahead, too

While not as severe as the debt ceiling or federal government funding, there are other issues Congress must attend to in the fall — important policy areas at risk of falling by the wayside amid the crush of high-profile crises that will dominate headlines. For one, federal transportation funding runs out at the end of October, when a congressional stopgap measure passed in July expires.

The Senate has passed a bipartisan, long-term bill that funds the nation’s highways — but did not give House members sufficient time to consider it before the recess. That chamber may soon consider a long-term transportation bill of its own — and it might have to. Nolan, Minnesota’s only representative on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, was adamant that the era of stopgap funding end now. He said he and others on the committee have made it clear to GOP leadership that “we’ve had it with short-term extensions.” If there is no long-term bill by the end of October, Nolan says he would likely vote against another short-term funding bill.

Congress also has the chance to send a comprehensive education bill to the President for the first time in over a decade. Earlier in the summer, the House and Senate passed respective versions of legislation to reform the Bush-era No Child Left Behind K-12 education package. Second District Rep. John Kline, sponsor of the House bill, is leading the bicameral, bipartisan conference of legislators to hammer out differences between the two bills.

Kline, who announced his retirement last week, said his top priority in his last months in Congress is to get that bill passed into law. He will be working with limited time: with the election year approaching, lawmakers may not want to touch a lightning rod issue like education after they return in January 2016.

Divine intervention?

The slate that awaits lawmakers this fall is daunting, no question about that. But they just might get some relief from a higher power: on September 24 — most likely after the Iran vote and in the middle of budget negotiations — Pope Francis will visit Washington and address a joint session of Congress.

John Kline won’t seek re-election

Sam Brodey — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 18:15:55 +0000

Second District Rep. John Kline, the Minnesota delegation’s most senior Republican, announced on Thursday that he’ll be retiring from Congress when his term ends in January 2017.

“After much careful thought and deliberation I have decided not to seek re-election next year,” Kline said in a press release sent out Thursday morning. “I have never wavered in my commitment to my conservative values. And I have demonstrated my ability to find solutions to the problems that matter most to Minnesota families.”

The announcement came as a relative surprise to Congress-watchers, as did its timing — deep in the lull of the summer recess and before a holiday weekend.

On a call with reporters shortly after the announcement, Kline was relaxed and candid, saying it was “just kind of time” to move on, and emphasizing the work he still has left to do in Congress over the next 16 months, including the passage of a package to reform the No Child Left Behind K-12 education law.

Kline also made clear that his decision was not made due to health concerns, or worries that he might not win re-election in 2016. He explained that “it’s been a lot of years of me being in Washington,” adding that his grandkids had grown up in a “blink of an eye.” Kline was elected to Congress in 2002, and turns 68 this Sunday.

The seven-term congressman also acknowledged that his decision was partly motivated by the imminent end of his chairmanship of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the apex of his influence in Congress. (House committee chairmanships are limited to three terms.) “It’s time to let someone else have a shot,” he said.

Political realities

Though the 2nd District voted for President Barack Obama in 2012 and Senator Al Franken in 2014, the Cook Political Report still rated it as “likely Republican” as of August 28. Kline was candid about Republicans’ chances of holding the district in an election year when Hillary Clinton’s likely presence at the top of the ticket will heavily drive Democratic turnout.

Kline referred to his district as a “swing district” several times, and acknowledged that an incumbent Republican would probably have the best chance at holding it. However, if the Republican nominee is strong, he said, “there’s no reason why they can’t win this race.” He declined to endorse anyone in particular, and said he plans to fully support whoever the nominee might be.

Whoever does earn the 2nd District GOP nomination — and competition is now expected to be fierce — will likely benefit from some of the campaign cash Kline has raised so far. His campaign has raised over $639,000 this year. State Sen. Dave Thompson has been floated as a top potential Kline successor, but there are many other potential Republican candidates in the district.

Kline’s retirement also throws a wrench into the DFL side of the 2016 race. The two competitors so far are St. Jude Medical executive Angie Craig and VA doctor Mary Lawrence. The prospect of not facing Kline may draw a stronger Democrat into the race: State Rep. Joe Atkins, who represents a part of the 2nd District, said today he will make an announcement regarding his plans next week. Craig has raised over $350,000 so far, while Lawrence has over $1 million cash on hand, much of that self-funded.

Looking past the election and into his retirement from Congress, Kline laughed at reporters’ suggestions he would consider a run for governor or senate — though he didn’t explicitly deny them, either — or the prospect of being on a cabinet position shortlist in the event of a Republican presidential victory. “I expect I’ll have a bit more time to fish,” he said.

It’s who you know: the Minnesota delegation’s ties to the Democratic presidential field

Sam Brodey — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 14:59:57 +0000

With much of the 2016 presidential buzz centered on a handful of states — including a particular one over the southern border — you might be forgiven for thinking that Minnesota is an electoral backwater, disconnected from the main movers and shakers in the presidential contest.

Sure, Minnesota is no Iowa come election season, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant: Last Friday, four out of the five declared Democratic presidential candidates traveled to Minneapolis for the Democratic Party’s annual summer meeting. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee assembled in front of the national and state Democratic Party faithful to make their case to be the party’s nominee in 2016.

Also present were members of the Minnesota congressional delegation. For some of them, connections to presidential candidates are strong, going back years — and may give clues how Minnesota leaders will figure into the 2016 race.

Hillary Clinton

Befitting her quarter-century in the highest echelon of Democratic Party politics, Hillary Clinton has political connections that run broad and deep in every corner of the country. Minnesota is no exception: At some point in their careers, most of the state’s Democratic members of Congress have benefited from Bill and Hillary’s influence and power — and tried to return the favor, too.

Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar are both considered key Clinton allies, and were among the first politicians to back her 2016 presidential bid. Franken’s connection with the Clintons goes back to 1996, when the then-full-time entertainer roasted President Clinton at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

In 2008, when Franken was mounting his first Senate run, both Clintons frequently traveled to Minnesota to stump for him. Some progressives credit them with pushing Franken to his narrow victory over Republican Norm Coleman. The Clintons returned to Minnesota again in 2014 to campaign for Franken and Gov. Mark Dayton’s re-elections.

Klobuchar also benefited from a Clinton visit — in 2006, then-Sen. Hillary came to Minnesota to campaign for Klobuchar’s first run, an event Klobuchar recalls fondly in her newly released memoir. Klobuchar has hosted fundraisers benefiting Hillary’s presidential candidacy since at least last year, and has traveled to Iowa to campaign for her.

In recent weeks, Klobuchar has emerged as a vocal surrogate for the candidate, appearing on CBS and MSNBC to stump for Clinton and defend her as the never-ending email scandal unfolds. Klobuchar is sometimes mentioned as a potential running-mate for Clinton, or a possible Cabinet appointee. (Then again, Klobuchar’s name is thrown out for a lot of stuff.)

The Clinton and Klobuchar camps have a few staffers in common, including Jake Sullivan, a top Clinton aide and Minneapolis native who formerly worked for Klobuchar.

Clinton can also count on a few Minnesotan allies in the House of Representatives. Along with Klobuchar, Reps. Rick Nolan and Betty McCollum hosted a fundraiser in 2014 for Clinton’s pre-campaign super PAC, Ready for Hillary. In an interview on WCCO earlier this month, McCollum said she would be supporting Clinton’s bid. Rep. Tim Walz also announced his support for the former secretary of state. (Nolan has not made a formal endorsement.)

Rep. Keith Ellison has said he’s a fan of Hillary, and defended her earlier this year from criticism over Bill Clinton’s decision to continue delivering paid speeches during his wife’s candidacy.

Ellison has withheld any formal endorsement, but the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which he co-chairs, met with the candidate earlier this year on Capitol Hill. It’s no secret that Ellison — who is also a big admirer of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — would like to see Clinton take more boldly progressive stances on some issues.

Bernie Sanders

Hillary Clinton may have a reservoir of Minnesota good will that will serve her well on the campaign trail — but that doesn't mean there isn't any left over for Bernie Sanders. The socialist Vermont senator’s insurgent campaign does not have much concrete support from the Minnesota delegation, but some members have plenty of good things to say about him.

Earlier this month, Sanders’ Senate colleague Klobuchar said that his run was good for the party. (Klobuchar and Sanders are in the same Senate class, entering in 2007.)

“Bernie has a heartfelt message,” Klobuchar said, adding that Clinton’s message is similar. In her book, Klobuchar admiringly describes Sanders railing against problems in the post-recession Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Though Franken will back Clinton, he and Sanders appear to have a warm relationship: In 2011, Franken showed up at a Sanders town hall meeting in Vermont, and ribbed the senator with a (pretty funny) impression. (Franken also praised him: “You have a great senator in Bernie Sanders,” he told the crowd.)

Ellison also has a deep fondness for Sanders, the lone senator in the Progressive Caucus. (Nolan is also a CPC member.) The two have collaborated on a number of issues over the years — particularly on income inequality and Wall Street reform — and Sanders appeared at a 2014 fundraiser for Ellison in Minneapolis. The two lawmakers also draw resources from the same pool of national progressive activists, including environmental and labor groups.

What about Biden?

The three other declared Democratic candidates — O’Malley, Chafee, and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who did not visit Minneapolis — don’t really register in Minnesota political circles. (Though Webb, like Sanders, was also in Klobuchar’s Senate class.)

However, one potential candidate — who has yet to enter the race — does register: Vice President Joe Biden. In the last few weeks, Biden and his allies have shaken up the Democratic primary contest with some well-placed press leaks suggesting that he is seriously weighing one more White House run.

It's all speculation at this point, of course, and Biden could easily end up not running. If he does run, though, he could pick up some Minnesota support: Rick Nolan is said to be a huge fan of Biden. In 2014, the vice president traveled to the 8th District to campaign on behalf of Nolan. There is a Klobuchar-Biden connection, too: Jake Sullivan, her former staffer and current Clinton aide, was a top security adviser to the vice president.

Alas, Biden was nowhere to be found this weekend in Minneapolis, leaving those hoping for some Joe-mentum to wait another day.

Rep. Wonk: Erik Paulsen sweats the small stuff

Sam Brodey — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 15:45:35 +0000

CC/Flickr/House GOP

Rep. Erik Paulsen doesn’t shy away from getting into the details of lawmaking.

Don’t look to Rep. Erik Paulsen for big ideas.

It’s not that the Eden Prairie Republican doesn’t have them — for one thing, he’d like to see a fundamental rewrite of the entire tax code — but in a political environment where such sweeping legislation becomes immediately stuck in gridlock, Paulsen has chosen instead to focus on the tiny, the mundane, the overlooked detail.

Since arriving in Washington in 2009, Paulsen, a former Minnesota House Majority Leader and analyst for Target, has carved out a niche within the Republican caucus as a sharp, detail-oriented numbers guy with a knack for producing policy that homes in on specific issues in the tax code and health care.

Paulsen’s wonky approach centers around the idea that there is always something — a small fix to a larger problem — that reasonable people can agree to. In a highly partisan climate where big, comprehensive laws rarely get off the ground, it may be one of the few paths left for actually getting things done in Congress.

Focused bills

As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee — the panel charged with writing tax, health-care, and trade law — Paulsen regularly introduces bills that focus on tax policy or health care. In the first eight months of the 114th Congress, Paulsen introduced 16 bills. (Only Rep. Keith Ellison, with 20, is more prolific.) Eight of them focused on taxation, and four focused on health care. One bill, which proposes repealing the Affordable Care Act’s tax on medical devices, hits both areas.

Here is a sampling of some of the policy Paulsen has proposed this year:

The Family Healthcare Flexibility Act, which “repeals the part of [the Affordable Care Act] that sets a $2,500 flexible savings account (FSA) contribution cap and prohibits health savings account and FSA participants from using their own account dollars to purchase over-the-counter medicines without a prescription.”
The Private Foundation Excise Tax Simplification Act of 2015, which “amends the Internal Revenue Code to: reduce from 2% to 1% the excise tax rate on the net investment income of tax-exempt private foundations.”
The Don’t Tax Our Public Safety Heroes Act, which exempts from income taxation “amounts paid by the Bureau of Justice Assistance as a public safety officer survivor’s benefit or … disability benefit” or by “a state program that provides compensation for surviving dependents of a public safety officer who has died as the direct and proximate result of a personal injury sustained in the line of duty.”
The Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act, which lowers excise taxes on craft alcoholic beverages and streamlines regulations and tax filing rules; it staggers decreases in excise tax rates on alcohol so as to benefit the smallest craft producers.

The bills are emblematic of Paulsen’s legislative style: Instead of following the lead of some in the GOP caucus by proposing a repeal of the Affordable Care Act — a pointless exercise that’d eventually meet President Obama’s veto pen — Paulsen prefers to make small adjustments to the law that are more likely to receive bipartisan support. For example, his Family Healthcare Flexibility Act makes health savings accounts, favored by conservatives, slightly more advantageous in the healthcare ecosystem of Obamacare.

Paulsen hasn’t touched comprehensive immigration reform, a goal that many in Congress claim to want, but one that quickly stalls amid partisan rhetoric and electoral politics. Instead, he has targeted one issue, by introducing a bill that would give American-educated foreigners an easier path to securing long-term U.S. visas.

Serving his district

Why has Paulsen chosen to spend his career in Congress taking on very specific issues that most Americans might file under the category of boring, but important? One factor to consider is the makeup of Paulsen’s congressional district. The 3rd District covers Minneapolis’ western suburbs, which are home to some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the state. Much of the state’s medical-device sector is based in the district, too.

The 3rd District is also somewhat moderate politically. Though it has sent a Republican to Congress for decades, the district voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and the Cook Political Report — which rates the partisan preferences of congressional districts — says it leans only two points in the Republican direction. (Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson’s 7th District, by contrast, leans Republican by five points.)

Considering the 3rd District’s politics, wealth and industries, Paulsen’s approach makes sense. His office says the most common topic of concern that constituents bring up in phone calls is tax reform. Paulsen and his staff say that the majority of their ideas for legislation come from constituents, as well as other groups aware of his reputation in the House.

“When you carve out a niche, then different stakeholders start to come to you and say, hey, what do you think about this?” Paulsen says. He cites the bill to amend private foundation tax rules as an example, saying that foundations in his district and elsewhere came to him explaining their difficulties.

An effective approach

Another influence on Paulsen’s approach is simple: the political environment in which members of Congress operate. Ambitious, far-reaching legislation and reform packages were once common on Capitol Hill, but as the ranks of congressional moderates have hollowed, Congress has seemingly governed from crisis to crisis, passing short-term and stop-gap measures instead of long-term bills.

Like other members from both parties, Paulsen wants comprehensive tax reform legislation passed by both houses and signed by the president — something that hasn’t happened in 30 years, and isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. While Paulsen is publicly optimistic at the prospect, his legislative record shows a more pragmatic approach: Instead of taking on tax reform whole hog, he’s leading the charge to chip away at it with incremental, highly focused legislation.

“If I could wave my magic wand, we’d do comprehensive tax reform,” Paulsen says. But because it’s been “elusive,” he says, “by doing a lot of little things, we build more momentum so we can be more successful on bigger stuff.”

Like most bills, plenty of Paulsen’s haven’t gone anywhere, but he can point to a couple of successes. The Don’t Tax Our Public Safety Heroes Act, introduced earlier this year, made it through Congress and was signed by President Barack Obama. His medical-device tax repeal bill passed the House, and awaits a vote in the Senate. It has stalled before there, but Paulsen is optimistic it will get a yes vote — nearly every member of Minnesota’s House delegation voted for the bill, and Sens. Klobuchar and Franken support repealing the tax (Democrats have criticized Paulsen’s bill for lacking an offset to the lost revenue).

Nerdy by nature

One last thing to consider is that the guy is just a wonk by nature. He doesn’t just care about the minutiae of tax policy, he likes it. Paulsen received a mathematics degree from St. Olaf College, and embraces the “math guy” identity, though he says his daughters make fun of him for it. He says his math background has “given me good analytical skills … not just number crunching, but looking at a problem and trying to solve it.” As a former member and majority leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives, he says he got the opportunity to hone those skills on policy.

It’s tempting to compare Paulsen to another, better-known congressional wonk: Rep. Paul Ryan. While both are lanky Midwesterners, the similarities do extend past the superficial. Ryan is the chair of the Ways and Means Committee upon which Paulsen sits, and both have made names for themselves as economic policymakers — though Ryan, who famously pushed broad budget overhauls, has arguably been more ambitious in scope. Both also got their starts in politics the same way, as congressional staffers: Paulsen worked for his 3rd District predecessor, Rep. Jim Ramstad, and Ryan for former Wisconsin Senator Bob Kasten.

The comparison to Ryan is one Paulsen welcomes. “In many respects, I like to think I’m cut from the same cloth as Ryan,” he says. “What I like about him is that he’s very forward thinking. He knows the chair does well when members of the committee shine.” The praise goes both ways: In a statement, Ryan said, “What I admire most about Erik is his laser-like focus on making good policy. He spends every day trying to help the people of Minnesota, and he’s one of the sharpest minds on our committee.”

Relationship with Democrats

One point of departure between the two, however, is that Ryan — who was Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 — can sometimes be a partisan lightning rod, while Paulsen has taken pains to avoid controversy. He says he talks with Democrats often, and says “relationships matter … in divided government, you’re never going to get your way 100 percent of the time.”

To that end, when he introduces a bill, Paulsen says he “shops them around … I talk to members and get to know them, and that has created opportunities to work with [Democrats].” Indeed, his office says that over 80 percent of the bills he has sponsored or co-sponsored have also been co-sponsored by Democrats. Paulsen acknowledges this is not a common approach in the GOP caucus. He says there are some members of his party who will wait to vote on a bill or an amendment to make sure that not many Democrats support it. “I don’t think that’s the right approach,” he says.

Paulsen’s efforts at maintaining a pragmatic and bipartisan image haven’t spared him from Democratic criticism, however. Earlier this year, the 3rd District DFL began taking aim at Paulsen, suggesting his “moderate independent” image is an act. In an online post, the DFL cited a list of his votes, such as one in favor of the “Tea Party” Republican budget, in painting a picture of him as a right-winger. The DFL also hammered his advocacy for the medical-device-tax repeal. Though every member of the Minnesota delegation backs the idea to some degree, Paulsen’s bill would not replace the Obamacare funding the tax provides, basically a prerequisite for Democratic support. He has said an offset is unnecessary.

Still, Paulsen is a team player and a good soldier for GOP leadership, and as the party’s center has moved to the right, some moderates and liberals will find plenty not to like in his voting record — for example, on the environment. Paulsen, like much of the Republican caucus, has voted to weaken environmental regulations, and has voted against initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. He has a 17 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters.

But the legislation he has personally introduced — look no further than to the bill to provide tax relief to the families of fallen or injured firefighters, for example — appeals to a healthy swath of the electorate.

For those issues that aren’t as straightforward, though, Paulsen and his staff acknowledge that messaging can be an uphill battle.

“There are small bills that the average person may never have heard of — kind of wonky, that get in the weeds,” he says of his record. In making his point, Paulsen recalled a coffee group he visited last week at a McDonald’s in his district. “I showed up and there were about 25 people there,” he said. “They were asking me — ‘how come Congress isn’t doing anything?’ I rattle through the little things, and they say, ‘how come we don’t hear about them?’ That can be a constant battle.”

The congressman acknowledges the 24-hour news cycle doesn’t exactly reward politicians like him, who may not grab headlines with big, bold ideas but prefer to quietly advance policy. But he says he doesn’t care. “I’ll continue to be a workhorse. I don’t need to be on cable TV, I just wanna get stuff done.”

Have congressional seat, will travel

Sam Brodey — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 15:34:57 +0000

Most of the time, the life of a member of Congress is a grind, with days spent racing to and from committee hearings, caucus meetings, and endless fundraising calls. But for a few days out of the year — or more — members counter the slog by partaking in one of the coolest available congressional perks: the chance to travel abroad.

MinnPost tracked down the travel records of each current member of the Minnesota congressional delegation, going back to 2010. Here are the most important takeaways from their globetrotting, in six charts.

1. They’ve been all over the place.

Countries visited by members of the Minnesota delegation since 2010 are highlighted in blue; darker shades of blue indicate more visits. Not pictured on the map: Malta, Bahrain, Singapore, Vatican City (with one visit each) and Cape Verde (with two visits).

From Malta to Myanmar, South Korea to South Sudan, Minnesota’s members of Congress have availed themselves of opportunities to travel. Collectively, they have taken 64 trips to 65 countries.

The delegation has traveled to all inhabited continents except Australia. They’ve visited key U.S. allies like the United Kingdom and Japan, as well as four self-identified communist countries — China, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba. They’ve traveled to troubled, often volatile countries like Somalia and Mali as well as emerging economic powers like the Philippines and Nigeria.

Naturally, they’ve found their ways to warmer climes, but don’t let the jaunts to Mexico and the Dominican Republic fool you: these trips are all business. If there’s any sightseeing at all, it’s usually woven into public appearances and meetings with foreign officials — forget downtime at the beach. The travel itself can be punishing, too: in one 2013 trip, Rep. Erik Paulsen visited nine countries in Africa and Southeast Asia — in eight days.

2. They go to the Middle East and North Africa a lot.

On a regional level, the most common destination for Minnesota’s lawmakers, by far, is the Middle East and North Africa. There are a few reasons for that: for one, official congressional delegations (or CODELs) often visit American troops stationed overseas. Sen. Al Franken, as well as Reps. John Kline, Tim Walz, and Erik Paulsen have all visited Afghanistan. Kline and Rep. Keith Ellison have visited Iraq a combined three times.

Congressional trips also tend to focus on strategically important relationships for the U.S., so it makes sense that the nations of Turkey, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel are familiar territory for the Minnesota delegation: all members except Rep. Collin Peterson have been to at least one of those countries at least once since 2010.

Turkey and Israel receive disproportionate attention, partly due to the willingness of groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Turkish Coalition of America to underwrite congressional travel. Those efforts pay off: more Minnesota members have been to Israel than any other country. Seven out of 10 have gone in the last five years.

Kline — a Marine veteran and a frequent travel partner of Speaker John Boehner — accounts for a good deal of Middle East travel. So does Ellison: as the first Muslim to serve in Congress, and a consistent voice on Africa policy, he’s often tapped as a liaison to Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. (Eleven of the 21 countries he has visited are Muslim-majority.)

3. Israel and Turkey are top destinations, but Cuba is close behind.

Given the Middle Eastern focus of the delegation — and American foreign policy more broadly — it’s not surprising that three of the top four most-visited countries are in the Middle East. What is likely unique among the Minnesotans, however, is the focus on Cuba. Five members — Sens. Klobuchar and Franken, and Reps. McCollum, Emmer, and Peterson — have gone to Cuba a combined six times. All of that travel has occurred within the last 18 months.

If travel to the island continues apace — and additional congressional trips are said to be in the works — Cuba could easily become Minnesota members’ top international destination by the end of the year.

It’s also worth noting that for some countries, one member can account for a significant chunk of delegation travel. Kline has been to Afghanistan three times, and Ellison has visited Turkey and Kenya three times each.

4. Ellison, Paulsen, and Kline top the frequent flier club.

Not all members travel the same amount: Reps. Ellison, Paulsen, and Kline have logged the most miles, while Reps. Walz and Rick Nolan have tended to stick around the home base.

A variety of factors play into why a member might travel more or less. Serving on a committee like Foreign Affairs or Armed Services often translates into lots of travel abroad. Paulsen, who serves on the Trade Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, naturally travels often to focus on international trade.

Positions in leadership matter, too. Kline, as Chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is a top Republican, and has been invited to travel with Speaker Boehner’s CODEL several times.

It’s also worth noting that Emmer has only been in office since January 2015, and Nolan since January 2013 — so take their numbers with a grain of salt compared to the rest of the delegation.

5. Official travel still rules, but private groups are stepping up.

Members of Congress will typically travel abroad in one of two ways: either with a CODEL paid for by taxpayers, or in unofficial delegations backed by private entities. CODELs, as the chart shows, are the most common. They’re usually organized by committee or party leadership to accomplish specific goals — for example, Paulsen and colleagues will travel on a CODEL later in August to west Africa to discuss trade legislation.

These trips aren’t cheap, however. Depending on the duration of the trip, the distance traveled, and the ground security required, expenses can range from a few hundred dollars to over $17,000 per member. In recent years, congressional leaders have encouraged lawmakers to fly commercial — as opposed to using military transport, which is pricier — and cut costs where appropriate.

But public scrutiny of taxpayer-funded travel is high, and no member wants to get attacked as a high-flying globetrotter come election time. To ease some of that burden, private entities are increasingly organizing congressional travel — and picking up the bill. The Aspen Institute think tank funds lawmaker trips around the globe to highlight various issues; this month, Ellison travels to Tanzania in an Aspen-funded trip to focus on trade, terrorism, and the environment, among other things. AIPAC offers all congressmen the chance to travel to Israel on its dime, and most freshmen congressmen will go there this month.

In rarer circumstances, members will travel officially, but not as part of a CODEL. Klobuchar went to Cuba last week to witness the re-opening of the U.S. embassy there, traveling with a few fellow members of Congress as well as Secretary of State John Kerry and other top diplomats.

6. Paulsen: The Most Traveled Minnesotan

Paulsen, with his 12 trips to 26 countries (Bahrain, Cape Verde, Malta and Vatican City are not shown on the map), easily wins the title Minnesota’s Most Traveled Member of Congress. The map above shows where he’s gotten to since 2010 — and it’s tempting to read his travelogue as a reflection of the U.S. trade agenda of the last five years. He’s hit potential Trans-Pacific Partnership signatories like South Korea and Thailand, major U.S. traders like China and Taiwan, and potential European free trade partners like the Czech Republic. He’s been dispatched to tiny countries like Malta and Vatican City, and the world’s newest country, South Sudan.

Klobuchar at Cuban Embassy opening: ‘It’s time for something new’

Sam Brodey — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 19:11:06 +0000

Last Friday, a few hundred people gathered in Havana to witness a historic event: the raising of the American flag on Cuban soil, symbolically re-opening the U.S. embassy after half a century of lapsed diplomatic ties. Among the people present were Secretary of State John Kerry, a host of Cuban government officials, and a select few members of Congress — including Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

The Obama administration appeared to reward lawmakers driving the Cuba policy shift in Congress with an opportunity to witness the event: Klobuchar, along with Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake and Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, sponsored a bill to officially lift the trade embargo on Cuba. Flake and Leahy joined Klobuchar in the delegation. Members of the House of Representatives like California Democrat Barbara Lee, who has pushed for a change in Cuba policy for years, also went on the trip.

According to Klobuchar, who spoke with MinnPost on Monday, the day was a whirlwind, beginning with an early-early-morning flight to Havana from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington and ending with a late night flight back. There was “buoyancy in the air” in Havana, she said. She recalled as a high point the raising of the flag itself, which was carried out by three retired Marines — the last ones to pull down the flag when U.S.–Cuba ties ceased in 1961.

Klobuchar said the response from most Cubans was very positive. “There were just a few hundred in the embassy area,” she said, but “outside of the gates, people were cheering.” Cubans both in and outside the gates proudly sang their national anthem, she recalled.

Rubio: ‘a propaganda rally’

While the White House and others celebrated the day as a high water mark of American diplomacy, a vocal opposition, including many Cuban-Americans, painted it as a travesty. Republican presidential candidate and Florida Senator Marco Rubio denounced the re-opening of embassies in a fiery speech from New York City the same day. He accused President Obama of legitimizing a state sponsor of terror and rewarding the Castro regime’s tactics at the expense of Cuba’s oppressed.

To Rubio, the flag-raising at the embassy was “little more than a propaganda rally for the Castro regime.”

Klobuchar said she wasn’t surprised by the rhetoric of her Senate colleague — nor by his argument. “We’ve had over 50 years of a failed policy and it hasn’t worked, it hasn’t changed their government,” she said. “It’s time for something new.”

Ever the diplomat, Klobuchar said she understood where people like Rubio are coming from. “There are people who had friends and relatives in prison — there’s a reason they’re angry at this regime,” she said. “People want to see the same results. But they go about it in a different way.”

Challenges ahead

Despite the significant changes to the U.S.–Cuba relationship since last December’s prisoner swap, the opposition of Rubio and others underscores how much still needs to happen before relations are truly normal again. The travel and trade embargoes can technically only be lifted with congressional approval, and getting the necessary support could be an uphill climb in this GOP-controlled Congress — even though some Republicans support ending the embargo. Klobuchar says she hopes her trade ban-ending bill and the travel ban lift can advance in the next year or two. Her bill currently has over 20 co-sponsors, and it could potentially pick up even more support if brought to the floor for a vote. The White House, however, is signaling it may work around much of the travel embargo on its own.

Despite the challenges ahead, to Klobuchar, August 14 is perhaps the most significant day — at least symbolically — of the U.S.–Cuba detente so far. She recalled a moment during the day where it began to rain, and people retreated inside the embassy. “This guy was on the piano, and he started playing ‘God Bless America’ and everyone burst into song,” she said. “I thought, this song hasn’t been sung here for quite a while.”

What do members of Congress actually do during their summer 'recess'?

Sam Brodey — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 14:28:48 +0000

It’s a time-honored congressional tradition: every August, members of Congress quickly file out of humid D.C. and head home for several weeks for the so-called “summer recess.” For much of its history, the recess was a time for some R&R, and the American public still mostly thinks so. Inevitably, before heading home, Congress leaves a major piece of business unresolved — this year, it was transportation funding — prompting pundits to denounce delinquent lawmakers for “skipping town” to go on vacation.

The idea that members of Congress set aside business to take a five-week summer break is a major misconception, though. Members are just as busy back home as they are in D.C. — in some ways, even busier. They fill the weeks of recess not with lounging at the lake, but with meetings, fundraisers, and business trips. In election years, it’s a time for campaigning. There’s a reason why the preferred term for the recess these days is “summer work period” — and why it can be uttered without a smirk.

Still, what, exactly, do lawmakers do on recess? MinnPost checked in with members of the delegation to get a sense of their plans until Congress convenes again after Labor Day.

Meeting and greeting constituents

For members of Congress — particularly those in the House — the recess is a critical time to have face-time with constituents and, more generally, be visible in their districts. Many lawmakers cite this as the single most important part of their time away from D.C., and their schedules reflect that: from early in the morning until late at night, their days tend to be packed with meetings, tours, speaking appearances, and interviews with local media.

Take, for example, a typical mid-August day for 6th District Rep. Tom Emmer. He’ll start his day at 8:30 with a quick, half-hour meeting at the United Way in St. Cloud. Then, he has a 90-minute coffee meeting with the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, followed directly by a sit-down with the editorial board of the St. Cloud Times. At noon, Emmer will tour the St. Cloud VA facilities, followed by a meeting with leaders of the Small Business Advisory Council in Otsego. His day wraps up at 8:30 with a 90-minute town hall in Waconia.

5th District Rep. Keith Ellison has a similarly frenzied schedule — he cited a day last week in Minneapolis when he worked from 7:30 in the morning until 9 at night. Between interviews and staff meetings, he spoke on a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention in Minneapolis, participated in events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and toured areas of Minneapolis with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro.

It was a Friday and Ellison — a practicing Muslim — didn’t have time for the customary Friday prayers. “That’s what it’s like in the district during the summer work period,” Ellison says.

Fundraising, fundraising, fundraising

Members of Congress spend significant amounts of time fundraising. In fact, if you’re a member of the House — where an election is always on the horizon — you might spend at least 25 percent of your working time raising money, according to Steve Billet, director of George Washington University’s Legislative Affairs Program. A slide leaked from a PowerPoint presentation by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee suggested that new members spend four hours per work day on “call time” — read: chatting up donors.

kline.house.gov

Rep. John Kline

Back home during the recess, those fundraising operations hardly let up. Instead of merely calling up major contributors, however, lawmakers can secure valuable face time with them. This month, GOP Reps. Emmer, John Kline, and Erik Paulsen will host a fundraiser in Edina for House Speaker John Boehner, who will be in attendance. The event benefits Boehner’s joint fundraising committee — a type of committee that leverages the stature of a figure like Boehner to spread the wealth among candidates — and will likely attract top-level donors.

Since elections are still over a year away, the pressure to rake in cash won’t be crushing, but it remains a key priority. “Fundraising is one of those things we have to do no matter where we are,” Ellison says. “We call donors, talk about what we’re doing, talk about raising money for the DCCC.”

Keeping tabs on the district office

It’s not glamorous work, but during the recess, members of Congress have duties to attend to in their district offices. Generally, members’ senior legislative and communications staff work out of their offices in Washington, but district offices are home to the bulk of constituent services staffers. When they return home, members will touch base with their district workers, and some will personally interview candidates for open spots in Minnesota and D.C. District offices, like the ones on Capitol Hill, are also home to interns, and members often make time to have lunch with them, too.

Traveling — in-state and abroad

Members of Congress are almost always on the move: Minnesota’s House members generally return back to their districts on the weekends, so they spend a good chunk of time on planes or in airports. While the recess offers a brief respite from the commute, lawmakers are hardly sedentary during their time away from D.C. Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar must make appearances across the state; representatives like Collin Peterson and Rick Nolan have huge districts to cover. (Peterson is known to fly his own plane across the vast 7th District.)

On Monday, for example, Franken spent the morning doing radio interviews in Minneapolis before traveling to Rochester to visit the Mayo Clinic and meet with the Rochester Post-Bulletin editorial board. Over the course of the month, the senator will attend over 35 events and meetings around the state. Klobuchar — as part of her annual goal to visit each of Minnesota’s 87 counties — will tour 12 western counties in August to focus on rural Internet access.

The recess is also prime time for overseas travel — something members regard as one of the coolest parts of the job. Typically, there are a few ways members can travel abroad. The most common are through an official, taxpayer-funded congressional delegation (CODEL), though there are also privately-sponsored trips, which are often funded by foreign governments and trade groups.

Rep. Keith Ellison

A typical congressional trip overseas is hardly a sightseeing tour: they’re highly scheduled, with very specific goals. Often, CODELs travel to places where American troops are active, like Afghanistan, or to emerging nations in Africa and Asia where the U.S. is eager to establish stronger ties. Days are usually filled with travel, meetings, and tours. Ellison compared it to a graduate school seminar, “like drinking out of a water hose, frankly.”

This month, Ellison will join a privately-sponsored trip to Tanzania, where he and other lawmakers will meet with officials and tour businesses in the east African nation of 50 million. Paulsen, who who co-chairs a caucus advocating for a “Trans-Atlantic Partnership” trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Union, spent early August in the Czech Republic discussing trade. He will head in a CODEL to the west African nation of Gabon in late August to focus on trade there, too.

6th District Rep. Tom Emmer is also travelling abroad this month, but not with fellow members of Congress. Instead, he joined his one-time gubernatorial rival, Governor Mark Dayton, and over 30 fellow Minnesotans on a trade delegation to Mexico.

Maybe, actually, sort of relaxing a little bit

Members of Congress, like other actual human beings, need to recharge and spend time with their families. Some members, like Emmer, Paulsen, and 1st District Rep. Tim Walz, have school-aged children at home in Minnesota. Ellison’s children are older, but he says he got to send one of his sons off to law school last week. Al Franken got the chance to make his annual trip to see the Vikings training camp with his son, Joe.

Members also try to carve a little piece of vacation out of the recess. One year, Franken managed to get away for a few days at the Boundary Waters — only to be called back to D.C. for a critical vote on Syria.

Does the respite from the gridlock and partisanship of D.C. do members any good? Minnesota lawmakers generally say they enjoy the chance to get their constituents’ perspectives on issues. But the transition back to Congress in September can be “abrupt,” Ellison says. “You go from seeing citizens…regular people dealing with regular problems, then back to Congress — and frustration.”

George Washington University’s Billet says members could be in for a more frustrating return than usual this year, with battles looming over government funding, transportation, the Iran Deal, and Planned Parenthood funding. “There may have been a time where the recess served as a cooling-off period,” he says. But he argues it’s hardly a “reset button” for the frustrations of the past seven months.

“I’d think there’s not much that will change the rabid partisanship that we have here, especially right now, starting to gin up for this presidential campaign,” Billet says. “We’re in the silly season.”

The GOP has controlled both houses of Congress for seven months. How’s that going?

Sam Brodey — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 15:41:39 +0000

WASHINGTON — In January, the 114th Congress was gaveled into session under new management: after a sweeping electoral victory in the 2014 elections, Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate for the first time in eight years.

In the first seven months of the new-look Congress, did anything actually change?

MinnPost checked in with members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation to hear what they thought of the session so far. Broadly, they agreed that Congress has plenty of room to do better, and public polling continues to back that up: as of late July, barely one out of six Americans approved of Congress’ performance.

Democratic and Republican members sounded sharply different notes in explaining why Americans remain frustrated with Congress, but to some, this session has already yielded major progress.

Highlights

Finally, movement on K-12 education reform
If nothing else, Congress can say it did something it had failed to do for 13 years: get versions of K-12 education reform passed in both the House and Senate. Lawmakers had been at odds over how to revamp the No Child Left Behind education bill — which passed in 2002 — leading to gridlock that frustrated education advocates and prompted the Obama administration to simply bypass sections of the law.

Later in the year, a committee of lawmakers from both parties and chambers — chaired by 2nd District Rep. John Kline, author of the House bill — will meet to hammer out differences between their bills before a final version can be sent to the president’s desk. Whatever legislation emerges from the conference committee will roll back much of the high-stakes testing regimen and school sanctions imposed by NCLB. But the Senate bill is considered more moderate than the House bill, and Kline will have to reconcile that with the goals of conservatives in the House GOP.

Having come this far, though, lawmakers will be pressed to finally pass reform. Just the fact that they’re this close is an achievement.

Sen. Al Franken, who attached several provisions onto the senate bill, lauded it as a bipartisan, “comprehensive overhaul” to No Child Left behind.

Obama signs Walz veterans’ mental health measure
Congress may not agree on much, but on at least one issue — veterans — nearly all members will band together. The 114th Congress moved early to pass legislation strengthening the quality of mental health care for servicemembers, in response to greater scrutiny of combat veterans’ mental health challenges as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs’ performance on the issue.

The Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, or the SAV Act, was introduced in the House by 1st District Rep. Tim Walz, and was signed into law by President Obama in February. It was named for Clay Hunt, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who found little support from the VA after returning home from war. He died by suicide in 2011.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

President Obama signed the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act in February.

Walz said his bill was one of the few bright spots in a session of Congress he views as lackluster thus far. “For the most part,” Walz said, “the Veterans Affairs committee has risen above the partisanship.”

