D.C. Dispatches

Minnesotan featured in Obama Bain Capital ad

Devin Henry — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s re-election campaign opened up its Bain Capital-focused line of attack on Mitt Romney this week, releasing a television ad, web video and website hammering the presumptive Republican nominee’s work at the venture capital firm.

At the heart of the new ad is the tale of GST Steel, a Missouri steel mill that Bain purchased in 1993 and that went bankrupt in 2001. David Foster, a Minnesota Democratic activist who was a steelworkers union leader at the time of the sale, appears in the ad.

Foster was the regional director of a steel workers union when Bain purchased GST Steel, and he was a lead negotiator for workers during the Bain years. In an interview, Foster echoed the ad’s central message — that Bain, led by Romney, acted as a “financial predator” that swooped into GST Steel, saddled it with debt, cut benefits for employees, reaped a healthy profit for its investors and let the company fall into bankruptcy in the end. Romney left Bain in 1999 to lead the Olympics in Salt Lake City.

As the company went bankrupt, Foster was the one who broke the news to its employees, telling them they were losing health insurance, vacation time and chunks of their pensions. In the ad, he called it “among the most painful experiences of my life.”

The Obama campaign’s ad will run only once (during the evening news tonight), in only five markets (none in Minnesota). It’s a very small ad buy — only $83,000, reportedly, though the ads have already been viewed more than 400,000 views online — but it represents the Obama campaign’s first salvo in what is likely to be a lengthy and bitter fight to define who Mitt Romney is and what he stands for.

The Romney campaign was ready for the offensive. After the Obama ad was announced on Monday, it released its own video about how “the American Dream” played out a different steel plant, Steel Dynamics, which quickly grew after an initial round of investments from Bain.

The campaign also highlighted a statement from Steven Rattner, a former Obama adviser, who called the advertisement unfair and defended Bain as doing “superbly well, acting within the rules, acting very responsibly,” a potential warning to the Obama camp that slamming Romney too hard for his past as a capitalist could backfire if voters choose to defend his work on free-market grounds.

The ads come at an especially important juncture in the general election contest between Obama and Romney. A CBS/New York Times poll released this week shows nearly one-third of voters hold no opinion of Mitt Romney, so both campaigns are trying to write a narrative about the candidate. Democrats want to paint him as an out-of-touch millionaire who made his fortune at the expense of middle-class workers; Republicans are trying to cast him as a job-creator who has on-the-job experience helping grow the private sector economy.

Foster, now an executive director of the Blue Green Alliance, predicted that Romney’s Bain years will eventually turn middle-class voters off to his candidacy.

“I think it will be a tough change of leadership for people to swallow,” he said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

U.S. House approves Kline's National Guard benefits bill

Devin Henry — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:48:41 +0000

WASHINGTON — Legislation meant to provide paid leave benefits to Minnesota National Guard members and thousands of other soldiers nationwide passed the U.S. House on a voice vote on Tuesday night.

Minnesota Republican John Kline was the lead sponsor of the bill, inspired by the 2,000 members of the Minnesota National Guard serving in the Middle East when the Department of Defense amended its paid leave policy. The new policy would have left some members with up to 27 fewer days of leave.

The effort has bipartisan and bicameral support, and the bill now moves to the Senate, where Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced similar legislation. Before the House vote, Kline and several other Minnesota lawmakers spoke on the floor about the measure.

"The legislation is critical to ensuring our sons and daughters in uniform receive the benefits they were promised and rightfully earned," Kline said.

Standards changed

The Department of Defense changed its paid leave standards last fall after a two-year review of the program, a Pentagon spokeswoman said.

The end result was a program that streamlined the way paid leave time was allocated depending on where and how long service members were on active duty, and in some cases reduced the amount of leave time they are eligible for. The new policy took effect Oct. 1, cutting the leave benefits for about 51,000 service members who had been deployed overseas under the previous policy, Kline said.

The new regulations did not grandfather those soldiers in, and they faced the prospects of losing their benefits when they returned home, like the Minnesota National Guard “Red Bulls” did a few weeks ago.

Kline said he has no problem with the rule change on its face, but the loophole that left the Red Bulls and their colleagues without their paid leave was too much.

“I think it’s perfectly within the Pentagon’s correct role to look at policies like this and say this is what the policy ought to be going forward,” he said. “My problem is that they put a program in and then changed the rules for people that were already deployed.”

Panetta questioned

Kline grilled Defense Secretary Leon Panetta about the new guidelines when he appeared before the House Armed Services committee in February. He introduced a bill to extend the paid leave benefits a short time later, and Klobuchar did the same in the U.S. Senate.

The pair kept talking to Panetta, Kline and the Pentagon said, until there was an understanding that deployed service members should receive those leave benefits and that Congress would need to pass a bill saying so.

“After Sen. Klobuchar and Rep. Kline brought this to his attention, he determined it was important that we take a second look to address the concern,” Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said in an email.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Even as the Blue Dogs decline, Rep. Collin Peterson sees an opening

Devin Henry — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:14:49 +0000

WASHINGTON — Republicans have seen, in rather high-profile fashion, the thinning of the ranks of their party’s moderates (think of U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar’s defeat in last week’s Indiana primary), but they’re not the only ones.

The Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats is half the size it was in 2010, thanks in large part to the retirement of its members, the general election defeat of many others, and, in more recent cases, challenges from a more liberal ilk of Democrat.

Minnesota U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson was the seventh House Democrat to join the group when it formed in 1994. He said there is still room in Congress for a centrist coalition like the Blue Dogs, but said that the leftward swing of newly elected Democrats is partially to blame for both the group’s shrinking numbers and the partisanship crippling Washington.

For the coalition to thrive again, as Peterson says it can, it’ll have to weather a left-ward turn by new Democratic House candidates and the ever-present threat from Republicans, whose target is always trained on Blue Dogs come election year.