House passes medical research funding bill
While Congress is eager to come together to show support for veterans, it tends to not overwhelmingly support items like the 21st Century Cures Act, a sweeping package that spends more on medical research and reforms some of the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory powers. In July, though, the House did exactly that, passing the bill by a count of 344 to 77.

The 21st Century Cures act aims to give agencies like the National Institutes of Health the resources they need to develop new medicines and make progress in understanding diseases like Alzheimer’s. The bill would allocate to the NIH nearly $9 billion in additional funding over the next five years. The FDA would also get close to half a billion dollars in new funding, and it would be granted the authority to streamline approval of new medical devices.

With its focus on health research and medical devices, it’s no surprise that all of Minnesota’s representatives enthusiastically backed the bill. (Reps. Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Rick Nolan, Erik Paulsen, and Tim Walz co-sponsored it.)

Walz, whose southern Minnesota district stands to benefit greatly from the law, said in a statement that the bill’s passage demonstrates “how our Congress is supposed to work…In a bipartisan manner to improve Americans’ quality of life.” Paulsen hailed it as a “result of bipartisan work” that will make a difference in people’s lives.

The bill still awaits a vote in the Senate.

Doc fix fixed
21st Century Cures wasn’t the only health care-related area where lawmakers found room to compromise: In April, Congress finally addressed Medicare’s so-called “doc fix,” a long-running Washington fiasco often held up as a textbook example of short-sighted, illogical legislating. (Or, depending on who you ask, “Congress’ dumbest ritual.”)

The problem started in 1997, when Congress reconfigured the amount doctors got paid for seeing Medicare patients. That ended up translating into escalating cuts in physician pay, so to prevent doctors from fleeing Medicare, Congress passed stop-gap measures to prevent the pay cuts from taking effect. Over the course of more than a decade, Washington dug itself a deep, multi-multi-billion-dollar hole.

After spending nearly two years developing a plan, Democratic and Republican lawmakers in both houses passed a fix to the doc fix, which was promptly signed by President Obama. It hardly dominated headlines, but it was quietly hailed as one of the most important moments of bipartisan cooperation in a long time — though no one has any illusions that a long-term agreement on Medicare and Medicaid is possible.

Still, it was cause for relief on Capitol Hill. “We found a permanent fix,” Paulsen said. “Now we never have to deal with that again.”

Movement on diplomatic thaw with Cuba
No one would have believed it even a year ago, but 2015 has been a historic year for relations between the U.S. and Cuba. While the White House takes much of the credit, Congress — and particularly the Minnesota delegation — has also played an important role.

To recap an eventful year: in December 2014, after months of talks, President Obama announced a prisoner exchange with Cuba, and an intention to normalize relations with the communist island nation. Shortly after Congress convened, Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced a bill that would effectively end the half-century-old trade embargo on Cuba. Last month, U.S. and Cuban embassies officially re-opened in Havana and Washington; a week later, Rep. Tom Emmer introduced his own House bill lifting the embargo, announcing that “the time has come for a change in our policy toward Cuba.”

REUTERS/Larry Downing

Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced a bill that would effectively end the half-century-old trade embargo on Cuba.

No votes have been held yet, but Congress has kept pace with the diplomatic events unfolding elsewhere — no small feat, considering the substantial opposition to U.S.–Cuba detente that remains among some Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

Low points

Last-minute Confederate flag amendment sinks spending bill
Late one night in July, just as the House was wrapping up its business for the day, Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Ken Calvert received a last-minute amendment to his massive spending bill: without mentioning the word “Confederate flag,” it would have protected display of the rebel banner in certain situations on federal parkland.

4th District Rep. Betty McCollum was on the floor, and realized what it was — a last-ditch attempt to “sweeten” the spending bill in order to secure conservative votes. The issue quickly blew up the next day: Democrats lined up to speak on the House floor next to a printed-out rebel flag and denounced it as a symbol of terror — one made horrifically relevant again by the murder of nine black churchgoers by a white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina.

REUTERS

Democrats lined up to speak on the House floor next to a printed-out rebel flag and denounced it as a symbol of terror.

Facing a revolt, GOP leadership — which had sent the amendment to the floor — pulled the bill from consideration. To some, the episode exemplified everything wrong with Congress in 2015: leadership resorting to an ill-conceived tactic to wrangle its conservative caucus into voting for a basic spending bill, only to have the gambit backfire, thus tabling the bill as it neared passage.

The status of the bill remains unclear, but party leaders say various items — including the flag provision — are being negotiated. Last week, McCollum — the Democratic floor manager for the interior spending bill — said the GOP “failed to get the appropriations bill done because they had to go to such extremes, with erroneous riders, to get their members to pass it. They can’t get their work done.”

Paulsen was a bit more reserved. “We got hung up,” he said. Ever the optimist, he added: “But we’re still ahead of schedule.”

Transportation continues to be kicked down pothole-ridden road
Everyone — Republicans, Democrats, labor, business — wants a long-term transportation funding bill. Despite the preponderance of bipartisan will to act, lawmakers hit traffic again on the way to moving a comprehensive transportation bill through both houses, instead passing a short-term funding extension for the 34th time in eight years.

The situation was the result of some unexpected dysfunction between House and Senate GOP leaders. In late July, the Senate tried to ram a bipartisan highway bill through Congress that was drafted without input from the House, which had already passed a six-month extension. The House refused to consider the Senate bill, forcing the upper chamber to pass a less-ambitious extension.

The episode was arguably the most widely shared disappointment of the entire session thus far. Democrats were generally eager to blame it on GOP internal strife. Rep. McCollum said, “Republican leadership knows there are people on their side of the aisle that are disgusted with kicking can down the road and not getting any work done that they’re attaching it to a veterans bill,” referring to the extension’s pairing with a veterans health care law in one bill.

Rep. Walz added, “The idea of a great nation budgeting two months at a time…Some folks thought we should run government like a business, and there's no business that runs on those terms.” Lawmakers have until the end of October to agree on a long-term fix.

Department of Homeland Security nearly shuts down
While now distant in Congress’ rear-view mirror and obscured by newer, fresher embarrassments, the near shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security this winter stands out as a prime example of time-consuming brinksmanship.

In January, GOP lawmakers arrived on the Hill determined to find a way to overturn President Obama’s executive action to allow five million undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S.

Eventually, they settled on DHS funding — which was set to expire at the end of February — as a way to force the administration into giving in on immigration.

Back-and-forth brinkmanship continued until past the 11th hour, when Obama signed a one-week extension of DHS funding through the first week of March. Ultimately, House Speaker John Boehner caved, advancing a “clean” funding bill free of immigration language, which easily passed the House.

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

After much drama, John Boehner eventually advanced a “clean” Homeland Security funding bill free of immigration language.

At the time, Minnesota legislators expressed relief the debacle was behind them. Unfortunately for them, DHS funding is set to expire again, soon after legislators return from vacation.

Klobuchar human trafficking bill gets held up by bitter abortion fight
The Senate likes to think of itself as having higher standards of decorum and collegiality than the House — and for the most part, senators have worked across the aisle on a variety of issues so far. But inter-party fighting reached a low point this spring, when Republicans quietly added anti-abortion language onto a bipartisan, anti-human trafficking bill introduced by Sen. Klobuchar that had just cleared committee.

Despite the fact that nearly all senators supported the bill, the abortion language sent the Senate into finger-pointing that lasted for weeks, with Democrats accusing Republicans of politicizing an important bill and vowing to block it until the language was removed. The bickering ultimately resulted in a stalemate that grew so consuming, it delayed the confirmation of Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Ultimately, Klobuchar and her colleagues reached a compromise that saved the anti-trafficking bill and placated abortion opponents. On May 29, nearly three months after being brought to the floor, President Obama signed it into law. Klobuchar and Rep. Paulsen, who introduced the House version of the bill, were present.

With that behind them, senators are now poised to lose faith in one another in a new, upcoming abortion battle — this time, involving funding of Planned Parenthood.

Pessimism abounds, but there’s still time to act

In light of what’s looming ahead — a vote on the Iran deal, battles to fund the government and highways — members of the delegation emphasized that Congress needs to do better. And they didn’t unanimously doubt that possibility. “It has to get better,” McCollum said. “I come to work optimistic. The American people expect more from us.” Over in the Senate, Franken added he’d been working hard to reach across the aisle to get things done, but said, “We still have a lot that needs to get done this year.” Klobuchar added she hopes Republicans “will come back in September ready to work with Democrats on the challenges that must be addressed before the end of the year.”

Emmer struck a similar note. Congress, the freshman says, has been “better than I expected. That doesn’t mean it’s good. But we’re moving in the right direction.”

Seventh District Rep. Collin Peterson, for his part, says he’s been the target of bipartisan cooperation from the Republicans — a novel concept. “Before, they were kind of like, we’re gonna do this, we’re Republicans, to hell with you guys,” he says.

But Keith Ellison saw little to like. Overall, he gave Congress an “F.” “The only reason it’s not an F minus is that they haven’t shut down the government,” Ellison said.

He acknowledged, though, there’s still time for that.

Heading into August recess, Obama administration pushes hard for Iran deal

Sam Brodey — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 16:01:25 +0000

WASHINGTON — There’s still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the fate of the Iran nuclear deal in Congress, but many in D.C. agree on one point: they’ve never witnessed President Obama push Congress this hard — ever.

The White House is aiming to ensure that Congress doesn’t scuttle its painstakingly negotiated agreement, which would subject Iran to a strict inspection regime designed to stifle its nuclear weapons program, in return for countries lifting economic sanctions.

If Congress were to do nothing, the agreement would go forward. But Republican leaders are hoping to pass a motion of disapproval in September that would explicitly reject the agreement. On its surface, such a rejection should be unconcerning to Obama, since he can veto it.

But it becomes a problem for the White House if the deal’s opponents amass a veto-proof majority of 290 members in the House and 67 in the Senate. If all House Republicans vote for the resolution, at least 44 Democrats would need to cross the aisle to bypass Obama’s pen. At least 13 Senate Democrats would have to do the same. The White House now finds itself working hard to woo skeptical Democrats, and prevent the entire Congressional Republican caucus from voting no.

In conversations with lawmakers, Obama and other administration officials have stressed that the deal being considered is the best that negotiators from the U.S. and its partners — Russia, China, France, Great Britain, and Germany — could’ve gotten. They say that Iranian nuclear facilities will be subjected the the most rigorous inspections ever, and that it would delay a nuclear-armed Iran for decades. And, most importantly, the administration argues that rejecting the deal would embarrass the U.S., harm its credibility with Iran and negotiating partners, and jeopardize negotiations going forward.

Republicans felt ignored

That line of argument isn’t resonating much on the Republican side of the aisle.

For their part, Minnesota’s three Republican representatives argue that the U.S. got a bad deal — and suggest that if the Obama administration had seriously engaged with Republicans, they would’ve gotten a deal they could support. Each intends to vote no, and it’s unlikely the deal will find much — if any — support within the House GOP.

To that point, 3rd District Rep. Erik Paulsen brings up a letter, which he co-signed with 366 of his House colleagues of both parties, including Reps. Tom Emmer, John Kline, Collin Peterson, and Rick Nolan. The letter outlined certain benchmarks they sought in a deal, including the so-called “anytime, anywhere” inspections of Iranian facilities.

Paulsen says he got the idea those concerns were heard by members of the administration — but they weren’t. “We ended up with a bad deal, because whether it was the president or Secretary Kerry, they were giving the perception that…benchmarks would be met, and none of them are met,” he said.

6th District Rep. Tom Emmer expressed similar frustration: that the administration is now flooding lawmakers after mostly ignoring them — particularly Republicans — while the negotiations occurred. Emmer brought up a meeting in March where Secretary of State John Kerry appeared before House members: he said “we’ll engage, we want you to be involved, we want you to understand,” Emmer recalls. “The next time we heard from Secretary Kerry was a week ago.”

Both Emmer and Paulsen say that the deal could stall in Congress, and Emmer attributes that to what he says is the White House’s long-running failure to cultivate a good relationship with Congress. “It doesn’t appear they do much of a job in engaging Congress in anything they’re working on that they think is important — they haven’t built relationships on either side of the aisle,” Emmer says. “Then appearing before the House of Representatives and the Senate and suggesting that this must happen and this must happen now,” he laughs, “that makes anything you wanna propose a heavy lift.”

Keeping Democrats in line

With Republican support for the deal unlikely, keeping enough Democrats in line to prevent a veto override is critical to the administration’s strategy.

At least three of Minnesota’s Democrats — Reps. Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, and Rick Nolan — will back the deal. 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson is undecided. Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar say they are undecided, though Franken has signalled he’ll probably back the deal.

Democrats supportive of the deal agree there is a tough road ahead, but are generally optimistic about the deal’s chances, stressing that critics have failed to advance a viable alternative.

Ellison, who was an early supporter of the deal, thinks the administration’s push has been impressive, and says it’s now up to people like him to win over people on the fence. In an interview on Friday, Ellison said that he’s had many conversations with colleagues who are publicly undecided but privately support the deal. “What I’m telling them,” he said, “is if you don’t want to be lobbied to death, be early and be clear, be a leader, and explain to people why this is the best thing for the United States of America, and for the people of Iran.”

Indeed, Jewish-American and pro-Israel groups have put pressure on undecided lawmakers, directly appealing to them in D.C. and encouraging constituents to call their representatives to urge a no vote. The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) expects to meet with every member of Congress prior to the vote.

Ellison says this climate has caused Democrats who support the deal to not publicly back it yet, depriving the yes camp of crucial momentum. “There are a whole lot of Democrats who don’t want to say they support it because they don’t want to be in opposition to people in their districts who don’t support it,” Ellison said. “They’re playing politics, even though they know what they’ll do.”

Still undecided, Sen. Al Franken. says he’s been weighing all sides, and is paying special attention to understanding certain scenarios, such as what sanctions might take effect if Iran were found to have violated the terms of the deal.

The senator, who is usually a reliable backer of the Obama administration, has been to meetings with Kerry and other top officials, and has also had conversations with pro-Israel groups like AIPAC. Ultimately, he says he’s been impressed by the administration’s pitch. He recalls a session where Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz spoke to senators in the old Senate chamber of the Capitol, no staff or media present. “I was so impressed with him taking on all comers in terms of that treaty — I was actually pretty astounded with his understanding of the treaty, codicil by codicil.”

Franken said that comments — like Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker telling Kerry he got “fleeced” — were embarrassing and irresponsible. The notion that the U.S. got a bad deal? “I don’t buy it,” Franken says.

Vote after the recess

Both the pro- and anti-deal camps will continue their lobbying just as heavily into the August recess — much of the freshman class will travel on an AIPAC-funded junket to Israel, where they are expected to focus on Iran. (Minnesota’s freshman legislator, Emmer, isn’t going.)

Will undecided Democratic lawmakers make the difficult choice to back what could become a politically toxic deal? Ellison, at least, thinks so. “The supporters, and there are many, need to bite the bullet and have tough conversations with constituents and explain, I’ve been in the briefings, been in the classified meetings.

“We gotta have people understand the deal is more important than re-election. If someone says, Keith Ellison shouldn’t be the representative of the 5th Congressional District of the State of Minnesota if he supports this deal, then I will gladly lose reelection over this deal, because it’s the right thing for the country.”

Correction: This article previously misstated the number of co-signers of the letter referred to by Rep. Erik Paulsen. The letter was signed by 367 representatives. Also, the article previously misstated Rep. Tim Walz's support for the deal. He is currently undecided.

McCollum calls for federal investigation of lion-killing Minnesota dentist

Sam Brodey — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 15:58:49 +0000

Rep. Betty McCollum

WASHINGTON — The Internet exploded in outrage this week after it was revealed that a Minnesota tourist killed a beloved lion while on a hunting expedition in Zimbabwe. That indignation reached Capitol Hill yesterday, as 4th District Rep. Betty McCollum was quick to call for justice for the protected African lion, fondly referred to as Cecil the Lion.

In a statement released yesterday, McCollum denounced the actions of Walter Palmer, a dentist from Eden Prairie, who may have paid as much as $50,000 to participate in the guided hunt in Zimbabwe. Palmer and his guides allegedly lured the lion out of a protected area in order to kill it, a move that critics, including McCollum, call illegal.

“To bait and kill a threatened animal, like this African lion, for sport cannot be called hunting, but rather a disgraceful display of callous cruelty,” McCollum said. Palmer says he was not aware that the lion was a protected animal, and regrets what happened.

McCollum, who serves as co-chair of the International Congressional Conservation Caucus, called for an investigation of Palmer. “For those of us committed to ending poaching of iconic African species I strongly believe the U.S. Attorneys' Office and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should investigate whether U.S. laws were violated related to conspiracy, bribery of foreign officials, and the illegal hunting of a protected species or animal,” McCollum said.

She added that she would actively pursue a legislative path to protecting other endangered animals in Africa and elsewhere. Speaking on Minnesota Public Radio on Wednesday morning, McCollum said she is currently working on legislation to crack down on the poaching of animals for ivory.

Palmer, whose dental practice is based in Bloomington, appears to be an avid rare game hunter, and photos of him posing with dead trophy animals like cheetahs have surfaced online. Lions and other protected big game are hunted and killed regularly by tourists from the United States and elsewhere, according to experts.

Rick Nolan and the sad ballad of the House Transportation Committee

Sam Brodey — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 16:09:31 +0000

WASHINGTON — He should be getting ready to enjoy his time at home in Brainerd in August, but Rep. Rick Nolan — Minnesota’s lone voice on the House Transportation Committee — is frustrated.

Leading up to the past weekend, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell abruptly announced an ambitious plan. He would lead the Senate in passing a bipartisan transportation funding bill — a real, six-year plan for funding the nation’s highway and infrastructure needs, not a stopgap. The bill, written by both Democrats and Republicans, would provide over $300 billion in transportation funding over the next six years.

There was a problem though — and that problem was the House, which leaves for summer recess on Friday. Even if the Senate passed McConnell’s plan — which it hasn’t — House members would have a scant few days to review the details. Given the unrealistic timeline for considering such a major piece of legislation, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy pronounced fellow-Republican McConnell’s plan dead-on-arrival. Instead, House members of both parties say the Senate should pass a short-term bill — highway funds run out at the end of July — and work on a long-term fix in the fall.

Barring an unlikely turn of events, then, the federal government will continue to support the nation’s infrastructure as it has for the past eight years — with a stopgap funding measure that merely extends current federal policy. This would be the 34th time in a row.

Given that dismal record, it's understandable why Nolan is discouraged by the latest twist in federal funding of the nation’s infrastructure. “I have no interest whatsoever as a member of the Transportation Highway Subcommittee in passing a six-year deal without any input from members of the House,” Nolan says. “It’s wholly, 100% unacceptable…now I find myself arguing for something I’ve been deploring, which is the short term extensions.”

Lost its luster

It's a far cry from the days of Nolan’s predecessor from the Eighth District, Rep. Jim Oberstar. The 36-year congressman was known as a titan of transportation policy — when he died last year, former 6th District Congressman Vin Weber called him “the leading infrastructure expert of our time.”

Oberstar was a member of — and, for four years, presided over — a Transportation Committee that made things happen. While serving as chair from 2007 to 2011, Oberstar secured billions of dollars in transportation and infrastructure funding when Congress passed its massive stimulus bill in 2009. In 2007, Oberstar pushed through a $250 million emergency package days after the I-35W bridge collapsed. He also thoroughly availed himself earmarks — the riders lawmakers attach to bills to fund specific projects — bringing $22 million in federal funding back to Minnesota in his last term alone.

It wasn’t just Oberstar who used the power of the committee to shape infrastructure policy and bring home bacon for his district. Members and past chairs alike had done so for decades, which is why the Transportation Committee was considered as plum an assignment as there was on Capitol Hill.

1st District Rep. Tim Walz used to be on the Transportation Committee, but left at the end of the last Congress. He told MinnPost in March that the committee doesn’t work the way it used to. “Quite honestly, that committee has lost its luster,” Walz said. “Kicking the can has really soured a lot of people.”

What changed?

How did Congress, and the once-great Transportation Committee, become unable to perform one of its most central duties? Lawmakers and observers point to two factors: the banning of earmarks, and the rise of a powerful anti-tax faction within the Republican Party.

Upon taking the House majority in 2011, GOP leadership moved to ban earmarks — or pork, as they’re commonly called — in the name of good governance and fiscal responsibility. They pointed to prolific procurers like Oberstar and wasteful projects like Alaska’s infamous Bridge to Nowhere in making the case that they caused more harm than good.

But critics of the ban argue that earmarks accounted for a drop in the federal spending bucket, and that the ban has deprived lawmakers a critical tool for moving legislation through Congress. It helps explain why the Transportation Committee has lost so much clout: few committees were as reliant on earmarks. It used to be common for highway bills to be loaded with pork — concessions for corralling votes on massive, complicated pieces of legislation. Longtime Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said last year that the earmark ban has “created a situation where you can't get transportation bills passed.”

But beyond the spending angle, there’s also a funding problem — namely, the stalling of the federal tax on gasoline. For nearly 60 years, Washington used the fuel tax to support the Highway Trust Fund, a key way of paying for the nation’s Interstate Highways. For decades, the tax enjoyed generally bipartisan support, with periodic increases in the rate. But since 1994 — the year of Newt Gingrich’s conservative revolution — the tax has not gone up.

According to a Pro Publica report on the tax, it provides only $34 billion of the Highway Trust Fund’s $50 billion, and for years, the U.S. Treasury has been making up the difference. Democrats blame the effectiveness of a group of GOP lawmakers, who signed pledges to not raise taxes, in stalling the gas tax. Today, however, those anti-gas-tax views are mainstream, and top GOP leaders such as Speaker John Boehner and House Ways and Means Chair Paul Ryan oppose the tax. Serious efforts to raise it have not gained traction.

As Nolan sees it, a stridently anti-tax conservative faction is holding GOP leadership hostage, and making long-term compromise impossible. “I have every confidence that if the Transportation Committee were allowed by Republican leadership to write a bill, we could write a good bill,” he says. “Leadership refuses to allow that to happen because tea partiers threatened to take away Boehner’s speakership.”

It’s a sorry state of affairs for the Transportation Committee, according to Nolan. It used to be “the most highly sought-after committee assignment — and now it might be the committee where members are the most frustrated…The bridges are falling down, trains are coming off the tracks.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated the length of Rep. Jim Obertsar’s tenure in Congress. He served for 36 years.

Backed by food and agriculture interests, U.S. House passes voluntary GMO-labeling bill

Sam Brodey — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 15:17:09 +0000

CC/Flickr/Stephenie Schukraft

Under the House bill, companies can choose to put U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified labels on their products identifying them as GMO or non-GMO.

WASHINGTON — After years of staying out of a contentious debate, Congress came closer to passing policy regarding the labeling of genetically-modified foods for the first time ever. On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to pass the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, which would establish a national, voluntary, federally-administrated standard system for the labeling of GMO and genetically engineered foods.

Critically, the bill would prevent states and localities from passing their own mandatory GMO labeling laws — a central point of contention that lawmakers, interest groups, and activists have focused on. It would invalidate the laws of states like Vermont, for example, which passed a mandatory labeling statute last year.

The Minnesota legislature has considered labeling bills before, but none have become law. Bills in the House and Senate were introduced during the last legislative session but didn’t go anywhere.

Supporters of the bill, which was introduced by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, claim it targets these local laws in order to eliminate inconsistency in labeling standards from state to state, or even city to city. 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, backed the bill after being on the fence. He called the difference in local laws an “unworkable scenario” that creates confusion for farmers, companies, and consumers. The bill, he said on the House floor Thursday, “doesn’t get to where some people want, but it’s a workable solution that people should support.”

Food industry lobbies heavily

Food industry interests were active in shaping the regulations. According to lobbying disclosures, 51 interest groups worked on it, including Minnesota companies like Land O’ Lakes, General Mills, Hormel, and Cargill. Mark Klein, a spokesman for Cargill, said, “We view this through the lens of food security and the implications for food costs and supply disruptions that a patchwork of state requirements would create. We’ll continue to talk with lawmakers, customers and others as this proposal moves ahead.”

The labeling bill passed with support from members of both parties, though Democrats constituted the overwhelming majority of the no votes. Democrats Tim Walz and Betty McCollum, along with the three Republicans in the delegation, joined Peterson in voting yes. Reps. Keith Ellison and Rick Nolan voted no.

The issue of GMO labeling — and their use more broadly — is deeply divisive nationally. On the House floor, members engaged in heated debate over the safety of genetically modified foods and the role states and cities should play in labeling. Many Democrats took to the floor to question the safety of GMO foods — something Walz wasn’t buying. “I respect their worries but the science isn't there with them,” he said. “You can’t have it both ways…If you’re frustrated that people don’t look at the science on climate change or vaccination, you don’t get to reject it.”

Activists disappointed

Consumer and environmental activists are deeply passionate about labeling, and an organized movement has emerged in recent years. In Minnesota, Heather Flesland coordinated opposition to the bill for a group called Right to Know Minnesota, which pushes for labeling laws. She says her group has gotten hundreds of Minnesotans to call and write to all eight representatives, urging them to vote no.

Flesland and other activists have characterized the bill as a creation of agricultural interests — its elimination of local mandatory labeling standards is strongly backed by the food industry. In the activist community, the bill already has a catchy alternate name: the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act, or the DARK Act. “This was basically written in partnership with some of these larger companies, like Monsanto,” Flesland says. “You look at someone like Collin Peterson, who has gotten the maximum donations from Monsanto, you can see that money trail.”

Beyond prohibiting local and state labeling laws, opponents of the bill take issue with what they see as a weak labeling system under the law. It would allows companies to choose put U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified labels on their products identifying them as GMO or non-GMO. Critics like Flesland doubt that any companies would voluntarily label their products as GMO.

Starting the conversation

The bill’s supporters feel that it’s been mischaracterized by a zealous opposition. They point to things like the bill’s provision for mandatory federal research of newly engineered organisms in making the case that it’s a step forward for consumer safety. They’ve also argued that strict GMO labeling laws — like the one passed in Vermont last year — would create confusing loopholes and raise prices on consumer goods. Those arguments — amplified by a powerful flow of cash from the food and ag industry — helped defeat similar GMO labeling laws on the ballot in California, Oregon, and others in recent years.

McCollum, speaking shortly after the vote Thursday afternoon, emphasized that the bill isn’t perfect. “This is only the first step and I want to move this progress along, she said.” McCollum was singled out by Minnesota Right to Know’s Flesland, who said she was disappointed the St. Paul congresswoman supported the bill. “If I vote to kill [the bill], I vote to stop discussion,” McCollum said.

“I have a lot of questions, a lot of concerns with this bill,” she said. “But I want to get to a point where any consumer can pick up a label and have confidence when they read that label that they know what's in it.”

The bill now heads to the Senate for consideration — where activists say they’ll fight it just as hard.

How Keith Ellison made the Congressional Progressive Caucus into a political force that matters

Sam Brodey — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 15:01:14 +0000

CC/Flickr/Keith Ellison

In June, Rep. Keith Ellison spoke at a rally opposing President Obama’s trade agenda, flanked by Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva, right, and other caucus members.

WASHINGTON — One sunny morning this June, President Barack Obama did something he almost never does: He went to Capitol Hill to save a bill. The legislation at hand: Trade Promotion Authority, which would allow Obama to “fast-track” trade deals — like the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership — through Congress with just an up-or-down vote. Making the situation more remarkable still was that Obama came not to twist the arms of adversarial Republicans — but those of his fellow Democrats.

Most members of the president’s party fiercely opposed his trade agenda. Progressive lawmakers — led by the Congressional Progressive Caucus — waged a ferocious, months-long campaign to halt TPA. As the president’s motorcade made its way across town, and with a trade vote hours away, tensions were at their peak.

Flanked by key administration brass like Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Obama made his pitch in a closed-door meeting to House Democrats. He delivered a speech members recall as forceful, emotionally charged, and at times, angry. The eventual passage of TPP, to which fast-track was crucial, is considered the cornerstone of Obama’s second-term agenda. He wasn’t about to let progressives in the House derail a legacy-making achievement.

Over and over, Obama implored House Democrats to “play it straight.” He urged them to not vote down Trade Adjustment Assistance — a popular program that aids workers harmed by free trade agreements — in order to kill the whole trade package.

Once the president and his entourage departed, the Democrats were left to stew. Amid the tension, Keith Ellison — co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a key leader in the trade fight — went to the podium to address his colleagues.

Ellison, those in the room say, called the president out. “Play it straight?” he asked, incredulously. “He comes up here and asks us to play it straight?” That disbelief resonated with the caucus. It was common to use legislative strategy to accomplish your goals, he said — not a crooked tactic, as Obama seemed to suggest. If anything, the progressives thought, it was the White House that failed to “play it straight” by wedding TPA with TAA in the first place.

Hours later, the visit blew up in Obama’s face. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi would go to the House floor to voice her opposition to the package, and encourage her caucus to do the same — which they did, in droves. TAA suffered a stunning defeat, putting the trade deal in jeopardy.

Eventually, Obama and the GOP would get their victory: House leaders separated TPA and TAA, and each passed. But for a week, a handful of House progressives sent their president and his allies scrambling. That victory, however brief, was the result of weeks, months and years of work to build their Congressional Progressive Caucus into a true fighting force — the kind that could nearly kill a bill jointly desired by the White House, congressional leadership, and the business establishment. And few people were as central to that work as Keith Ellison.

***

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has changed considerably since its founding in 1991, but its core mission has remained the same: to advance a decidedly liberal Democratic agenda in Congress. That agenda hasn’t always been the same, and the caucus hasn’t always been effective at advancing it. But CPC members, aides, political consultants, and activists overwhelmingly agree that now, under the leadership of Ellison and his co-chair, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the CPC is more effective than ever.

Today, the CPC consists of 70 House members, including 8th District Rep. Rick Nolan, and one member of the Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It’s grown steadily over the years, and represents a greater share of the overall Democratic caucus than ever — nearly two in every five House Democrats are CPC members. It’s the largest belief-based caucus within the party.

The CPC’s rise represents a remarkable reversal of political fortune. For most of its history, the CPC was a marginal group within the Democratic caucus, founded to counter what the party’s left wing considered a weak Democratic response to the tax cuts and income inequality increases of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies. Progressives also aimed to replace the ailing Democratic Study Group, a once-great organization of Capitol Hill liberals that shut down in 1994.

In the 1990s, the CPC was adept at getting attention, if not results: It held dramatic press conferences in which members denounced the designs of Newt Gingrich’s Republican Congress. They brought Noam Chomsky to testify before Congress to talk about globalization. They didn’t gain very much traction, but they focused early on what is now the CPC’s central cause: economic fairness. In 1995, CPC members introduced the first legislative alternative to Gingrich’s Contract With America, emphasizing stagnating wages, unemployment and education. The tagline for the CPC agenda: “The Progressive Promise: Fairness.”

During the George W. Bush years, the CPC’s attention pivoted abroad, as it adopted a primarily anti-war agenda. For most of Bush’s second term, the CPC was chaired by Northern California Democrats Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, both known for their outspoken anti-war stances. (Lee was famously the only member of Congress to vote against authorization of military force after Sept. 11th.) Membership in the caucus was roughly two-thirds of what it is now, and the CPC’s platform, while popular as the wars dragged on, led to few legislative victories.

Once Barack Obama took office, progressives were heartened, believing that finally they had one of their own in the White House. However, many members now remember 2009 and 2010 bitterly as a low ebb of the CPC’s influence, mainly because of its failure to push the Affordable Care Act to the left.

With a Democratic majority backed up by a Democratic president for the first time in 14 years, Congress had an unprecedented chance to refashion health-care policy with long-desired liberal ideas, like a government-run “public option” for health care that would’ve competed with private plans. After months of promising progressive congressional Democrats that the ACA would have a public option, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California — herself a former CPC member — ultimately gave in to moderates in the Senate by not including it.

The CPC, Ellison says now, just didn’t have the sway to beat out the more moderate voices in the party. “It felt like we were trying to stop some big car from rolling down an icy hill,” he says. “We were holding onto it but it just kept dragging us.” He said that “of course” progressives ultimately supported the ACA, even though they considered it watered-down.

That November, the Tea Party swept the House, costing Democrats their majority and handing the party its worst electoral defeat in 60 years. A month later, Ellison and Grijalva were elected co-chairs of the CPC. It was a critical juncture for the party — and one that many observers agree Ellison was uniquely positioned to take advantage of to increase progressives’ influence in Congress.

New leadership, new direction

The new co-chairs took the helm in 2011 determined to do three main things, Ellison says: unify the caucus for action, engage more with the progressive community, and grow influence and raise money to elect progressives come election season.

Their success on that first point seems clear. The CPC is a big, diverse group, but leaders have proved adept at wrangling them to mobilize, on trade and beyond. Much of that is due to Ellison and Grijalva’s relentlessness in advancing the kinds of issues that play well with the progressive base — things members of Congress were eager to run with. Some of those issues, particularly key economic fairness points like raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the wealthy, and expanding student loan refinancing options, are important to the broader electorate as well as the progressive base.

Rep. Mark Pocan

The CPC’s chief vice chair, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, suggests that’s a substantial help come election time.

“When you go back home, you try to point to successes in work we’ve done as a caucus with a Republican majority in the House,” Pocan says. People aren’t as disillusioned with Congress when you explain this stuff, he says.

What often changes their minds, Pocan says, is when he rattles off a laundry list of what he calls progressive victories in the last three years: pushing for Obama’s executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors, extending LGBT nondiscrimination language to cover those contractors, working with the White House on immigration executive action.

“Keith has been good at finding alternative paths,” he says.

Courting activists

It is that second point, however — connecting with the grass roots — upon which Ellison has focused as co-chair: Members and activists cite his eagerness to connect with the activist community as the signature strategy of his chairmanship.

Historically, Democratic lawmakers have had an uneasy relationship with the progressive grass roots. In 2014, in an article on Ellison, the progressive website Truthout questioned whether congressional Dems were “worth organizers’ blood, sweat, and tears.” Progressives, writes the site’s Sam Knight, “might see finite resources better spent outside of campaigning for a party that has systematically ignored those most in need.”

Ellison and Grijalva have tried to bridge that divide and persuade activists to get on board as partners — recognizing lawmakers’ and activists’ mutual strengths, and acting on them. “There’s a distribution of labor,” Ellison explains. “No member of the progressive community can introduce a bill because they’re not in Congress. No member of Congress can mobilize, educate, create the wave effect that grass roots do.” To that end, the CPC under Ellison has cultivated deep ties with activists, from groups pushing to raise pay of low-wage workers to climate change activists to immigration-reform groups and DREAMers.

Political leverage — and getting things done — springs from the grass-roots relationships, Ellison says. This is something that conservative Republicans do particularly well, and how they’ve managed to push their party’s leadership to the right on many issues. “The GOP is well connected to their grass roots,” Ellison says. “Heritage, Cato, the NRA, are closely connected to those guys. I just think they have more leverage and can apply more than we can,” partly owing to their position in the majority.

“The leverage we have is in the relationships we hold with progressive partners,” he says.

That may hold true for elections, too. For years, Ellison has been a loud voice within the Democratic Party on its turnout problem: its consistent failure to get Democratic constituencies to show up in midterm election years. Low midterm turnout is “killing us,” Ellison said last May, and argued that activist-fueled campaigns focusing on economic issues will help fix the problem.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Some issues, particularly key economic fairness points like raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the wealthy, and expanding student loan refinancing options, are important to the broader electorate as well as the progressive base.

Big surprise, then, that Ellison is considered a rock star to progressive activists dismayed by what they see as an extremely conservative, money–corrupted Congress. Ilya Sheyman, the executive director of MoveOn’s political action wing, says his group’s members “think the world” of the congressman. “I think he just gets organizing,” Sheyman says. “He has an incredible ability to organize both inside and outside — if a fight is happening in some committee in Congress, it’s relevant to millions of people on the outside.”

To others in the activist community, this represents a new way of doing business. Jeff Blodgett, the founder of St. Paul-based Wellstone Action, calls Ellison’s focus on “strategic, aligned conversations inside and outside Congress” the “missing ingredient” of progressive legislative success, and compared his organizer’s sensibility to that of Paul Wellstone. “He is showing a different model,” Blodgett says. “Maybe it’s taken being the minority in Congress to get people focused this way.”

At no other time was the CPC’s renewed focus and success with the grass roots more evident than during the trade fight. It was the kind of issue Ellison’s vision was built for: The Trans-Pacific Partnership deeply concerned various elements of the progressive base. Labor worried about lower wages and lost jobs, environmentalists were concerned about insufficient protections, consumer-health advocates believed the deal would limit access to cheaper pharmaceuticals. On several occasions, the CPC held conferences, flanked by activists from MoveOn, the Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO and a host of others.

Would an earlier iteration of the CPC have been able to unite such a diverse array of groups, and come close to scuttling the deal and forcing a long trade debate — mostly on progressive terms — in D.C.? Many progressives doubt it. According to California Democrat Brad Sherman, a prominent voice against the trade deal, “to think that a few of us, together with labor and environmentalists, went up against all of Washington, Wall Street and the White House — we acquitted ourselves well.”

Thinking back on the caucus’ impotence during the ACA public-option fight, Ellison says, “I had these fantasies — what if we could get 10,000 people on Capitol Hill demanding a public option?”

“We can,” he says, pounding his coffee table for emphasis. “We can do that today! We have that power. We didn’t have it then.”

Policy incubator

Beyond its grass-roots clout, the CPC is finally being recognized as an incubator for progressive policy that ultimately gets adopted by the Democratic caucus as a whole. Central to that function is the annual Progressive Caucus Budget: Put to a vote alongside the main Democratic budget, the GOP budget, and others, the budget is a mission statement and vision of CPC governance. Ellison calls it the group’s “founding document,” and it’s spoken of in reverent tones within the caucus.

Once written off as a progressive wish list, the budget is now gaining more currency, at least within the party. For the first time since 2010, a majority of the House Democratic caucus — 96 out of 188 — voted for the CPC budget. To be sure, the budget contains some unlikely asks: Its calls for debt-free college, ending subsidies to fossil fuel industries, and giving states single-payer health-care options are unlikely to be taken up in this Congress.

MinnPost photo by Devin Henry

Once written off as a progressive wish list, the Progressive Caucus Budget is now gaining more currency, at least within the Democratic Party.

But members like to focus on those elements of the CPC Budget that get picked up on and developed by more mainstream elements within the party. Pocan cites a tax on financial services transactions, an idea endorsed by Ellison that’s sometimes called the “Robin Hood tax.” This year, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, put a version of the idea in the main Democratic budget. The budget’s calls for free preschool and paid parental leave are picking up steam in the party, too.