'We were invited into the room'

The Blue Dog Coalition formed on eve of the 1994 election that swept Republicans into the majority in the U.S. House, its name derived from an old saying that Southerners would vote for a yellow dog if it was running as a Democrat. The Blue Dogs were yellow dogs "choked blue" by their more liberal colleagues.

Peterson was the seventh member of what, at the time, was an exclusive group of lawmakers whose preferred ideology was one of fiscal conservatism with a healthy desire to work with both mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike.

And for a while, that’s how it worked. Both parties looked to compromise with the centrist Blue Dogs, especially when the margin between the majority and minority parties was especially small and the centrist vote was, by extension, especially important.

“We were invited into the room,” Peterson said.

At the time, the Blue Dogs were so exclusive that a single dissenting member could keep a lawmaker from joining their ranks. (The goal was “try to find people that are ideologically compatible,” Peterson said.) The meetings were conducted by members only — unlike other caucuses on Capitol Hill, staffers were not allowed to sit in for lawmakers — and those who didn’t show up were dismissed from the group.

Those rules grew more lax around the late 1990s, and the group’s influence waned as the size of the majorities grew larger. In 2006, when Democrats took back control of the House, Peterson said Democratic leadership wasn’t interested in Blue Dog appeals that the party move slowly and not pursue costly big-government bills. But that’s just what they did, especially after President Obama took office, when the House passed the stimulus bill, cap and trade legislation, and health care reform, all of which Peterson and other Blue Dogs opposed.

Electoral problems

The Blue Dog Coalition had 54 members on November 2, 2010, when voters swept Democrats out of power in the House. Between retirements, resignations and general election losses (many Blue Dogs represent moderate districts or even those that skew a bit to the right, thus making them top targets for Republicans) they have only 25 members today.

And things are going to get worse for the moderates before they get better, said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

“Over a long period of time Democrats have become far more homogenous and moved left,” he said.

Ornstein is out with a new book, called “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” detailing the increased polarization of the two parties, and though the book places most of the blame on Republicans (which is a different story entirely), he said Democratic moderates face their challenges as well.

First, redistricting was unkind to them, especially in states where Republicans controlled the Legislature. Increased outside spending on critical races in tight districts will also hurt them, as will the threat of primary challenges from the left.

Two Blue Dogs witnessed that first hand in April, when Pennsylvania Reps. Jason Altmire and Tim Holden lost primaries against more liberal Democrats. Through redistricting, Altmire was paired with his colleague, U.S. Rep. Mark Critz, who, while not a diehard liberal himself, used Altmire’s vote against Obama’s health-care package to snag the endorsement of labor unions and former President Bill Clinton. Holden’s opponent, an attorney named Matt Cartwright, was aided by an anti-incumbent super PAC that targeted Holden.

NRCC targets

Between those two losses and the retirements of others, the Blue Dogs are going to be at least seven members down by next session — and that’s if all the rest survive the general election.

The National Republican Congressional Committee is taking aim at the remaining Blue Dogs this fall. Of the 18 Blue Dog re-election campaigns, six have Republican challengers on the NRCC’s list of potential "Young Gun" candidates, up-and-coming Republicans in winnable races (Peterson’s opponent, Lee Byberg, is not on the list).

The NRCC is “aggressively targeting these so-called moderate Blue Dog members who say one thing in their home districts and vote another way in Washington,” spokeswoman Andrea Bozek said.

But if the Blue Dogs survive, and if, as Peterson predicts, whichever party holds the majority does so by only a few votes, Peterson said he could see the coalition controlling valuable real estate as the centrist votes both parties need to enact legislation.

As for the decline of the political middle in general, Peterson said that’s in the voters’ hands.

“If you want to vote Republican or Democratic, I don’t care how you vote, but don’t vote for anybody in any party that is going to vote party line.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Rick Perry endorses Pete Hegseth

Devin Henry — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:24:37 +0000

Texas governor and former presidential candidate Rick Perry has endorsed Pete Hegseth in the fight for the Minnesota Republican U.S. Senate endorsement.

In a video released by the campaign, Perry called Hegseth "exactly the kind of patriot we need" and praised his conservative credentials and his work with veterans support organizations.

"He won't be afraid to walk into hostile territory to take on President Obama and Sen. Amy Klobuchar," Perry said.

The endorsement is the second in the race by a Texan who has sought (or still is seeking) the Republican presidential nomination — U.S. Rep. Ron Paul endorsed state Rep. Kurt Bills in March, and a surge of Paul backers at the state Republican convention this weekend could end up helping Bills.

A third former presidential candidate, Herman Cain, backed former state Rep. Dan Severson's candidacy a few weeks ago.

Republicans meet in St. Cloud on Friday and Saturday and will endorse a candidate to take on Klobuchar.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

National Guard benefits bill to get Tuesday House vote

Devin Henry — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:13:13 +0000

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House will vote on a bill this week to reverse a Pentagon policy that reduced the amount of paid leave time members of the Minnesota National Guard receive.

The Department of Defense amended its leave policy last fall while some 2,700 members of the Minnesota National Guard were serving in the Middle East. Under the new policy, some members could lose up to 27 days of paid leave, according to Republican Rep. John Kline, who is the bill's sponsor.

Kline's bill would force the Defense Department to give soldiers the leave time they were eligible for when they were deployed.

"Promises made should be promises kept," Kline said in a statement. "I look forward to my bipartisan bill becoming law so our heroic Minnesota troops receive the benefits they were promised and have earned.”

The bill is scheduled for a U.S. House vote on Tuesday, and it's expected to pass. Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar sponsors a similar bill in the Senate.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Cravaack targets climate change education funding

Devin Henry — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:59:50 +0000

WASHINGTON — Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack has introduced legislation to cut off funding to a National Science Foundation program that funds climate change education.

Cravaack, a first-term Republican from the 8^th District, introduced an amendment to a science funding bill that would cut $10 million from the NSF's Climate Change Education program. The amendment was adopted by on a 238-188 vote in the House on Thursday.