To Pocan, that’s a clear sign of the CPC’s increased viability within the broader Democratic caucus. “We’re doing the heavy lifting, and talking about issues that resonate with people.” And it’s part of the reason why these days, the CPC is referred to by members and activists alike as the “legislative arm of the progressive movement.”

Who will lead the Democrats?

Rep. Ron Kind

That isn’t to say there isn’t tension within the Democratic ranks. While the left pines for a stronger progressive presence in Congress, moderates in the party are struggling to keep pace. The rise of the CPC has coincided with the decline of more moderate Democrats, who now organize in the New Democrat Coalition. That group, chaired by Wisconsin’s Ron Kind, is the heir of the Blue Dog Coalition, the once-powerful group of Democrats whose centrist “Third Way” outlook prevailed during much of the 1990s and 2000s.

The New Democrats number 46 representatives and five senators, but have struggled to attract as much enthusiasm among Democratic constituencies as the CPC. The two groups have butted heads — sometimes rather acrimoniously, especially over the trade deal. To some, that episode is exemplary of what Ellison calls the “tug of war” between progressives and moderates for the soul of the Democratic Party.

Moderates and progressives scrambled to sway the same handful of lawmakers on trade, and members of each camp sparred on TV and on Twitter to win the messaging war. In a rerun of Clinton-era Democratic politics, moderates got tarred as agents of Wall Street, and progressives were slammed as out-there obstructionists.

Ultimately, it was the progressives who won the messaging battle, though they lost the legislative one. Rep. Rick Nolan attributes that to the deftness of Ellison and Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro at messaging. Ellison, Nolan says, is “fearless — not afraid to go anywhere,” including Fox News. “That’s played a critical role in building support for our progressive agenda.”

The New Democrats’ Kind expressed frustration with the anti-trade camp’s messaging. “It’s easier to oppose than to support, and it’s easier to push buttons and rile people up, especially when there’s so much inaccurate information out there,” he said. “The idea that this was hush-hush in secret is false. That it was large corporations dictating terms — false. It was a false narrative, but that’s what people tended to believe and that’s what gets people riled up.”

Kind, who was a classmate of Ellison’s at the University of Minnesota Law School, says he “greatly respect[s] Keith and any other group pushing the administration to do better.” But he suggested the opposition of the CPC was somewhat knee-jerk, and emphasized that they presented no alternative to how they’d negotiate with emerging trade partners. “Why members feel offended when the president is coming to ask for [trade promotion] authority is beyond me,” he said.

The trade saga is illustrative of the complex relationship between the CPC and Obama. Progressives sense a kindred spirit in the former community organizer now occupying the Oval Office — which makes the cut that much deeper when he acts on his more moderate tendencies, as he did with trade. At points, Obama publicly rebuked congressional progressives on their trade talking points — sometimes harshly. In May of this year, Obama said Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren was “absolutely wrong” when she said the trade deal would primarily aid Wall Street.

Warren is not a CPC member, but the caucus views her as one of its own, and Ellison quickly fired back. Appearing on C-SPAN, he said Obama was “insulting” toward Warren. “If I was trying to persuade a friend, I wouldn’t start out by saying how deficient they were,” he said. Privately, many progressives felt slighted by the herculean lift the White House was making to pass fast-track and TPP. If he had done all this to support the public option, many wondered, would it have been spared the ax?

Ellison was quick to downplay any feud with the president and moderate Democrats, and says he understands the point of view of many of them. But he believed the progressive stance on trade reflects what working people want. “The enthusiasm is not with the Third Way,” he said. “They don’t draw crowds. They meet in small rooms. The passion is with the Bill de Blasios, the Elizabeth Warrens.”

At that, Ellison got up from his chair, picked up a copy of TIME magazine from his desk, and dropped it in front of me. The cover: “Who’s Afraid of Elizabeth Warren?”

Growing the caucus

Despite the magazine covers, the packed rallies for Bernie Sanders, and the increased policy heft, the CPC still must reckon with a lingering stigma surrounding the progressive brand. Due to redistricting and Republican-wave elections that swept out moderates, the Democratic House caucus as a whole is smaller and more left-leaning. Yet there are representatives who share much of the CPC’s politics but are not members. Brad Sherman, Ellison’s erstwhile trade ally, is not a CPC member, though he represents a deep blue Los Angeles district. Fourth District Rep. Betty McCollum is not a member, even though her environmental and foreign-policy standpoints are widely shared by CPC members.

If the CPC is to grow to 100 members, as leaders want, people on the fence will have to be won over, whatever their misgivings may be. Ellison thinks that the CPC has “more work to do to make the progressive brand attractive to more people. There are people who call themselves conservative who ain’t all that conservative, but they call themselves that because they think it signals something. We still have room to do that.”

Rep. Barbara Lee

Barbara Lee, the former CPC co-chair and current whip, believes now is the perfect time for that mission. “This country is progressive in many ways,” she says. “A majority of the American people want to raise the minimum wage. Being a progressive is where people are in this country.” To Ellison’s point, she says, “I see people who aren’t progressive saying they are progressive now — maybe they’re more moderate or liberal, but they’re embracing the progressive agenda.”

“You see non-Progressive Caucus members participate in many of our forums, press conferences,” Lee says. “I attribute that to Keith Ellison's leadership, which has been tremendous.”

***

In a preview of the kind of clout the CPC could wield in the 2016 elections, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton had a closed-door meeting with the caucus during a mid-July visit to Capitol Hill. Clinton and the progressive wing of the party, of course, have a fraught history. It was the grassroots’ enthusiasm for a certain Illinois senator, after all, that derailed Clinton’s path to the 2008 Democratic nomination.

But for about 40 minutes, Clinton sat, and dutifully spoke with members about inequality and the Fight for $15 Movement and the Middle East. She studied a binder packed with briefings and budget plans the CPC gave her. She joked they were the only group to assign her homework. And there’s reason to believe she’ll actually do that homework: Pocan said that the CPC has been in contact with Clinton’s policy team for months, providing information and urging her to tackle certain issues more strongly.

Ellison said he was “honored” that Clinton came to the CPC. “We're proud she did. I think it’s a smart move on her part,” he said. He smiles. “I see it as an embarrassment of riches,” he says of the Democratic primary field. “Bernie’s one of our own. Hillary is speaking our language.”

It’s a clear sign that the CPC’s championing of a populist economic platform — inspired by its embrace of the grass roots — is now being recognized by the party establishment as a path to political victory in 2016. “Anyone who wants to be the Democratic nominee knows that, if they’re not talking about raising people’s pay, they’re not talking about nothing,” Ellison says.

So, as it attacked fast-track with gusto, Ellison and the CPC have a full to-do list to attack ahead: push Hillary to the left, reach 100 members, outmuscle the moderates, build a campaign apparatus that somehow puts Democrats back on the path to a congressional majority.

For now, though, power tastes sweet, and it’ll take some getting used to. Mark Pocan recalled a conversation he had on the House floor recently with Rosa DeLauro and Ellison. “She said on the floor to Keith and I, ‘The progressive caucus is a force now.’ We’re in the front right now.”

Franken amendment to Senate education bill would ban LGBT discrimination in schools

Sam Brodey — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 15:15:20 +0000

YouTube: The UpTake

Sen. Al Franken delivered an emotional floor speech on Monday calling for non-discrimination protections for LGBT students in public schools.

WASHINGTON — On the Senate floor Monday afternoon, Sen. Al Franken stood next to a photo of Justin Aaberg, a gay Anoka teenager who committed suicide in 2010. After his death, Franken said, “his mother learned from Justin’s friends and from messages he left before his death that he had been the victim of incessant bullying at school.” In total, the senator spoke about three American boys who took their own lives after being harassed because of their sexual orientation.

That emotional floor speech came after years of work on a piece of legislation close to the hearts of Franken, President Obama and a host of politicians and activists: the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA). The law aims to enshrine into law anti-discrimination protections for LGBT students in public schools. On Tuesday afternoon, it is expected to get a vote in the full Senate for the first time ever.

Franken first introduced SNDA unsuccessfully in 2010 as a stand-alone bill. Now, he is tying its fortunes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — the massive federal K-12 education law also called No Child Left Behind which is nearing a re-authorization that’s eight years overdue.

Franken and LGBT advocates say that SNDA simply extends current law — which covers discrimination based on race, disability, gender and national origin — to sexual orientation and gender identity. Broadly, that means schools would be prohibited from excluding LGBT students from activities or services other students enjoy, or turning a blind eye to student bullying or teacher harassment. Like the landmark Title IX provision for sex-based discrimination, SNDA is enforced by linking compliance to federal funding for schools.

In his floor speech, Franken said the bullying of LGBT students had reached “epidemic proportions,” saying that 75% of LGBT students report verbal harassment at school and 35% report physical violence. Eighteen states, including Minnesota, have anti-bullying statutes which specifically extend protections to LGBT students.

Objections to SNDA, and laws like it, have centered around a perceived ambiguity of the text. In 2010, when it was first introduced, Cato Institute scholar Neal McCluskey said it would curtail free speech. “The definition of harassment could be broadly interpreted that anybody who expressed a totally legitimate opinion about homosexual behavior could be made illegal,” he said.

That was five years ago, but nevertheless, SNDA still hasn’t gained much traction among conservatives, particularly those in the House. Earlier this year, when House members were marking up their education bill in committee, SNDA was struck from consideration on a party line vote. Franken successfully attached SNDA as an amendment onto the Senate’s education reform bill.

That bill is the product of careful bipartisan compromise from the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions — of which Franken is a member — and it is expected to receive broad support. Despite the House GOP’s apparent opposition, Franken is confident that SNDA has solid support that would carry through to a bicameral, bipartisan conference committee tasked with hammering out the education package once both chambers have passed bills. He cited the success of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — an LGBT workplace protection law — which passed the Senate with some GOP support in 2013.

Speaking with MinnPost after his speech Monday afternoon, Franken said, “I feel like it’s my responsibility” to help LGBT kids. “This is an education bill…it’s about doing everything we can to make sure that kids get out of school with the tools they need. It’s hard to do that if you’re afraid.”

Last-minute Confederate-flag amendment holds up massive Interior Department spending bill

Sam Brodey — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 16:26:36 +0000

CC/Flickr/John Sonderman

WASHINGTON — Members of the House of Representatives, including 4th District Rep. Betty McCollum, were shocked Wednesday night when Republicans quietly introduced an amendment to a massive interior appropriations bill that would ensure that national parks could display and sell the Confederate flag.

After outraged statements and floor speeches by McCollum and several Democrats, GOP leadership announced that it had pulled the massive spending bill off the floor before a major vote scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

Late Wednesday, as work on the bill appeared close to finished for the night, Interior Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Ken Calvert, R-California, unexpectedly introduced the amendment after an aide passed it to him, according to CQ Roll Call. That move came a day after the House had agreed on amendments that would prohibit federal money from being used to place Confederate flags on graves, and prohibit the sale and display of the flag in national park gift shops. Calvert’s amendment squarely overturned that: the Republican said tersely that “this amendment will codify existing National Park Service policy and directives with regard to the decoration of cemeteries and concession stands.”

Immediately afterward, McCollum — who has managed the Democratic side of the bill, as ranking member on the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee — rose to express her disbelief. “I never thought the U.S. House of Representatives would join those who want to see this flag flown,” she said.

Democrats, including McCollum, have suggested Calvert’s amendment arrived to the floor as a last-minute ploy from GOP leadership to corral Republican support for the appropriations bill, which some conservatives in the caucus believe does not go far enough toward limiting the power of the Environmental Protection Agency, among other things. On Thursday morning, McCollum told reporters that Democrats understood that conservatives “weren’t going to help pass the bill unless they can have something out of it.”

Democrats are united in their opposition to the bill because they believe it overly restricts the federal government’s ability to regulate polluters.

McCollum said she spoke to Calvert after his amendment’s introduction, and told him she was disturbed by how last-minute it was. She said it arrived to her as a “hand-written, scribbled copy.”

In a statement released after the removal of his amendment, Calvert appears to have taken McCollum’s misgivings to heart. “I regret not conferring with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, especially my Ranking Member Betty McCollum, prior to offering the Leadership’s amendment and fully explaining its intent given the strong feelings Members of the House feel regarding this important and sensitive issue,” Calvert said.

The Republican nevertheless defended the content of his amendment. Calvert said it codified existing policy set by the Obama administration, which limits the flag’s role in national parks to educational or historical contexts, and added that the amendment “clear[s] up confusion” about federal policy. Still, it overturned the amendment, adopted without opposition on Tuesday, regarding rebel flags in federal cemeteries.

It’s unclear when the Interior and Environment Appropriations Act will return to the House floor — House Speaker John Boehner said it will be held until a resolution on the flag issue is reached.

Is our legislators learning? After 13 years, Congress takes stab at reforming No Child Left Behind

Sam Brodey — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 15:51:23 +0000

CC/Flickr/Robert Couse-Baker

Since its passage in 2002, the No Child Left Behind law has been the centerpiece of the federal government’s funding and policy approach to K-12 education.

WASHINGTON — 2nd District Rep. John Kline has been chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce since Republicans took over that chamber in 2010. But it’s only now, in his fifth year in the position, that he’s taking on the biggest piece of education policy of his career: reforming the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, the centerpiece of the federal government’s funding and policy approach to K-12 education.

Passed in 2002 with strong bipartisan support, No Child Left Behind was a cornerstone of President George W. Bush’s domestic agenda. A re-write of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), NCLB sought to use a rigorous regimen of federally-mandated standardized testing to bolster accountability for schools, teachers, and students, and use the results to improve performance across the board.

After 13 years, that approach has delivered mixed results at best, and its various elements have managed to offend people across the political spectrum. Congress has attempted to move on NCLB reform before, but in absence of a hard deadline — the law’s provisions have been automatically extended since 2007 — political forces have stymied it.

But Kline and fellow GOP leaders think things are different now. With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, momentum to replace the unpopular education law is stronger than ever. Still, there are plenty of obstacles and constituencies to appease — not to mention the Senate and the Democrat in the Oval Office.

If Kline and Republicans manage to push out a bill that gets President Obama’s signature, it’ll undoubtedly be Kline’s biggest achievement as committee chair. But if the bill is vetoed, or if Republicans buck him, it will be a high-profile defeat for the seven-term congressman.

Reduced federal role

Kline’s task here is not an enviable one. On one hand, his Republican Party is eager to seize this opportunity to curtail the role of the federal government in education, and broadly align education policy with conservative principles. Even though it’s a signature achievement of the last Republican president, NCLB, with its testing mandates and delegation of authority to the federal government, has grown deeply unpopular within the post-Tea Party GOP. Debate about the proper role of Washington in school policy has also been re-energized by the introduction of the Common Core education standards, and conservatives have been insistent on rejecting legislation with even whiffs of “federal standards.”

Kline and GOP leadership have emphasized that their bill sharply reduces the role of the federal government and delegates significant authority to states, school districts, and parents. Under current law, the Department of Education retains authority to make decisions about how NCLB is implemented by states. Kline’s bill would roll back the Department of Education’s role, and eliminate nearly 70 federal education programs, replacing that funding with block grant-like packages to be distributed locally. Kline’s bill also delegates accountability decisions — in other words, what the government does with test results — from the federal government to states and school districts.

For some of the GOP’s most conservative lawmakers, this package is still not good enough. That group has stalled Kline’s bill once before: In February, when the Student Success Act was initially on the House floor, conservatives revolted, forcing leadership to pull the bill when it became clear it didn’t have the votes. In March, Heritage Action, the advocacy wing of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, came out swinging against Kline's bill once more, arguing that it doesn't cede enough control to families and local authorities and that its spending cuts were insufficient.

Beyond his own party, Kline must deal with an equally vocal Democratic caucus, whose support — at least from some members — is necessary if he and GOP leaders hope to get a bill out of Congress. Democrats generally dislike the standardized testing-heavy approach of NCLB, its punitive sanctions for poor results, and how it tied teacher performance ratings to test results. While Kline’s bill allows states to largely craft their own approaches on accountability, it still maintains the frequency of testing under NCLB: that students in grades three through eight be tested in math and reading annually, and once in high school. That’s something both teachers’ unions and conservatives would like to see changed.

At the same time, Democrats like how accountability provisions spotlighted the academic achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Education and civil rights advocacy groups have pushed for an NCLB rewrite that maintains state and local accountability to the federal government as it pertains to disadvantaged student groups, like low-income students or English language learners.

Bipartisan Senate bill

And then there’s the Senate. The upper chamber is considering its own NCLB rewrite bill known as the Every Child Achieves Act. The legislation is the product of a compromise between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and it’s more bipartisan than Kline’s chiefly Republican-crafted bill.

There are a few key points of departure between the House bill and its Senate counterpart. For one, the Senate would require states to intervene and assist particularly low-performing schools. It’d also give states and districts the option to incorporate teacher-designed tests or projects, instead of standardized tests, in accountability systems.

An amendment introduced by Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester would replace the annual testing mandate, upheld in Kline’s bill, with so-called “grade span” testing, which is less frequent. Sen. Al Franken stated his intention on Tuesday to include the Student Non-Discrimination Act as an amendment on the Senate bill, which would codify anti-discrimination protections for LGBT students into law.

Whatever Congress agrees on is likely to have at least a few items that are true crowd-pleasers across the board. Both bills do away with some of NCLB's least popular provisions — particularly those that emphasize the role of standardized testing. The mandate that schools must make “adequate yearly progress” in testing — or else face sanctions such as teacher firings or even school closing — should be a thing of the past. Both bills also eliminate the requirement that states assess teachers and school administrators largely through student testing as a condition for receiving federal education money.

Mary Cathryn Ricker, a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, says her organization is heartened by the Senate’s stab at bipartisan reform, and said that chamber appeared serious about revamping NCLB “for the first time in a long time.” Ricker said that stands in sharp contrast to the House bill, which she said “would allow funding to be redirected from English language learners or low-income students, [which] defeats the original intent of ESEA.”

The Obama factor

If both chambers pass their respective bills, NCLB reform will head to a conference committee, where legislators from both parties and chambers will hammer out details before sending a final product to President Obama.

Getting Obama’s signature could be a tough ask if the bills don’t change much: on Monday, the president applauded the bipartisan nature of the Senate’s bill, but expressed disappointment with both chambers’ bills, calling their accountability provisions insufficient. The White House says it wants legislation from Congress that specifically focuses on the lowest performing schools in each state, and requires states and school districts to have plans to improve them. That’s close to what the Senate bill currently has.

Still, the bipartisan nature of a conference bill means Obama will be under serious pressure to sign whatever Congress gives him — even if it’s closer to the vision of House conservatives. He hasn’t ruled out a veto, however.

Debate begins

Both chambers begin consideration of the bills this week. The House will vote on Kline’s bill, with some amendments, on Wednesday. The Senate, which began debate Tuesday, is likely to work on its bill for the next week, at least. Despite the mountain of potential obstacles, Kline is optimistic about the chances of reform.

“Every day we fail to replace No Child Left Behind is another day states are tied to a broken system and children remain trapped in failing schools,” Kline said in a statement. “I am pleased to see the process resume in the House so we can move one step closer to sending a commonsense bill to the president’s desk.”

With House approval of worker aid bill, trade package goes to Obama

Sam Brodey — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 20:16:07 +0000

WASHINGTON — It took fierce lobbying from the White House and congressional leadership, parliamentary wrangling, and weeks of high drama at the Capitol, but today, the “fast-track” saga has finally come to an end.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 60 to 38 to approve Trade Promotion Authority, or “fast-track” authority. Today, the House of Representatives voted 286 to 138 to pass a trade preferences bill that includes the reauthorization of Trade Adjustment Assistance, a longstanding program designed to aid American workers harmed by free trade agreements.

Both head to President Barack Obama’s desk, paving the way for the next trade battle: the negotiation of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, a top goal of the Obama administration.

Obama and congressional Republicans overcame their ideological differences and delivered a powerful effort to get this trade package through Congress. Over the objections of some in their caucus, Republicans led the charge to give Obama so-called “fast-track” authority, or the power to send trade deals for congressional approval without that body being able to amend or filibuster them. Fast-track was staunchly opposed by most Democrats, and in the House, they nearly killed the package by voting down TAA, which is popular in their party, for the sake of stopping TPA.

After that setback, the pro-trade camp correctly bet that, by separating the two, they would have the votes to send TPA to Obama, leaving Democrats no choice but to support TAA, too. Democrats were skeptical that Republicans’ would move to pass TAA — a program the GOP views as unnecessary welfare — once they already had what they wanted. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, gave assurances they would.

Ultimately, Minnesota’s Democrats in Congress voted against TPA and in favor of TAA. Minnesota Republicans voted in favor of both — with Reps. Tom Emmer, John Kline and Erik Paulsen bucking most of their party in voting for worker aid.

Fast-track alone is a huge win for Obama, but his ultimate goal — TPP — is far from a done deal. Labor unions, environmental groups and other progressive organizations, which spent tremendous time and resources to stop the trade package, have vowed to fight that deal as tenaciously. Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison — who has been a vocal critic of the White House and leadership throughout this process — immediately pivoted to TPP in a statement after the vote. “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a bad deal for working Americans,” he said. “I will continue to oppose any trade deal that puts corporate interests above creating jobs and increasing wages for working Americans.”

As Democrats move on to the next battle, the president and congressional Republicans seem content to savor the moment, at least for now. Paulsen, a leading proponent of the trade deal, said, “The progress made this week on trade is critical to expanding opportunities for U.S. businesses to sell more American products around the globe and create higher-paying jobs here at home. We’re also one step closer to achieving an ambitious TPP agreement to open new markets in Asia.”

Emmer and Ellison team up to form House Somalia Caucus

Sam Brodey — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 16:20:06 +0000

WASHINGTON — Congress has no shortage of caucuses: the voluntary groups where members meet to advance commonly-held ideas and legislation number nearly 700, from the powerful, active Congressional Black Caucus to the less-powerful, but perhaps equally active Congressional Bourbon Caucus.

On Tuesday, 5th District Rep. Keith Ellison and 6th District Rep. Tom Emmer added one more: the Congressional Somalia Caucus. In a joint statement announcing the caucus’ formation, the lawmakers said, “for us, and the constituents we represent, Somalia is not a far off foreign policy issue, it’s a matter of domestic policy and national security. We are committed to advocating on behalf of all of our constituents while ensuring that Somalia has the tools it needs to create strong democratic institutions that provide safety and economic opportunity to its people.”

Ellison and Emmer might differ in their politics, but each represents a large Somali community.

There were at least 25,000 Somalis living in Minnesota as of 2010. The Somali population is primarily concentrated in Ellison’s Minneapolis district — about 16,000 are there — but there is also a growing community in Emmer’s district, particularly in St. Cloud. That city’s school district has faced scrutiny for years over alleged harassment and mistreatment of Somali students. In April, after Somali students walked out of school in protest, federal Department of Education officials arrived in St. Cloud to meet with educators and students.

Per Ellison and Emmer’s announcement, the Somalia Caucus will aim to “advocate for peace and stability in Somalia by ensuring the United States is providing sufficient and meaningful assistance so that democracy, good governance, and prosperity prevail over terrorism in Somalia.”

In the 112th Congress, 71 caucuses — a plurality — were devoted to foreign interests. The Somalia Caucus joins the likes of Congressional Friends of Denmark and the Congressional Caucus on Turkey and Turkish-Americans. These types of interest caucuses differ in how they function. Some, like the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, have been active in introducing legislation to advance the group’s mission. In January, that group introduced a largely symbolic bill calling on Russia to release a Ukrainian held by Russian authorities. Other caucuses, like the decade-old US-China Working Group, simply aim to educate members.

Members of Minnesota’s House delegation belong to a number of foreign-interest cacuses:

Rep. Erik Paulsen: Friends of Norway, US-China Working Group
Rep. Betty McCollum: Co-chairs Friends of Norway and the Congressional Algeria Caucus and belongs to Friends of Canada, Friends of Ireland, Caucus on the EU, Caucus on Armenian Issues, Caucus on the Netherlands, Caucus on Turkey, Sudan Caucus and the Tunisia Caucus
Rep. Keith Ellison: Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans
Rep. Tom Emmer: Taiwan Caucus, Korea Caucus and South Sudan Caucus
Rep. Collin Peterson: Friends of Denmark and Friends of Norway

No other members of the Minnesota delegation have joined the Somalia Caucus yet, but it’s likely that some will.

Supreme Court’s King v. Burwell decision could give GOP opening to rewrite Obamacare

Sam Brodey — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 15:53:31 +0000

WASHINGTON — Sometime in the next week, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling on the most substantive legal challenge to Obamacare in years. In King v. Burwell, the court will decide whether language in the Affordable Care Act prohibits the federal government from providing insurance subsidies to consumers in states that use the federally-run Healthcare.gov exchange instead of state-created exchanges.

Thirteen states — including Minnesota — have set up their own exchanges, while consumers in 34 states — which are mostly Republican-run and concentrated in the South and Midwest — rely on the federal marketplace.

It all hinges on one sentence in the ACA, which reads that tax credits for low-income health care consumers will be available through exchanges “established by the State.” The plaintiffs — four Virginia residents — argue that the language doesn’t provide for extension of subsidies to the federally-run exchanges, making them illegal. The government contends that the law clearly provides for that, and that Congress wouldn’t have written the law in any other way.

The stakes are huge: one the one hand, the court could rule that the government is correct, keeping the Affordable Care Act intact and depriving opponents of one of their best legal hopes for challenging the health care law.

But if the court decides that the federal government can’t provide subsidies to individuals who obtained a plan through Healthcare.gov, millions of people would lose these supports — and possibly their ability to afford health insurance. It’s unclear exactly how many people would be affected — most estimates range from roughly 6 million to as many as 9 million.

For Minnesota, at least in the short term, a ruling striking down the federal subsidies would have little effect: because Minnesota built its own exchange, consumers’ subsidies aren’t at risk.

But with the threat of millions of Americans nationwide losing health insurance subsidies they had counted upon, a ruling against the government will force the Republican-controlled Congress to act. And given the GOP’s long history of opposition to the health law — a Republican controlled House has voted at least three times to completely repeal the law since its passage — the changes made to the health law will extend well beyond the narrow question of who receives subsidies.

Kline sees opportunity to rewrite health law

Second District Rep. John Kline, as chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is one of the select few legislators charged with crafting the GOP’s response in the event of a ruling against the government, along with Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton, R-Michigan.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling on King v. Burwell is still pending, the group has hasn’t released any specific plans. But most observers believe the GOP would temporarily extend subsidies for some period of time in order to ensure that millions of Americans’ insurance premiums don’t skyrocket overnight.

In the longer term, the simplest fix to address the complaint in King would be to add a sentence that’d clear up the subsidy confusion — clarifying that subsidies could flow to consumers in exchanges “established by the State” as well as those established by the federal government.

But Republicans, who have campaigned against Obamacare since it passed in 2010, don’t want to let this opportunity slip away without getting more fundamental changes to the health law.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed written earlier this year, Kline, Ryan, and Upton repudiated Obamacare and broadly outlined what the GOP might send to the president’s desk in return for extending subsidies. They seem to accept King’s arguments: “the Internal Revenue Service handed out subsidies to people on both the federal and state exchanges,” they write. “This blatant disregard for the law has put millions on the hook, because if you received a subsidy and lose it because of the administration’s illegal actions, you’ll face big insurance bills you can’t afford.”

To correct what they call an illegal move, the GOP chairmen say their plan-in-progress would include the removal of Obamacare’s defining element: the individual and employer mandates to have health insurance. “Our proposal will also allow participating states to opt out of ObamaCare’s burdensome individual and employer mandates, allowing Americans to purchase the coverage they want,” they write. They also say that they’d plan to extend a flexible tax credit to consumers who lose subsidies in affected states.

Political chicken

Despite the wonkiness of all of this, there’s an element of political gamesmanship here. The GOP knows that it must send Obama something he can sign — to ask him to get behind everything in that op-ed would be difficult. According to Fred Morrison, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, anything short of a simple one-sentence subsidies fix could hand the president some political ammunition. “Obama’s going to get on TV and say, for 8 million people who had their insurance taken away, it was the Republicans that did it,” he says.

Obama, though, will be under pressure to sign whatever comes to his desk, and Republicans are hammering their talking point that the White House has carelessly failed to develop a King plan B.

Observers on both sides agree, however, that the onus will be on Congress to fix the aftermath of the court’s decision. If the GOP is unable to agree on a single plan — which could be likely, given that other ideas will compete with the Ryan-Kline-Upton plan — it won’t look good. And there’s also the Senate to consider, and Republicans in that chamber seem to be coalescing around a plan to extend subsidies through 2016 while striking the individual and employer insurance mandates, according to US News and World Report.

Replacing Obamacare

Still, Ryan and other GOP leaders have been clear that — any short-term deal notwithstanding — King would hugely advance the cause of an Obamacare replacement. In March, Ryan said the GOP would have an “immediate response” to a ruling in favor of King, adding that once they “deal with it…I fully intend on articulating what we ought to replace the whole thing with.”

The big question, then, is how quickly the GOP would move toward that system. Morrison says the GOP could extend subsidies until after the 2016 elections, buying them time to run on a more comprehensive ACA fix while avoiding potentially damaging political fallout.

The endgame for most strategies, though, hinges on the presidential elections. If a Republican moves into the White House in 2017, Congressional Republicans believe they will have a very favorable climate to move toward a full Obamacare repeal.

That isn’t to say they won’t face substantial opposition from Congressional Democrats. 5th District Rep. Keith Ellison dismissed the Republican alternatives in an interview with the Huffington Post. The GOP plan, he said, is to “go back to 1999…to the days when huge portions of our country were in a health care nightmare.”

Waiting on the court

Of course, most of these considerations go out the window if the court rules against King. In a statement, Ellison said he’s “optimistic the Supreme Court will do what’s right… and rule against the Republican-backed attempt to take health care away from millions of Americans.”

Conservatives and liberals are divided on how the court might rule — each side is bullish on their chances. Morrison agrees with Ellison, predicting that Chief Justice John Roberts will lead a charge on the court for a pro-government ruling.

The Supreme Court will hand down the decision on Thursday, Friday, or next Monday. Congress, however, begins its July 4th recess on Monday — meaning that a late ruling could delay a King response from Capitol Hill.

Why is Minnesota’s congressional delegation so focused on Cuba?

Sam Brodey — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 13:53:51 +0000

WASHINGTON — Since the thaw in relations that followed an unexpected prisoner swap late last year, Minnesota’s members of Congress have wasted no time diving into the relatively uncharted waters of U.S.-Cuba diplomacy. In the House and Senate, Minnesota legislators have introduced bills, traveled to the island, and — in the case of Sen. Amy Klobuchar — become at least minor celebrities among the Cuban people.

Klobuchar has been in the vanguard of congressional response to the opening with Cuba. In February, she introduced the Freedom to Export to Cuba Act, a bill that would essentially kill the half-century-old trade embargo. She also co-sponsored Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R-Arizona) bill to end the travel ban to the island, and in May, she successfully got federal authorities to clear the Minnesota Orchestra’s travel from MSP Airport to Havana. Earlier in the year, Klobuchar traveled to the island with a congressional delegation, where Cubans recognized her face from news reports about the embargo-ending bill.

Sen. Al Franken has also been active on the issue. He went to Cuba over the Memorial Day recess as part of a congressional delegation. Speaking about his trip, he said he got “a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the fact that it looks like we are going to be normalizing relations very soon.”

The senators’ House colleagues share their interest in the island nation. 4th District Rep. Betty McCollum traveled to Cuba last summer, and said she saw “saw the tremendous opportunities that exist between the people of our two countries to find common ground.”

8th District Rep. Rick Nolan has a Cuba connection that spans decades — in 1977, during his first stint in Congress, Nolan visited the island as part of a team that successfully negotiated the release of five U.S. prisoners. In December, Nolan called the re-establishment of diplomatic relations “a monumental step,” and plans to visit sometime this year. Along with Reps. Keith Ellison and Collin Peterson, Nolan co-sponsored the House version of Klobuchar’s bill ending the trade embargo.

On the Republican side, 6th District Rep. Tom Emmer has joined a small but vocal segment of the party that has welcomed the White House’s diplomatic push. The freshman lawmaker went to Cuba earlier in the year as part of a congressional delegation, and says the trip convinced him that the Cuban people are ready to do business with America. “Before the trip, you can be academic about [the issue],” he said. “Once you see the people, it’s not about leadership as much as it’s about people. They’re hungry for the next step, hungry for access to the marketplace.”

At the same time, Emmer said that U.S. and Cuban leaders would have to come to agreements about reparations for Cubans persecuted by the government, as well as extradition of individuals in Cuba wanted in the U.S. for crimes. “We can’t forget that this is personal for people,” he said, referencing Democratic and Republican colleagues who deeply oppose lifting the embargo. “This thing is going to evolve over time.”

Why Minnesota?

If it seems unlikely that Minnesota would be a hotbed of action on Cuba policy, well, that’s understandable. The state doesn’t have the usual factors that animate other states’ activity on Cuba — like Florida, whose large Cuban-American population holds strong views on the issue, and whose business interests eagerly eye an untapped market just 90 miles away. Still, take a look at some of Minnesota’s most important economic interests — and the priorities of its representatives in Congress — and the Minnesota-Cuba connection begins to make sense.

Broadly speaking, there are three reasons why Minnesota legislators have been so active on Cuba politics, according to Eric Schwartz, dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. For one, the export opportunities for two of Minnesota’s biggest industries — agriculture and medical devices — are massive. For example, Minnetonka-based Cargill has lobbied aggressively to open the Cuba market. A company spokesperson called the embargo a “failed experiment” that has robbed the U.S. of billions of dollars in exports.

Beyond that, Minnesota’s lack of a large Cuban-American community, and its distance from the island, means lawmakers aren’t subject to the same pressures as representatives from states like Florida and New Jersey.

Emmer says there’s a bit of history to the Minnesota-Cuba ties: when limited agricultural trade was allowed a decade ago, Minnesota was “one of the first to lend a hand,” he said. “Minnesota has an ongoing relationship where others are just now starting.”

Still, it’s not like Iowans or Ohioans in Congress have been especially vocal in supporting the Cuba shift. Schwartz’s theory? “I think a number of our legislators in Minnesota happen to be reasonable people,” he said. “This is an embargo that, if your goal is to promote change in Cuba or promote U.S. exports, it’s hard to see how the embargo serves either of those interests.”

That’s not to say the embargo doesn’t have its defenders in Congress. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley — who represents Iowa, the largest agricultural exporter in the U.S. — came down sharply on the U.S.-Cuba detente. Republican freshman Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas harshly condemned the Cuba developments, despite the fact that agricultural interests in Arkansas — a leading U.S. rice producer — appear eager for increased business with Cuba, one of the world’s top 20 rice consumers. (However, his Arkansas colleague, Republican John Boozman, co-signed the Senate bill lifting the travel ban.)

Klobuchar admitted she wouldn’t be able to convince all the Republican skeptics to get on board with her bill. “I don’t think it’s going to be unanimous,” she said, noting that perhaps 20 or so Republicans would need to support it. She expressed optimism that some may join, noting that Senate Agriculture Committee chair Pat Roberts, R-Kansas — who has signaled at least some openness to lifting the embargo — traveled to Cuba earlier this year.

Klobuchar said that during her visit, she was struck by how many Minnesotans were there as part of agriculture and business delegations. “Minnesotans have, in the last few decades, been international in reach — many big companies selling things abroad, agricultural interests, international adoption,” she said. “Cuba is part of this. They’re people we’d like to get to know.”

Moving forward on trade deal, House passes standalone ‘fast track’ bill

Sam Brodey — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 21:08:01 +0000

CC/Flickr/Scott Johnson

The House of Representatives voted 218 to 208 to advance Trade Promotion Authority — commonly known as “fast-track” — as a standalone bill.

WASHINGTON — Last week, when their major trade bill was dramatically defeated, President Obama and GOP congressional leadership went back to the drawing board to find a way forward.

On Thursday, that way forward became clear: the House of Representatives voted 218 to 208 to advance Trade Promotion Authority — commonly known as “fast-track” — as a standalone bill. TPA would clear the way for President Obama to negotiate the Trans Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation free trade agreement.

Previously, GOP leadership advanced this “fast-track” authority together with Trade Adjustment Assistance, a worker aid program, in a single package, hoping the worker assistance provisions would draw some Democratic votes. But that effort failed last week when Democrats largely voted against the worker assistance program in an effort to scuttle the entire trade deal.

On Thursday’s standalone “fast-track” vote, all of Minnesota’s Democrats voted “no,” while its Republicans voted in favor.

TPA now heads to the Senate, where a roughly a dozen Democratic votes will be needed to pass it. Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar have signaled their opposition to TPA in the past, though Klobuchar has not come out wholesale against the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Senators of both parties have said they will have a hard time sending TPA to Obama’s desk unless there are assurances a renewal of the TAA worker assistance program will soon follow. Senate leaders have said that TAA will be attached to a trade preferences bill focusing on African countries, which has Democratic support.

In the days since Friday’s vote, the White House and GOP leadership — forming a rare alliance — undertook a serious offensive and did some parliamentary wrangling to get TPA back to the House floor. At first, there was doubt they would be able to get Democrats to vote for TPA if it were separated from TAA. But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, have virtually guaranteed that TAA will follow TPA. The White House has said "the only legislative strategy the president will support is a strategy that results in both TPA and TAA coming to his desk."

After confusing, dramatic Friday votes in the House, here’s where the trade deal stands

Sam Brodey — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 16:05:03 +0000

WASHINGTON — Last Friday’s vote on a huge trade package, which has divided Washington for months, was as dramatic as they come. Last-minute defections, confusion on the floor, an eleventh-hour visit from President Obama — this one had it all. If it isn’t clear to you what happened, you’re not alone: staffers, journalists, and even lawmakers were thrown by the turn of events.

So what happened, exactly? On Friday afternoon, the House considered the Trade Act of 2015, which included Trade Promotion Authority — the “fast-track authority” that would pave the way for the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership — and Trade Adjustment Assistance, a federal program intended to aid workers who lost their jobs because of free trade. President Obama and GOP leadership were most concerned about corralling enough votes for TPA, and focused their efforts on pushing the handful of Democrats on the fence to vote yes. Obama, in an extremely rare move, went up to the Capitol on Friday morning and gave an emotional speech to persuade the Democratic caucus to pass the trade package.

Quickly, however, the stumbling block became TAA. Though TPA and TAA are part of the same bill, leadership chose to put each to a separate vote, though one could not pass without the other. The logic here was to divide and conquer: leadership believed that most Republican lawmakers would vote against TAA, a program the GOP considers glorified welfare. They bet that Democrats would be reluctant to vote down the reauthorization of TAA — which some claimed would be hard to bring back — even though Democrats might oppose TPA. On the other side, they knew most Republicans would support TPA — enough to push it through, even if the majority of Democrats voted no.