The Climate Change Education program was originally introduced in President Obama’s 2012 budget. In a statement, Cravaack called it a “duplicative program costing us money we simply do not have.”

“As someone who supports education, amid a deficit of $1.3 trillion and debt of $15.7 trillion, a redundant global warming program can hardly be justified,” Cravaack said in a statement. “The recently created CCE duplicates the already inherent ability of the NSF to fund worthy proposals through its rigorous, peer-reviewed process.”

The amendment drew criticism from environmental activists. The education advocacy director for the National Wildlife Foundation told the Duluth News Tribune that the amendment is “an effort to keep our children in the dark about the science of climate change. It’s an attack on our children’s future.”

Cravaack told Minnesota Public Radio that he considers himself a skeptic of global warming. While running for election in 2010, he called climate change science “bunk.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Michele Bachmann withdraws Swiss citizenship

Devin Henry — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:52:13 +0000

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann intends to withdraw her dual citizenship in Switzerland, she said in a statement.

Bachmann says she sent a letter to the Swiss consulate in Chicago asking for her citizenship to be withdrawn. She said she did so to make clear her loyalty to the United States.

"I took this action because I want to make it perfectly clear: I was born in America and I am a proud American citizen," she said in a statement. "I am, and always have been, 100 percent committed to our United States Constitution and the United States of America. As the daughter of an Air Force veteran, stepdaughter of an Army veteran and sister of a Navy veteran, I am proud of my allegiance to the greatest nation the world has ever known."

Bachmann announced her dual Swiss citizenship earlier this week while talking to a Swiss television reporter. She later said she had automatically received citizenship under Swiss law when she married her husband, Marcus, in 1978. Marcus Bachmann is the son of Swiss immigrants.

Bachmann said she and her family recently updated their documents with the Swiss government, but that she "never exercised any rights of that citizenship."

The third-term Republican from Minnesota's 6th Congressional District is seeking re-election to her House seat after waging a failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination. She sits on the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

Jim Graves, Bachmann's DFL opponent in November, had issued a statement calling the issue a "distraction."

"The Graves family is not interested in dual citizenship, and they are proud to be Americans,” his spokesman said in a statement. “Jim Graves is in the business of creating economic opportunity.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com

Franken lauds Obama's gay marriage announcement

Devin Henry — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:07:05 +0000

WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Al Franken said he is proud of President Obama for endorsing gay marriage on Wednesday.

“It marks an important step for loving families across the country," Franken said in a statement. "I've been married to my wife Franni for 37 years, and it’s the best thing that's ever happened to me. That’s why I’ve long believed that people should be able to enter into loving, committed marriages regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And I’m glad the President agrees.”

Obama's endorsement of gay marriage was the first ever by a sitting president, and a reversal of Obama's years-old public position on the issue. Before today, Obama said he views were "evolving" and he'd denounced efforts to amend state constitutions to ban gay marriage (including in Minnesota), but he'd never gone so far as to support it.

Franken, meanwhile, has been an ardent supporter of gay marriage.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

New Chamber of Commerce ad backs Cravaack

Devin Henry — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:08:31 +0000

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is going on the airwaves to support Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack.

The ad, part of a wide-ranging ad buy supporting Republicans in races across the country, focuses on Cravaack's conservative voting record on issues important to small businesses.

"Who is standing up for Minnesota jobs? Chip Cravaack," the ad says. "Tell Chip Cravaack: keep fighting against more big government policies from Washington."

The Cravaack ad is one of 21 announced by the Chamber on Tuesday. The Chamber is not disclosing the size of the buy.

Cravaack, a first-term Republican who scored one of the biggest upsets in the country during the 2010 election, is expected to face a stiff re-election challenge. Outside groups both supporting and opposing Cravaack are already active in the 8th District.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Switzerland)

Devin Henry — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:46:01 +0000

WASHINGTON — Rep. Michele Bachmann lives in Stillwater, hails from Iowa and works in Washington, D.C. — and as of March is a citizen of the country of Switzerland.

Bachmann’s spokeswoman confirmed that the third-term Republican and some of her family had became citizens of Switzerland. Politico was the first American news outlet to report the news.

Bachmann’s three youngest children are also Swiss citizens, according to Politico. They got dual citizenship through the Swiss consulate in Chicago.

“Congresswoman Bachmann's husband is of Swiss descent so she has been eligible for dual-citizenship since they got married in 1978," spokeswoman Becky Rogness said in an email. "However, recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family."

Bachmann met with members of the Swiss parliament in Washington on Tuesday, and laughed when asked by a Swiss television reporter if (since she's eligible) she ever planned on running for office in Switzerland.

“There’s a lot of competition behind me that I would have to run against and it’d be very stiff because they are very good,” she said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Klobuchar, Franken give back-to-back student loan speeches

Devin Henry — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:04:50 +0000

WASHINGTON — The Senate floor was all Minnesota's for about 20 minutes on Tuesday, just hours before the Senate failed to pass a bill Tuesday to keep interest rates on student loans from doubling over the summer.

Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken gave back-to-back speeches on the rising cost of higher education and their support for a Democrat-backed plan to keep the 3.4 percent Stafford student loan interest rate from doubling on July 1. The bill would eventually fail a procedural vote on Republican objections to the way Democrats planned to pay for the bill’s $6 billion cost.

Both Klobuchar and Franken have met with Minnesota students on the cost of college. Klobuchar was at the University of Minnesota last week to discuss the issue and Franken was recently joined by student government leaders from around the state in announcing an effort to better inform students about the true cost of college before they attend.

The two speeches were based around these meetings — Klobuchar said she met with a U student who was working 50 hours a week to help pay for school, and Franken highlighted a group of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities students who visited him in Washington to discuss ways to bring down the cost of college.