Progressive leaders in the Democratic Party, like 5th District Rep. Keith Ellison, pushed the caucus to vote against TAA, believing that killing it would stop the entire trade package. (Indeed, that's exactly what Obama came to the Capitol to tell Democrats not to do.) Before the vote, Ellison dismissed arguments that failing to reauthorize TAA now would effectively kill the program forever. He also expressed his displeasure with the President’s words that morning, particularly his plea for House Democrats to “play it straight” on trade. “When he says play it straight, we are,” Ellison said. “He cares about TAA but he’s using it as a bargaining chip to get what he really wants, which is [TPA]. Is that playing it straight?”

Before the vote, the big question became whether Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Obama ally but a reliable liberal, would fall in line with the President or buck him. But in a floor speech, she opted for the latter, urging her members to vote down the package. It was the first blow in what had become a stinging defeat for Obama: when voting on TAA ended, 302 Republicans and Democrats had joined to vote down TAA. Each Minnesota Democrat — including long-undecided 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson — voted no. The three Republicans voted yes.

Many Democrats had been told that defeating TAA would effectively kill the trade package — but Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy called a vote on the TPA bill, surprising onlookers and even some lawmakers. The procedure was mostly symbolic, but TPA passed, 219 to 211. (Minnesota members voted the same on TPA as TAA.) The passage of TPA gave House leadership room to make a motion to reconsider TAA, essentially giving Obama and the pro-TPA coalition a long weekend to somehow flip the 70 or so Democratic lawmakers who voted against TAA. There is some disagreement as to whether or not those efforts will make any difference.

Democratic aides were skeptical that anything would change over the weekend. As a Democrat, the cost of flipping your vote would be too high, according to one aide. And he doubted what Obama or GOP leadership could offer to Democrats that they wouldn’t have offered on Friday. “If they were going to swoop in and save the day, they would have done it,” he said.

Another aide noted, however, that some Democrats now realize that killing TAA won’t kill TPA — and Obama is hoping some will flip their votes to avoid the potential albatross of having voted down TAA. In theory, the House could vote down TAA and pass TPA, but that would require a Senate-House conference committee, where many believe the bill would stall.

Republicans remain optimistic that a deal will be reached. On Monday, 3rd District Rep. Erik Paulsen said he was surprised at what he called the “disparity” of the TAA vote. But he emphasized that the President will have to move the needle with members of his own party. “Central to the pitch, from the president’s point of view, is that the world is looking to the US for leadership,” Paulsen said. “If he leans into that message, he'll be able to sell it among his own folks.”

6th District Rep. Tom Emmer acknowledged some conversations may take place to persuade members of the GOP caucus to support TAA. (158 Republicans voted against it.) “What I deal with, mostly, is that if the President wants it, it must be bad,” Emmer said. Referencing a conservative framing of TPA, he said, “We’re not talking about ObamaTrade here, we’re talking about American trade.” Ultimately, Emmer echoed Paulsen’s sentiment. “As far as it getting passed,” he said, “it will be up to the Democrats if they want TAA to be reauthorized.”

It is expected that the House will vote again on TAA sometime this week, though it’s unclear exactly when. A Tuesday vote has been widely reported, though it’s possible that House leadership could set up a vote for Wednesday, or later in the week.

Paulsen in the middle of beer-industry fight fermenting on Capitol Hill

Sam Brodey — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 14:16:41 +0000

WASHINGTON — Last week, leaders of the Brewers’ Association — a trade group for small craft brewers — descended on Capitol Hill. High on their agenda: urging lawmakers to advance the Small Brewer Reinvestment and Workforce (Small BREW) Act, a bill introduced by Minnesota 3rd District Rep. Erik Paulsen that would slash federal excise taxes for small breweries based in the United States. But thanks to the introduction of another bill backed by big breweries, Paulsen now finds himself in the middle of a contentious beer battle.

Paulsen’s bill, which he introduced with Rep. Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, has about 40 co-sponsors in the House, and a sister bill in the Senate. It defines a “small brewer” as one that produces fewer than 6 million barrels of beer annually, and it adjusts tax cuts so as to benefit the smallest breweries. For any small brewer, the federal excise tax is halved — from $7 to $3.50 per barrel — on the first 60,000 barrels of beer they produce. From that point up to 2 million barrels produced, the tax is lowered from $18 to $16 per barrel.

In Minnesota, popular brewers like Brooklyn Center-based Surly Brewing Company would stand to gain from the cuts. According to the Brewers’ Association, there are 3,200 small breweries around the country, employing more than 100,000 people. Craft beer was a $14 billion industry in 2013. (There are 75 craft breweries in Minnesota, and another 45 that plan to open, according to Bob Pease, CEO of the Brewers’ Association.)

Weeks after the introduction of Small BREW, Rep. Steve Womack, R-Arkansas, and Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wisconsin, introduced the Fair Brewers Excise and Economic Relief, or "Fair BEER" Act. The Fair BEER Act intends to spread the tax benefits to all brewers who supply beer in the U.S., even those based abroad. Under the bill, brewers who make under 7,144 barrels per year would pay no excise tax, while those making between that and 60,000 barrels would pay $3.50. From that point on, its rates are the same as those of the Small BREW Act.

These seemingly minor differences between the bills, however, have sparked a lobbying and messaging battle between craft brewers and the big breweries. The Fair BEER Act is strongly backed by the Beer Institute, the trade group that represents the world’s biggest beer providers, MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev. The Beer Institute has spent over $600,000 lobbying in D.C. in the first quarter of 2015 alone. The Brewers’ Association, on the other hand, has spent $40,000.

While the Brewers’ Association’s Pease says his group doesn't oppose the Fair BEER Act, he maintains that Small BREW is a better law. Indeed, Brewers’ Association has branded the Fair BEER Act as a creation of the mega-breweries, designed to block what it calls a measure to help the little guy. It’s a “strictly defensive bill designed to fend off a tax increase for large brewers,” the group said.

Beer Institute CEO McGreevy

Beer Institute CEO Jim McGreevy countered, “The Fair BEER Act allows members of Congress to support microbrewers, national craft brewers and major brewers and importers. It doesn't force Congress to pick winners and losers, and it simplifies the excise tax code.” He also pointed out that the Small BREW Act seems to disproportionately benefit larger, nationally consumed craft brewers who produce around 2 million barrels annually, like Massachusetts’ Sam Adams.

It’s still early in the legislative process on both bills — neither has been scheduled for a mark-up yet — and industry-specific tax breaks are famously difficult to advance. It’s very possible neither will move ahead, much less pass.

Paulsen, for his part, has sought to stay above the fray in the beer battle. He hasn’t weighed in publicly on the Fair BEER Act, and has mostly stuck to supporting his bill. Critics have attacked Paulsen — a deficit hawk who’s argued against special interest carve-outs in the tax code — for pushing the bill. If enacted, the Small BREW Act could cost the federal government as much as $79 million in lost revenue this year.

Beyond Paulsen, Minnesota lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have close ties with the beer industry. Reps. John Kline, Betty McCollum, and Rick Nolan are members of the House Small Brewers Caucus, along with Paulsen. The National Beer Wholesalers’ Association, which backs the Fair BEER Act, kicked in thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Paulsen, Kline, McCollum and Nolan, in addition to Reps. Collin Peterson and Tim Walz.

McCollum, Peterson and Rep. Tom Emmer co-sponsored Fair BEER. Peterson, interestingly, also co-sponsored Small BREW, making him the only Minnesotan to join Paulsen.

The trade deal that’s pitting Minnesota’s Democrats against Obama — and has Republicans backing him up

Sam Brodey — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 14:16:17 +0000

WASHINGTON — On a dreary Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Rep. Keith Ellison stood with fellow progressives and vowed to kill a key item on President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda. Flanked by people holding signs — “No to Fast Track” and “Stop the TPP” — Ellison attacked the Obama and GOP-backed free trade legislation that Congress will soon consider. “This is wrong, from A to Z, and I’m against it!” Ellison exclaimed.

After being pushed out of the spotlight for weeks, rancor and sharp rhetoric over trade policy is returning to Congress in a big way. At issue is the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 — known simply as TPA (Trade Promotion Authority) 2015 — which would set new rules governing how the U.S. government negotiates international trade deals. It would permit the president to put trade agreements to an up-or-down vote in Congress, but legislators would not have the immediate opportunity to amend or filibuster. Opponents call it “fast-track” authority, while proponents say this bill provides for plenty of Congressional power to influence trade policy.

Major free-trade agreement

The law has passed the Senate, and, if approved by the House, would pave the way for Congressional consideration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade agreement that has been a longtime goal of President Obama. Like NAFTA, TPP would set up free trade rules between the U.S. and 11 other countries aimed at boosting exports and setting up enforceable standards, particularly regarding labor, among signatories.

TPP is being called the biggest trade deal since NAFTA, and one of the most important battles of the fourth quarter of the Obama presidency. In an unusual alliance, the White House and Congressional Republicans have joined forces to move the legislation, while many Democrats — moderate and progressive alike — have sharply criticized it.

Complicating matters is an additional variable: Trade Adjustment Assistance, a long-standing federal program designed to aid American workers who lost jobs due to international trade. TAA, as renewed in the TPA package the Senate approved, provides for $700 million of assistance annually over 10 years. That cost, however, is offset by cuts to Medicare, making it unpalatable for many Democrats.

Members of the Minnesota congressional delegation have played significant roles arguing both for and against TPA and TPP. Reflecting the broader national divide, Minnesota Republicans have enthusiastically backed the White House’s push, touting potential benefits for Minnesota businesses and agricultural interests. Meanwhile, nearly all of the Democrats have expressed reservations or just plain condemned the plan — which they tend to call “fast-track” — citing widely held concerns about transparency, special interests, and the security of Minnesota workers.

Paulsen a strong proponent

Rep. Erik Paulsen

While Minnesota’s three Republican representatives have been vocal in their support of TPA, the issue is particularly important to Rep. Erik Paulsen. The four-term congressman is regarded as a leading free trade advocate on the Hill, and serves on the Trade Subcommittee of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, where the current TPA legislation originated.

In a Star Tribune op-ed, Paulsen laid out the central case for free trade, citing the potential for it to open up foreign markets to American products. “Minnesota is uniquely positioned to sell goods and services to [foreign] consumers and create jobs here at home,” Paulsen wrote, mentioning the state’s agriculture, medical, and manufacturing sectors.

First-term Republican Rep. Tom Emmer is also a strong supporter of TPA — and as early as February, he was cajoling fellow freshmen to get behind it. Emmer circulated a letter urging them to support the soon-to-be-introduced bill, and he says that more than half of the 58 new members signed it. Emmer has been highly critical of President Obama, and some of his Republican colleagues have been reluctant to “give any more authority to this president,” he says. “The response I have is: you’re not.”

Emmer added that Congress would retain authority to reject White House trade plans. The “fast-track” label is a misnomer, he said. “It sounds like Congress is pulling a fast one — but that’s not what this is.”

Rep. John Kline echoed that sentiment. “We retain the right to reject any agreement at the end,” he said.

Democrats cite lack of protections

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Al Franken was an early opponent. He co-signed a 2014 letter with Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), and others, stressing that good trade agreements should have strong anti-currency manipulation and pro-labor provisions. Franken maintains that the current bill won’t deliver, and voted against it. Sen. Amy Klobuchar also voted against TPA and is awaiting more details about TPP before taking a position.

Ellison’s opposition to the proposed deal is not new, and the usually reliable Obama ally has been outspoken on the topic. In a Guardian op-ed he penned with Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), Ellison laid out the case against the law as a creation of corporate interests. Comparing TPP to NAFTA, they write, “the US must stop using trade agreements as investment deals for the world’s wealthiest corporations and instead prioritize higher wages, safer work and environmental standards and a healthier world economy.” They also condemned TPA for being insufficiently transparent, and for not giving Congress the opportunity to amend trade agreements.

Reps. Betty McCollum, Rick Nolan, and Tim Walz have all expressed opposition to TPA, and along similar lines. Walz spokesman Tony Ufkin said that TPA doesn’t create transparency and “leaves Congress — and constituents — in the dark.”

Peterson ‘officially on the fence’

Rep. Collin Peterson

Rep. Collin Peterson, as ever, has proven a wildcard. As he put it in May, he is “officially on the fence” on TPA, and remains so. The longtime 7th District representative has shown flashes of what he intends to focus on, however. As Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee, Peterson has publicly weighed how a new trade deal would affect agriculture. “Most of the people that eat in the world live outside the U.S.,” he said in a March hearing, referencing a common argument that the deal would open up foreign markets to American ag products. He also said that “unions and environmentalists are putting the heat” on Democratic lawmakers on trade.

Despite his own party’s opposition, President Obama will need only a moderate number of Democrats to support trade legislation thanks to strong Republican support — perhaps as few as 20 or 25. Given Peterson’s stature, he’s a highly sought-after get for the pro-trade coalition.

It’s unclear exactly when TPA and TAA will return to the House floor, but it could be as early as next week. House leaders are attempting to rework the TAA Medicare offset in an attempt to pick up some Democrat votes, but Republicans are confident that they’ll have the votes to pass both TAA and TPA, without the bill going to conference — where it could potentially lose critical momentum.

Senate passes Franken-backed bill reforming NSA surveillance

Sam Brodey — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 22:10:12 +0000

On Tuesday, Congress passed the first comprehensive surveillance reform package since the broad scope of National Security Agency activity was revealed in 2013. After what was at times a dramatic and frustrating saga at the Capitol, the Senate passed the USA Freedom Act — after it had stalled for weeks — with bipartisan support. The bill reforms surveillance powers originally granted to the NSA by the Patriot Act. It now heads to President Obama’s desk, where he is expected to sign it.

Sen. Al Franken was a lead proponent of the bill, and, along with Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller, wrote sections that dealt with how government agencies disclose their data collection procedures. Before the vote, Franken took to the Senate floor to convince his colleagues to pass the bill without delay, and without amendments pushed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), which were mostly small changes, including a provision that would’ve given the NSA a full year to transition to the new program instead of six months.

McConnell’s amendments “would weaken the bill in unacceptable ways, and they would only serve to prolong and deepen the uncertainty around the reform and continuation of important national security authorities,” Franken said. “Down the road we will have the opportunity to revisit these issues as needed,” including the further improvement of transparency provisions, Franken said. (The Senate ended up rejecting McConnell’s amendments.)

Franken, who serves as Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, has been vocal on privacy issues for years. Before he was a senator, he was an outspoken critic of the Bush-era Patriot Act.

When the breadth and depth of NSA surveillance was exposed, however, Franken was more measured than some of his colleagues, prompting some in the media to brand him as the NSA’s “one liberal friend,” as National Journal put it.

Indeed, in June of 2013, Franken told WCCO, “I have a high level of confidence that this is used to protect us, and I know that it has been successful in preventing terrorism… There are certain things that are appropriate for me to know that is not appropriate for the bad guys to know.” Later that year, he introduced a bill that would have required the NSA to disclose how many people are targeted by surveillance programs, among other things. The bill failed to advance.

After Franken’s speech on Tuesday, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) took the floor and began his remarks by thanking him for playing a leading role in crafting the legislation. Franken, Leahy said, “worked very, very hard to get us where we are” on surveillance reform.

The bill passed on a 67–32 vote. Sen. Amy Klobuchar joined her colleague Franken in voting for the measure.

Following the bill’s passage, Sen. Franken praised it, saying that measures he helped write would “let Americans know how many people’s records are being collected…allowing them to decide for themselves if the right balance is being struck between national security and privacy.”

McCollum seeks ban on new mines in much of northeastern Minnesota

Devin Henry — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 19:45:29 +0000

CC/Flickr/Alan Strakey

“Water knows no boundaries,” McCollum said. “It’s great that we have buffer zones, but we can’t tell a water-soluble toxic material, oh there’s a buffer zone there, stop. And that’s why you start looking at the watershed and the hydrology on how to protect the water.”

WASHINGTON — When it comes to controversial mining projects in Minnesota, the headlines go to PolyMet, the proposed copper-nickel mine near Hoyt Lakes that became a touchstone in last year’s elections.

But one group of Minnesotans is taking on a bigger foe — and a bigger mine — miles to the north, and they have found an ally in the state’s congressional delegation.

A group called the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters is working to convince the Obama administration, and eventually Congress, to take steps to block the proposed Twin Metals project, and indeed any precious metal mining in a vast swatch around the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

The group’s director, Becky Rom, was in Washington last month with a group of scientists and a stack of environmental studies, polling data, and economic reports meeting with administrators and members of Congress. Her message: the watershed surrounding the Boundary Waters is territory too precious to allow copper and nickel mining projects that present a set of environmental complications unique to the area.

Congress has previously protected thousands of acres of land surrounding the Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park from mining interests, and the Obama administration has the right to do the same on its own, at least temporarily. Rom’s goal is to convince both Congress and Obama that the land straddling the BWCA is worthy of protection, and Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum announced Tuesday that she will introduce a bill to do just that.

“Here the choices are pretty clear,” Rom said. “It’s not difficult. It really is a pretty stark choice about our future and what’s important to people.”

Twin Metals: bigger than PolyMet

As currently envisioned, Twin Metals would be a large underground mine located about seven miles southeast of Ely. The project would employ 850 people and produce up to 50,000 tons of copper and nickel ore a day. The mine could operate for up to 30 years. (PolyMet, a project much further along in the regulatory process, is smaller, and much further away from an area as environmentally sensitive as the Boundary Waters watershed.)

Courtesy of Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness

Federal metallic mineral leases near the Boundary Waters. Potential Twin Metals mine sites are circled in light blue. Click for larger version.

Like PolyMet, the Twin Metals mine would use a mining process that extracts metals by stripping them from surrounding rock. The waste rock then has to be stored offsite.

Storing the spent rock is contentious: exposed to air and water, leftover tailings could produce sulfuric acid, which Rom and others worry could leak into the Rainy River Drainage Basin.

It’s a process vastly different from iron ore mining, an industry that has defined northeastern Minnesota for generations.

Twin Metals spokesman: Enviornmental concerns premature

Twin Metals spokesman Bob McFarlin said it’s premature for environmental groups to say the mine could threaten the Boundary Waters given how long it will take for the mine to get up and running (the company is still writing its mine plan and McFarlin said it’s about two years away from submitting it to regulators). The company has been conducting environmental studies for more than five years, and McFarlin said it intends to design a mine that meets all existing environmental regulations.

“It’s all about knowing and understanding the regulations up front and designing our project to meet those regulatory standards,” he said. “If we don’t, we don’t get approved to move forward.”

Rom’s concerns aren’t solely with Twin Metals. It isn’t the only company considering precious metal mining in the region — maps of the area are dotted with permits for mineral prospecting around the Twin Metals site — and Rom questions the safety of the mineral extraction process itself, something her group says has led to acidic leaks at other mines around the country.

And besides, Rom said, even though the mines themselves are underground, the industrialization that would come from them could damage the aesthetics of the area.

“We’ve accepted this Mesabi Iron Range landscape,” she said. “Every one of those blotches is a permanent feature on the landscape. … We have to decide if we’re willing to let that happen all around the southern boundary of the Wilderness.”

A three-pronged approach

Rom has decided she is not willing to let that happen. Her group has commissioned pro-BWCA polls of Minnesotans and written environmental and economic studies based around mining’s impact on the region’s ecology and economy. Now, the group is pushing a three-pronged approach in Washington to stopping it.

First, the company that owns Twin Metals is in the process of renewing its lease on the land it hopes to someday mine. Rom’s group has asked the Bureau of Land Management, which is charged with approving the leases, to deny renewal on environmental grounds.

McFarlin said lease renewals are generally uncontroversial measures and an environmental review associated with it would be “unnecessary” because a company needs additional permitting before they can do anything with the minerals themselves. There are, of course, layers of environmental review associated with those new permits.

Secondly, Rom’s group wants the Obama administration to unilaterally ban mining on lands south of the Boundary Waters — not just Twin Metals, but the whole area. That sort of declaration has happened before: in 2012, then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar removed 1 million acres of federal land around Grand Canyon National Park from a mineral leasing program, effectively banning uranium and other mining activities there.

“There is precedent,” Rom said, “but it is courageous and it’s visionary.”

And it’s also only temporary. Twenty years after the administration’s actions, the lands are put back into the mineral leasing program, unless Congress steps in to remove them permanently. And for Rom, that’s step three.

McCollum joins the effort

Rep. Betty McCollum plans to introduce a bill later this week that would ban new mining on federal land in the Rainy River Drainage Basin around the BWCA. If enacted, the bill would allow mining activities on existing mineral leases (such as Twin Metals’, if they are to be approved by the BLM, something McCollum said he doesn’t want to happen), but with stricter federal oversight. It would also ban future mining leases throughout the area.

McCollum shares her goals with Rom: protect Northern Minnesota waters from any potential ill from a new form of mining.

“We are watching what is going on in the world, and even in the United States, with water becoming a resource that people are realizing needs to be protected and managed,” she said. “We know now we cannot take the water for granted.”

Congress has a history of protecting lands around the Boundary Waters. In 1964 and 1978, lawmakers enacted mining-free lands to the west of the BWCA. The state followed up with a similar buffer zone in 1991. McCollum’s bill would expand on those to cover much of the federal land in northeastern Minnesota.

Courtesy of Rep. Betty McCollum’s office

McCollum’s bill would expand mining-free areas to cover the Rainy Creek watershed, outlined in yellow. Click for larger version.

Those buffer zones are among the reasons McFarlin says Twin Metals and the Boundary Waters can coexist. Mines there will open only if they conform to existing regulations, and McFarlin said Twin Metals isn’t looking for loopholes or relief from those regulations.

“The premise of the scenarios that are laid out in terms of harming the Boundary Waters or Voyageurs ... do not acknowledge the existence of the regulatory standards or the regulatory enforcement mechanisms at the state and federal level,” he said.

Dim political prospects

Politically, it’s unlikely McCollum’s bill will find much support in a Republican Congress. Even some Democrats might defect anyway, including those from Minnesota, where many DFLers have a tendency to support mining, or at least the processes that determine its environmental safety.

U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan, who represents northeastern Minnesota, is among them. Asked about efforts to block mining in the area — but not McCollum’s bill — Nolan said, “I believe we have the brains and the technology to do both” mine and protect the environment.

“We’re never going to allow mining in the BWCA, we’re never going to allow mining in the Voyageurs National Park,” he said last month. “The deal was that the rest of the federal and state forests would be available for responsible forest management and mining and other commercial-related activities. At some point, we have to have some jobs, we need forestry products, we need mining and mineral products.”

‘Contrary to good government’

Beyond their obvious opposing viewpoints on the relative merits of Twin Metals, McFarlin said he’s against the approach that Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters is taking now. Asking the government, be it regulators or Congress, to block any mining at all near the BWCA precludes any projects from going through environmental review or a public comment process. It’s “contrary to good government,” he said.

But in a way, that’s what Rom wants: a declaration that there are some places where any mining at all should be off limits, the watershed of the BWCA among them.

“If you wait until leases are in place and a mine plan is fully fleshed out and developed, and then you start a review of that mine plan, you’re no longer having a discussion of whether a mine is appropriate in this place,” she said. “What we’ve learned is that when you have a very important area of national significance that is threatened by a particular inappropriate activity, that your campaign is about that special place. Our goal is no sulfide ore mining in the watershed.”

This is Devin Henry’s last story as MinnPost’s D.C. correspondent. You can keep up with him on Twitter: @dhenry

A ‘very, very rocky start’: three months in, Minnesota’s representatives rate Congress

Devin Henry — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:49:38 +0000

WASHINGTON — In November, after Republicans’ big showing in the mid-term elections, this was how Sen. Amy Klobuchar handicapped the new Congress’ potential for getting things done:

“I take the Republicans at their word. They say they want to move on things. I’ve talked personally to Sen. [John] Cornyn, who’s in leadership there, and he’s devoted to this. I talked to Sen. [Mike] Lee yesterday about potential rules moving forward. I think there is some opportunity here. We will know, probably, within three months if it’s real, but I think there’s opportunity.”

That three-month mark has almost passed, and it’s been a turbulent time so far for Congress, with a near-shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, growing, bitter angst over foreign policy, and abortion politics sinking a bipartisan sex-trafficking bill and delaying a vote on a major Obama administration nominee.

But lawmakers point to signs of progress, like last week’s breakthrough in the House, where lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill fixing the annual problem of potential payment cuts to doctors under Medicare (the “doc fix” or the “sustainable growth rate”), something members praised as they left town for a two-week recess.

That was the mood when I asked the delegation to take Klobuchar’s timeline for progress and diagnose how well this Congress is governing three months in. Their perspectives range the spectrum from cautious optimism to resigned indignation:

REUTERS/Larry Downing / Reuters

Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke about the possibilities of increased relations with Cuba in January.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar:

We have made some progress but it is much slower than I would like. I’d say the probably shining light in these first three months was the sustainable growth rate deal. That was something that for Minnesota is just critical. Franken and I were two of just a handful of Democrats to vote against the temporary fix last year as a protest, basically laying down the gauntlet that we were not going to vote for this again unless it was fixed. That is actually a surprising result, that that agreement was reached.

I’d say that was a positive, I think getting the Homeland Security funding done was a positive. We saw the kind of pushback against the extremists who were trying to put the immigration provision on. I think what has held us back is some of the extremism, and I use the example of Loretta Lynch, the attorney general [nominee], that it has taken so long to get her confirmed, when she’s only going to be in for a year and a half, and a number of the people who are opposing her have been complaining about [Eric] Holder from day one.

There has been some progress, especially from the last deal, but it has taken too long. I think it is somewhat predictable that there would be some of the Tea Party extremism issues going on, but I’d hoped that they would be slightly more in check than they have been.

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Sen. Al Franken was joined by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley last week to warn against abolishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Sen. Al Franken:

I don’t know if we know yet.

Obviously the Lynch nomination taking so long to get to, that letter, I think both Congress inviting [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu here without talking to the president or the State Department was kind of bad form, and the letter to the Iranian mullahs, I found kind of shocking. ...

I don’t know if it’s the worst I’ve seen before. This hasn’t been great, we’ve had shutdowns, we’ve had a lot of discord before, but right now, it hasn’t been promising. But I have optimism in some areas. We on the [Health, Education, Labor and Pensions] committee are looking to reauthorize [the Elementary and Secondary Education Act] and thus far … the process seems to be one that I have some cause for optimism that we’ll get to try to do a bipartisan mark-up of the bill … I have some hope in [Chairman Lamar Alexander’s] leadership style that we will have a productive mark-up.

Rep. Tim Walz:

I would say that I think there’s potential here. I am hopefully optimistic. I know the bar’s not that high, when we avoided a shutdown of DHS, but we did it. I would say we found a bipartisan compromise to move a bill on veterans. We did the terrorism insurance, and the reason I think today I’m even more so optimistic is, we did something that I didn’t think I would see while I was in Congress, a permanent fix to the sustainable growth rate on Medicare.

I think this is a Congress that has potential at this point, and at a few times has actually lived up to it a little bit, what I was hoping would happen, when you’ve got split government. We’ll see how the Senate responds, but it sounds like there’s some ability to talk the folks that are not interested in government off the ledge, or at least marginalize them and put what’s right for the public forward.

CC/Flickr/Speaker John Boehner — Caleb Smith

Rep. John Kline watches as House Speaker John Boehner signs S.J. Res. 8, a resolution decrying a recent NLRB ruling, last Wednesday.

Rep. John Kline:

I think we got off to a very, very rocky start, we ran into problems. I think we’re still in a pretty tough place. I think the House, even though we’ve had some internal debate inside the Republican conference and probably inside the Democrat conference, this week was a really good week and showed we could get some stuff done and get bipartisan stuff done.

Budgets are never bipartisan, but we were able to work one through, which we think was a good blueprint, and the bill we were talking about, on the SGR and Medicare, was a very solid bipartisan effort. Now the Senate, they’ve been able to do a couple things, they passed the Keystone pipeline, they were able to do the Congressional Review Act on the NLRB’s ambush elections, but by and large, Senate Democrats have been able to hold as a bloc, so they haven’t been moving stuff...

I think the jury’s still out.

Rep. Erik Paulsen:

Number one, there have been some stumbles, right out of the block. From my perspective, I just want to get some things done, I think we can get some more things done. The trafficking bills that are hung up in the Senate right now, I think the easiest thing is just moving House bills, that will happen.

The good news is, this is a big week for us … The most substantive legislation we will take up, which is a major win, this permanent doc fix. Passing that will allow us to do other health care initiatives, rather than doing this short-term, fix after fix after fix. That’s really important for Congress, I think, to get that under its belt, to show you can do long-term solutions.

The three-month mark will be a lot better after we pass that, versus looking back for the last two and a half months.

Rep. Betty McCollum (in a statement):

The first three months in any Congress is more about posturing than real governing. I am optimistic, mainly because behind the scenes it is clear to me that there is a group of Democrats and Republicans who all want the same things — to be sure that government responsibly meets the needs of the American people. When we focus on our shared agreement towards those goals, we can tackle big policy challenges.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Rep. Betty McCollum with Rep. Keith Ellison on Inauguration Day.

Rep. Keith Ellison:

I think the governing of this Congress has been abysmal ... We really have not done anything productive. Republicans’ repeated attacks on government are reflected in the fact that they have a lot of contempt for it and they don’t do it very well. They’re not good at governing, they can’t pass anything and important things that Americans need are going unaddressed.

What are we doing on infrastructure? Nothing. What are we doing on jobs? Nothing, they complain that even though Obama’s presided over many, many months of private job growth, they still criticize the economy. And there’s still criticism to be made on the economy, but what are they doing to address it? Absolutely nothing. What are they doing on immigration? Nothing.

There is no important issue that Americans are facing that Republicans are addressing. They simply have failed, utterly, at governance.

Rep. Tom Emmer:

The last couple of weeks, on the House side, it’s starting to come together. Within the Republican conference it’s been interesting to get to know the different perspectives ... As of yesterday, I saw some very interesting evolutions, people getting used to each other.

Now it will be interesting to see how the next three months go. It’s almost like people feeling out, not only where they are, but where everybody else is and how they can actually move what they believe in. Frankly, some people are more interested in stopping the things they don’t believe in. …

For me, the sky is still blue and the glass is half full.

Rep. Collin Peterson:

I think they’re actually doing better than I expected. They went through this thing on Homeland Security, but it got worked out. Now, for [Speaker John Boehner] and [Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi] to put this [doc fix] thing together, and for him to take on his right-wingers and for her to take on pro-choice, I think that’s a pretty big deal.

It’s certainly a better start than I expected.

REUTERS/Gary Cameron

Rep. Rick Nolan, right, watches as Lt. Bradley Wick, of Duluth, is awarded a Medal of Valor in February.

Rep. Rick Nolan

It’s not governing well, and it’s hard to imagine because the last Congress is one of the most unproductive in the history of the country. I’m still hopeful that this Congress will get its act together and start conducting itself under open rules and regular order, because that’s where common ground and bipartisanship comes from, that’s how you get things done…

We’ve had a couple of wins, and the Democrats have obviously been agitated of being shut out by the process. ... You know the old saying we have in the country: With all this manure we’re going to find a horse somewhere. I remain optimistic that we can find a way to restore regular order and in the process, find common ground and see some bipartisanship to get things done.

I haven’t given up yet.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Lean times at the Pentagon pit active-duty Army against National Guard

Devin Henry — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 15:33:53 +0000

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Tim Walz remembers the 1980s, when the National Guard was made up of “weekend warriors” training just a couple days a month, and when they were equipped accordingly.

“The National Guard got all the hand-me-downs, they were a second thought, and quite honestly they were an operational reserve force,” said Walz, a retired National Guard Command Sergeant Major. “If everything went to heck, the National Guard would be there as a last resort.”

That’s not the case today, after nearly 14 years of war in the Middle East in which reservists like the Guard fought side by side with the active component of the Army.

Which is what makes an ongoing spat between the Guard and the Army so, as Walz put it, “uncomfortable."

The Army’s active duty component and the National Guard are arguing over troop levels and who get to use which helicopters, a conflict that could have an impact on Minnesota National Guard staffing and operations. It’s one of the simmering disputes set off by larger questions of how to fund the armed services in an era of smaller conflicts abroad and budget caps at home.

There are two underlying issues causing this fight. The first is the basic question of how the American military should be organized and staffed as wars wind down. During relative peacetime, the force can be smaller, leaner and less expensive, and after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s the direction we’re headed in now.

But the second issue is newer, imposed by modern congressional fights over the deficit. Sequestration, across-the-board spending caps that took effect in 2013, limits how much Congress can spend on defense programs (as well as domestic programs). Both the Army and the National Guard have blamed sequestration as a root cause for their dust-up. As lawmakers took the dive into budget season this week, it serves as a reminder of what their blunt budget cap has done for a branch of federal spending both side say they support.

“[Sequestration] is the pebble in the pond and what you’re seeing the ripples, and some decisions that are causing other ripples,” said National Guard Association of the United States spokesman John Goheen.

A battle over helicopters

In 2013, the Army announced a plan it said would help freshen up the active-duty helicopter fleet while sticking to the budget targets under sequestration.

The “Aviation Restructuring Initiative” would cut to the number of aviation combat units in the post-war years and retire the Army’s fleet of aging Kiowa helicopters, replacing them with Apaches, combat helicopters also used by the National Guard. The Army would take these helicopters from the Guard and replace them with a different, older helicopter. The move could cut troop levels and costs — by reducing the number of aviation units — while also improving the modernity of the active fleet, two stated goals for the Army.

But the National Guard hit back, warning that taking away a combat helicopter hurts its ability to match the active fleet’s combat skills. The Guard and its advocates argue that, as a part-time fleet, it is, by its nature, cheaper to maintain than its active-duty counterpart, and that cutting its numbers and taking its equipment in the face of a tight budget ignored those facts (The Army says the plan will save $12 billion, and Defense Department studies reportedly show it would cost less than a Guard-proposed alternative).

“We get it, that the nation needs full time Army troops for rapid responses for future contingencies,” said Col. Kevin Olson, a Minnesota National Guard spokesman. “In the meantime, while war is winding down, it’s so much more cost effective to keep part-time Guard members to be utilized as needed.”

The Minnesota National Guard doesn’t have any of the Apache helicopters, but it might have to transfer some of its existing helicopters to other states that lose theirs. Olson said that could mean less equipment and reduced readiness for the Guard to conduct domestic missions, such as search and rescue or fire suppression.

Cutting combat units could mean Minnesota would lose some of its 13,000 service members, though Guard officials said they don’t have an estimated number. But they say moving Apaches from the Guard to the active force could hurt training efforts for troops it routinely deploys. Members of the St. Paul-based 34^th Combat Aviation Brigade are currently stationed in Kuwait helping command attack helicopter missions in the Middle East, for example.

Congressional commission steps in

In response to the spat, Congress approved the “Commission on the Future of the Army” last year, meant to study how to staff and finance the Army in the post-war years and make recommendations to Congress. The National Guard is banking on the commission listening to — and relieving — their worries about the potential for losing its helicopters, and Walz said the panel will give more insight on what the next steps should be overall.

Congress caused this fight in the first place by allowing sequestration to take effect two years ago, a fact not lost on lawmakers themselves.

Legislators grudgingly signed off on sequestration in 2011, hoping the threat of blind, across-the-board caps on both domestic and defense spending would push them toward a broader deficit reduction package. They failed, and the caps became law in 2013.

Today, sequestration is a common source of angst on Capitol Hill, on both sides of the aisle. Simply put, no one likes sequestration and would rather do away with it — if only there were consensus on what to do in its place.

The irrationality of sequestration

President Obama has proposed lifting sequestration on both domestic and defense programs and raising taxes to pay for new spending, including at the Defense Department. The GOP-controlled House passed a plan this week that would fund the department at the sequestration level but backfill it with $96 billion in wartime funding not subject to the cap. Fiscal hawks tussled with defense supporters over a portion of that fund and the fact that its spending isn’t offset elsewhere, but the House eventually passed the budget as written.

“We have our sons and daughters in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in northern Africa, we need to make sure that they are as well-trained and equipped as we can make them,” said Minnesota Republican Rep. John Kline, who supported the bill. “In the base, the sequestration budget, there’s not enough money to do it. That’s how we got to the solution which actually finally passed.”

As budget season heats up (this week’s vote was only an early step in that process), Minnesota’s two members on the House Armed Services Committee, Kline and Walz, both agree that the government should spend more on its military than sequestration mandates. The problem, as always, is how to get there.

Walz said Congress should “have the courage” to simply remove the caps and hold a debate on where to find savings elsewhere in the budget.

“Why would you cut 5 percent from a program that should be zeroed out and why would you cut 5 percent from a program that’s absolutely needed?” he said. “I think we’ve got to go back and do it, we’ve got to have the courage to get out of this thing.”

Kline, though, said the votes likely aren’t there to lift the caps. He said Congress should look toward the biggest chunk of the federal budget — entitlement spending — for savings. Entitlement reform is a long-shot goal for any Congress, but Kline is heartened by the fact the House passed a bipartisan bill fixing a Medicare funding problem just this week.

“We need that kind of thinking now to look at, how do you get rid of sequestration?” he said.

As for the National Guard-Army spat, both Kline and Walz said they want to make sure the Guard is properly equipped going forward. But they acknowledged there would be tension between active and reservist units so long as sequestration is on the books.

“At the end of this, my guess is that the Guard doesn’t get everything they want, and what we’re hearing form the [U.S. Army] Chief of Staff, he’s probably not going to get everything he wants,” Kline said. “You’ve got to balance here.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

The very serious politics of ‘vote-a-rama’

Devin Henry — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 14:56:36 +0000

CC/Flickr/cursedthing

WASHINGTON — Today will see one of the more interesting spectacles on the congressional calendar: before the Senate votes on its budget outline, members will spend hours and hours on the floor voting on dozens of amendments to the bill, likely deep into the night.

The process is called the “vote-a-rama,” when any member can offer practically any amendment to the budget bill and force a vote on it from their colleagues. Budget resolutions aren't binding, so the votes won't count from a purely legislative perspective.

But they have a long political shelf life, as we saw in Minnesota last year.

Throughout his U.S. Senate campaign, Republican candidate Mike McFadden accused his opponent, Sen. Al Franken, of voting to “raise taxes over 40 times.” It was a charge he used in campaign ads and in debates and on the campaign trail, based on a number that ballooned during the last vote-a-rama.

In March 2013, during an overnight session, senators voted on dozens of amendments to that year's budget resolution. Some were from Democrats pushing tax-related amendments that conformed with the party's platform. Many were from Republicans, designed to force Democrats into taking tough political votes, especially against tax breaks.