Democrats and Republicans generally agree that an extension of the lower student loan interest rate is necessary, but like so many other matters Congress has considered this session, they’re hung up on how to pay for it. Republicans favor instituting spending cuts (and passed a bill in the House two weeks ago to zero-out a component of President Obama’s health care reform law as a pay-for), while Democrats support closing certain tax loopholes, a funding mechanism included in the Senate bill Tuesday.

The final vote was 52-45. It needed 60 votes to pass.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Super PAC backs Senate candidate Hegseth

Devin Henry — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:02:08 +0000

A new Washington-based Super PAC has endorsed Minnesota Republican U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hegseth.

The group, Reclaiming Freedom, intends to raise $10 million to help Republicans win control of the Senate in November. It plans to focus on only three to five races, Politico reports, including Hegseth's campaign and that of Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).

Hegseth is running for the Republican Party's endorsement to take on Sen. Amy Klobuchar this fall. Two other candidates, state Rep. Kurt Bills and former state Rep. Dan Severson, are also running. Hegseth has said he will abide by the party's endorsement.

Politics in Minnesota notes Reclaiming Freedom's founder, Brian Wise, has worked at Vets for Freedom, a group Hegseth work for as well.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Tarryl Clark buys first radio ad in 8th District race

Devin Henry — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:50:12 +0000

DFL congressional candidate Tarryl Clark’s campaign launched its first radio ad of the cycle on Monday.

The ad, titled “Fight,” features a retired steelworker and targets incumbent Rep. Chip Cravaack for supporting Republican budget plans that Democrats say “end Medicare and Social Security as we know it.”

The ad will run for two weeks on just fewer than 10 radio stations in the 8^th District, campaign manager Joe Fox said. The campaign has not released the size of the buy.

Democrats in the 8^th District endorsed former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan on Saturday and he’s received the customary support from the state DFL Party. But Clark has a huge fundraising edge on both Nolan and former Duluth city councilor Jeff Anderson as the three compete in an Aug. 14 primary.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Michele Bachmann's formal endorsement a big unity step for Romney

Devin Henry — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:44:04 +0000

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Flanked by a Virginia flag and two “Romney: Believe in America” signs, Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann threw her weight behind the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Thursday, saying she was “[lending] my voice and my endorsement to Mitt Romney to take the country back.”

“This isn’t personal; this is about having a performance review after three-and-a-half years,” she said. “There is no question in my mind Americans will go to the polls and say, ‘Mr. President, you’re fired,’ and instead, we will soundly stand with someone who believes in America.”

Bachmann and Romney appeared together in this southeastern Virginia town, on the Chesapeake Bay, campaigning under a hot sun and blue skies at Clifton Diving Corp., a manufacturer of scuba diving equipment. Several hundred people showed up for the campaign stop, where Romney’s opening acts were Bachmann and Virginia Gov. (and a potential member of the Romney vice presidential short list) Bob McDonnell.

Bachmann got big cheers and had a good amount of support in the crowd. One woman, Frances Bouton of Suffolk, came carrying a sign urging the selection of Bachmann for VP. Another, Ann Preston of Chesapeake Va., estimated that she was the preferred presidential candidate of many of the conservatives in the crowd.

“It was very exciting when everyone heard Michele was here.” she said. “Everybody just went, ‘Wow’ — everybody was really happy.”

Bachmann is the latest in a string of prominent Minnesotans to back the former Massachusetts governor, including U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen and former Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Her appeal lies with a group of voters with whom Romney has struggled: the most conservative wing of the Republican Party and evangelical Christians, who might still be uncomfortable with Romney’s Mormon religion.

The last, best candidate for those voters, Rick Santorum, dropped out of the race in early April. Romney’s inevitability as the party’s nominee had been assumed even before then.

Bachmann’s endorsement, senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie said, “just shows the unification, the unity that’s going on right now and that’s a very positive thing.”

But Bachmann has never been a diehard Romney fan. Running for the Republican nomination herself, Bachmann called Romney’s Massachusetts health care reform package a deal breaker for conservatives and said it imperiled him in a general election contest against Romney.

“He cannot beat Obama because his policy is the basis for Obamacare,” she said the night before the Iowa caucuses. “You can’t have a candidate who has given the blueprint for Obamacare.”

Bachmann had no such criticism today. She said she managed to pull Romney further to the right on the issue of Obama’s health care reform law (he started off promising to offer vouchers for the program; on Thursday he said, “the first and easiest program I will eliminate is Obamacare”), and he was now worthy of her endorsement.

MinnPost photo by Devin HenryA rally attendee shows her support for Rep. Michele Bachmann joining the Romney ticket.

“This is where I made a direct contribution to the presidential election” she told MinnPost. “Because of my contribution to this race, now Gov. Romney is for full-scale repeal of Obamacare, and no less … I can fully get behind him because he recognizes that there is nothing less than full-scale repeal.”

After Bachmann dropped out of the presidential race in January, she pushed off this endorsement for months. She met with Romney privately in February, before the Minnesota caucuses, but denied that she would endorse Romney any time soon. Since then, she’s hinted at an endorsement, and said last week that one would come “in due time.”

That time, apparently, was Thursday.

“I’m thoroughly convinced that Barack Obama should not have a second term as president, so I’m happy to lend my name and my support to Gov. Romney’s candidacy, and I truly believe he will be the next president of the United States,” Bachmann said.

Romney give a Virginia-focused speech

Romney’s stump speech was a tailored pitch to Virginia voters. He blamed Obama for failing to capitalize on the state’s natural energy reserves and calling for more investments in the armed services, one of the largest constituencies in the state.

“The idea that you have powerful energy right off your coast, that you could be creating good jobs right here in Virginia and providing resources at a reasonable cost to the people of America, that’s been lost by a president who has said, ‘No,’ ” he said. “When I’m president, I’ll put Virginians to work getting energy from above and below the ground.”