McFadden's campaign keyed in on nine of those votes, from one against an amendment that would “repeal tax increases on low- and middle-income individuals enacted under the 2010 health care overhaul” to another in favor of imposing a “fee on carbon pollution and [using] revenues collected to reduce the deficit.” WCCO ran the campaign's whole list of tax increases last September.

The McFadden campaign wanted to push the narrative that Franken was a big-taxing liberal, and nearly a quarter of the votes it used to make that point happened on just one evening in Franken's first term: the vote-a-rama.

Neither Minnesota senator is up for re-election next year, but votes taken tonight are likely to loom large for those on the ballot in 2016. Some, like Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, will use this process to frame their agenda ahead of a presidential run. Many others will find themselves defending their votes during their re-election campaign. Politico has a preview of the type of amendments we might see this time around.

Having won his race last year, Franken will be there to cast a vote on every one.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Minnesota is losing its voice on federal transportation policy

Devin Henry — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:26:26 +0000

CC/Flickr/d Wang

The rail lines around Ranier, Minnesota have come under increasing strain in recent years as oil shipments from Canada have risen.

WASHINGTON — The border crossing in Ranier, Minnesota, near International Falls, is one of the busiest rail points of entry in the United States, and these days it’s straining under a big increase in oil trains streaming in from Canada.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan went looking for ways to ease growing congestion at the crossing — 1,500 miles away, in Brownsville, Texas, on the U.S.’s border with Mexico.

Several years ago, Brownsville had congestion problems like Ranier’s, until officials moved their customs inspection station several miles deeper into American territory.

“Perhaps the same type of solution could work for Ranier/I-Falls,” Nolan wrote in a constituent newsletter in February. “I plan to discuss what I learned in Brownsville with officials in Ranier and International Falls as we continue to seek a long-term fix to the rail congestion that is causing so much difficulty for residents and visitors on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border.”

Transportation issues like rail congestion are the “number one primary domestic policy focus” for Nolan, the last Minnesotan on the House Transportation Committee, a panel on which the state used to have a lot of clout. Until this year, two Minnesotans have served on the panel every session since at least the mid-2000s. Committee Democrats were long led by Rep. Jim Oberstar, whose seat Nolan now holds.

But when Rep. Tim Walz left the committee and leadership declined Rep. Tom Emmer’s request to join it this session, Nolan became the last Minnesotan left. He’s cognizant of the legacy of his seat, and he said he’s taking steps to compensate for a state whose influence has waned, even as Congress girds for another big transportation fight this year.

Blatnik, Oberstar held Nolan's seat

Rep. John Blatnik

Minnesotan involvement in federal transportation policy stretches back to the 1950s and Rep. John Blatnik, a liberal from the 8^th District who is credited with helping secure funding for the interstate highway system.

Oberstar succeeded Blatnik and immediately went to work on transportation issues, rising to become the committee’s chairman in 2007. Oberstar, who died last year, was regarded as an expert on transportation issues and fought to bring federal dollars — for highways and airports, and even bike trails — back to Minnesota during his tenure. He was a key player in transportation project authorization bills and called for even greater investment in infrastructure to bolster Congress' 2009 economic stimulus act. At the end of his tenure, he took credit for provisions in the bill that he said created 1.3 million jobs, but he wanted to do even more.

Rep. Jim Oberstar

“I still hear around the Congress here from so many people that if the president and the Congress had listened more carefully to Jim Oberstar, the economic recovery act would have been significantly better, both in terms of creating good paying jobs and in rebuilding our infrastructure,” Nolan said. “But he wasn’t listened to to the extent that he should have been.”

Oberstar, whose portrait now hangs alongside other chairmen in the committee’s hearing room, was the panel’s highest-profile Minnesotan, but not usually the only one there. Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy served on the committee during his tenure, and Walz joined in his first term, in 2007. When Chip Cravaack defeated Oberstar in 2010, he served his lone session in the House on the committee.

Committee 'lost its luster'

Sen. Amy Klobuchar sits on the Senate's Transportation Committee, but in the House, Nolan is the only one left.

Walz left last year to focus on armed services issues, and though Emmer had asked to be on Transportation, leadership assigned him to Foreign Affairs instead. He was also assigned a spot on the Agriculture Committee, which has become the state’s power center among congressional committees: Rep. Collin Peterson is the panel’s ranking Democrat, and Walz, Nolan and Emmer all hold seats.

Walz left Transportation disheartened by the politicization and gridlock that had developed on what had traditionally been one of Congress’ most bipartisan committees. Until recently, Congress had passed long-term bills authorizing transportation and infrastructure projects with broad support. But lawmakers haven’t passed a bill lasting longer than two years since 2005, approving only short-term measures instead, and otherwise fighting over spending priorities (highways versus transit, for example) and funding mechanisms. The committee’s effectiveness has been diminished along the way.

“The committee no longer works the way it used to, and the decisions are made at the top and by leadership and that’s it,” Walz said. “So at a point in time where [its reputation] comes back, I can see where there would be a desire to get more on there. But quite honestly, that committee has lost its luster. Kicking the can has really soured a lot of people.”

Nolan embraces role

Rep. Rick Nolan

In spite of the increasing gridlock, the Transportation Committee remains a popular one among members of Congress. Nolan said he needed to use his seniority to win a spot on the committee when he rejoined the House in 2013 (he served three terms in the 1970s).

Nolan knows Congress has circumvented the committee process — it’s one of his biggest gripes about modern legislating — but he has embraced his position on the panel this session. He serves on four of its six subcommittees, more than anyone else except the ranking Republican and Democrat. He said he’s working with other members of the Minnesota delegation on local transportation issues around the state, such as a proposed Duluth-to-Minneapolis passenger train, and he has held a series of transportation forums throughout his district.

Nolan said he wants to take a multi-pronged approach to transportation, finding ways to invest in not just in roads and bridges but also waterways (he represents the port of Duluth), rail and airports. He says it’s good for jobs — someone has to fill those potholes and build new bridges — and for reviving America’s aging infrastructure system.

The problem, of course, is paying for all that.

Congress must pass a bill

Congress has to pass a new transportation authorization bill before the end of May, a process that was so snagged by an election-year fight over funding last summer that Congress passed a short-term bill instead of an overhaul.

The federal gas tax, the main funding mechanism for transportation, is providing less and less revenue as cars become more efficient. Though members across the ideological spectrum have floated a number of solutions to meet a raising price tag for transportation projects and infrastructure repair, there’s no consensus on the right way forward.

President Obama wants to spend $478 billion on transportation over six years, and he’s proposed paying for it by giving corporations a temporarily lower tax rate on bringing their overseas cash holdings back to the United States. Some want to raise the gas tax for the first time in more than 20 years (something some red-state Legislatures have done this year, but with soft Republican support nationally). Others have proposed a mileage tax, or a point-of-sale tax on gas.

Nolan said he is “willing to support a measure for new revenue,” or even using general tax revenue for transportation needs, but he doesn’t want to take sides until the committee is further along in the process of writing a new bill. That is, if they ever get there. A protracted fight over new revenue could sink hopes for a long-term funding bill and force Congress to pass another short-term bill in its place, the “kicking the can down the road” proposition that turned Walz off to the committee.

Republicans, who now control both chamber of Congress, will need to find a solution that works for Obama and congressional Democrats. If they can’t, Nolan suggested the very unlikely proposition that Republican leadership spurn their conservative factions and bring a bill to the floor with majority Democratic support.

Either way, Nolan hopes there will be a breakthrough yet.

“We’re right at where we were two years ago,” he said. “We’re holding hearings, we have governors and mayors in today giving their testimony, to prepare ourselves to write a new surface transportation bill. My hope is that they let us do that.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Klobuchar holds Senate floor to push for action on trafficking bill

Devin Henry — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 20:24:58 +0000

CC/Flickr/Brandi Korte

WASHINGTON — For more than two hours before Democrats formally blocked a human trafficking bill for the third time on Wednesday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar held the Senate floor and read a book, protesting the political debate that has stalled work on the bill.

Klobuchar’s speech came as she led Senate Democrats’ floor debate ahead of the vote. She invited other members to speak with her, but she was alone until soon before the Senate’s vote, working her way through parts of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s “Half the Sky,” a book on international sex trafficking.

“I just decided after being somewhat disgusted by all the anger that I’ve heard in this chamber that maybe I would just starting reading from this book,” she said during her speech. “When my colleagues want to come down, I welcome it. But I only ask them one thing, that if maybe they could just consider the issue at hand and stop all this vengeance and anger and then maybe we will have an opportunity, if we stop throwing darts, to get this done.”

Klobuchar is the lead Democratic co-sponsor of the Justice for Trafficking Victims Act, a bill written by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn that would use fines and assets from convicted human traffickers to establish a fund for victims. Republicans included — and Democrats say they missed — a provision prohibiting using funds under the program for abortions, sparking a nasty political fight and marring a bill that, without the provision, would likely have passed unanimously. A Klobuchar official told the Associated Press on Tuesday that an aide in her office had seen the language before a committee approved it last month, but didn’t warn Klobuchar or other Democrats about it first.

The fight has paralyzed the Senate for more than a week, delaying a vote on Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, an issue Klobuchar mentioned throughout her Wednesday speech.

The rancor in the Senate is in sharp contrast to the way the House passed a slate of sex trafficking bills in January, when Republicans and Democrats held joint press conferences hailing the effort as a bipartisan victory. Rep. Erik Paulsen, a Minnesota Republican who sponsored several of those bills, suggested the Senate take up the House’s version of the legislation, which didn’t include the abortion language, to defuse the fight.

“Democratic Senate leadership is probably still struggling over being in minority status, and probably thinking of ways to, how do they makes changes in legislation,” he said. “I don’t know, there are some of those issues going on probably, and then the Republicans dig in, and it’s just a back and forth, it’s politics as usual.”

Behind the scenes, lawmakers are looking for a way to break the impasse, but nothing has emerged yet, even as Republicans have tried three times to bring the bill, with the abortion language attached, to the floor for a vote. Klobuchar’s Wednesday speech — part a book reading, part an appeal for the Senate to work together — was her most public display of frustration over this process yet.

“People should focus on the issue at hand instead of partisan fights that have been going on.” Klobuchar said midway through her speech. “I think this institution is better than what we’ve seen the last week.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Klobuchar was back on the floor reading her book. She said she would move on to a new one on Thursday.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

How Congress manages to kill a bill all its members support

Devin Henry — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 15:16:15 +0000

WASHINGTON — It should have been easy. A Senate bill aimed at combating human trafficking with sponsors from both parties, including Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Minnesota’s own Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, passed out of committee unanimously and looked set for easy passage in the full Senate this week. After all, who isn’t against sex trafficking?

But nothing is easy in this Congress, and the all-but-assured passage of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act is now in jeopardy after Democrats noticed language inserted by Republicans in the legislation that would ban the use of funds and fees collected by the bill for abortion.

And so, in the theater of the absurd that increasingly characterizes Congress, Democrats spent the week promising to block an anti-human trafficking bill co-sponsored by many of their own, including Klobuchar, while members of both parties gave dueling floor speeches and accusatory press conferences blaming each other for politicizing and potentially sinking the sex trafficking work.

Hyde amendment

The legislation in question would take fines and assets from convicted human traffickers and establish a fund for victim rehabilitation. The abortion language, a version of the “Hyde Amendment,” a 40-year-old prohibition on taxpayer funding for abortions, bans the use of money collected under this legislation for abortion.

Democrats say this amendment would apply the abortion ban not just to taxpayer dollars but fees paid by prosecuted criminals, and it would essentially take effect permanently for those funds. When it’s attached to budget bills, Congress has to pass the Hyde Amendment on an annual basis.

Republicans say the bill just maintains a status quo that Congress reaffirms every year: no taxpayer funding for abortions. But abortion rights are about as sensitive and divisive a subject there is, and Democrats argue it shouldn’t be connected to something as bipartisan as anti-human trafficking legislation.

Last year’s version of the bill did not include the language, nor was it anywhere in a slate of human trafficking bills the House passed last month.

The Senate’s human trafficking bill applies the amendment through dense legalese, but it's been in this bill since it was introduced in January, giving Democrats, especially those with legislative expertise, plenty of time to spot it. But Klobuchar and other Democrats say they didn’t know about it until earlier this week. They acknowledged, per Politico, that they simply missed it until now. They say Republicans could have done more to warn them it was there, but Cornyn said at a press conference that “there were discussions on the staff level” about its inclusion.

Publicly, Klobuchar has mostly let leadership and Cornyn, her ally here, fight over the abortion language, alluding to it only in passing during a Wednesday floor speech. In a statement to MinnPost, she said, “my colleagues and I are continuing to work through issues, including the Hyde provision, which needs to be fixed. My focus is on finding a path forward so that we can get this done.”

Bipartisanship lost

This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Bills combating sex trafficking should be easy, bipartisan victories for a Congress that will see very few of those this session.

The House, usually marred by its own political dysfunction, passed its sex trafficking bills without opposition earlier this year. Last month in the Senate, the Judiciary Committee unanimously signed off on this bill, with the Hyde Amendment apparently hiding inside. Klobuchar and Cornyn penned an op-ed calling on Congress to pass the legislation, and as late as Monday morning, before the abortion language came to light, Democratic leader Harry Reid was calling on the Senate to support the bill. Now he says Democrats will block it until the language is taken out.

At Republicans' Thursday press conference, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman said he foresaw Congress passing the bill and President Obama hosting “a signing ceremony that will look unlike most signing ceremonies, in that there will be a bipartisan group there, and hopefully there will be kids up front, and it will be about how even in this terribly partisan environment we have in Washington, D.C., we can make progress on important issues.”

That would have been the case with maybe any other version of this bill, but it’s not looking likely now. Both sides are entrenched and the atmosphere is poisoned. Reid has accused Republicans of “hijacking” the anti-trafficking bill. Cornyn said Democrats “should be ashamed of themselves” if they block it over abortion.

The Senate is out for the weekend, and unless something changes, it will return to a stalemate on human trafficking. On the floor Thursday, McConnell said the Senate will “stay on this bill until we pass it,” but Reid said Democrats will block it until it’s changed.

“The bill dealing with human trafficking is going to pass this Congress,” he said. “But it’s going to pass this Congress without the abortion language in it.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Why the EPA’s Clean Power Plan makes even green Minnesota a little nervous

Devin Henry — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:51:33 +0000

WASHINGTON — It has one of those sunny, innocuous Washington-esque names that doesn’t nearly convey its scope, or the controversy it’s about to attract.

The Clean Power Plan is an ambitious proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent nationally before 2030. The rule sets individual reduction targets for each state, but state governments have the leeway to write proposals for reducing their emissions as they see fit.

The rule will be expensive — the EPA projects compliance costs could eventually hit $8.8 billion annually — and utility companies are leery because the plan targets coal, a cheap and prevalent source of energy.

Many Republicans are downright hostile towards it, which indicates legislative and legal challenges.

But until those challenges materialize, many states are pushing forward formulating their approaches to reducing carbon emissions under the plan. Minnesota is one of them. Under the EPA’s plan, the state has one of the most aggressive reduction targets in the nation, but one that officials say they expect to hit.

“When you look at the programs that we have in place, I think they’re all moving us down the pathway that will allow us to approach the target the EPA has proposed,” David Thornton, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency administrator, said at a Capitol Hill event on Tuesday.

Minnesota to rely on 2007 state law

Minnesota’s target is a 41 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 2030, using 2012 numbers as a starting point (that number could change before the EPA finalizes its rule this summer).

Minnesota’s target is one of the highest in a nation, largely due to the state’s lower-emission natural gas power plants, and an EPA expectation that it will rely on those more going forward than elsewhere.

Carbon emissions targets

Minnesota had one of the lowest carbon emissions rates of peer states in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator power transmission network…

…but its carbon-emissions-reduction target set by the EPA is among the most aggressive, at 41%.

Source: Minnesota PCA

States aren’t bound by the EPA’s expectations of how they will hit the targets, as long as they meet the percentage-reduction goals. There are a few options available to states: they can clean up existing power plants (many of Minnesota’s biggest are coal-based), rely on renewable or nuclear power, reduce demand through energy efficiency programs or some combination of those.

Minnesota officials have their misgivings about the target, and they hope the EPA will tweak it before it finalizes its rule this summer. They say the guidelines are based on some faulty data, and they would like to be able to take credit for work Minnesota did on emissions before 2012, the year that set the EPA’s emissions baseline.

In spite of concerns about Minnesota’s specific target, state officials are supportive of the plan in general. “We don’t want the EPA to weaken it overall, because we want it to be as aggressive as possible,” Thornton said.

The state is considering how to comply with the plan, and Thornton is bullish on Minnesota’s ability to meet even these lofty goals because they could fit under a law the state already has in place. In 2007 lawmakers approved the Next Generation Energy Act, which sets a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions before 2050, requiring utility companies get 25 percent of their power production from renewable sources by 2025, and improving efficiency in the state’s electric grid annually.

Compliance with that law could help the state reach the goals set by the EPA. MPCA numbers show greenhouse gas emissions from electricity use fell by 16 percent between 2003 and 2012, and Thornton said the state’s utilities are on pace to meet their renewables goal. Some Democrats, in fact, wants to increase the renewable energy standard to 40 percent by 2030.

“We would like to see that happen. It would certainly help. And we’re certainly headed that direction anyway,” Thornton said. “There are a lot of good reasons to increase the renewable energy standard. Until we know what EPA’s final target is, it’s hard to know if we absolutely need to do that.”

Industry: EPA has exceeded authority

The Clean Power Plan is central to the Obama administration’s approach to tackling climate change, and it’s an aggressive plan, enough so to have drawn backlash from energy companies.

Utility groups, including those backed by coal interests, have warned that the plan could lead to higher fuel costs for consumers (coal is cheap) and a less efficient power grid (environmental groups and regulators say experience doesn’t back that up). In coal producing states like Kentucky, officials and lawmakers worry it could mean less demand and fewer jobs.

The industry has also questioned whether the EPA has the power to enforce these rules. The agency made the rules under a section of the Clean Air Act that the EPA says gives it power to regulate emissions from existing power plants, but the industry — and several red-state governors who have already sued over the rules — dispute that interpretation of the law.

Minnesota’s affected power plants

According to the MPCA, the following power plants in Minnesota will be affected by the EPA’s proposed rules.

Company	Plant	Primary fuel types
Austin Utilities	NE Power Station	Coal
Minnesota Municipal Power Agency	Faribault Energy Park	Natural gas
Hutchinson Utilities	Hutchinson #2	Natural gas
Interstate Power & Light	Fox Lake	Oil
-	LSP Cottage Grove Cogeneration Facility	Natural gas
-	Mankato Energy Center LLC	Natural gas
Minnesota Power	Laskin Energy Center	Coal
Minnesota Power	Tac Harbor Energy Ctr	Coal
Minnesota Power	Boswell Energy Ctr	Coal
Minnesota Power	Hibbard Renewable Energy Ctr	Biomass, coal
Otter Tail Power Co	Hoot Lake Plant	Coal
Rochester Public Utilities	Silver Lake	Coal
Xcel Energy	Allen S King Generating	Coal
Xcel Energy	Black Dog	Coal, natural gas
Xcel Energy	Riverside Generating Plant	Natural gas
Xcel Energy	Sherburne Generating Plant	Coal
Xcel Energy	High Bridge	Natural gas

Jason Bohrer, the CEO of Lignite Energy Council, a pro-coal group of energy companies in North Dakota and Minnesota, said he thinks the agency may also be overstepping its bounds, or at the very least, its expertise, by so strictly regulating power plants. The agency knows how to deal with pollution, he said, but not necessarily the energy industry.

“I don’t think this is the appropriate regulation for the EPA to issue at all,” Bohrer said. “I don’t think they have the legal authority, and I don’t think they have the expertise even if they had the legal authority.”

Politics could get messy

Bohrer said state regulators are making a “good faith effort” to write plans that give utility companies flexibility to comply with the rule. But rather than giving the EPA the job of writing new power plant regulations, Bohrer recommended a more democratic, but dramatically less likely, approach: ask Congress to do it instead.

“I think people in the industry have said, whether we get [regulation] from EPA or from Congress, it’s probably on its way,” he said. “But we would rather have a legislative solution rather than a regulatory solution.”

Already in St. Paul and Washington, lawmakers are considering how to deal with the Clean Power Plan, but they’re unlikely to find any common ground on what should come next.

Republicans in the state Legislature have said they want to be able to sign off on any new Minnesota emissions plan under the EPA’s requirements. A House panel passed a bill saying so Monday, over objections from some Democrats and the MPCA, which says it would constrict the time they have to write their plan.

“The timing issue is difficult enough, and that would take what is already an aggressive 12-month work process and collapse it into six months,” Thornton said.

In Washington, two coal-country Republicans hold key positions that would let them take direct aim at the plan if they want to.

First, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader. He wrote an op-ed last week encouraging states to not write their own clean power regulations and let the federal government step in and do it for them. That could help bolster legal challenges against potential EPA overreach, he wrote.

John Moore, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Fund, said he doesn’t expect that to happen in many places. States will want the flexibility the plan provides them to define their own emissions standards.

“It would be foolhardy to the extreme,” he said.

McConnell's power is blunted by the fact he would need a lot of Democratic support to avoid a filibuster and pass something though the Senate. But there's also Kentucky U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Rogers’ committee handles federal spending, and could conceivably use the power of the purse to try blocking the plan. When EPA administrator Gina McCarthy testified before the committee last month, Rogers criticized President Obama’s budget for requesting $4 billion to help states begin to implement their emissions plans, which he said “are shuttering power plants all over the country and causing coal mines to close their doors.”

Republicans might be able to find a few coal-state Democratic allies in any potential fight against the EPA, but many Democrats have sided with the administration — Minnesota Sen. Al Franken released a statement Tuesday saying the EPA’s proposal will “help clean up the air and create a lot of renewable energy and energy efficiency jobs in Minnesota and across the nation.”

Finally, if Republicans do try to force the issue legislatively, Obama would likely threaten to veto anything they try to do against the rules.

All of that — a president pushing a legacy policy, an important (and deep-pocketed) industry opposed to that policy, and a divided Congress — make a legislative fix to the plan unlikely. Legal challenges to the EPA’s authority are inevitable, but until then, states across the country will have to determine how best to meet their new goals.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Kline, Republicans give overview of long-awaited ACA replacement bill

Devin Henry — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 14:56:30 +0000

WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans have long been on an elusive hunt for a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, but a group of them, including Rep. John Kline, think they've come up with the solution.

Leadership tapped Kline as one of three committee chairman to write a replacement plan earlier this year. Though past efforts have failed, Kline and his compatriots used Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing on the ACA's insurance subsidies to preview what they hope will make the cut this year.

A ruling against the law’s subsidies could end government support for up to 8 million people who got health coverage through federal exchanges, potentially forcing them off out of the market entirely, driving up costs for everyone else and threatening the very nature of the law. (Minnesota established its own exchange, so beneficiaries here aren’t directly at risk.)

Republicans are using that possibility to make their pitch: give the states the opportunity to bypass the law’s coverage mandates and allow them to set up their own insurance frameworks; maintain a handful of politically popular Obamacare coverage requirements; and create a tax credit for individuals who need help buying health coverage.

Politically, it’s exceedingly unlikely the three big factions of lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and President Obama — could ever agree on a replacement plan even if the subsidies fail at the Supreme Court. And details are still in short supply on what exactly Kline and the Republicans will include in their bill. But this is nonetheless the foundation on which they are working to build their plan.

“Right now, people are pretty dug in,” Kline said Wednesday. “The Democrats are pretty firmly supporting Obamacare, and that’s what you’d expect. But the point is, if King v. Burwell (the case before the Supreme Court questioning the exchanges) comes down the other way, then from their perspective, then you really do have something that has to be addressed. We want to make sure that we’re ready to do that, as well as a long-term replacement.”

Details scarce right now

With health insurance subsidies potentially on the chopping block at the Court, Kline’s plan, written with fellow chairmen Reps. Fred Upton and Paul Ryan, would look to replace them by instead offering tax credits to those who need them to buy insurance.

The credits would be available either immediately when someone needs them to buy insurance or refundable at tax time, Kline wrote in a Tuesday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the plan. But that’s about all we know — Kline didn’t have details Wednesday on how big the subsidies would be, or who would qualify for them. That will come later, Kline said, and probably from Ryan, who chairs the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

Specifics were scarce on Wednesday. The op-ed was meant mainly to introduce the ideas that will guide any GOP health care legislation this session. But since a bill hasn’t been formalized, it’s hard to compare what Kline and Republicans want to do with what’s in the law already.

Much of the proposal is made up of policies long supported by Republicans. Ideas they say would bring down the cost of health care — such as allowing insurance purchases across state lines and reforming medical liability — are hallmarks of GOP health care reform plans, none of which have gained traction with Democrats.

Since the ACA became law, Republicans have railed against Obamacare mandates like the individual coverage requirement and the forcing of employers to offer health insurance to workers. Democrats have rejected efforts to repeal them. The Republicans' replacement bill would give states the chance to opt out of those mandates and build insurance requirements of their own.

And though they plan to preserve politically popular aspects of the ACA — a pre-existing conditions ban, allowing those under 26 years old to stay on their parents’ plans — Kline couldn’t say how they would fit those into the context of a replacement bill meant to cut back on federal health care mandates.

“We’re basically not mandate people, so we’re working not to do mandates wherever we can,” he said. “But again, I can’t tell you what the language is going to be here. All I can tell you is we are actively working on it all the time.”

First replacement bill faces tough test

Republicans have never taken up a full replacement bill before. Though they have tried — with some, but little, success — to repeal or replace sections of the ACA more than 50 times since they took control of the House in 2011, Kline said a Supreme Court ruling against the ACA in the King v. Burwell case could provide the impetus to pass a full replacement bill this session.

“The action of the Supreme Court is going to force something, and it’s helpful that that’s going to happen,” Kline said. “Republicans have been talking about an alternative, we’ve been criticized about voting again and again to repeal Obamacare. … We are looking to courts and we understand the courts will make their decision whenever they make it, and we probably won’t hear the court’s decision until June.”

Passing a bill will be difficult. Republicans are unlikely to find willing partners in Democrats, who continue to support the ACA and who haven’t proposed any potential fixes to the law should the court gut the subsidy program. President Obama told Reuters this week, “if they rule against us, we'll have to take a look at what our options are, but I'm not going to anticipate that.”

Democrats have mostly been making the case that the court shouldn’t rule against the subsidies because it would threaten the effectiveness of the entire law.

“This thing completely unravels,” Minnesota Sen. Al Franken said at a press conference after oral arguments Wednesday. “That’s what at stake, and the Supreme Court is supposed to take that into account.”

Oral arguments in King v. Burwell began yesterday and Justices Kennedy and Roberts seem to be in play as to which side they will join.

Republicans will need to coalesce around a single plan if they're to pass something, since other Republican groups are working on their own ACA plans, as well. The conservative Republican Study Committee, in on op-ed of its own, has proposed a different health care-related tax plan, effectively a tax cut "for the majority of Americans" that could go toward health insurance.

Ryan has worked to distance his and Kline’s tax credit proposal from the subsidies in existing law, saying Tuesday that the ACA’s subsidies are there to force people into Obamacare, while Republicans would provide tax relief to let people buy plans outside of it. Kline said “I certainly hope” to get buy-in from conservatives for his proposal.

Ron Pollack, the executive director of the pro-ACA group Families USA, who was helping lead demonstrations outside the court Wednesday morning, said he doesn’t expect any sort of legislative response from Congress if the court undoes the subsidies.

“This is obviously an attempt to tell the court, well, don’t worry if you rule in a way that takes away the subsidies,” he said. “But if it ever gets to Congress and they have to fix it, it won’t get fixed.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Why three Minnesota lawmakers skipped Netanyahu’s speech

Devin Henry — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 15:38:29 +0000

WASHINGTON — The final media count: at least 56 Democratic members skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday speech to Congress, three Minnesotans among them.

Sen. Al Franken and Reps. Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison shared concerns about the speech: it had turned too political and it took place without buy-in from the Obama administration. Each watched from their offices as Netanyahu picked apart the ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and a coalition including the United States, warning against a nuclear Iran and the diplomatic effort he said would do nothing to prevent that from happening (Eric Black has more on the policies within the speech).

Netanyahu has left, but the Iran problem hasn’t. The U.S. and five other countries are looking to forge a deal with Iran in which the country's nuclear capabilities are diminished and foreign governments get the opportunity to verify that, in exchange for loosening economic sanctions on the country. But congressional Republicans are ready and willing to move forward with even more sanctions on Iran before the nuclear negotiations end, and at the very least they could consider a bill giving lawmakers a vote on the final deal — currently, the administration could agree to the deal without seeking ratification from Congress.

For the three Minnesota Netanyahu boycotters, the message was similar: Congress should keep its hands off the matter until at least later this month, when the Iran negotiations hit a critical deadline.

“I think we do have a role to play but I think the role that we’re playing is undermining the executive at this point,” Ellison said.

Franken met with Netanyahu later

Franken said Monday he would skip the speech because he was worried it would be a “partisan spectacle,” and afterward he said he didn’t regret sitting it out.

“In that chamber, things get to be a little bit of a theater,” he said. “The way it was done was too partisan for me, and I just felt uncomfortable being a part of a partisan spectacle.”

Franken backs the nuclear talks with Iran and said he “wasn’t entirely in agreement with” Netanyahu on what to do with Iran’s nuclear program (that's an understatement, considering Netanyahu came out strongly against the negotiations).

Franken was one of about 10 senators to sit down with Netanyahu after the speech, and Franken said he asked him how he and the Obama administration, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, could have such divergent views on Iran.

“He basically said they had different perspectives because America is in a safer neighborhood than Israel,” Franken said. “It wasn’t as responsive to my question as I would have liked, but that’s ok.”

Senate Republicans have floated the possibility of passing preemptive sanctions against Iran before the March 24 deadline for the country and the group of six negotiating partners to reach a preliminary nuclear deal. Many Democrats, such as the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, support that effort, but they have said they want to wait until the deadline to take that step.

But Republicans have also introduced a bill that would give Congress the power to review and sign off on any potential Iran deal, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday it could come to the floor soon. Franken said that’s not the best approach right now.

“I certainly think that before the 24^th we shouldn’t do anything, either on sanctions or whether Congress should vote on this,” he said. “I think it would not be helpful for the talks.”

Franken said Iran negotiations should yield an “intrusive inspection regime” to make sure Iran can’t build nuclear weapons and slow down the country’s enrichment capabilites enough to catch bomb development early “if they cheat.” Kerry briefed senators on the progress of negotiations last week.

“I want to look at this at the end of the day,” Franken said. And if Iran walks away from the negotiations, could he support new sanctions then?

“Oh absolutely,” he said. “Yeah, that wouldn’t be hard at all.”

McCollum: 'A prime time address for the prime minister'

Since Obama became president, either the House, Senate or both have voted on Iran sanctions or resolutions at least 10 times, and passed them all easily, often unanimously, according to numbers from GovTrack.

So Rep. Betty McCollum agreed with Franken that Congress could sanction Iran further if nuclear negotiations fail.

“Congress can pass a sanction bill in the drop of a hat if the Iranians either go back on the agreement that the White House has in place after the negotiations have taken place, or if they walk away from the negotiations,” she said. “To pass a sanction bill saying, ‘in case if’ and ‘if you don’t,’ while we’re doing a negotiation, is Congress just getting in the way.”

McCollum said “there was nothing that was surprising” in Netanyahu’s speech, during which he said that no nuclear deal is better than the one being discussed. “He doesn’t support any diplomatic solution to furthering this negotiation,” McCollum said.

McCollum skipped the speech in part because she was worried about its implications on the Israeli elections. Israelis go to polls on March 17, and polls show a tight race for Netanyahu’s Likud Party. In a Washington Post op-ed last week, McCollum said she worried that Netanyahu would make campaign ads using video of his speech in front of the United States Congress, a powerful symbolic image in Israel.

“Clearly they had an agenda and they wanted to deliver a prime time address for the prime minister two weeks before his election,” she said. (Netanyahu’s speech started around 11 a.m. Eastern time, or about 6 p.m. in Israel.)

Ellison: Congress can debate sanctions after a deal

Ellison said Netanyahu’s speech was so similar to past warnings about Iran that “it did not have to be given. It certainly didn’t have to be given from here.”

Ellison disputed some of Netanyahu’s claims about the nature of the negotiations, such as the operational scope of the Iranian nuclear program after a deal is reached, which Netanyahu said would be vast. And while Netanyahu said it’s “just not true” that failed negotiations, combined with harsher sanctions, could increase the risk of war with Iran, Ellison said he’s worried about just that: if the U.S. and others walk away, Iranian hardliners could ramp up bomb production, warranting a potential military response.

When it comes to Congress, Ellison said lawmakers would get the chance to debate the effectiveness of sanctions if negotiations succeed and “the president comes to us, as he invariably will, and say, can you start peeling off sanctions." (Iran has said they want every sanction lifted in any nuclear deal.)

And if negotiations fail — something even President Obama has said is possible — Ellison didn’t rule out voting to take a tougher line against Iran.

“I’ve voted for sanctions before, and I’ve voted against sanctions before,” he said. “For me, it’s all about diminishing the threat of weaponization. That’s the goal.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Congress' Seven Steps of Governing by Crisis

Devin Henry — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 15:47:44 +0000

WASHINGTON — Congress made a whole lot of noise but not a lot of progress last week on Department of Homeland Security funding. Whether you prefer the metaphorical (“punting,” “kicking the can down the road”) or the technical (“passing a one-week continuing resolution”), we’re back in crisis mode this week after lawmakers extended funding for the department just through this Friday.

It’s a pattern that’s becoming old hat for lawmakers. Since Republicans took the House in 2011 and divided government returned to Washington, partisanship has colored every debate on Capitol Hill and what were once business-as-usual fiscal votes, have turned into panicked, last-minute legislating.

From raising the debt ceiling — the statutory limit on federal debt — to simply funding the government, nothing is easy anymore, but everything follows Congress’ Seven Steps of Governing by Crisis:

Step 1: Schedule the crisis

These crises, from potential government shutdowns to debt-default deadlines, don’t just sneak up on Congress. Lawmakers know that they have to fund the government, for example, and when, exactly, they need to do it. For these routine steps to morph into a crisis, they have to actively avoid doing what they need to do to solve their problems — or even take steps to make them worse.

Recently, Republicans have tried to use budget fights to force policy concessions. Democrats, from President Obama on down, have refused to play ball. Together, that leads to stalemates like the current one over Homeland Security funding. Or take the government shutdown of 2013, when the GOP refused to fund the government over objections to the Affordable Care Act.

When it comes to Homeland Security, lawmakers knew in December that they needed to fund the department, but Republicans chose to fund it only on a short-term basis, just through the end of February, so they could use the budget as leverage against President Obama’s immigration executive actions. In passing the budget and setting that deadline, they knew there would be a budget fight last week (and now this week, too). They had scheduled the crisis.

Step 2: Do nothing at all

The easiest step in the process. Once the crisis is on the calendar, nothing of substance gets done until the deadline is a matter of weeks or days away. Lawmakers give speeches, send letters, and write op-eds, but generally Parkinson’s Law reigns. When Congress passed its Homeland Security bill in December, for example, it immediately left town on for a three-week recess.

Step 3: Pretend to “solve” the crisis

In the mid-stages of the crisis, both sides will try to claim moral high ground by pushing proposals to “solve” the problem. These plans are often partisan and base-pleasing, and dead-on-arrival as actual solutions.

Nowhere is this more evident than before the October 2013 government shutdown. Republicans had hoped to attach provisions delaying the ACA to must-pass bills funding the government. The New York Times has a great graphic detailing the back-and-forth game the GOP House and the Democratic Senate played next. The House would send the Senate funding bills with anti-ACA provisions, and the Senate would send “clean” versions, or bills without the provisions, right back. None of these bills would pass, and both sides knew that, but this exercise played out for days nonetheless.

This is also the point where the minority party, devoid of any real power, will begin playing procedural games. Maybe they’ll do as a group of House Democrats did Wednesday, lining up on the House floor to raise a dozen parliamentary requests, doomed for denial, to bring their own bill up for consideration. This is entertaining for congressional nerds, but otherwise completely useless.

Step 4: Ramp up the rhetoric. Deliver dire warnings.

In the final days before the deadline, officials will begin warning about the dire impacts of the crisis on the U.S.: Failing to raise the debt limit will lead to a default, a stock market panic and higher interest rates! Shuttering the government will mean furloughed workers and the loss of federal grants, especially for your very state!

Well-credentialed wonks and economists will show up in news stories and on television. High-ranking administration officials will take their case directly to reporters, a rarity under normal circumstances. The worse the potential outcome, the more likely it is they will broadcast it far and wide, all in the hopes of putting pressure on their opponent (or to use as political ammunition should the crisis come to pass).

That’s exactly what happened early last week with DHS funding, as cable news’ crisis countdown clocks began winding down.

Step 5: The “deal-in-principle” phase. Begin backroom dealings, prepare for handwringing.

Eventually, with the deadline bearing down on them, leadership in both parties will see the light and work together to find a real solution.

Details of these plans go public, and then the backroom dealing begins. House Republicans huddle in their basement conference room while reporters line the hall outside, waiting to mob members and find schisms within the conference. Senators have lunch with their party caucuses, and then hold dueling press conferences off the Senate floor. Outside interest groups will make snap judgments on the plan and warn lawmakers how they will “score” the deal.

Deals succeed and fail right here. Sometimes, compromises break down when there isn’t enough support to pass them, especially in the House GOP conference, which still generally abides by the principle that the House shouldn’t vote on bills unless a majority of the caucus supports it (though Speaker John Boehner has a history of breaking this rule to get a deal done). The conference has become so unpredictable that even internal plans fall apart — on Friday, Republicans tried to pass a three-week funding bill, but it failed on the floor when conservatives defected.

This leads to an optional, “choose-your-own-adventure” Step 6:

Step 6a: Reschedule the crisis

Don’t have the support to pass your compromise bill through both chambers? Pass a short-term bill (a suspension of the debt limit, or, say, a bill funding Homeland Security for just a week) to give you more time to fight. No one will be happy about this, and there will be much gnashing of teeth about the unproductivity of Congress, but the crisis cycle begins anew.

This is a common tactic, and members find unique ways to do it. In January 2013, Republicans said they would ignore the debt limit as long as the House and Senate both passed budget resolutions for the next year. If they didn’t, lawmakers wouldn’t get paid. Congress collectively threw up its hands and passed the bill, suspending the federal limit on debt … but only until the following May.