Romney, speaking just miles from the shipbuilding facilities that dominate the coast off Norfolk, said he’d bolster the nation’s military by buying more new ships for the Navy and new aircraft for the Air Force.

At the same time, he said he’d work to balance the budget by eliminating federal programs cutting spending.

“This president says he want to move us forward,” Romney said. “If the last three years are his definition of forward, I hate to see what backward is.”

Democrats slam Bachmann

Virginia is an especially important battleground state and will receive significantly more attention from both Romney and President Obama as the general election drags on. One of Obama’s formal campaign kick-off rallies this Saturday is in the commonwealth’s capital of Richmond.

Obama won the state by 6 points in 2008. A Public Policy Polling survey of Virginia voters showed him leading Romney by 8 percent.

The Democratic National Committee was ready for the Romney-McDonnell-Bachmann appearance here, releasing a web video ahead of the campaign stop that charges the three are actively “turning back the clock on women’s health.”

The video mashed together clips of the three discussing efforts to limit abortions, defund Planned Parenthood and roll back the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. The spot was red meat for liberals and an extension of the “war on women” narrative Democrats are trying to craft as the general election begins.

Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released a lengthy memo on Bachmann’s record, focusing on her effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act law and voting against Obama policies meant to stimulate the economy.

“Minnesotans know Michele Bachmann best, and have seen the impact of her extreme positions and outlandish statements,” the memo read. “Now we know that Mitt Romney officially stands with her — and against the best interests of middle-class families in our state.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Bachmann to endorse Romney on Thursday

Devin Henry — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:08:20 +0000

WASHINGTON — Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann will endorse Mitt Romney at a campaign stop in southern Virginia on Thursday, a Romney official confirmed Wednesday night.

Bachmann has been flirting with a Romney endorsement for a while now, telling CNN last week that the endorsement would come “all in good time.” As a founding member of the Tea Party caucus on Capitol Hill, Bachmann is positioned to give Romney a boost with the most conservative wing of the Republican Party, the voters he struggled the most to court during his nomination campaign.

Bachmann, of course, is a former presidential rival of Romney. She dropped out of the race the day after her sixth place finish in the Iowa caucuses. She hasn’t endorsed a candidate until now, just as Romney has the party nomination all but sealed up.

The endorsement will come at an event in Portsmouth, Va., just outside of Norfolk, at an afternoon rally. Virginia is one of a handful of battleground states in this November’s election. A Public Policy Polling survey of Virginia voters shows President Obama leading Romney 51-43.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Klobuchar bill seeks to ease drug shortages

Devin Henry — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:51:20 +0000

WASHINGTON — For 14 years, cancer survivor Lori Barghini went through the grueling biennial process of checking to see if the slow-growing cancer in her thyroid had returned.

After beating the disease in 1985 and again in 1994, Barghini would quit her synthetic thyroid medication for five weeks, growing sluggish and gaining weight as the body’s thyroid hormones dissipated, then disappeared, and she became hypothyroid. When doctors pumped her full of radiation at the end of it all, any leftover thyroid cells they detected could be cancerous.

“It’s almost like, when you’re a kid in a pool and you decide you’re going to walk on the bottom of the pool and see how far you can walk and move your arms and try to talk,” said Barghini, an afternoon drive radio host on myTalk 107.1 FM. “It’s hard. Everything about you feels like it’s so slowed down.”

That was until 1998, when a drug called Thyrogen hit the market. The drug, delivered by two injections over three days, helps a patient go hypothyroid quickly and easily, “without the misery of five weeks of lousy side effects,” Barghini said.

Last year, Barghini’s doctors found suspicious thyroid cells and needed her to undergo a radiation scan. She planned on using Thyrogen to do so.

The only problem: there wasn’t any Thyrogen left.

Thyrogen is on the Food and Drug Administration’s hundreds-long drug shortage list, a tally of drugs in short supply that has almost quadrupled since 2005. President Obama issued an executive order in October trying to carve away at the list, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar has been working to do the same in the U.S. Senate.

“It used to just be [an] anecdotal [problem],” Klobuchar said. “Now the numbers are showing this to be way more than anecdotal.”

‘It will bring down the crisis we’re seeing’

In February 2011, Klobuchar introduced a bill requiring drug companies to give advanced notice to the Food and Drug Administration if a drug shortage was on the horizon. The FDA sometimes has the power and resources to avert a drug shortage if given enough lead-time, and did so 195 times in 2011.

The drug shortage problem has progressively gotten worse over the past seven years at least. By the White House’s count, there were 61 products on the drug shortage list in 2005. Today, there are 231, Klobuchar said. More than half of those are caused by problems at factories or manufacturing and shipping delays, but a lack of raw materials and financial incentives (like a company merger, or a drug that doesn’t make enough money) can cause problems as well.

Early FDA notification is just an immediate policy change lawmakers are pursuing, Klobuchar said. Long-term fixes involving drug pricing and manufacturing are a ways off. The Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions committee incorporated her provision in a medical device bill on April 25.

“We’re very confident that, while this will by no means solve the whole problem, it will bring down the crisis that we’re seeing,” she said.

Executive order

Klobuchar’s bill, should it pass (and it has bipartisan support), would be an extension of an Obama executive order issued in October meant to force early notification among drug manufacturers. Before the executive order, manufacturers only had to disclose the discontinuation of a drug produced by a single manufacturer. Obama endorsed Klobuchar’s legislation when issuing the order.

The FDA says more than 100 potential drug shortages have been averted since October alone. In February, the FDA highlighted two such successes — cancer drugs Doxil and methotrexate. Their manufacturers gave early notice that the drug supply was running low, and the FDA ordered alternatives, including a replacement drug from the United Arab Emirates.

For its part, the pharmaceutical industry says it’s willing to work with the government to put more stringent shortage safeguards in place. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the major lobbying shop for pharmaceutical companies, said it has “long been in favor of working with all stakeholders on targeted solutions to help prevent and mitigate drug shortages.”