Step 6b: Miss the deadline. Let the crisis come.

The most rare and radical outcome. The ACA’s troubled roll-out would eventually overshadow the 16-day government shutdown in October 2013, but Congress’ failure to pass a budget, and the first federal government shutdown in 13 years, was a nadir for lawmaking, even under crisis-era standards.

This outcome is rare. The U.S. has never hit its debt limit; Congress will probably find a way to fund DHS this week. More often than not, Congress is able to …

Step 7: … Compromise (or, capitulate, depending on what side you’re on)

Lawmakers hold their noses and vote for an unlikeable bill to avoid the crisis. The debt limit goes up, with or without conditions attached. The government is funded, at levels no one really likes. This often happens at the last minute, and sometimes even after Congress’ deadline — lawmakers passed a deal avoiding the “fiscal cliff” on Jan. 1, 2013, even though the big tax increases and deep spending cuts it averted technically kicked in at midnight the night before.

Compromise is never popular, and the hardliners are usually the least happy about it. It seems likely any eventual DHS deal will, for all practical purposes, preserve Obama’s executive actions on immigration, so conservatives will walk away empty handed. In December, with a deadline looming, liberals rallied against what they considered weakened financial regulations included in a spending bill. They lost. The legislation passed and Obama signed it into law.

But even a done deal can start the cycle all over again. In 2011, lawmakers raised the debt limit but established deep across-the-board spending cuts, “sequestration,” set it take affect in 2013, if lawmakers couldn’t reach a deficit reduction deal first. They couldn’t, and the budget cuts eventually kicked in (those spending cuts were themselves delayed for two months by the aforementioned fiscal cliff deal).

In fact, every time Congress raises the debt limit, they’re starting the crisis countdown all over again — as long as the government runs a deficit, it will inevitably borrow so much money that Congress will need to raise the limit later.

Which is say: This week’s DHS spat isn’t the last one of these. You’ll need to keep an eye on Congress this summer. At some point (we don’t know when just yet), we’ll hit the debt limit. That will be the new deadline day, and crisis will be upon us once again.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

While celebrating a victory, Franken warns: ‘We have to stay vigilant’ on net neutrality

Devin Henry — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 16:37:57 +0000

WASHINGTON — Near the end of a written statement hailing Thursday’s Federal Communications Commission vote on open Internet rules as an “enormous victory,” Sen. Al Franken briefly fretted about the possibility that Republicans could work to undo the decision in the future.

But in what amounted to a sigh of relief, he added: “In the meantime, let’s celebrate.”

Franken has been one of Congress’ most vocal supporters of “net neutrality,” the concept that Internet providers must treat all online content equally and deliver it to users at the same speed. A court ruling imperiled that principle last year, but in an historic move Thursday, the FCC asserted its right to enforce net neutrality by reclassifying the way Internet providers are regulated, a move Franken and open Internet advocates have long called on the Commission to take.

It’s a massive win for open Internet activists, and the culmination of a year’s worth of work to convince the FCC to consider so-called “reclassification” to preserve net neutrality.

But it likely isn’t the end of the story. Internet service providers, whose lawsuit brought last year’s court decision, oppose the FCC’s moves and could choose to sue again. And outside the courts, there is an effort, albeit probably a long-shot one, by congressional Republicans to undo the FCC’s decision and write the rules in Congress.

What happened Thursday

What the FCC did is called “reclassification.” Under the old system, the FCC considered Internet service providers — companies like Comcast and CenturyLink — information providers, and a District Court ruled last January that rules like net neutrality couldn’t be applied to information providers. On Thursday, commissioners voted 3-2 to reclassify Internet service as a telecommunications service, which opens it up to more regulation.

Net neutrality has been a guiding principle on the Internet for a long time. Providers like Comcast aren’t allowed to charge websites like Netflix extra in order to deliver video to consumers faster than, say, Hulu. Companies can’t purposefully slow down content delivery, meaning a news site and a personal blog travel at the same speed.

But while the principle of net neutrality has existed for years, the FCC only recently tried enforcing it as a rule. This prompted a 2010 lawsuit by Verizon against the FCC’s net neutrality rules. Verizon later won in federal court, where a judge said the FCC didn’t have the power to regulate an information provider that way.

So, spurred on by activists, lawmakers and President Obama, the FCC reclassified Internet providers on Thursday, and though its final rule isn’t public yet, it will treat the web as a “common carrier” — a utility like a telephone service, forbidden to discriminate against any of the content it’s delivering.

Lawsuits coming?

As happy as activists were about the FCC’s decision, the cable companies whose litigation brought it about in the first place are warning about the ill effects of reclassification.

Counting something as a common carrier opens it up to a lot more regulations than Internet providers are used to — technically, for example, the FCC could now set Internet service rates. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said the government won’t do that, and took steps to include that in the final rule. But cable companies say the decision threatens the Web with over-regulation, and that it relies on a law from the 1930s never designed for Internet (to prove a point, Verizon published its statement on the matter in Morse code).

At this point, it’s assumed that companies like Verizon or Comcast will sue again to get the rules off the books. They haven’t detailed any lawsuits yet, but have threatened litigation for nearly a year.

“The big Internet service providers do have very deep pockets, so they’ll probably file suit, even though I think looking at this, there’s not much there, there,” Franken said. “I don’t know on what grounds they’re going to be able to prevail in court. They’ll probably just go through the exercise.”

University of Minnesota law professor Bill McGeveran said it’s possible the companies could look to challenge the FCC’s ability to reclassify the Internet. Officials on Capitol Hill said they couldn’t find another example of the FCC ever reclassifying an existing entity, though it’s an established part of administrative procedure.

“Victory in a court setting would be finding that the FCC didn’t have the authority to reclassify,” McGeveran said. “It would set us back to where we were the day before the vote, where the FCC doesn’t have any successful rules to protect net neutrality.”

Not everyone is sold on the idea of an imminent lawsuit, though. Tim Wu, a law professor who coined the phrase “net neutrality,” wrote a New Yorker article Thursday theorizing that Internet providers might hold off on a lawsuit, noting, in part, rising stock prices since Wheeler floated reclassification, and increasing investment in broadband infrastructure, in spite of warnings from Internet service providers that reclassification would stifle such investment.

Legislation's poor chances

A legislative response from Congress is unlikely, thanks to the political realities around net neutrality. Republicans have generally opposed reclassification, arguing it gives government too much regulatory power over the Internet, while Democrats and President Obama back it, meaning a bill relating to the FCC’s decision (either overturning it or codifying it into law) is unlikely to pass.

Even so, South Dakota Sen. John Thune has become Republicans’ point person on net neutrality, writing a bill that he says would preserve many core open Internet concepts, like preventing “fast lanes” for paid content. But the bill would undo reclassification, and also remove some of the FCC’s regulatory powers, which is why Democrats and activist groups oppose it.

Thune said Thursday that he’s trying to find a way to preserve net neutrality principles without the FCC taking the big step of reclassification. He argued a bill would provide more certainty for consumers (a future FCC board could technically overturn Thursday’s decision, but not a federal law) and bypass legal challenges from providers.

“The best solution would be to move a very narrow and simple approach legislatively that reins in the FCC, puts the necessary consumer protections in place, but is very limited,” Thune said at a National Journal event Thursday morning.

Franken said it’s not happening.

“We don’t need a net neutrality bill in the future,” he said. “You get voice over the Internet, you can get video. It is a telecommunications service. That’s what it’s become, and it should be regulated as such.”

Times have changed for net neutrality. As a concept, it’s less than 15 years old, but before last year, it wasn’t something that usually drew large-scale congressional attention.

“It does really show the recognition that this is an issue that people really consider important,” McGeveran said. “The perception of what’s at stake really is different than what it was when the first net neutrality regulations were proposed at the beginning of this.”

Driven by the public

In that way, Thursday’s FCC decision was a victorious moment for a coalition of Internet companies, brick-and-mortar businesses and the grassroots that pushed for stronger open Internet protections.

Internet media companies like Netflix have long backed net neutrality, and to get these regulations on the books, they fought alongside like-minded banks, creditors and even car companies.

But regular people took up the cause, too. Hundreds of thousands of people signed online petitions in favor of net neutrality. Obama thanked online activists on Reddit for their efforts. When the FCC solicited comments on a watered-down version of net neutrality rules last year, more than 4 million people left their opinions, the most in FCC history. Thune, too, acknowledged that, even though he’s “never been one to assert a role for government unless there is a real or actual need,” he took up the cause of legislating the issue because of concerns he heard from the public.

For now, that work is done. The FCC has ruled, and the slow rollout of the regulations themselves gives everyone a bit of breathing room until any potential next phase begins.

“We have to stay vigilant. I would say to anyone who cares about this issue, stay tuned,” Franken said. “I think this is settled for now, but there will be those coming after it, obviously.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

As consequences of Homeland Security shutdown become clearer, Congress looks to deal

Devin Henry — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 16:16:53 +0000

WASHINGTON — Congress is three days away from a crisis and we’re firmly in the “rhetoric and dire warnings” phase that comes before any potential resolution.

Lawmakers must pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security before this weekend or risk shutting down the department overseeing operations like anti-terrorism operations, border control and disaster recovery. Much of the department would remain operational, but officials say a shutdown would mean employees would go without paychecks or new federal grants for state programs would be delayed.

For Minnesota that means potentially more than a thousand workers forgoing pay and a stream of money worth millions in the past — and in the effort to fund the department, Democrats have raised the specter of a terror attack at the Mall of America to make their point.

The current impasse comes from a dispute over President Obama's November executive action protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Republicans opposed the measure, and decided to use Congress' power of the purse as leverage. In December, they funded the whole government for the rest of the year, except for Homeland Security — the agency tasked with carrying out Obama's immigration order. Homeland Security funding expires at the end of this month.

Republicans had planned to tie future money for the department to measures undoing the executive action. But Democrats have refused to consider any amendments contravening the president’s executive orders, which brings us to where we are today, facing a shutdown of the department.

So this shutdown threat is derived from Congress, which could stop it just as easily. As of Tuesday, that looked a bit more likely, as Senate Republicans said they would uncouple the budget from the immigration measures. Even so, the budget’s next steps are muddled at best, and with time winding down until the second (albeit partial) government shutdown in a year and a half, the warnings of how it would affect the country are flying.

1,700 jobs, $16 million in Minnesota

According to federal data from September, Minnesota has 1,700 Homeland Security employees, including 470 border agents, 150 immigration and customs officials and 950 TSA screeners. Even if Homeland Security goes unfunded, many of these workers, deemed essential, would stay on the job, though they wouldn’t get a paycheck until the shutdown ends (Congress would need to approve back-pay, which would be likely).

Nationally, 75 to 80 percent of Homeland Security’s 23,000 personnel would keep going to work, Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a briefing with reporters on Tuesday (The Washington Post looked at the effects of the 2013 shutdown on Homeland Security employment on Tuesday).

A shutdown could also impede the department’s ability to process and award grant funding to state and local law enforcement. Johnson said he is pushing Congress to pass a budget bill, without immigration provisions attached, to fund the department through the end of the fiscal year (in September). Without that type of budgetary stability, Johnson said, the department can’t run its grant programs, which sent $2.5 billion to states last year for things like surveillance and communications equipment or supplies for first responders.

Last year, Minnesota received more than $16 million in total grant money, according to numbers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That money wouldn’t be affected, but a shutdown could delay new grant processing.

“A lot of the Department of Homeland Security’s mission is our grant-making activity,” Johnson said. “Given how our challenges in homeland security are evolving, we have to rely more and more in our partnerships in state and local law enforcement.”

Democrats highlight Mall of America threat

Democrats are making a point to warn about all of these downfalls. A group of senators held a press conference Tuesday with first responders who have gotten grant money warning about the impact of delaying future funding, and some Minnesota Democrats are using a local concern to make their case: this weekend’s video from Somali militant group al-Shabab calling for an attack against Bloomington’s Mall of America.

In floor speeches Tuesday, both Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Betty McCollum said the threat of violence against the mall should be enough for Congress to action on the Homeland Security budget.

They followed Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who took to the floor Monday and pointedly called on Republicans to drop their immigration concerns and fund the department.

“Rather than acting to protect my state from the threat, there are people who are actively contemplating a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security — the Department we created after 9/11 to protect our homeland, to protect our country from these kinds of terrorist threats,” Klobuchar said. “The people in my state are standing tall when it comes to this threat, and our law enforcement is standing tall when it comes to this threat, but in Congress our message to these terrorists cannot be that we are going to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. That cannot be the message coming from the Senate of the United States of America.”

On Tuesday, Johnson wouldn’t expand on his weekend statement that shoppers be “particularly careful” going to the Mall of America (Officials later clarified to say there was no specific threat to the mall, despite the video). On the broader matter of an expanded terror threat without DHS funding, Johnson said that an “independent actor could strike any community with little or not notice to our intelligence community,” making the department’s coordination with local officials all the more important.

“A shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security has real consequences to homeland security and public safety, period, end of sentence,” he said.

McConnell charts a path forward

Congress usually — eventually — finds its way out of its (self-inflicted) budget quandaries, and there’s already an effort underway to do that this week.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he will offer up a Homeland Security funding bill alongside, but separate from, a measure to defund Obama’s executive actions. The plan would mean Congress could pass Homeland Security's funding to avoid a shutdown, then fight over the immigration actions separately. It also means Democrats could still oppose Republicans' immigration measures — and Obama could veto them — without threating Homeland Security funding, preserving the status quo over Republican objections.

The House would then have to take up a “clean” funding bill, something that could enrage conservatives deeply opposed to the executive actions. But House Speaker John Boehner has a history of cutting budget deals without buy-in from his right flank. A spokesman for Boehner put out a statement Monday that didn’t endorse or indict McConnell’s plan, saying instead that it would force Democrats to go on the record for or against the executive actions without Homeland Security funding on the line. In the past, Boehner had said that the House has ruled on the question of immigration and Homeland Security by passing its bill to fund the department while gutting Obama’s immigration executive actions, and the problem was now the Senate’s.

Despite weeks worth of finger pointing between the House and Senate, Johnson said he’s optimistic lawmakers will find a way to cut a deal before the shutdown clock hits zero.

“Almost everybody agrees that the Department of Homeland Security should be funded, one way or another,” he said. “We’ve heard from various members of congressional leadership that we are not going to let a shutdown happen. That’s what I continue to hear.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

U.S. Attorney Luger pitches outreach plan to fight terror recruitment, with a promise: 'No surveillance'

Devin Henry — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 15:36:15 +0000

WASHINGTON — President Obama pledged Wednesday to increase efforts to stop terrorists from “radicalizing, recruiting or inspiring others to violence” in the United States, and to discourage Americans from going overseas to fight for groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda or al-Shabaab.

Hours earlier, Minnesota officials presented the White House with their plans to do just that.

Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger and a group of law enforcement officials and community leaders are in Washington to brief officials on their progress in a three-city (with Boston and LA) pilot program meant to fight terror recruitment and radicalization.

Terror recruitment isn’t just a theoretical problem in Minnesota. Since 2007, more than 25 Minnesotans have joined al-Shabaab, a Somali militant group, and “a significant number” of Minnesotans have traveled or tried to travel to Syria to join ISIS in the last 15 months, FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Thornton said at the White House Wednesday.

More than 24 Minnesotans have been charged in federal court on terrorism-related charges, Thornton said. Now, officials hope to tackle recruitment through a new program of community outreach, but some Muslims worry the program could stealthily turn into one focused on spying or driving up further convictions in their community.

Luger: Program must be community-run

A key plank of Minnesota’s plan is bolstering programs that foster community engagement among Muslims, especially young people, who might otherwise be attracted by terror recruitment campaigns from overseas. That means things like expanding after-school mentorship through community groups like “Ka Joog,” or increasing funding for scholarships for students, or creating new religious programming in local mosques and bringing in positive role models within the Somali-American community to speak to kids.

The pilot program is designed to facilitate this by providing funding, but stay out of the hands-on, day-to-day work that goes into the effort itself, Luger said. Local institutions, from groups like Ka Joog and the Cedar-Riverside Youth Council, to mosques and parent groups, would be responsible for leading the effort and intervening when they find individuals susceptible to terror recruitment, not law enforcement or the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Funding for the program would come from federal grant programs — Obama has requested $15 million in funding for anti-recruitment efforts from Congress — and it would filter through Luger's office to the community institutions executing the plan.

Luger said the approach is based on what Minnesota’s Muslims themselves have requested of him. The community-run aspect is central to the whole effort — community and religious leaders design and run the programming while Luger provides both logistic and financial support for those who take on the effort (beyond federal sources, Luger is looking to partner with Minnesota-based companies and organizations to find further funding).

“Our job is really to bring the resources to the community, whether it’s people who have worked on similar programs or have tried to develop similar programs elsewhere — a best practices approach,” he said, “and also to bring grant funding from Washington, where money is available to support community-led efforts, and one of my jobs is to be a catalyst to help bring that money to Minnesota.”

'You've got FBI money'

Even so, members of the Minnesota Muslim community are worried law enforcement will contort the community-engagement program into one of surveillance and prosecution — or at least that some individuals will perceive it as doing so.

Jaylani Hussein, the director the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Minnesota, said Muslims may end up distrusting an effort that’s federally-funded, with money routed through the same office, Luger’s, that oversees terror investigations, because of past community engagement programs that included some secret surveillance aspect for law enforcement, around the world and in Minnesota.

Last month, Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept detailed two Minnesota outreach programs whose plans originally included surveillence. Officials told the site one program moved away from information gathering, and Minnesota officials have said they resisted federal directives to use outreach for surveillance in the past.

“The problem is the perception,” Hussein said. “Even if it’s completely honest and straightforward, people will see… guess what, you’ve got FBI money.”

Hassan Mohamud, a St. Paul imam, said he has heard from fellow imams who might turn down participating in the program because it could scare away people from worshiping at their mosques, worried about the government tracking their activities or spying on them.

“Their job is prosecuting criminals or investigating all types of crimes,” Mohamud said. “We don’t think this office is the appropriate office to do social work. ... Give this back to the community.”

Luger’s team is cognizant of simmering distrust within the Somali community toward the program. He acknowledged that “there may be disagreement” about how to form an anti-terror recruitment campaign, and Hodan Hassan, a Minneapolis mental health advocate who helped present Minnesota’s plan, said “the fear of law enforcement still remains a concern,” for those fighting against terror recruitment among Somali-Americans.

(Better community interaction from local law enforcement is another aspect of the program. Police chiefs from Minneapolis and St. Paul both discussed plans to hire more Somali police officers on Wednesday and said they would put some of their grant money toward that cause.)

CAIR is working to create a community task force separate from the pilot program to publicize the work local leaders have done on their own since al-Shabaab recruiting burst into the spotlight. The task force would work with officials on how to best implement and fund the program (they want funding, but not federal dollars that go through the U.S. Attorney's office).

Hussein said the goal is to avoid law enforcement “fishing for the community rather than teaching them how to fish. That’s kind of the bottom line here.”

“The challenge is to make sure the community is completely behind this, otherwise we’re creating another problem we have to deal with before confronting the actual problem,” he said.

'Absolutely no role for surveillance'

Luger said the pilot program “rose out of conversations that I have had with hundreds of members of the Minnesota Somali community” and that it isn’t going to be a tool for law enforcement.

“To be clear: There is absolutely no role for surveillance or law enforcement investigation in this program,” he said. “It is completely separate, that’s how it has to work, and it will.”

MinnPost photo by Ibrahim Hirsi

U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger spoke with members of the Minneapolis Somali community about his office’s investigations into Islamic State recruitment in September.

Luger is working with a group of community and religious leaders to make his case. Two imams, one of whom has helped facilitate meeting between law enforcement and the Somali community, joined Luger in Washington on Thursday to present the program, as did officials like Abdi Warsami, the Somali-born Minneapolis city council member who represents the large Somali population in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.

Other community leaders, like Mohamed Farah, the director of the Ka Joog outreach group whose goals of youth engagement align with the pilot program, and Mohamed Jama, a 21-year-old college student who founded the Cedar-Riverside Youth Council, are on board as well, and helped present the plan in Washington.

“We view this pilot program as a unique opportunity to engage our youth in positive programs,” Farah said. “Providing more opportunities, more outlets and more connections for Somali youth will help break a cycle that has drawn too many of our friends and relatives to a life of terror.”

Asked about any community hesitations toward the program, Luger pointed to his team’s credentials.

“These are leaders in the community who spoke passionately about the need for the work that we’re all doing together, to the Vice President [in a Tuesday meeting], who not only listened intently, but was taking notes,” he said.

In the end, both the pilot program and Hussein’s task force focus on expanding community-based work on terror recruitment, even if some in the community doubt the government’s means to that end right now.

“Ultimately, two to three years from now, the success will be in the fact that we’re no longer talking about young Somalis being recruited to a life of terror,” Luger said. “That’s our ultimate goal. That’s everybody’s goal. There may be disagreement about how we get there, but that’s the goal.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Obama signs Walz's veterans suicide prevention bill

Devin Henry — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 22:39:29 +0000

WASHINGTON — Rep. Tim Walz’s veterans suicide prevention bill is now law.

The Clay Hunt SAV Act looks to better publicize Veterans Affairs mental health offerings, provide incentives for psychiatrists to join the VA system and review the VA programs' effectiveness at suicide prevention. The House and Senate passed the legislation unanimously earlier this year, and President Barack Obama signed it into law during a White House ceremony on Thursday.

“I think more than anything, it signals that we’re still unified on this issue,” Walz said. “People still understand how important it is, and as we continue to ask the VA to be accountable and make those changes, we’re simultaneously putting new things in place.”

The bill is named for Clay Hunt, a Marine from Texas who died by suicide in 2011 at the age of 28. Hunt had sought mental treatment from the VA after returning from the wars in the Middle East, but was frustrated by the red tape he encountered there. Before his death, Hunt had partnered with veterans service organizations to lobby for mental health care on Capitol Hill, even meeting with Walz’s office about it.

When he died, Hunt’s family, friends and fellow advocates began pushing Congress to take action on veterans suicide, a problem the VA estimates claims 22 lives a day. The result was the Clay Hunt Act, written by Walz and a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

In an East Room signing ceremony Thursday, Obama praised Hunt as “selfless and brave,” and “a passionate advocate for veterans.” He said lawmakers are committed to helping veterans get the care they need when they return from combat, and called the bill a first step toward that goal.

“We’re here today to pick up where Clay left off,” Obama said. “The best way to honor this young man who should be here is to make sure that more veterans like him are here for all the years to come and able to make extraordinary contributions, building on what they’ve already done for our safety and our security.”

Much of the Clay Hunt law deals with overseeing the effectiveness of VA programs, from those already on the books to new ones the law creates, such as the recruitment of new psychiatrists. Walz said the VA has committed to strengthen its mental health programming, and he said he discussed the matter with VA Secretary Bob McDonald at Thursday’s bill signing.

“The only thing I ever got from him was, ‘Let’s do this together, let’s get this done,’ ” Walz said. “I’ve never seen that type of buy-in. He said, 'Let’s make this work.' ”

Veterans groups have a long list of mental health policies they want Congress to take up even with Clay Hunt passed. Walz said he hopes lawmakers will work to tackle those with as much bipartisanship as they did with this law.

“You don’t get to pop in on an issue like veterans care, veterans suicide, and then pop out,” Walz said. “This is a deep dive. You’re in it for the long haul.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

How the federal budget is supposed to work and why it rarely does

Devin Henry — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 16:31:59 +0000

WASHINGTON — When President Obama introduced his budget bill last week, he kicked off an annual process that should, according to well-established rules, lead to 12 spending bills on his desk before the end of September.

But that’s almost certainly not going to happen. Lawmakers tackle the federal budget every year and every year they mess it up.

But you can hardly blame them. While the process is clear, it’s also complicated, full of deadlines and committee votes and lots of places where it can go off the rails. Here’s an (admittedly brief) explanation of how the federal budget process is supposed to work, and why it so rarely does.

First off, the bottom line: how much money are we talking about here?

President Obama has proposed a $4.1 trillion budget for 2016, but only about $1.15 trillion of it — 28 percent — goes through the appropriations process described here. This is called “discretionary spending,” or funding for programs Congress deals with every year. Most of the budget goes toward “mandatory spending,” or funding for programs whose levels are already baked into the law (mostly Social Security and Medicare).

Source: National Priorities Project

The congressional budgeting process only covers areas of discretionary federal spending, about 28% of overall federal spending.

Okay, so how is it supposed to work?

In a perfect world, the appropriations process isn’t that much different than what’s supposed to happen to a normal bill: the House passes a bill, the Senate passes its own version, they work out the differences, pass the bill again and send it to the president for his signature.

There are a couple key differences when the budget is concerned. First, the president starts the process by sending his budget to Congress, usually in early February. President Obama did that on Feb. 2, and it’s how we know he wants to do things like increase transit spending or build more tribal schools. The document is basically advisory, indicating where the president thinks Congress should focus its spending.

Not that it really matters. Lawmakers can — and do — ignore the president’s budget. So Congress’ first job is to pass a budget of its own by mid-April. This budget takes the form of a resolution, a statement of Congress’ own spending priorities that does not have the force of law. To get there, the House and Senate both write and pass their own budget resolutions, establish a conference committee — a team of both House and Senate members — to merge them together, and then each body must again pass the final version.

The resolution never goes to the president — it just serves as a framework to guide the next step in the process.

So everybody’s said what they want, but when do they actually make the decisions?

By the end of spring, the real work on the budget begins. In the House and Senate appropriations committees, lawmakers begin poring over the 12 bills that make up the whole of the federal budget:

Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies;
Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies;
Defense;
Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies;
Financial Services and General Government;
Homeland Security;
Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies;
Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies;
Legislative Branch;
Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies;
State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs; and
Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies.

Each bill has its own subcommittee, whose job it is to pass their appointed appropriations bill, sending it to the full committee and eventually onto the floor for a full vote. These bills are supposed to conform to the overall spending framework already set in the budget resolution.

Source: National Priorities Project

A detailed breakdown of discretionary spending in President Obama’s proposed 2016 budget.

The House usually takes the first stab at this process. When it passes a bill and sends it to the Senate, senators can make changes and pass the bill again. Then Schoolhouse Rock kicks in: there’s a conference committee, the House and Senate pass the compromise bill, and the president signs it. Lawmakers are supposed to do this 12 times before a new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

So under normal order, passing the federal budget requires hundreds of votes in committees and in the full houses of Congress.

And how often does it actually happen like that?

Well, almost never.

The process breaks several times along the way. First, Congress is historically spotty when it comes to agreeing on a budget resolution — the last time it happened was in 2009. In fact, before 2013, the Senate had gone several years without passing its own budget resolution. That’s why Republicans would deploy the technically correct but misleading soundbite accusing Senate Democrats of not passing a budget for 1,000 or however many days — the Senate had indeed skipped the part where it sets internal spending targets, but it was still passing bills directing federal spending.

Without an agreed-upon budget framework, the House and Senate tend to go their own ways in appropriating funds, especially during times of divided government. That means critical steps in the process — like conference committees, or the Senate even voting on House-passed funding bills — simply don’t happen, especially for large or controversial spending areas. Last session, the House passed eight appropriations bills; the Senate didn’t vote on any of them.

What happens then?

If a budget isn’t in place by Oct 1, the start of the fiscal year, the government could shut down.

Congress avoids shutdowns by passing a short-term budget bill maintaining current spending levels called a “continuing resolution,” or “CR.” These give lawmakers more time to either write the 12 individual budget bills, or wrap them altogether in one overarching budget called an “omnibus bill,” which directs federal spending across all of the 12 appropriations areas.

Are omnibuses common?

Congress relies on CRs and omnibuses a lot. The last time Congress actually passed every individual budget bill was ahead of the 2002 fiscal year, and it took 8 CRs to get there first. Congress has passed its appropriations bills without needing a CR only four times since the 1977 fiscal year, University of Minnesota Congress expert Kathryn Pearson said, referencing a Congressional Research Service report.

Last year, Congress passed three CRs before agreeing to an omnibus bill covering the current (2015) fiscal year … and that was an especially odd one.

What was so weird about this year’s budget?

Around the time Congress needed to pass an omnibus bill, President Obama announced his immigration executive action, an order that the Department of Homeland Security would carry out. Republicans opposed the executive order, and they decided they could leverage the Homeland Security budget against it.

In December they passed a continuing resolution to fund DHS through February (this month), while passing an omnibus bill funding all of the rest of the government through the end of the fiscal year. In DC-speak, this scheme of attaching a continuing resolution with an omnibus bill was called the “CRomnibus” (the plan may or may not have been pastry-inspired).

Overall, Congress has a lot of rules guiding how it sets spending, and it breaks them. All the time.

Does Minnesota get a say on the appropriations process?

Beyond the fact that every member of Congress votes on the funding bills, Minnesota has one member on the Appropriations Committee: Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum.

McCollum serves on the panels dealing with Defense and Interior spending (as ranking member on the latter). Each tends to have some areas of relative bipartisan cooperation (funding troops in combat zones, supporting tribal education, etc), but are not without their controversial points either. For example, Interior includes funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, and Defense is the largest area of federal discretionary spending, encompassing many of the fundamental disagreements over foreign policy right now.

Since its members controls the government’s purse strings, and thus have a big influence over policy, McCollum said the appropriations committee is “a very exciting committee to be on.” But as we’ve seen, the process is an undeniably messy one, and especially so today, and McCollum said aspects of it are frustrating for her and her fellow budget-writers.

What would McCollum like to change about the process?

McCollum said she’s going to be focused on rooting out “riders” — unrelated policy provisions lawmakers attach to budget bills that wouldn't otherwise be signed into law on their own — while looking at the Interior budget: Environmental Protection Agency rules are likely to be in Republicans’ crosshairs this session.

There are two other aspects of the modern budgeting process she would change if she could.

First, she would reinstate earmarks, the process by which members would direct spending toward specific projects in the budget itself, rather than turning that power over to the executive branch. Policy-wise, earmarks gave lawmakers a chance to fight for local projects and debate their merits relative to other projects. Politically, earmarks encouraged cooperation during the budgeting process, though opponents might call it cronyism. Congress did away with earmarks in 2011.

Secondly, McCollum would undo sequestration, the ten years worth of spending caps Congress put in place in 2011. Sequestration lowers the amount lawmakers can spend across the board, which McCollum said hinders the process by limiting debate on individual aspects of spending bills.

Sequestration’s budget caps are malleable — in 2013, Congress voted to raise them slightly for a few fiscal years — and Republicans, now in charge of both the House and Senate, can decide to raise them again if they see fit. Obama certainly would if he could. His budget was $75 billion higher than sequestration caps allow. As the 2016 budget process begins, no one’s really sure yet how it will play out.

“[Republicans] need to put forward a budget number and agree with their colleagues in the Senate,” McCollum said. “The president put out a framework, and, realistically, as Republicans said, it’s dead on arrival. But at least he put out a plan he put out a framework to look at.”

Has budgeting always been this hard?

Lawmakers instituted the current budget and appropriations process in 1974 to take back some spending power from the president, who had, at the time, abused it by exercising too much discretion in how he spent appropriated funds. But many of the problems plaguing the process today are symptomatic of moving it back to Congress in the first place.

It sets up an annual clash on spending levels, Pearson said, a problem that grew especially as power centralized with party leadership. Lawmakers began attaching riders to the bills, which led to vetoes and delays in the process, especially under divided government in the Clinton years. Pearson said no one has come up with any serious reforms to help speed the process along.

“It’s become so routine that there’s sort of no hope going into the process that they’re going to follow the schedule,” she said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Where Republicans and Democrats agree the government needs to spend more

Devin Henry — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 16:43:09 +0000

U.S. Department of Education

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, center left, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, center right, visited Maine's Beatrice Rafferty School in August of 2014. The school had originally been allocated $3.5 million for planning, but Congress upped the funding to $20.1 million in order to build a new school.

WASHINGTON — From budget limits to the national debt, much of the debate Washington today focuses on cutting spending. But on at least one line item in President Obama’s budget, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree that the government needs to spend more.

Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat on the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, said she and a group of members, including Republicans, are looking for ways to boost funding for school construction on tribal lands around the country, even after Obama proposed pumping millions in new money into it.

Rep. Betty McCollum

Tribal school construction has been neglected for some time, so even though Obama proposed more than doubling its modest budget next year, it’s not nearly enough to confront the problem of broken down schools around the country. In Minnesota, the Leech Lake Reservation’s Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School, typifies this — it’s housed in a used pole barn and students have taken to wearing winter coats while in the school. When winds reach 40 miles per hour, teachers move children to other buildings.

The administration sees Obama’s proposal as a first step of a multi-year effort to improve the system, but Indian education advocates are looking for more money right now to kick-start new school construction down the road.

Still, officials are heartened that the issue is at least on the radar — the Bug School, for example, isn’t funded in Obama’s plan, but tribal chairwoman Carri Jones issued a statement saying the tribe is “extremely pleased and grateful” that the president included new funds in his budget.

On Capitol Hill, funding for Indian education, especially school construction, is an area of relative bipartisanship: last year, for example, both parties agreed on a large spending increase for replacement school construction around the country, above what even Obama proposed. McCollum credits this to trust and treaty obligations the United States government has to tribes across America — the U.S. has a responsibility to support tribes, and it’s one Congress takes seriously.

There are still a lot of questions about what McCollum and others are trying to do, like how much money they’re looking for, and where it will come from. For now, she’s not getting into details, except to say that she thinks more money could be on its way.

“This is not enough money and we need to come up with a plan that would have tribal nations, American children who are members of tribal nations, going to safe schools, 21^st century schools,” she said.

Obama’s plan wins bipartisan support

Obama has proposed a $1 billion budget for the Bureau of Indian Education in 2016 — a $150 million increase over current levels. That includes $45 million for new school construction. The budget represents a big increase over what Obama has looked for in the past — new school construction saw a big influx of funding in the stimulus act in 2009, but his $3.5 million request last year was his first since 2011.

Even so, the problem is much bigger than what’s in Obama’s budget. His proposal would go toward building the last two buildings on a 2004 list of replaceable schools, but that would still leave behind a $1.3 billion backlog of dilapidated schools nationwide.

Members on both sides of the aisle greeted the request as a welcome change of pace after what McCollum described as a “time out” for BIE construction funding. Republican Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoman on the Appropriations Committee with whom McCollum has worked on Indian issues, said the proposal “is an area where we can cooperate and hopefully make a lot of progress on.”

Minnesota Rep. John Kline, who chairs the House Education Committee, said in a statement that he’s “pleased” by the proposal and vowed to “look more closely at this issue and demand better for these students.”

All that said, everyone recognizes the plan only accounts for two schools-worth of funding. When Interior Secretary Sally Jewell introduced Obama’s plan to reporters last month, she acknowledged that $45 million isn’t enough to made major inroads in the school construction backlog. She called it “just step one in a multi-year approach” to fixing the backlog, and said it “was as far as we could reasonably go” to fit funding into the overall budget and get lawmakers’ approval.

Happy with the plan, but looking for more

Congress has a history of going above and beyond what the Obama administration requests on BIE issues. Last year, for example, Obama requested $3.5 million to plan construction of a new BIE school in Maine. Congress appropriated $20.1 million to straight-up build the school instead.

Since Obama’s 2016 budget covers the money needed to rebuild the schools still on the government’s list, any money above that could go toward planning the schools that might be included on a new replacement list, McCollum said.

“When we see the list and we have a dollar figure off the list, then we need to have the big idea, the big plan on a way forward so we can get these schools reconstructed so they can be repaired, and rebuilt where they need to be taken down,” she said.

To that end, she and other budget writers are scouring the budget — from the Interior Department and beyond — trying to find funding to pump up BIE construction even further. It’s a bipartisan effort: McCollum said she, Cole and a group of other Republicans began discussing additional funding schemes while they toured Indian Country in Arizona last month.

“We were literally at dinner like, ‘what if we try this, what if we try that, well we’re going to talk to Treasury, we’re going to talk to OMB, let’s talk to the White House,’ ” she said.

There is danger here, of course, that partisan budget fights could delay or derail the whole process. The Interior budget is relatively small, which McCollum said makes it difficult to shift funding toward a bipartisan priority like Indian schools when there are other areas — clean air and water, wildfire prevention — that need funding. It’s easier to find money for Defense Department schools (the only other school system the federal government runs) because the DOD budget is so big.

But that’s what negotiations are for. McCollum and Oklahoma’s Cole both said they expect to eventually find a path forward on this.

“The trick is always finding the money, because the president is proposing this having disregarded the budget caps,” Cole said. “But it wouldn’t be the first time, on Interior Approps, we’ve been able to rob Peter to pay Paul. And the Democrats might not like the Peter, but we all agree on the Paul that needs help, in this case Indian Education.”

Bug School could get on new list

Minnesota's BIE schools

Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School
Bena, MN
Facility condition (2011): Poor

Circle of Life School
White Earth, MN
Facility condition (2011): Good

Fond du Lac Ojibwe School
Cloquet, MN
Facility condition (2011): Good

Nay-Ah-Shing School
Onamia, MN
Facility condition (2011): Good

The Leech Lake Reservation’s Bug School has gained some notoriety in the Indian education community. Jewell visited it last summer and in announcing Obama’s funding request, mentioned it as the type of school that needs to be replaced. Lawmakers did the same in a budget bill Congress passed in December.

When officials made their list of replacement schools in 2004, they left off the Bug School. The Interior Department has now assembled a team of experts from the Department of Defense’ school system and the Interior Department to write a new list and come up with criteria meant to more accurately identify replaceable schools.

For example, McCollum said, the last list considered the condition of all the schools in an individual district, and because Leech Lake’s elementary schools are in comparably acceptable condition, the Bug School was less likely to make the cut. Its inclusion in a budget bill, and the attention Jewell has given it, indicates its inclusion on a new list, which is expected this spring.

“We are extremely pleased and grateful that the President’s budget includes substantially more funding for BIE school construction and rehabilitation than in years past and that it begins to recognize the significant need in Indian Country for a safe learning environment for our students,” Jones, the Leech Lake tribal chairwoman, said in a statement to MinnPost. “We are fighting to give our community a new high school facility because our children deserve the best educational opportunities.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Emmer on Cuba embargo: 'Clearly that’s not working'

Devin Henry — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 15:26:16 +0000

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer has described his positions on the Agriculture and Foreign Affairs committees as a potent combo for Minnesota interests — especially with the prospect of improving relations with Cuba landing in Congress’ lap right away this session.

Agricultural interests and their allies, including a Cargill-led group, have already touted the benefits of lifting the 54-year-old embargo against Cuba for their industry, a prospect made more likely by the Obama administration’s sudden shift in relations with the country in December. But there are stumbling blocks: only Congress can lift the embargo and its members are fractured on the Cuba question, and a deal to normalize relations with the country is a long way from final anyway.

Cuba is one of the first foreign policy questions Emmer, a Republican, has tackled in the new Congress — the Foreign Affairs Committee’s second hearing of the session was on Cuba. If certain conditions are met, Emmer said, he could support lifting the embargo and even though he thinks Obama could have been more open about his initial talks with Cuban officials, he’s willing to let U.S.-Cuba talks work their way toward a solution.

“By all accounts the Cuban people are worse off today than when [the embargo] started. So clearly that’s not working,” he said. “And I’m supportive of engaging in diplomacy, starting to re-engage in diplomatic relations with Cuba, to begin that process to hopefully someday getting to normalize that relationship. But it’s two separate things. One, it’s diplomacy, and down the road is normalization.”

Negotiate first, move forward later

Rep. Tom Emmer

In December, Obama announced restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and the easing of certain trade and travel restrictions. Since then, the administration has been negotiating with Cuban officials with the intent of eventually fully normalizing relations with the country, but because aspects of American sanctions are baked into statute, Congress will eventually need to take up the issue.

Before that happens, negotiators have to resolve any number of concerns. When Obama officials testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Emmer focused on three:

reparations for Cubans who have been persecuted by the Castro regime,
payments for those who lost property to the regime and
safe harbor of fugitives within the country.

He said he could support eventually normalizing relations, but we’re nowhere near the point where that’s possible yet.

“This is were I think everybody got ahead of themselves, because they equated renewed or restarting diplomatic relations with normalization,” he said in an interview. “[Obama has] re-engaged the diplomacy, now the question is: can you get these things at the end of the day so you can normalize these relations?”

CSPAN

Rep. Tom Emmer questioned Obama administration officials during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.

Republicans divided on Cuba

Obama’s December shift in Cuba policy caught nearly everyone by surprise, and on Capitol Hill, it’s drawn battle lines among both Republicans and Democrats.

Within the GOP there are members on every side of the debate. Emmer, for example, is content to let the process work itself out and provide oversight along the way. Others, led by Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, are essentially selling Obama’s plan to Congress from the right side of the aisle. A more vocal group, one that includes Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz — both Cuban-American, both potential presidential candidates — has come out forcefully against normalizing relations with Cuba.

Democratic detractors are fewer, but prominent: New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, a Cuban-American and the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, has not been shy about his opposition to Obama’s maneuvers on Cuba.

Among Minnesotans, Rep. Erik Paulsen falls close to Emmer. In a statement, he said, “We should be looking at opportunities to open up trade between the United States and Cuba so we can export more American goods and services. However, the President should have engaged Congress before making concessions to the Cuban government.”

In a statement, Rep. John Kline said he's "not confident the Administration will follow through on its promises to hold the Castro dictatorship regime accountable, and I’m concerned about revisiting relations with Cuba until all Cubans enjoy a free democracy.”

Emmer said he’s talked to some Republican members who could fit in the Rubio-Cruz camp, but that many GOP critics of Obama’s plan are taking a more measured approach to the issue. They're upset about the way he went about negotiating the initial deal — in secret, without consulting Congress first — but willing to see what comes next (something they’re probably stuck doing anyway, given that Obama has the reins of U.S. foreign policy for the rest of his term).

“I think they are sending up that warning flag about, no, you don’t just go from zero to normalization overnight, there are some major issues that need to be dealt with,” Emmer said.

Agricultural interests

Last month a group, led in part by Minnesota’s Cargill, called the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba launched with the goal of lifting the embargo and opening the country up for more American trade.

Their kick-off event in Washington attracted both Republicans and Democrats ready to preach about what promise a normal relationship Cuba could have for American farmers. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called it a $1.7 billion market, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar gave a speech saying that even the relaxed trade provisions Obama has already introduced could double Minnesota agriculture exports to the country (some agricultural trade is allowed with Cuba under current law. Exports to Cuba were worth about $20 million for Minnesota in 2012, out of an $8.2 billion export portfolio).

REUTERS/Larry Downing

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, along with a few other members of Congress and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, spoke at the National Press Club to the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba.

Emmer said he hasn’t been directly lobbied by anyone in the agriculture industry on Cuba (“Nobody’s called me yesterday or in the last 28 days and said, ‘you’ve got to get on board and you’ve got to support normalized relations with Cuba,’ ” he said). But he said he’s dealt with the country’s market potential since his time in the Legislature.

“You’ve got a population of over [11] million, they are potential, not only allies, the people of Cuba, to this country, but they’re customers, they’re suppliers someday, there are a whole bunch of benefits if you get through these issues,” he said. “There are a lot of people in Minnesota who, in addition to other parts of the world, look at Cuba as a wonderful opportunity for exchange."

Nothing happening now

No one expects Congress to move quickly on Cuba issues. Emmer said the administration’s negotiations need to yield results first, and Klobuchar, at January’s event, said Congress will mostly focus on oversight of those negotiations for now.

Rep. Collin Peterson, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, agreed. Peterson has carried Cuba-related bills in the past, including one nearly included in a funding bill in 2010 that would have lifted a travel ban to the country and eased export restrictions there. Democrats controlled Congress at the time, but leadership still pulled the measure from the bill.

Republicans are in charge now, and Peterson said they wouldn't be able to do anything on Cuba this session, either for or against thawed relations. His focus, like others, is to see what policy changes Obama plans to make on his own.

“I don’t think the Republicans are going to be able to bring up anything,” he said. “And I don’t think they’ll be able to stop the president and what he’s doing. I think what the president has done here, I really give him credit, it was the right thing to do.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Net neutrality: Franken hails FCC chair’s move toward Internet service as utility

Devin Henry — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 21:33:06 +0000

WASHINGTON — On the day the head of the Federal Communications Commission confirmed he would make the strongest possible moves to preserve federal open Internet rules, Sen. Al Franken repeated what he has said throughout the debate over net neutrality: “This is the First Amendment issue of our time.”

This time, he added: “This is a very good day.”

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced Wednesday that he would seek to reclassify Internet service as a public utility worthy of government regulation, which in this case means maintaining the concept that all content on the Internet should be treated the same by the providers who bring it to users.

This so-called “net neutrality” has been a key component of FCC regulatory schemes for a long time, but it was struck down last year by a federal court, which ruled existing net neutrality regulations were not allowed because the Internet isn’t currently considered a utility.

The FCC needed to either change the rule or consider reclassification, a process that drew more than 4 million public comments and a public prodding toward reclassification from President Obama in November. In an op-ed in Wired, Wheeler said he would look to do just that, so as to preserve net neutrality. The full FCC board will vote on the proposal later this month.

Internet providers have long opposed reclassification because it could open the door to more regulations on them, and it could still face a legal challenge, but open Internet activists have long hoped Wheeler would consider the move.

“This is preserving net neutrality, that’s what just happened,” Franken said during a press conference on Tuesday. “All this innovation that has happened on the Internet has been because of net neutrality. It has been the architecture of the Internet from the very beginning, and this is preserving it.”

Net neutrality bans so-called “fast lanes,” or when content creators cut deals with providers to deliver their content to consumers faster. Net neutrality advocates also consider it a First Amendment issue, because it would prevent providers from theoretically slowing down delivery speeds for websites or messages with which they disagree.

“This is about our economic future,” Franken said. “The Internet is about our economy, it’s about prosperity, and it’s also democracy and freedom of expression.”

Franken has been one of Congress’ most vocal supporters of net neutrality. Wednesday’s press conference, which featured Franken and Democratic Sens. Cory Booker (New Jersey), Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Ed Markey (Massachusetts), was, at times celebratory to the point of hyperbole, with some senators saying Wednesday amounted to a national holiday. Markey, for one, called net neutrality the “Declaration of Independence for the Internet,” equated it to preserving clean air and water standards and said it would promote “Darwinian, paranoia-inducing competition” among Internet providers.

To which Franken deadpanned: “I’m for that?”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Obama budget funds Southwest LRT — if everything goes right

Devin Henry — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 16:42:32 +0000

Courtesy of Metro Transit

Southwest LRT is tucked into a $3.25 billion package of mass transit projects the Department of Transportation proposes to fund next year.

WASHINGTON — There was some good news for Minnesota’s planned Southwest LRT project buried in President Obama’s 2016 budget request on Monday: he wants to give the line $150 million to begin construction next year.

But getting that cash will require everything to work out just right.

Plans call for the federal government to provide half the funds needed to build the $1.68 billion light rail line, which would stretch from Target Field to Eden Prairie, with the state (10 percent), metro area (30 percent) and Hennepin County (10 percent) picking up the rest of the tab. The budget request seems to be a major step toward making that line a reality — and it is, assuming all goes as planned. But Obama wants to fund the line as part of a big increase in federal mass transit spending, which could be a complicated matter on Capitol Hill.

Big funding request

Southwest LRT is tucked into a $3.25 billion package of mass transit projects the Department of Transportation proposes to fund next year. The current budget is $2.1 billion, meaning Obama is asking a Republican-controlled Congress for a nearly two-thirds increase in funding for mass transit in 2016, paid for in his budget with a new tax on cash corporations are holding offshore.

Among the proposals in Obama’s budget, this is one that might — might — find some support on the hill, because some Republicans have pitched similar, if smaller, tax plans. Even so, Congress incrementally increased funding for mass transit between 2014 and 2015, and a 65 percent increase is a heavy lift, especially absent a long-term transportation bill, which is years overdue and whose prospects are perpetually dim.

If Congress trims down Obama’s proposal or keeps the mass transit budget flat, funding for certain projects could go out the window — which means a December tweak to a transit funding formula could loom large for Southwest LRT.

40 percent vs. 50 percent

Every year, the Federal Transit Administration creates a list of proposed projects to which it will grant funding agreements. Projects that have previously won a grant agreement get annual funding installments and are first in line every year to get cash.

In December, Congress decided to give second priority to projects whose federal share is less than 40 percent, before moving to other projects beyond that. Under that language, Southwest LRT’s federal share of 50 percent makes it a lower priority than, say, light-rail projects in Tacoma, Washington or suburban Maryland, whose federal shares are smaller.

Southwest LRT supporters said there isn’t much to worry about right now, noting there is enough buffer room in Obama’s budget request that the line should receive its federal funding next year even if Congress doesn’t appropriate the full $3.25 billion. Back-of-the-envelope math suggests that between existing projects ($1.35 billion) and new projects with a lower percentage federal share than Southwest LRT ($825 million at most), the project could get its funding even if Congress gives a minimal bump to the mass transit account flat next year.

Proposed 2016 new transit projects

Obama's budget, which calls for $3.25B in spending on federal grants for new transit projects, proposes funding the projects listed below, in addition to projects currently receiving funding ($1.35B) and spending on new project development and oversight.

Project	2016 cost (Millions)	% federal funding	Project rating
New Starts Program projects
Red Line (Baltimore, MD)	$92	34%	Medium-High
National Capital Purple Line (MD)	$100	37%	Medium-High
Southeast Extension (Denver, CO)	$150	44%	Unknown
Mid Coast Corridor Transit Project (San Diego, CA)	$100	49%	Medium-High
Southwest LRT (Minneapolis, MN)	$150	50%	Medium-High
TEX Rail (Fort Worth, TX)	$100	50%	Medium-High
Westside Section 2 (Los Angeles, CA)	$100	?	Unknown
Total	$792
Small Starts Program projects
Tacoma Link Light Rail Expansion (Tacoma, WA)	$75	35%	Unknown
4th Street/Prater Way Corridor (Reno, NV)	$6	47%	Unknown
Provo-Orem Bus Rapid Transit (Provo-Orem, UT)	$71	47%	Unknown
CityLYNX Gold Line Phase 2 (Charlotte, NC)	$75	50%	Unknown
San Rafael to Larkspur Regional Connection (San Rafael, CA)	$20	53%	Unknown
Montana Corridor BRT (El Paso, TX)	$27	59%	Unknown
Van Ness Avenue BRT (San Francisco, CA)	$30	60%	Medium-High
Fresno Area Express Blackstone/Kings Canyon BRT (Fresno, CA)	$11	80%	Medium
COTA Northeast Corridor BRT Project (Columbus, OH)	$38	80%	Unknown
Total	$353

“We are hopeful that Congress will continue to support investing in our nation’s transportation and transit infrastructure at least at the current levels and that they support the President’s request for Southwest LRT,” said Meredith Vadis, a spokeswoman for the Met Council, which is charged with requesting the funding.

But opponents of the line have suggested the project’s FTA rating could hurt its chances of winning a grant. That’s what former Congressman Martin Sabo, who opposes the current alignment of the line, suggested last year when the 40 percent benchmark was first tucked into a budget bill.

Ratings are based on factors like land use, ridership and financing, and in September 2011, Southwest LRT won a “medium” rating from the FTA. (UPDATE: The FTA informed officials Tuesday morning that Southwest LRT has been assigned a "Medium-High" overall rating.) Opponents say higher-rated projects like the “medium-high” TEX Rail, a Fort Worth commuter rail project with a 50 percent federal share set to be funded at $100 million in Obama’s budget, could end up getting priority if funds are tight.

If it all goes wrong and Congress decides to cut into the mass transit account the safest way to improve its funding chances could be to increase the state and local contribution to the budget (a 10 percent increase would equal about $168 million). In an email, Vadis said, “we would have to look at a variety of sources to fill that gap with local funding” if that were to happen.

The Met Council is still waiting on the FTA to clarify what impact an increased percentage of local funding would have on the project’s funding prospects. “When we have more information, we’ll be prepared to address potential changes to the project's current funding formula,” Vadis said.

Minnesota politics confuses the issue

To make all of this even more confusing, if Minnesota wants to win a federal funding agreement in the 2016 fiscal year, it needs to have already secured state and local funding, a prospect complicated by state politics.

Gov. Mark Dayton supports the project, but he’s been hesitant to pursue the final $120 million state contribution for it until a dispute between the Met Council and the Minneapolis Parks Board is resolved, and Republicans in the Legislature have already said they’re against funding the line.

Transportation is such a hot issue for the Legislature this session that we’re likely months away from any type of deal on the light rail front. The line isn’t as controversial on the federal level as it is in Minnesota, and by virtue of putting Southwest LRT in its budget, it’s clearly a priority for the Obama administration. It’s a massive public works project four years in the making, and funding for those doesn’t just disappear overnight. But right now, the calculus for securing funding has gotten muddled in St. Paul and it isn’t exactly a slam dunk in Washington.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Southwest LRT had a project ranking of "medium" and it could miss out on funding to projects with a higher ranking. Officials were told Tuesday morning that the project had been upgraded to "medium-high."

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Sorry about your losing campaign — now pay up

Devin Henry — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 16:48:53 +0000

WASHINGTON — Long after the votes are tallied and the winners declared, political campaigns’ treasurers keep busy with a different tally: adding up the campaign’s debts and figuring out some way to pay for it all.

Campaign debt is by no means rare or limited to candidates of one party. And it can go on for a long time — there is no legal requirement mandating when and how candidates pay down their debt. For example, Newt Gingrich filed a report Thursday showing him $4.6 million in the hole for his 2012 run. Still, before a candidate can officially close out their campaign, the debts must be resolved.

With end-of-year campaign finance reports due to the Federal Election Commission this weekend, we’ll get an update on the outstanding debts leftover for a handful of Minnesota candidates, ranging from a few thousand dollars in invoices to big loans from self-funding candidates.

McFadden looks for savings

Campaigns have many strategies for paying down their debt, from traditional fundraising appeals to making personal loans to renting out campaign supporter email lists to other candidates.

Another option is to try to negotiate payment terms with vendors.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden’s campaign manager Carl Kuhl said that’s part of what he’s been doing. After his unsuccessful bid for election, McFadden had invoices from fundraising consultants, legal counsel, online advertisers, banks, caterers and others totaling nearly $140,000. Kuhl said the campaign has been scrutinizing that list to weed out payments the campaign had made previously or bills that were double-counted, and to make sure fundraising consultants, for example, were only getting credit for the donors they actually attracted.

Kuhl said the campaign, which finished the cycle with only $62,000 on hand, has been working to assess its final debt tally before finding ways to pay for it.

Even so, he anticipates closing out the campaign's debt quickly, possibly as soon as the next filing period in April. That process could be delayed by an FEC complaint against a pair of its vendors. (Democratic groups have accused some Republican vendors of illegal coordination. McFadden’s campaign, and others using the vendors, can’t close down until the complaint has been settled.)

“Whether it's a close-out report or the quarterly report, our intention is to have this all wrapped up,” he said. “We will have it done. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

The forgivable personal loan

For wealthy candidates, the bulk of debt owed by a campaign is often to the candidate themself.

In Minnesota, 8th District Republican candidate Stewart Mills lent his campaign $360,000 for which his campaign hasn’t reimbursed him, and likely won’t. Candidates who self-fund don’t have to reimburse themselves — and many don't, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of 2010 races — so none of these candidates need to ask donors for cash, unless they have other debt.

Mills, whose stake in his family’s Fleet Farm retail chain is worth millions of dollars, owed three campaign vendors nearly $17,000, a sum he reported paying off in his year-end filing on Thursday. The campaign has less than $300 in its bank account. A message left with Mills’ secretary Thursday was not returned.

Mills wasn’t the only Minnesotan to self-fund: challengers in the 1st District (Jim Hagedorn, $23,000), 2nd District (Mike Obermueller, $32,500), 3rd District (Sharon Sund, $10,500) and 4th District (Sharna Wahlgren, $51,900) all made sizable personal loans to their campaigns.

Of course, candidates can pay themselves back. Rhonda Sivarajah lent her campaign $170,000 before August's 6th District Republican primary. At the time, she had more than $190,000 on-hand. When she filed her next FEC report in October, she had paid off the loan, and her bank account was nearly emptied out.

Easier for winners

For a winning candidate, the fundraising game is significantly easier.

Take Rep. Tom Emmer — the 6th Distric winner had more than $210,000 in unpaid expenses after his first congressional campaign, the most among successful candidates in Minnesota. Most of that is owed to fundraising and media consultants or advertising companies.

David FitzSimmons, Emmer’s campaign coordinator and chief of staff, blamed part of that on the costs of starting up a campaign — building a team of consultants and advisers and a fundraising network that existing members already had set up — while competing in a contested endorsement process and primary election before even getting to the general. Incoming House freshman are also expected to pay for some of the transitional costs that go into being elected, such as flying to D.C. for new member orientation in November.

Emmer has apparently recognized the need to pay that debt down quickly — in the three weeks immediately following the election, traditionally a quiet period for fundraising wherein four Minnesotans raised $200 or less, he brought in $23,000. FitzSimmons said the plan is to for the campaign to be debt-free well before the heavy lifting of a re-election campaign begins.

In all, Emmer’s campaign wasn’t an incredibly expensive one — he spent $1.8 million on his race last year, which was less than what the two other Minnesota Republicans, Reps. Erik Paulsen ($2.5 million) and John Kline ($2.9 million), spent on their races. Even retired Rep. Michele Bachmann, whom Emmer replaced, spent more than he did during the cycle ($2.2 million, of which $585,000 went toward her presidential campaign’s outstanding debt and legal fees).

“The expense-side is incredibly minimal right now, so we’re able to raise in excess of where we’re at,” FitzSimmons said. “We plan on, after the first quarter [ending March 31], being above the black line.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Obama administration to request new funding for American Indian schools

Devin Henry — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 23:27:48 +0000

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will request $1 billion in funding for American Indian education when it releases its budget next week, including millions for school construction desperately needed at schools like one in Minnesota.

The request is $150 million more than the Bureau of Indian Education’s budget for the current fiscal year, and if enacted, it would be the largest budget the program has seen since the stimulus package in 2009. The request includes $45 million for replacement school construction, a $25 million boost over this year’s number, though not nearly enough to address the problem of disrepair among Indian schools.

By government estimates, one-third of BIE’s 183 schools nationwide are in poor condition, and there are still two facilities on a 2004 list of schools that need to be replaced. Until recently, Congress and the Obama administration have put off addressing the problem. Congress appropriated $20 million for school construction last year, even though the administration had requested just $3.2 million. Before that, the administration had not requested school construction funding since 2010.

If enacted by Congress, Obama’s request for next year would close out the 2004 list of replacement schools, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said on a press call Thursday afternoon. Officials expect to release a new list of schools in need of replacement this spring or summer.

The Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School on Minnesota’s Leech Lake Indian Reservation figures to be on that list. Housed in a used barn, it’s the only “poor” rated BIE school among the four in Minnesota, and tribal officials have long requested funds to replace it. Jewell, who visited the school last summer, highlighted it as indicative of those needing to be replaced around the country.

“The hallways are small, the building is freezing cold in the winter, it leaks, it smells and it certainly is not conducive to learning,” she said Thursday.

The budget request still needs to get through Congress, but administration officials said they expect the funding will receive bipartisan support. Minnesota lawmakers hailed the announcement on Thursday. Rep. Betty McCollum, the ranking Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee dealing with Indian Affairs spending, called it an “important recognition by the administration that BIE school construction funding needs tremendous improvement.”

Sen. Al Franken, who sits on both the Senate Indian Affairs and Education committees, said, “This new budget proposal from the Department of Interior is a sign that people are paying attention. These children deserve better, and I’m going to keep fighting for them.”

Officials said a visit to North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux Reservation last year spurred Obama toward action on Indian schools, something Jewell said has been on her radar since she took over as secretary in 2013.

Still, $45 million won’t be enough to solve the department’s problems: government studies estimate it would take more than $1 billion to bring the system’s schools up to satisfactory levels. But Jewell said the request "was as far as we could reasonably go" to both fit within the overall budget and request funding for other BIE priorities.

“This is just step one in a multi-year approach that will go well beyond the Obama administration to transforming Indian education for the benefit of any children, frankly, for the next generation of Indian tribes and tribal leaders in this country,” Jewell said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

House passes Paulsen's anti-trafficking legislation

Devin Henry — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 20:06:31 +0000

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House has passed a bill from Rep. Erik Paulsen meant to target human trafficking.

The bill would provide incentives for states to adopt laws that would expand access to rehabilitation services to underage trafficking victims. Minnesota adopted one of these so-called “safe harbor” laws in 2011. The bill would also bring the U.S. Marshals Service into human trafficking investigations, Paulsen said at a Tuesday press conference.

“These provisions will now give law enforcement more critical tools to combat this horrific crime and also allow the victims to get the services they need,” Paulsen said.

Human trafficking is a growing problem in Minnesota, with the FBI ranking the Twin Cities one of the top 13 cities for trafficking crimes in 2013. Nearly 400 people were convicted of sex trafficking violations in Minnesota in 2011, according to the State Court Administrator’s Office.

Paulsen's bill — which passed Tuesday by a unanimous voice vote — is a part of a package of bipartisan bills the House is considering this week designed to combat human trafficking (The Hill has more information on some of the other bills here). Many of the bills, including Paulsen’s, passed the House last year but were not taken up by the Senate.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Minnesota parents to Congress: maintain 'No Child Left Behind' testing

Devin Henry — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 14:49:40 +0000

WASHINGTON — Tameka Jones’ daughter graduated from St. Paul’s Central Senior High last year and went to Prairie View University in Texas — and both mother and daughter worry she might have underestimated college’s difficulty.

“I don’t know if she’s at the same level as the other students,” Tameka Jones said Wednesday. “Her first semester wasn’t that great, and I think that she had a false sense that she was on the ball because of her schooling in Minnesota. Now that she’s somewhere else, she’s like, wait, hold up, I didn’t know all of the things that I needed to know to be here at this time.”

As congressional efforts to reform the bruised and beaten No Child Left Behind law began in earnest on Wednesday, Jones and a group of parents and educators from Minnesota were in Washington to ask lawmakers to preserve a key component of the law: the standardized testing designed to give educators, parents and lawmakers more insight into the strengths and weaknesses of America’s schools.

For the group, black women with children in Minneapolis or St. Paul schools, educators in training or alumni themselves, testing is tantamount to a civil rights issue: the results of the tests give parents and administrators the chance to compare student progress against school districts around America, and provide a goldmine of information about the achievement gap that has consumed inner-city schools and minority students.

Minnesota Rep. John Kline, the chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said maintaining a testing requirement is likely to be part of his panel’s NCLB reform package, and the Obama administration has said it hopes for the same. The issue is still up in the air in the GOP-controlled Senate, where lawmakers held a hearing on testing Wednesday.

“We want to be sure to be kept aware of how our children are doing in schools,” Khulia Pringle, a teacher-in-training, said. “Without that data, there is no way for us to know how our kids are doing individually, how they’re doing compared to their peers, how they’re doing nationally, how teachers are doing. So it’s critical.”

Shining a light on the achievement gap

Under NCLB, school districts are required to test their students on math and reading annually between third and eighth grade and once on each subject in high school. NCLB doesn’t mandate one national benchmark by which to judge student progress — states are given the power to do that. But when the federal government began issuing states waivers from the law’s penalties in 2012, it said states needed to show “college and career readiness” for their students, and their testing schemes must align with that goal. States still determine what that means, but the federal government can review their decisions.

The results of the testing, which are made public, have helped illuminate the performance gap between suburban schools and those in inner cities, and between whites and students of color — an area of particular concern for Minnesota.

Jones, Pringle and others came to Washington Wednesday with the Minnesota branch of a group called Students for Education Reform to talk to members about the importance of testing standards for their kids and their communities.

Latasha Gandy, the group’s managing director in Minnesota, said test results are a tool parents can use to identify schools that are the best fit for their children.

“Before this was available to me, I would have sent my kid to the normal neighborhood school, the school bus stopped at the stop on the corner and they would have went there,” she said. “And I would have thought they were getting everything they deserved, like I did for so many years. But the test makes me understand how my child can do there.”

Zina Fizer, a parent of a student from St. Louis Park High, said the law’s national standards give parents and policy makers a way to compare where students and schools are relative to their peers, not just within a district but nationwide.

“I’ve always appreciated the standardized testing because it let me know where my child was,” she said. “I was able to determine how he ranged and rated all across the nation. If that part goes away, then that makes the parent ignorant of where their child is, and then you can’t intervene if you don’t know.”

Over-testing a complaint

NCLB testing has been controversial for any number of reasons: before the waivers, tests were deemed to be a high-stakes game with funding on the line. Some teachers groups have complained about over-testing (an argument advocates say is misplaced: NCLB testing mandates haven’t changed, though states have added regimens of their own on top of them), and some parent groups have begun leading movements to have their children opt out of the tests.

Chris Stewart

That’s where, for these parents, the idea of testing as a civil right comes into play. Chris Stewart, the director of outreach for the group Education Post, argued that testing, as a tool for assessing large-scale student progress, is not a new concept, but only became controversial when it started exposing a racial disparity in education. Fizer said some people would rather ignore data showing underperforming schools than try to change the status quo.

“[Testing] shows that there is gap, it shows that there isn’t equity as we said there was,” she said.

“You get rid of the tests, you get rid of the evidence,” Stewart said.

Kline: Keep testing

Senate Republicans held a hearing on testing on Wednesday after releasing a draft NCLB reform bill last week. The draft was thorough, but the committee chairman, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, left two possible options for testing: maintaining the annual test mandate or turning it over to states to overhaul as they please.

Kline said his committee’s version of NCLB reform will include an annual testing requirement, but he wants to remove the penalties that forced states to adopt proficiency standards. He equated the testing question to the debate over Common Core, the controversial standardized education benchmarks many states have adopted to win an NCLB waiver (Minnesota is not a Common Core state). He said states should be allowed to coordinate their education standards, “but it is entirely wrong for the federal government to try to manage that.”

Even if there isn’t a national standard, Kline said he recognized the importance of standardized tests in assessing states’ education progress and in quantifying the achievement gap.

“I do think it’s important that there be testing,” he said. “I think it’s important that you can get enough data so that you can disaggregate it, that is, you can peel it apart to make sure that you’re not leaving behind certain groups.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Hearing from the other Minnesotans at the State of the Union

Devin Henry — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 16:03:47 +0000

WASHINGTON — The most conspicuous Minnesotans in the House chambers during last night’s State of the Union address were Rebekah and Ben Erler, the Minneapolis couple and guests of the first lady whose story of middle-class resilience served as a central anecdote in President Obama’s speech. But they weren’t the only Minnesotans in the room.

Each member of Congress gets to invite a guest to sit in the upper gallery of the House chamber and watch the speech.

Selecting a State of the Union guest is one of those “flag in the ground” moments for members, who often invite people of like mind and priority: Rep. Keith Ellison’s guest this year is a champion of the low-wage worker; Rep. Tim Walz brought a decorated member of the military. They bring an eclectic mix of interests, experience and expertise to Washington, and in a grab bag speech like the State of the Union, there’s something in there that hits home for most of them.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha Co-Director Veronica Mendez

MinnPost photo by Devin Henry

Veronica Mendez

So much of President Obama’s middle-class agenda matters for Minneapolis’ Veronica Mendez, Ellison’s guest.

Mendez’s group works with low-wage workers throughout the Twin Cities, organizing fast food workers and janitors to push for higher pay and better benefits. When Obama talks about a minimum wage hike, or paid sick leave, or free community college for students, the people with whom Mendez is working most definitely stand to benefit. Mendez said “99 percent of our members don’t have what President Obama was talking about” in his speech.

“Low-wage workers across the country have been standing up in the hundreds of thousands and demanding change because they continue to be marginalized in this economy, and we need to see a change,” she said.

The political atmosphere in Minnesota has been a bit better for her group’s goals recently, but she said it takes collective action to force lawmakers on any level to move on the issues that matter most to them.

“Whether it’s the state Legislature in Minnesota or the U.S. [Congress], I think that it’s all about people being in the streets, speaking up and demanding justice, and demanding that their voices be heard, and as long as people are doing that, we can change it, wherever we are,” she said.

Army Ranger Sgt. Thomas Block

MinnPost photo by Devin Henry

Sgt. Thomas Block

It was Oct. 5, 2013, in southern Afghanistan, when a woman blew herself up near Waseca native Thomas Block.

He was thrown 35 feet into a minefield, and it took doctors six surgeries to rebuild his face, according to a military narrative of his service published last year when Block won the Army Times Solider of the Year award. His right eye is gone. A prosthetic has taken its place, stamped with an image of Captain America’s shield.

Veterans affairs and military issues weren’t marquee issues in his speech, but Obama did highlight a vets jobs initiative, and he said the Veterans Affairs administration is on track to fix its backlog of hospital patients, a problem that boiled over into a scandal last year.

Block, Walz’s guest, is still on active duty, so he’s diplomatic when it comes to Congress and its politics. He said he’s “going to put a lot of faith in my leadership to voice what we need to be done for us,” but he was interested in what Obama said on veterans, and he said the VA is moving in the right direction.

“I’m going to trust in my leadership that they’re going to get it right for me when I go through and I get to that system as a retired military member,” he said.

Virginia High School Senior Sophie Cerkvenik

MinnPost photo by Devin Henry

Sophie Cerkvenik

Rep. Rick Nolan’s guest, Sophie Cerkvenik, is a senior at Virginia High School eyeing a college career next fall in Maine.

Cerkvenik’s school of choice, Colby College, is a four-year liberal arts institution, so it’s different from the community colleges that Obama talked so much about in his speech.

But Cerkvenik said if Congress were to find some agreement on a way to subsidize community college — a long shot, to be sure — it would be something that would “have a good effect on my generation.”

“I think it’s great that he’s trying to expand free college education into the college level, especially with all the technological advances that our country is making,” she said. “It’s getting hard to get a job without a post-secondary education, so I thought that was pretty awesome.”

But for all the talk about free community college and enhanced job training opportunities, the president of the University of Minnesota’s undergraduate students said she was surprised by how little else Obama said about higher education.

Minnesota Student Association President Joelle Stangler

Courtesy of Sen. Al Franken

Joelle Stangler with Sen. Al Franken

Joelle Stangler’s school won a mention in Obama’s speech, but not in the context it might like: A year at the U, Obama said, costs as much as a year of child care for two Minnesota children, in what amounted to an indictment of both college affordability and child-care costs.

Stangler said Obama’s free community college plan is one to watch, but she’s interested in how the government would fund it, and how it will conform with states that are already trying to bring down costs. She said she was hoping to hear more about existing student debt, a topic Sen. Al Franken, her host, has worked on.

“I would have liked to see a focus on a solution on existing debt rather than letting it linger like the elephant in the room,” Stangler said. But she’s a pragmatist, hoping a student loan plan will be in Obama’s budget proposal, and cognizant about just how much a president is able to fit into any one State of the Union address.

“Student debt isn’t the sexiest of things to be included in the speech,” she said.

Minneapolis Police Sgt. Grant Snyder

Grant Snyder has been on the sex trafficking beat in Minneapolis for four years, officially, and 15 years overall. The problem has become a scourge for the city, he said, with victims growing younger and more numerous every year.

Rep. Erik Paulsen invited Snyder to the State of the Union as the congressman is pushing a bill, modeled off of a Minnesota law, that would create “safe harbors” for trafficked girls, treating them as victims of a crime rather than criminals themselves. Sex trafficking prevention didn’t come up in Obama’s speech, but it’s already moving on the Hill; the House Judiciary Committee is due to mark up Paulsen’s bill on Wednesday, and a previous version passed the House unanimously last year.

“Safe Harbor is one of those things that is a really great starting point, because it makes that commitment to look at this a certain way and to really look at the victims a certain way, and that’s critical,” Synder said.

The next step is a more difficult one: trying to dampen demand, especially for young girls. Snyder suggested hiking up penalties for people who go looking to buy sex.

“If we believe that sex trafficking is slavery, then in all its various manifestations, whether it’s street corner prostitution, massage parlor sex work, those sorts of things, we need to be very deliberate about increasing the penalties for buyers of sex across that whole spectrum,” he said. “That’s where the problem really lies.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Closing the books on 2014 campaign fundraising

Devin Henry — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 15:10:47 +0000

WASHINGTON — Do you miss the election? Do you miss MinnPost’s campaign finance dashboard?

Let’s revisit both for one minute.

Final campaign finance reports for federal races were due to the Federal Election Commission in December, giving us a final look at the money race for the 2013-14 cycle (there is one final “year-end report” due to the FEC at the end of this month, but that fundraising will count toward the 2015–16 cycle). Before the next round of fundraising begins in earnest, let’s take at look at how Minnesota candidates fared last cycle.

The dashboard has been updated with final numbers for federal candidates (gubernatorial year-end reports are due Februrary 2), and you can always step back through previous reports to re-live the ups and downs of candidate fundraising. Meanwhile, a couple of quick thoughts on the last cycle:

Stewart Mills lent himself a lot of money: In Minnesota’s closest and most closely watched race, 8^th District Republican candidate Stewart Mills ended up giving his campaign nearly $403,000, which helped him out-spend incumbent Rep. Rick Nolan by about $31,000. Nolan raised a lot more money from contributors — $2.1 million to $1.6 million — and he starts out the new cycle in a fair position, with $104,000 on hand and less than $10,000 in debt. That’s more than twice as much as he had in the bank after his 2012 campaign.

Nolan beat Mills by 1.4 percentage points.

Franken stiffly outraised McFadden: In the end, Sen. Al Franken’s army of small-dollar donors helped give him a three-and-a-half-to-one fundraising edge on Republican businessman Mike McFadden. Franken brought in $24.5 million to McFadden’s $6.9 million, and both spend just under those amounts.

It’s not reflected on the dashboard, but the McFadden campaign took on some big debts on its way out the door, to the tune of $139,000. Unlike Mills, McFadden didn’t loan his campaign any money.

Also, lest you think campaigns take some time off after the elections, Franken’s 2020 campaign committee is already live in the FEC’s database. He ended his first re-election campaign with almost $524,000 on hand.

Big bank account for Paulsen, lots of IOUs for Emmer: Nearly every campaign in Minnesota ratcheted up their spending in the last two months of the campaign, except one: Rep. Erik Paulsen.

En route to a 24.3-point victory over DFLer Sharon Sund, Paulsen spent much less between Sept. 1 and Election Day ($477,000) than he did between June and August ($1.2 million). He’s the only major candidate in Minnesota to take his foot off the gas as the election drew closer. He didn’t need to spend the cash, so he didn’t, and he’ll start the 2016 cycle with an enormous bank account: nearly $1.3 million. That’s 2.75-times what Paulsen’s last two challengers raised, combined. That’s enough to probably scare off many Democratic challengers in 2016, and eventually set in motion speculation that Paulsen will look to run statewide in 2018 or 2020.

Among Minnesota’s other Republicans, Rep. John Kline raised $2.7 million and ended the year with $174,000 on hand. On the flip side of that, Rep. Tom Emmer is pretty deep in the hole: he has $14,000 in the bank but $210,000 in leftover bills, easily the most among Minnesota candidates who didn’t self-fund.

With that, here’s the dashboard, and we’ll see you when 2016 numbers start rolling in.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Reducing veteran suicides, one step at a time

Devin Henry — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 17:01:26 +0000

WASHINGTON — Clay Hunt was a Marine veteran, a soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who volunteered in earthquake-ravaged Haiti and Chile and went on long-distance bike rides to keep his war-induced depression at bay. He also sought treatment at Veterans Affairs hospitals, but, as his family told 60 Minutes, was frustrated by scheduling delays and the type of treatment he found there.

In March 2011 he shot himself in his Houston apartment, at the age of 28.

Last year, a group of lawmakers, led in part by Minnesota Rep. Tim Walz, took up the cause of Hunt and his fellow veterans, and this week, just days into a new Congress, the House passed the Clay Hunt SAV Act. The bill aims to reduce veteran suicides by doing three things: it directs the VA to create a website listing its mental health offerings for veterans, it requires a yearly review of the effectiveness of those services, and it creates a student loan repayment program to help the VA recruit and hire new psychiatrists, up to 10 per year.

A version of the same bill passed last December but stalled in the Senate when Sen. Tom Coburn placed a hold on the legislation, citing its $22 million price tag. Coburn has since retired, and the bill’s unanimous passage in the House this week, coupled with bipartisan support in the Senate, means it will likely become law.

Veteran suicide is a daunting challenge — The VA estimates veterans are committing suicide at a rate of 22 per day — and Walz and other advocates acknowledge that this bill — if it passes — will only address a small part of the problem. Yet in a Washington political environment hostile to sweeping actions, advocates are embracing a more piecemeal approach to the issue, passing scaled-down bills, making sure they’re implemented properly, and seeing what works and what doesn’t along the way.

“What we want to make sure, though, is that it’s not viewed as, oh we did something on, let’s move on,” Walz said. “This is a place that moves on to what’s the next thing.”