“It is critical that we seek a more comprehensive understanding of the many circumstances that can lead to a drug shortage as industry, Congress, FDA, patients, providers and other stakeholders try to identify meaningful ways to help alleviate, mitigate and address this critical problem,” PhRMA President John J. Castellani said in a statement. “PhRMA and its members have worked — and will continue to work — diligently to this common goal.”

Supplies rebounding

In Barghini’s case, she was placed on a Thyrogen waiting list, but her doctors warned there were more crucial patients in front of her. She thought of going to Canada to get a dosage, but Thyrogen’s manufacturer, Genzyme Corp., had warned that the drug is in short supply worldwide, so there’s no guarantee she would get it there.

Genzyme originally announced the shortage in October 2010. A company spokeswoman blamed it on “a transition to a new plant for its bottling and labeling.”

Last December, Genzyme announced a “more consistent and predictable” supply of Thyrogen this year. Spokeswoman Ingrid Esser said the company could meet about 80 percent of the demand in the United States right now. The drug is still on the FDA’s shortage list.

“We’re on track,” Esser said. “We see the progress going along nicely and hope that it continues to do that.”

For Barghini, that means working her way to the top of the waiting list.

“I’m just going to have to deal with it,” she said. “But I sure would like to know why this is going on and why other people are having trouble getting medications, whatever their issue might be. It just seems like that’s going backwards.”

Barghini said her doctors are convinced her number will be called and she’ll get a dosage of Thyrogen before July.

But if not, she said, “I’m probably going to have to kick it old school … which is just going to be a drag.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Bachmann comments on Osama bin Laden anniversary

Devin Henry — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:02:06 +0000

WASHINGTON — On the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, Michele Bachmann congratulated President Obama for ordering the mission that killed the terrorist leader but slammed him for not articulating the American mission in Afghanistan.

“I remain proud and grateful for the President, the U.S. military and the intelligence community’s decisive action last year,” Bachmann said in a statement from her congressional office. “Violent Islamic terrorists remain a threat going forward, and our mission must remain to provide a stable Afghanistan. I call on President Obama to reaffirm that mission.”

Bachmann recently visited Afghanistanto meet with troops and diplomats in the region. She left congratulating the troops and but was largely noncommittal on the effort to draw down the American presence in the region.

Bachmann’s statement didn’t address the Obama re-election campaign’s subsequent use of the bin Laden killing in an ad that has drawn fire for questioning whether likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would have ordered the mission. Romney tweeted Tuesday, “I commend those who planned and conducted the bin Laden raid a year ago, and I applaud President Obama for approving the mission.”

Here’s Bachmann’s statement:

“One year ago today, a nearly ten-year mission ended with the assassination of Osama bin Laden. The world breathed a collective sigh of relief, and while we will never forget the devastation and grief caused by the attacks on September 11, there seemed to be a shared optimism that his death would bring closure in Afghanistan.
      “One year later, the President’s mission in the war-torn nation remains unclear. He apologizes for America’s actions, and we are left with no clear mission for our troops.
      “Our troops are one of America’s greatest resources. The men and women in uniform – and their loved ones -- step up and bravely make sacrifices to serve their country. We cannot let their sacrifices be in vain. We need to have an end goal; we need to remove politics from military decisions; and we must not let another American die for a cause undefined.
       “I remain proud and grateful for the President, the U.S. military and the intelligence community’s decisive action last year. Violent Islamic terrorists remain a threat going forward, and our mission must remain to provide a stable Afghanistan. I call on President Obama to reaffirm that mission.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Peterson, Walz vote for GOP student loan interest rate plan

Devin Henry — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:19:13 +0000

WASHINGTON — Democrats Collin Peterson and Tim Walz broke with their party and voted for a House GOP student loan interest rate plan on Friday. The bill passed 215-195, with only 13 Democrats voting in favor.

The GOP's $5.9 billion bill would prevent the 3.4 percent interest rate on Stafford loans from doubling on July 1, but it's paid for by cutting from a preventative health care fund in President Obama's health care reform law. The White House threatened to veto the bill should it pass both the House and Senate (where Democrats are in the majority and the plan is dead on arrival).

Democrats had hoped to pressure Republicans into supporting the lower rate, launching an offensive earlier in the week that saw President Obama travel to colleges around the country to rally support. Likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney backed the rate on the Monday and Senate Republicans did the same later in the week, calling for spending cuts to pay for the lower rate.

Democrats in the Senate have called for closing tax loopholes to pay for the lowered rate; Republicans in the House wrote a bill to take from what they called a health care reform "slush fund" instead.

Peterson and Walz were the only members of the delegation to vote against their party on the GOP plan.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Franken, other lawmakers scramble to keep post offices open

Devin Henry — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:03:45 +0000

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate passed a postal service reform bill this week meant to stop a slew of post office and distribution centers from closing as early as next month.

Last year, the United States Postal Service, $13 billion in debt, released a list of 3,700 post offices and distribution centers it was considering closing as early as mid-May as a way of easing its financial burden. In Minnesota, 117 post offices and five distribution centers (many in rural areas) were on the chopping block.

Lawmakers in Washington offered up a slate of proposals meant to provide financial relief to the USPS while preventing the mass closings. The U.S. Senate passed a bill Wednesday giving the USPS $11 billion, most of it coming through a refund of overpayments to the federal retirement fund. The bill would offer incentives for early retirement and reduce the amount the postal service contributes to retiree health care programs.

That alone could keep most of the post offices and up to half of the distribution centers open, supporters say. But the bill was laden with other measures meant to stall disruptions of service that the USPS had planned, including provisions barring the closure of rural post offices for one year and ensuring six-day-a-week mail delivery for two years (the postal service has considered ending Saturday delivery as well). Both Minnesota Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, voted for the bill and co-sponsored several of its amendments.

One such amendment, introduced by Franken and Montana Sen. Jon Tester, allows users of a local post office or processing center slated to close to challenge the decision with the Postal Regulatory Commission, which could then reverse the decision.

“Communities that [are] losing their post office would have a right to protest,” Franken said. “It really meant that people would feel there was some due process and that things weren’t arbitrary.”

‘Creating two classes of citizens’

Lawmakers have spent much of the last two weeks trying to make potential post offices closings personal.

For Franken, that meant the 367 residents of Calumet, Minn., a small mining community in Itasca County. He gave a speech on the floor of the Senate last week and held the town up as an example of what might happen if its post office closes, as it’s slated to.

“Especially in rural Minnesota, post offices are the center of communities,” he said. “If the Postal Service’s closure plan is implemented, it will have a devastating impact on rural Minnesota.”

Calumet Mayor John Tuorila told MinnPost that the residents of his aging community are willing to do about anything to keep their post office from closing down, even if it means losing Saturday delivery, something lawmakers in Washington had fought against.

“People in this town are willing to be flexible,” he said. “But they don’t want to lose their post office completely.”

In Duluth, officials say the loss of the city’s distribution center could drive away businesses like printers who need to have immediate access to major mail facilities.

More broadly, Mayor Don Ness warned that moving a distribution center (and thus slowing down the delivery process by first sending customer’s mail to the Twin Cities to be sorted) would marginalize rural customers.

“They are creating two classes of citizens — one that lives in close proximity to distribution centers and those that live further out and will have to wait a day or two as they wait for their mail to be shipped 200 miles south and be shipped back,” he said.

The USPS took a different view, saying it makes fiscal sense to close under-used post offices in the face of dwindling mail delivery.

“Given volume losses we have experienced over the past five years along with expected future trends, it is totally inappropriate in these economic times to keep unneeded facilities open,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a statement after the Senate vote. “There is simply not enough mail in our system today”

House must pass a bill

The U.S. House needs to pass a postal reform bill before it would become law, of course. Franken said he’s hopeful the House will take up the Senate’s bill (which passed with bipartisan support, 62-37).

But House members are considering a few different versions of a USPS bill reform bill. A Republican-introduced plan would create a commission to recommend post office closings and another to investigate other cost-cutting measures. It would allow the USPS to end Saturday delivery and would cut more broadly than the Senate bill.

An alternative plan would reform the Postal Service’s pension obligations (USPS is currently required to prefund retiree benefits 75 years into the future). The bill has 228 co-sponsors, including all four Minnesota Democrats and 32 House Republicans.

But Franken said the he hoped the issue wouldn’t be decided on partisan lines.

“The post office is very, very central to our country in so many way,” he said. “The post office is so important in so many ways and I hope this bill will help modernize this process.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Franken cries during Senate speech

Devin Henry — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:28:35 +0000

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Al Franken broke down on the Senate floor Thursday in an emotional speech about the Violence Against Women Act and the influence of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila.

Franken’s speech was a tribute the couple and the work Sheila Wellstone did with victims of domestic violence. The Violence Against Women Act, specifically the provisions in it helping keep women who are fleeing domestic violence from becoming homeless, was part of her ultimate vision, he said.

The Wellstones died in a plane crash in 2002. Franken started crying discussing Sheila Wellstone’s legacy.

“She and Paul and their daughter Marcia were tragically taken from us too soon. But Sheila's example is with us. Her legacy is with us and her words are with us,” Franken said.

The Senate approved the Violence Against Women Act later Thursday afternoon. The bill provides funding for grants to help law enforcement investigate and prosecute crimes involving domestic abuse and sexual violence.

The bill passed 68-31 one day after Republicans had said they would not block the bill, even though it contained provisions some considered to be unconstitutional. Likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had endorsed the legislation.

Franken had two provisions included in the final legislation, one forbidding the eviction of a woman from federally-supported housing because she was a victim of domestic or sexual violence, and another ensuring victims of sexual assault don't have to pay for their rape kits.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, writing an op-ed in about bill in the Huffington Post, also invoked the Wellstones. She introduced an amendment to the bill that would have relieved the nation's backlog of untested rape kits. The amendment did not meet the 60-vote threshold for passage.

A version of a second Klobuchar provision, one strengthening federal anti-stalking laws, was included in the final version of the bill.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Dayton administration on defensive over Minnesota Medicaid practices

Devin Henry and James Nord — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:09:11 +0000

Courtesy of the Governor's OfficeGov. Mark Dayton

WASHINGTON — Gov. Mark Dayton and his health and human services chief beat back congressional complaints over the state's Medicaid spending on Wednesday, arguing his administration should be giving credit — not investigated — for reforming the system.

A U.S. House panel held a hearing Wednesday based around a $30 million gift to the state from UCare, one of four HMOs that administer Medicaid in Minnesota, the ownership of which was disputed by the state and the feds. Lucinda Jesson, the Commissioner of the Minnesota Human Services Department, was called to defend the state's handling of the money.

The hearing drew testimony and comment from a slew of Minnesota officials, including lawmakers like Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum and Michele Bachmann. A key witness was former Minnesota Hospital Association counsel David Feinwachs, who said he was fired for raising questions about the state’s Medicaid oversight.

Bachmann compared the controversy to a grocery store clerk who charges too much for a cart of food, but refuses to give the receipt to a customer.

“It appears that maybe a game as been played, that [managed care organizations] can charge anything they want for whatever they want,” she said.

UCare ‘Gift’

The UCare gift, a $30 million donation to the state in March 2011, caused bipartisan consternation from members of the committee.

When UCare told state officials about the money, they considered it to be a “bona fide donation,” Jesson said, and intended to put the full amount in the Minnesota general fund. But the federal government cried foul, calling the “donation” a refund for overpayments to UCare and demanding half of it. On Monday, two days before the congressional hearing, Minnesota agreed.