Better coordination between departments

Walz’s original Clay Hunt bill concerned not just Veterans Affairs but also the Department of Defense — which cares for active duty personnel — and would have mandated better coordination between the two agencies’ health care services.

The bill would have created programs that intersect between both Defense and Veterans Affairs so that when a service member retires, records and treatment plans transition between the departments. That proposal was pulled to speed up passage of a slimmed-down bill, but Walz hopes to use his new spot on the House Armed Services Committee to work on bringing the DOD and VA closer together on mental health care.

“Since I’ve been here I’ve talked about the lack of seamless transition,” Walz said. “It really was, and it still is to a certain degree: you leave the military and you fall off a cliff and then you try to figure out how to get back in VA, which is just stupid.”

Jackie Maffucci, the research director for the veterans’ group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America — which put out a white paper on addressing veteran suicide last year — said improved records coordination between DOD and VA would allow the VA, an opt-in organization, to better market to potential beneficiaries of their programs. Through 2013, less than 60 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were using VA care, according to VA records. Among those who do use the VA, mental health problems are the second-most diagnosed aliment.

Right now, the two departments can view each other’s records, Maffucci said, but the system is convoluted. The goal, she said, is a system “where regardless of if you’re being seen at DOD or VA, there’s one window with all the records.”

Personality disorders

Walz has also introduced legislation meant to address the availability of VA mental health services for veterans who may have been discharged due to mental-health problems.

Veterans who are dishonorably discharged — due, for example, to behavioral problems — are not eligible to receive VA care, including mental health services. A 2011 report from the Vietnam Veterans of America estimated that up to 30,000 service members were discharged due to misdiagnosed “personality disorder” issues between 2001 and 2011. Walz said lawmakers should reassess whether those individuals should be eligible to receive mental health care through the VA.

Last session, Walz introduced a bill that would have required a review of discharges based on personality disorders, which are considered pre-existing conditions but could be attributed to PTSD or other combat-related trauma.

And even if those disorders were present before enlistment, “My take is, you broke it you own it,” Walz said. “You should have not enlisted them if that was the case… I’m of the belief that these people were treated unfairly… they can at least now get care under [the Affordable Care Act], but they should be getting VA care.”

Finding more psychiatrists

Mental trauma and suicide among veterans obviously isn’t a new problem, but it’s something that’s become more traceable in recent years.

Paul Summergrad, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, attributed the problem to the rise of head injuries from Improvised Explosive Devices, but also to improvements in medical care — soldiers are surviving injuries that would have killed them in past conflicts.

Today, though, that translates to high demand for psychiatrists in the VA system. A 2012 VA Inspector General’s report found that more than 70 percent of the system’s mental health staffers said their facilities were too understaffed to meet veterans’ needs. Summergrad said his organization’s members are on board with finding a solution, though one hasn’t emerged yet.

The Clay Hunt bill looks to change that by offering student loan repayment for trained psychiatrists who work in the VA system. Walz said it’s a best practice suggested by providers, though he said he’s afraid it might not be enough.

“You have to be able to pay them somewhat similar to the private sector,” he said. “And if we’re not able to do that, we might be able to do something in terms of: entice them through student loan payments.”

Mental health parity, more research

Groups are looking at other aspects of the problem as well.

Summergrad said lawmakers should work to institute mental health parity — the concept that mental health should be covered as thoroughly as physical health — throughout the private sector, a plan Walz agrees with (Minnesota has a history of parity advocates, including Paul Wellstone and Jim Ramstad).

Walz said he hopes to be a voice for the National Guard on the Armed Services Committee, and he’s already proposed making sure reservists have access to the same mental health proposals as active duty personal. And both Summergrad and Walz said the government should help fund more research into the effects of military service on mental health.

A long-term process

Walz acknowledged that the next legislative steps on mental health are likely more than a year away. Advocates say they need to make sure the Clay Hunt proposals work first — and, in fact, need to decide what metrics they should use to even decide what that means.

“This is going to be a bit more of a longer-term process,” IAVA’s Maffucci said. “We’re not going to see outcomes in a month or two.”

Walz, who attributes last year’s uproar over VA wait times with helping to prod along passage of Clay Hunt, said he hopes to keep the issue on lawmakers’ radar.

“I don’t like the cliché of we can't wait another day. On this one I think it fits. I do think we’re going to have to get a body of research to see, and this may take several years … we hope we’ll see numbers reducing because of this.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Franken renews push for American-made steel for Keystone

Devin Henry — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 01:13:29 +0000

WASHINGTON — Here's some déjà vu for Minnesota voters: Sen. Al Franken has injected American-made steel back into the Keystone XL pipeline debate.

Franken has formally introduced an amendment requiring the pipeline, if approved by Congress, be built with American-made steel. The amendment, which Franken offered to a GOP bill that would authorize construction of the pipeline despite an ongoing State Department review, could come to the floor for a vote next week, lawmakers announced Tuesday.

The American-made steel debate will be familiar to those who paid attention to Franken's re-election campaign last year. Franken has said he opposes bypassing the regulatory process for Keystone, but, either way, it should be constructed with American steel. During the campaign his Republican opponent, businessman Mike McFadden, said he didn't think that should be a precondition to constructing Keystone, a comment the DFL used against him throughout the campaign, especially on Minnesota's Iron Range.

Franken's amendment is short, requiring that: “to the maximum extent consistent with the obligations of the United States under international trade agreements, none of the iron, steel or manufactured goods used in construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and facilities approved by this act may be produced outside of the United States.” The big caveat: the amendment wouldn’t apply if using American-made products would increase the price of the project by more than 25 percent.

“I have long believed that Congress should not short circuit the regular permitting process for the Keystone pipeline as there are still agencies reviewing the project that have yet to complete their analyses,” Franken said in a statement. “I also think that if the pipeline is built, it should be built with American steel from our American producers.”

Lawmakers are expected to vote on the amendment and the final bill early next week. Republicans overcame a Democratic filibuster on Monday, and the House passed a bill approving Keystone, a 1,179-mile pipeline carrying oil from Canada to existing pipelines in Nebraska, last week. President Obama has threatened to veto the bill should it reach his desk.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry.

Walz moves to Armed Services Committee; delegation committees set

Devin Henry — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 15:40:24 +0000

CC/Flickr/The USO

Over the past year, Rep. Tim Walz has sought to grow his influence on veterans and military issues.

WASHINGTON — As he had hoped, Rep. Tim Walz will get a spot on the House Armed Services Committee, Democratic leadership announced Friday.

After his bid to lead Democrats on the Veterans Affairs Committee failed in November, Walz pushed to be added to the Armed Services Committee so he could grow his influence on veterans and military issues. He dropped off of the Transportation Committee to get the Armed Services spot, but he told MinnPost last year that it was a trade he was willing to make, given the transportation panel’s recent inability to move forward on major funding bills.

In a Friday statement, Walz said he was “honored” to win an assignment to Armed Services (something that still needs to be approved by the Democratic caucus, which is all but a formality).

Lawmakers use their committee assignments to either push issues they care about or to help them craft new legislative portfolios. Walz wanted to be on both Veterans Affairs and Armed Services, for example, because he wants to work more on military issues, and Rep. Tom Emmer, a congressional newcomer, says he sees his assignments (Agriculture and Foreign Affairs) as a potent combo given how much overlap there is between the two committees on topics like trade.

With that in mind, here’s a rundown of the committee assignments for Minnesota’s congressional delegation:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar:

Judiciary
Commerce
Agriculture
Rules
Ranking Democrat, Joint Economic
Chair, Steering and Policy (an intra-party conference committee that helps set policy for the conference)

Sen. Al Franken:

Judiciary
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Indian Affairs
Energy

Rep. Tim Walz:

Agriculture
Veterans Affairs
Armed Services

Rep. John Kline:

Chair, Education and the Workforce
Armed Services

Rep. Erik Paulsen:

Ways and Means

Rep. Betty McCollum:

Appropriations (most senior Democrat on the Interior subcommittee; also serves on defense subcommittee)

Rep. Keith Ellison:

Financial Services
Democratic Steering Committee (similar to the Senate version, a party committee that sets a platform and works on committee assignments)

Rep. Tom Emmer:

Agriculture
Foreign Affairs

Rep. Collin Peterson:

Ranking Democrat, Agriculture

Rep. Rick Nolan:

Agriculture
Transportation

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Medical device tax opponents’ $29 billion question

Devin Henry — Fri, 09 Jan 2015 16:00:37 +0000

WASHINGTON — The latest round of the medical device tax fight kicked off on Wednesday with a press conference exuding bipartisan confidence, a group of Republicans and Democrats certain that this is the year the Affordable Care Act’s tax is finally taken off the books.

But first, they have to figure out how to pay for it.

Repealing the 2.3 percent tax has been a top legislative priority for Minnesota Rep. Erik Paulsen practically since it was passed into law. The House has passed some version of his bill twice, but the Senate has never taken it up, though there is enough bipartisan support to get repeal through the chamber.

With the GOP takeover of Congress, action on a device tax repeal is coming sooner rather than later. Republicans will need Democratic support to get it through the Senate, which means finding a way to make up the lost revenue — a “pay-for” in Congress-speak — that will work for both sides, not to mention the president. Right now, at least, negotiations are ongoing and no one is able to say what that is — but repeal proponents say they're sure they are going to find one most people will like.

“We’ve been in the red zone before, but with new Senate leadership we’re confident and optimistic that we can get it across the goal line,” Paulsen said.

Working on it

ACA architects included the medical device tax in the law as a way to help pay for it, though tax opponents managed to cut its rate in half before passage. The tax is slated to bring in about $29 billion over ten years.

Repealing the tax is especially important for Minnesota, which has more than 400 device companies employing up to 34,000 people, Paulsen said. He introduced his first version of the tax repeal just a month after it was signed into law in 2010, and the entire state delegation supports repeal.

After Republicans' big wins last November, it was assured they move quickly on repeal. They still need at least six Democrats to join them if they are to overcome a potential filibuster in the Senate, and, of course, convince Obama to sign the bill.

After the elections, Obama didn't close the door to a tax repeal bill, and many Democrats support repeal in principle: 33 Senate Democrats voted for a non-binding resolution saying so in 2013, and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken both oppose the tax. But supporters need to find a new, agreeable funding offset, and no one’s ready to say what that might be.

Rep. Erik Paulsen

On Wednesday, Paulsen said he was “convinced that having such a strong group of bipartisan legislators, the pay-fors are not going to be a problem.” (The bill has more than 250 co-sponsors.) He did acknowledge, though, that in 2012, that wasn’t the case. Both he and bill co-author Ron Kind (D-Wisconsin) said leaders in both parties are looking for a solution.

Kind suggested they could find savings within a health care industry whose costs are growing more slowly because of the ACA, but that’s about as specific as anyone can get right now.

In a statement, a Franken spokesman said that he “is continuing to explore ways to offset repeal.” Klobuchar, when asked about it on Meet the Press this Sunday, said she is working with Senate Republicans to find a solution. A spokesman for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the bill’s Republican sponsor in the Senate, that he “will be working with members of both parties to move the effort forward in the new Congress.”

Device tax opponents say the bill could begin moving by March.

2012’s offset

Republicans moved Paulsen’s bill on its own in 2012, paying for it using a strategy called “subsidy recapture.” Essentially, the bill reduced ACA subsidies to certain individuals who don’t spend their entire payment on purchasing health insurance plans. (Here’s a much more technical description of the policy from 2012). The plan would have saved the government $43.9 billion over 10 years, more than enough to offset the $29 billion the government would lose if it repeals the tax.

Many Democrats, even some who oppose the tax, were not fond of this plan. Obama threatened a veto of the bill, citing the subsidy cuts, and some Minnesota Democrats who supported the bill said they hoped the funding mechanism would change. Rep. Betty McCollum, a liberal Democrat who opposes the tax and has co-sponsored Paulsen’s bill, said at the time, “I will vote to send this bill to the Senate where I know a responsible offset can be found that will not hurt any citizen.”

The Senate never took up the bill.

How it might pass

There a couple of different paths a medical device tax repeal could take through Congress this session, and each has a unique twist on the funding side of the equation.

• First, Paulsen’s bill could pass on its own, with an agreed-upon offset. Mark McClellan, a health care expert at the Brookings Institution, suggested, as Kind did, that lawmakers could look toward other aspects of federal health care spending for savings, even within the ACA.

“Other places to go might be aspects of the [law] that many Democrats might not be willing to die on their sword over,” he said, such as payments to insurers or certain types of funding for the law’s built-in bureaucracy.

• Lawmakers could also attach a repeal bill to a broader tax reform package. But modern attempts at so-called “comprehensive tax reform” have turned out to be the legislative equivalent of Bigfoot: much discussed, often sought after, rarely seen in the wild and, until evidence proves otherwise, probably a myth.

Even so, a new Congress means renewed hope that such a plan could come together. That would make moot the question of a $29 billion offset for one specific tax cut when, by definition, the tax code as a whole would be rebuilt. In a Wednesday statement, Klobuchar said, “I also continue to believe [a device tax repeal] could be done as part of comprehensive tax reform.”

Genevieve Plumadore, the director of government relations for the St. Louis Park-based LifeScience Alley, a medical industry trade group, suggested repeal could be attached to either a tax overhaul or possibly a larger negotiated ACA reform package. Though her group advocates for repeal, she said they are leaving specific funding decisions up to Congress.

• McClellan suggested lawmakers could pass a repeal bill annually, with some kind of spending offset attached each time (in other words, finding about $3 billion a year, rather than $29 billion all at once). Congress does this with the “doc-fix,” a yearly exercise in which Congress delays Medicare reimbursement cuts to doctors.

In an interview, Paulsen said leadership will have the ultimate say on an offset. With Republicans in charge of both the House and Senate, that could be a worrisome prospect for Democrats. But Paulsen is adamant that with bipartisan support for repeal, there is incentive to find a solution.

Either way, the bill is coming to the floor, and soon, meaning lawmakers are about to be forced off the fence.

“No one is going to be able to hide behind a vote, they’re going to have to really put up now and show they actually do indeed want to repeal that tax, which is good,” Paulsen said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Klobuchar: Improved relations with Cuba will help U.S. agriculture

Devin Henry — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 22:17:34 +0000

WASHINGTON — Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Thursday that she is bullish on the impact improved relations with Cuba will have for the Minnesota agriculture industry.

Klobuchar told a newly formed coalition of agriculture interests that trade and travel provisions within President Obama’s shift in Cuba policy last month represents an opportunity to tap into a new market of potential consumers in the nation.

Current law allows for some agricultural exports to Cuba, but groups say more would be a boon for their industry and the American economy. Minnesota exported about $20 million worth of agricultural goods to Cuba in 2013, Klobuchar said. It’s not a major market for the state, which exported $8.2 billion in agricultural goods in 2012, but Klobuchar said Obama’s move could lead to up to $20 million in new exports for Minnesota agriculture.

“We see Cuba as a market of 11 million people, 11 million new customers that can buy American products, and to me, that means jobs in America,” Klobuchar said.

For more than 50 years, the U.S. has enforced a trade embargo against Casto-led Cuba, but in December Obama announced he would begin moving toward normalized relations with the nation, just 90 miles off the coast. That means easing travel restrictions and moving toward more open trade, though the embargo will remain in place until Congress removes it.

Many Republicans, and some Democrats, have opposed Obama’s Cuba policy, and Klobuchar said ending the embargo wouldn’t be at the top of Congress’ Cuba agenda this session. She said lawmakers’ first task should be monitoring Cuban progress on internal reforms and the degree to which the new policy is helping U.S. economic interests.

“I think it’s first defensive, and then we move on from there,” she said. “I think the first moves, clearly, are going to be the moves of the administration and our working to get diplomatic relations going, and then we’ll move from there in terms of what legislative efforts would help to expand on what they’re doing.”

Klobuchar, along with a few other members of Congress and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, spoke at the National Press Club to the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba, made up of interest groups and companies like Minnesota’s Cargill that are pushing for better American trade policies toward Cuba.

DeVry Boughner Vorwerk, a Cargill Vice President and the chair of the coalition, said agriculture interests have long wanted a better American relationship with Cuba, a goal that has grown more popular with the public since Obama’s announcement in December.

“We are re-energized to establish Cuba as a market for U.S. food and agriculture exports, and as an industry to advance the end of the embargo,” she said in a speech. “The sanctions are harmful to the citizens of Cuba and harmful to our industry.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Welcome to the big leagues: Emmer makes the move from Legislature to Congress

Devin Henry — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 15:44:47 +0000

MinnPost photo by Brian Halliday

Rep. Tom Emmer

WASHINGTON — Tom Emmer went for an early-morning run in the congressional gym and was in the office early on Tuesday, swearing-in day for the new congressman from Minnesota’s 6^th Congressional District.

When Emmer was in the state Legislature, he said, he would start his days as early as 5 a.m., so if anything, the early start was familiar, even reassuring.

“The best time you had was when it was quiet, and you could read and do the stuff you needed to do,” Emmer said. “This morning was probably the first time when it was like, you know what, this is going to happen.”

Emmer knows there will be a learning curve, a steep one, to his new job in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he formally took over for Rep. Michele Bachmann on Tuesday. He has often spoken of the limited influence of freshman members, like himself, who come to Washington without any high-powered allies.

While he recognizes he has a lot to learn, Emmer is using the lessons of his six years in the Minnesota Legislature as a reliable guide to his new job in Congress, from his experience with legislative issues and the personalities of his fellow members, to the very way he plans to study the legislation on which he’ll soon be voting — even though he acknowledges the Legislature isn’t a perfect parallel to the U.S. House.

Reading legislation

Take, for example, the very act of reading legislation.

In Legislatures in Minnesota and around the country, lawmakers are given both the amended and original versions of legislation they’re set to vote on so they can see the changes within it. Not so in Congress, Emmer learned at a Republican conference meeting Monday night.

Emmer said he tried to read as many actual bills as he could in St. Paul (a habit his old legislative seatmate, Rep. Erik Paulsen, later confirmed), but he acknowledged that will be harder in Washington. As of Tuesday morning, he said he hadn’t even gotten around to looking at much of the GOP’s first week legislative line-up.

“I’ve been told that’s much too big a hill to climb around here, that you’ve got to be a little bit more judicious, a bit more strategic with your time, so that’s what I’ll be trying to figure out,” he said.

'The analogy is baseball'

Emmer’s office is a so-far bare space on the fifth level of the Cannon House Office Building. It’s a floor so far out of the way that many elevators can’t reach it, one traditionally relegated to freshmen members who suffer the fate of a poor draw in the office space draft.

During the campaign and after his election, Emmer spoke a lot about the importance of building relationships with the colleagues on the floors below him, those with more experience and more cachet. He was told early on to expect to find a cast of characters with traits as varied as those in a state Legislature, just playing the game at a much higher level.

“I told this to somebody else, who told me, look the analogy is like baseball,” Emmer said. “Every level you move up, the athletes get bigger and faster and stronger and he said, it’s the same here. When you get here you might feel a little bit of that and you just have to do the work because then the ball will slow down and you will see it.”

Surprising committee assignments

Not everything has gone the way Emmer has planned, most notably his committee assignments.

Emmer had hoped to land spots on two of three committees: Agriculture, Transportation or Financial Services. Leadership assigned him Agriculture and Foreign Affairs instead.

Emmer’s not complaining, and after talking with Minnesota farmers, he finds the combination an intriguing and complimentary one. The Ag committee deals with emerging export markets, for example, while Foreign Affairs handles trade deals.

But Emmer said that when committee assignments came down, he expected to get Agriculture and Transportation, a subject he made the focal point of one of his few television ads last fall. He said he still hopes to be involved in the issue, and he’s talked with Sen. Amy Klobuchar about what can be done there.

Emmer said he’s working on building up relationships with members of the Minnesota delegation. The Minnesota State Society hosted a reception for Emmer on Tuesday, drawing a crowd that included Republican Reps. John Kline, Erik Paulsen and former 6^th District Rep. Mark Kennedy, as well as Democrats Klobuchar and Reps. Betty McCollum, Tim Walz and Collin Peterson.

The group hasn’t given him any advice, per se, Emmer said, except for an implicit reminder that despite their political differences, they’re all working toward the same goal — just like in the Legislature.

“What I’ve gotten is, this is what I did in the state Legislature, this is what I’ve done in my professional career. I’m going to do the same thing here, hopefully with some more wisdom and some more experience,” Emmer said. “Regardless of what jersey you wear, at the end of the day, we are the Minnesota delegation. I’m the newest member. It means I get to walk at the end of the line; I get the last chair of the table. Whatever it might mean, I still have a voice and I still have the ability to help the state of Minnesota.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Battle lines drawn in the new Congress — but can bipartisanship break through?

Devin Henry — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 16:30:42 +0000

WASHINGTON — On the first day of the new Congress, lawmakers took about as easy a vote as a member of the U.S. House possibly could — passing a bill called the “Hire More Heroes Act,” a veterans jobs bill that won unanimous support.

It’s only going to get harder from here.

Congress has returned after a session that was so noxiously partisan that it ranks among the least productive in modern U.S. history. Members were, by and large, chipper and upbeat for the new session on swearing-in day, but from here on out, their early schedule is dotted with potential partisan landmines. Obamacare is on the agenda this week. The next two weeks are shortened so the parties can hold their beginning-of-session strategy retreats. The State of the Union is after that, then a likely showdown over immigration in February before budget battles begin to fully bloom.

But Minnesota Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen said Congress will also kick off its new term with a barrage of work and a list of legislation the GOP designed both to help the economy and — they hope — win bipartisan support. The party now controls both the House and Senate, but will need Democratic votes to overcome filibusters in the Senate, and will, of course, need the President’s signature before the end.

“There’s a lot of alignment on a lot of different issues where we’re going to see bipartisan initiatives going through both the House and the Senate for the first time in a long time,” he said. “I think that’s going to bring cooperation from the White House in divided government and our constituents are going to see positive results.”

Obamacare, Keystone on the agenda

The agenda this first week is a good indicator of what Republicans view as first steps on potential boosts for the economy: selectively chip away the Affordable Care Act and push energy policies they’ve long been able to pass through the House, only to see stymied in the Senate.

Their first order of business: two Obamacare-related provisions. The first would exempt veterans already covered by government health insurance from being counted toward the employer mandate — the rule that requires businesses with 50 or more employees to offer a health insurance plan. The move is meant to encourage businesses scared of bumping up against the insurance mandate to hire veterans. That’s the “Hire More Heroes Act,” which the House passed Tuesday night.

The second would redefine a full-time employee — whom businesses are required to cover under the law — from 30 hours to 40 hours. The measure could win bipartisan support, but the White House indicated Tuesday that it opposes the bill.

Keystone comes next — Republicans are pushing to bypass the current State Department review process of the oil pipeline between Canada and the United States. Approving the pipeline project, long delayed by administrative review, has been atop the Republican wish-list for years — they argue the pipeline will lead to job gains and increased North American energy production. It’s very possible they will get it the President’s desk before the end of the month.

Republicans hold 54 seats in the Senate and need just six Democrats to vote for the bill and bypass a potential filibuster. When the Senate voted on the project in December, 14 Democrats joined, though some have since lost their seats. Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken are on record opposing a fast-tracked approval process for Keystone, at least for now.

Even if approved, the vote would be inconsequential. The White House threatened to veto a Keystone bill within hours of the House gaveling in Tuesday.

Minnesota Rep. John Kline said this is how Republicans plan to run Congress during the first few table-setting weeks of the session: approve bills the Republican-controlled House had previously passed, and finally give a GOP-controlled Senate a chance to do the same.

“I think you’ll see that model from Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell, where there are some things we already know there’s traction and bipartisan support and we want to move that, and the others will go down the old fashioned [way],” he said.

Minnesotans push their issues

Some of Minnesota’s members are already taking steps to move their legislative priorities.

Paulsen reintroduced his bill repealing the ACA’s tax on medical device manufacturers this week. When the House passed Paulsen's bill in 2012, it secured 270 votes on the floor, including all eight from the Minnesota delegation. The Senate never took up a final bill, and Democrats cited concerns with the way the tax’s $29 billion in revenue was made up for by cutting certain health care subsidies under the ACA. The Senate did pass a non-binding resolution supporting a device tax repeal last year, and Paulsen said Republicans would look to bring the bill up within the next few months.

“I think all those issues are going to lead to economic growth and opportunities for people,” he said. “What we should be focusing on is everything should be looked at through the lens of job creation, improving the economy, creating a healthier economy.”

Democratic Rep. Tim Walz will re-introduce a bill designed to prevent suicide among veterans. The House passed the bill unanimously in the lame duck session, but now-retired Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) blocked it in the Senate, citing the bill’s $22 million price tag.

“We’ve got guarantees from everyone up to the Speaker that we can get that through,” Walz said.

Big political battles ahead

Then the battles start.

Lawmakers will need to fund the Department of Homeland Security next month, and Republicans have promised to tie funding to some type of legislative response to President Obama’s immigration executive action.

The limit on federal debt is due to be increased this year, and Republicans have already indicated they’ll target a reduction in federal spending as a condition for raising the cap.

“For the first time in a very long time, we’ve got a Senate Republican party whose votes count,” Kline said. “I think the old analogy is they’re firing real bullets now. I suspect they’re going to take their actions seriously and try to get legislation that matches their principles, matches our principles, and that can move.”

But on Tuesday, as Congress gaveled in, lawmakers in both parties say they’ll weather those storms, and try to find common ground elsewhere. Kline thinks a No Child Left Behind overhaul could be signed into law this session. Walz said he hopes they can agree on ways to fund transportation projects over the long-term. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, bouncing between swearing-in parties for senators on Tuesday afternoon, said a strengthening economy should give lawmakers more leeway to work together.

“We have an opportunity, we have a very significant moment in time, for the next year before the presidential [election] really starts, we have an entire year to govern not from a crisis, but to govern from opportunity,” she said.

Keeping in mind lawmakers’ success rate over the last four or so years, pessimism for the 114^th Congress might be well warranted. But on Day One in Washington, at least, optimism reigned.

“I suspect you’re going to have votes that are more partisan, of course that’s going to happen, they always do,” Klobuchar said. “They’ll make their points, we’ll make some points, but then, can we make a difference by passing some of these broader bills?”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Klobuchar, Franken vote against funding bill; Norway ambassador nominee won't get vote

Devin Henry — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 15:47:14 +0000

CC/Flickr/Navin75

Minnesota’s two Democratic Senators joined their House colleagues in opposing the government funding bill.

WASHINGTON — Here are a couple of “CRomnibus” updates from this weekend:

• Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken voted against the $1.1 trillion government spending bill over the weekend, citing a handful of policy changes within it, including those to to Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulations and increased campaign donor limits. They join their five Minnesota Democratic House colleagues in opposing the bill, but they were in the minority in their party in the Senate; the final tally was 56-40, with 32 Democratic yes votes.

The House passed the bill last week, so it now goes to President Obama for his signature. It funds most government agencies through next fall, except Homeland Security, where funding will expire in February so Republicans can respond to President Obama’s immigration executive order. The bill had been dubbed the “CRomnibus” — a combination continuing resolution (the Homeland Security portion) and omnibus funding bill.

The Senate passed the bill on Saturday night after an unusual weekend session and a long day of nomination votes (which we’ll get to). The bill undoes a Dodd-Frank trading regulation and increases the per-year limit on donations to party committees from around $130,000 to more than $777,000 (Common Cause has the explainer).

“This spending bill included major provisions that were added with no public debate, including measures designed to chip away at campaign finance laws,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “We need to have these debates in the light of day through an open process, and moving forward I will continue to fight to make sure we can find common ground without sacrificing transparency and accountability.”

“This bill reverses important rules that were put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, putting tens of millions of Americans back at risk,” Franken said in a statement. “And this bill further erodes our nation’s campaign finance laws by giving wealthy individuals even greater influence in our election system. After closely studying the legislation, I could not in good conscience vote for it.”

• Notably, it was Franken’s old attorney, Marc Elias, who led Franken’s recount team in 2008-09, who helped write the new campaign finance provisions, according to Politico.

• As for the nominations, Democrats are set to approve up to 24 new Obama administration officials after a day of procedural votes on Saturday, allowing for their potential confirmations sometime this week. Democrats can thank conservative Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee for this — the pair objected to a deal Senate leaders had cut on Friday to vote on the budget deal this week, forcing a weekend session which gave Democrats time to set the confirmations in motion. Politico has more on the procedural maneuverings here, as well as some of the nominees who could get confirmation votes this week.

• One nominee who will not get a vote is George Tsunis, the New York businessman whose nomination to be ambassador to Norway was derailed by a disastrous confirmation hearing last winter. Tsunis told Newsday he had heard he would not get a vote on his nomination.

Norwegian-Americans, led by Minnesotans, launched an offensive against his nomination after the January hearing. Soon Klobuchar and Franken, as well as North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson, both Democrats, said they wouldn’t support the nomination if it came to the floor for a vote. With four Democrats defecting and no Republicans likely to support Tsunis, he was facing a very tough sell in the Senate. In the end, Democratic leaders never brought him up for a vote.

“Though I do feel for Mr. Tsunis, I know that our efforts over the past eleven months have finally brought about the right result,” T. Michael Davis, a Twin Cities attorney who helped lead the charge against Tsunis, said in a statement. “Instead of seeing Norway denigrated, both countries embarrassed, strategic interests jeopardized in an area where Russian aggressiveness has become a daily occurrence, or putting real business, diplomacy, and exchange on hold for the next two years, we can now look forward to what we hope will be a qualified and knowledgeable individual nominated for Oslo in the coming weeks by President Obama.”

• Finally, Klobuchar was among a group of senatorial Christmas carolers over the weekend, per a photo from New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Minnesota Democrats vote against government funding bill

Devin Henry — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 15:03:54 +0000

CC/Flickr/intrepid00

WASHINGTON — Nothing is easy in this Congress, right up to the bitter end.

In potentially its final series of votes of the 2014 session, the House passed a bill Thursday night to fund the government into next year, after a lot of behind-the-scenes arm-twisting and public hand-wringing. All five Minnesota Democrats in the House voted against the bill, as did Rep. Michele Bachmann. Republican Reps. John Kline and Erik Paulsen voted yes.

The bill funds most of the government through September, except for the Department of Homeland Security. Lawmakers funded that through February, giving Republicans enough time to craft a response to President Obama’s executive action on immigration (Homeland Security implements the executive order).

The House was scheduled to vote on the bill around 2:00 p.m., but recessed instead while leadership looked for the votes to pass it. When the House finally voted on the bill, around 9:15 p.m., the final tally was 219-206, with 67 Republican no’s and only 57 Democratic yeses.

Members of the two parties had different reasons for voting against the bill. Most conservatives, including Bachmann, opposed it because it didn’t go far enough in undoing the immigration order. Minnesota liberals Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison said in statements that they objected to policy riders attached to the bill, including increased contribution limits for political parties and a change to Dodd-Frank trading regulations; Rep. Rick Nolan said the same, and added his opposition to war funding and a change to pension programs. Rep. Collin Peterson said he opposed the bill because of the Dodd-Frank changes.

The bill is meant to avert a government shutdown, which was due at midnight Thursday. The Senate still has to take up the legislation, and could consider it as soon as Friday. In the meantime, Congress approved a two-day extension of government funding to avoid a shutdown.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Can Klobuchar’s Minnesota Nice melt Senate deadlock in 2015?

Devin Henry — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 16:29:08 +0000

WASHINGTON — Last month, on one of the lawmakers’ first days back in Washington after the election, Democrats elected two senators to potentially contradictory leadership positions.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was tasked with reaching out to progressive groups and making sure they have a strong voice in the party’s internal deliberations.

And Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar won the job focused on finding common ground with Republicans, as Democrats move in to the minority for the first time in her Senate career.

Those two roles — Warren championing liberal causes while Klobuchar serves as lead dealmaker with the GOP — are bound to produce some very different priorities.

Klobuchar isn’t worried about that tension.

“I think we’ve always had different views, from different people, and different styles of how we work with people,” she said. “I spend a lot of time focusing on common ground, and other people spend a lot of time focusing on other things, so I think it’s more the acknowledgement that we have a big tent, and we want that to continue, and mostly it’s an acknowledgement that we want to get some stuff done.”

Figuring out how to get stuff done is Klobuchar’s job heading into 2015. As she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have described it, part of Klobuchar’s new position is essentially the party’s outreach arm to the GOP. She hopes to find bipartisan bills the two parties can work together to pass, and identify individual Republicans who would be willing to work on legislation Democrats could support. Klobuchar has a deal-making streak, and she has, at least right now, an optimistic view of how Congress can bounce back next session and actually get something of substance done.

“I think the times demand, right now, that we work across the aisle. Everybody knows that, certainly the Senate has been more like that than the House. Now it’s very important,” she said.

Democrats losing influence next year

Democrats will have markedly less influence as soon as the 114^th Congress gavels in to session in January. Republicans added to their majority in the U.S. House, and won control of the Senate for the first time of the Obama era, and of Klobuchar’s tenure.

But at 54 members, Republicans won’t have a filibuster-proof majority, which means any legislation will need a fair amount of bipartisan support to pass. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Roll Call he hopes to find ways to cooperate with Democrats to pass bills, and that he plans to open up Senate floor proceedings a bit more than his predecessor, Reid, who kept a tight lid on which amendments could come to the floor in order to save Democrats from having to take tough votes.

If all that’s the case, there’s still a chance that Democrats could help move some bigger bills. By default, they’ll have to be bipartisan, whether it’s Republican-led legislation or something Democrats push during a more lenient amendment process, and that’s where Klobuchar comes in.

In November, Reid said he had asked Klobuchar to put together a list of measures both parties could support and pass. A few bills like that are moving right now, like a bill called the ABLE Act, which sets up tax-free savings accounts for people with disabilities.

Given this session’s constricted timeline — lawmakers hope to pass a budget bill and leave town this weekend — Klobuchar said she expects the new Congress will quickly consider and pass similar “mid-tier” bills early next session. Think something bigger than naming a post office, but smaller than comprehensive immigration reform.

“They’ve already gone through [in the House], and they kind of meandered through the Senate, so we still have a chance, it’s not like it’s over. They are going to have to get blessed [by the House] again,” she said. “I think you’ll see those going through, end of the year and then January, and then I think the tackling of some of these big things.”

Why hasn’t it happened?

The question is why that hasn’t happened up to now, with Klobuchar’s party in charge of half the Congress.

By some metrics, the current Congress has been on pace to be one of the least productive in modern U.S. history. Klobuchar has a diagnosis for lawmakers’ current paralysis, and why she thinks the atmosphere should improve next year.

“Because of the election year, because people went into their opposite warring camps, and the results weren’t good, in terms of getting things done for people,” she said. “I think one of the messages from the American people was, a pox on your house if you’re just going to let things go and fight all the time and not move legislation forward, so I think there will be a mutual interest in moving things forward.”

But if that was a problem ahead of a midterm, it could be exacerbated next session by the beginning of the presidential election cycle. At least a few Senate Republicans are contemplating runs and could potentially push their conference rightward as they go — a move that could risk alienating the very Democrats whose votes they need if the Senate is to pass any legislation this session. But the antidote, Klobuchar said, could be a Senate electoral map filled with potential dealmakers who have an incentive to move things forward.

“They’re going to have some power because they’re going to be up for election: [Missouri’s Roy] Blunt, [Ohio’s Rob] Portman, [North Dakota’s John] Hoeven, [South Dakota’s John] Thune, so I’d look at that too,” she said. “Sometimes Senate stuff matters just as much as the presidential election in this chamber.”

Bills: tax reform, transportation

As for bipartisan legislation that might come up, Klobuchar has a wish list.

A medical device tax repeal will certainly be on the agenda; lawmakers in both the House and Senate are looking for a way to offset a tax repeal’s lost revenue. Klobuchar thinks tax reform as a whole could be possible, as well as measures that would discourage corporations from moving their headquarters overseas, like Medtronic’s flight to Ireland.

Congress has to tackle a long-term transportation bill, and Klobuchar said tax reform could add revenue to that effort. She wants to tackle workforce development through community and technical colleges, student loan relief and Congress’s white whale, immigration reform — though a much less sweeping package than the Senate moved this year.

All of that, of course, depends on what Republicans want. They’ll be in charge, they’ll set the agenda, but given their numbers, they’ll also need some Democratic help to get anything done. Klobuchar knows that, and she said about three months of Republican control will indicate how they intend to run the chamber — inevitable anti-Obamacare votes and all.

“It really starts in January,” she said. “I wouldn’t judge the first week, my guess is there will be a lot of votes that were predictable in the first month.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Looking forward, Bachmann wants a voice in 2016 elections

Devin Henry — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 17:03:36 +0000

REUTERS/Mike Theiler

Rep. Michele Bachmann spoke at the Conservative
Political Action Conference earlier this year.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Michele Bachmann is spending her last days in Congress fighting against President Obama’s executive action on immigration.

But what’s next for her? When the House adjourns this month — possibly as early as next week — what does Bachmann do next?

That’s been one of the biggest questions in Minnesota politics since she announced her retirement last year. In an October Washington Post profile, she said she wants a role similar to that of former House Speaker Newt Gringrich, who has done work for conservative think tanks while also writing and speaking about conservative ideals (along with a heavy rotation on cable news shows).

When she talked to me either this week for Friday’s immigration story, she gave a broader overview of what she’s thinking:

“I want to go out and, in my next life, continue to speak out across the country, especially to young people, speak across the country and write, and be affiliated with groups, and weigh in on 2016. I occupy a very unique space: I’m the only woman that has ever participated in presidential debates on TV on the Republican side,” she said. “Most likely there will be a female on the Democrat ticket as the nominee, and what I want to do is let people know, my party is the party of women, and we are the party of choice. You want a choice party? You want a party that reflects your values and is all about entrepreneurism? This is us, this is who we are. I want to occupy a part of that space in the next two years. It’s a very consequential election, and I want to be a part of that.”

Bachmann didn’t say if she had any formal plans firmed up yet. Fundamentally, though, she wants to be a voice for Republicans heading into the 2016 elections. She foresees an election in which disillusioned Democrats line up behind a Republican presidential nominee, much in the way she personally did after working for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976.

“I was very proud to be a Democrat. And then I saw the bumbling, stumbling of the policies of the Carter administration, and as a young person, I realized, I don’t want any part of this nonsense,” she said. “I became a Republican and I didn’t look back, and the policies of Ronald Reagan did a lot better for me, personally.”

She envisions the same thing happening at the end of the Obama era, if only Republicans can package their message effectively.

“We had a very effective communicator in Ronald Reagan, and I think that will be the challenge for the Republican Party, to effectively communicate an alternative to the stumbling, bumbling disaster that have been the heavy bureaucratic answers that have come out of this administration, and that’s a challenge I want to be a part of.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.