Lawmakers suggested Minnesota officials were working to keep the money for the state, pointing to an email in which Jesson instructed a staffer to call the money a donation in public.

“In order to have a good chance of keeping all this money, it must be characterized as a donation,” she wrote. “If a refund, feds clearly get half … I thought we were going to handle this through phone calls.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., accused the state of trying to “keep as much of other people’s money as you possibly can even if it means recharacterizing something.”

“This was a very unique situation and one which we didn’t have a playbook for,” Jesson said. “There wasn’t a clear answer.”

Jesson didn’t find any relief from the Democrats on the committee. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, for one, said that he had “questions about how you got to the point of believing and acting to keep all of the UCare funds for Minnesota when many believed at the time and you now concede that the funds needed to be divided with the federal government.”

Part of a larger problem?

More broadly, lawmakers accused Minnesota officials of scheming to get more Medicaid funds from the federal government than it was owed, primarily by overpaying HMOs through Medicaid reimbursements while underpaying them for plans that use just state money.

A congressional investigation, spearheaded by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, accused the state of spending less of its money on in-state health care plans while over-charging the federal government, through Medicaid reimbursements, to make up the difference. The state could end up owing the federal government “hundreds of millions of dollars” for such a system, according to a committee report.

Minnesota spent about $7 billion on Medicaid in 2009. More than 60 percent of that came from the federal government.

“This appears to be another example of the old game of states pushing the bounds to maximize federal dollars received while minimizing state dollars spent,” Grassley told the committee.

Feinwachs, the former general counsel of the Minnesota Hospital Association, told the committee that the problem dated back to 2003, during the Tim Pawlenty administration, and continues today. He said he raised the issue with his supervisors in 2010, and he said he was fired a short time later.

“It does appear from what has occurred in Minnesota that some public employees and our HMOs were, in fact, collaborating in the conduct we are questioning today,” Feinwachs said.

Dayton: Charges ‘just disgusting’

Minnesota officials said the charges are overblown. Gov. Mark Dayton, speaking at a St. Paul press conference, called them “just disgusting. It’s totally uncalled-for, totally unjustified.” He said Jesson should be applauded, not investigated, for bringing down Medicaid spending in the state.

MinnPost photo by James NordCommissioner Lucinda Jesson

Jesson said the Dayton administration had taken a proactive approach to providing more oversight on Medicaid spending, by calling for more audits of the state’s HMOs, instituting a competitive bidding process and ask the HMOs — all non-profits under Minnesota law — to cap their profits to 1 percent of their operating margins. Jesson said the reforms would end up saving $600 million.

“Minnesota has long been a leader in how managed care plans serve our Medicaid enrollees,” she said. “But changes need to be made in the way we do business now and in the future. We have made an unprecedented number of reforms in purchasing and accountability in just the past 15 months.”

State lawmakers in Minnesota on Wednesday resisted taking aim at specific officials for implementing the flawed accounting, but admitted there’s a problem. They criticized the federal and state systems for allowing the shoddy transactions to take place, but said Minnesota was simply working within the established public health care framework.

They also said seeking more federal aid is something that every state does.

“I’m sure every state is trying to maximize federal dollars,” said Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville. “That doesn’t mean what was done was appropriate or anything like that, and so the federal government understandably wants to check in on it.”

Still, Minnesota is feeling some aftershocks from Feinwachs’ quest. The omnibus Health and Human Services bill, which passed both the House and Senate on Tuesday, includes a “very toothy, very strong audit provision,” to look into the managed care plans, said GOP Rep. Jim Abeler, chairman of the House Health and Human Services Finance Committee.

Sen. Sean Nienow, R-Cambridge, who had called on Congress to hold the hearings, said he wanted to uncover the root of the obvious, but mysterious problem through the audits. A group of “proponents” for examining the HMOs came to Nienow with a “suite” of bills last year, he said.

“It wasn’t just that it didn’t smell right,” Nienow said. “You could see the smoke throughout the Capitol, figuratively, and it got to the point where we needed to find out: Is the house on fire or not? Because I could smell it, I could see it, but where’s it coming from?”

Despite the condemnation, the legislators aren’t very concerned the feds will find any wrongdoing.

“I don’t believe they’re going to find that it was fraud,” Abeler said. “I’ll be astonished if they come back with that.”

But their ideas for a solution to the problems fall along partisan lines. Abeler said the feds should look at the sweeping reforms propagated by Minnesota’s Republican legislative majority last session as a template for the nation. Marty has called for ending contracts with the HMOs and returning the to government-led care systems that were in place before them.

“It’s been going on for a long time,” Marty said. “I’m not nearly as interested in blame, either for the Pawlenty administration or the Dayton administration or anyone. I’m interested in fixing the problem.”

National problem

The charges against Minnesota are part of a larger problem, Republicans warned, citing a 2010 Government Accountability Office report that warned “[the federal government] cannot ensure that states’ managed care rates are appropriate, which places billions of federal and state dollars at risk for misspending."

“This is not just a Minnesota problem, this appears to be a problem around the country,” Bachmann said in her testimony. She said she will introduce a bill requiring third-party audits of managed care financial statements and state contracts with them.

Republicans said this was especially prudent given the way President Obama’s health care reform law expands Medicaid, warning that fraud will become more common as 20 million people become eligible for its coverage and the federal government begins reimbursing states for covering them.

The committee called whistleblowers from two other states to testify alongside Feinwachs. An orthodontist from Texas testified that her state had improperly spent millions of Medicaid dollars on routine orthodontic care. A lawyer from New York testified that he helped recover $70 million in misspent Medicaid money from New York City.

A lawmaker asked each of those testifing to rate the level of Medicaid fraud that persists in their states. Both testified it was potentially widespread and rampant.

When the question was posed to Feinwachs, he responded: “Not to be outdone, but Minnesota’s fraud is more massive and more clever than yours.”

Congressional panel grills DHS Commissioner Lucinda Jesson on state Medicaid spending

Devin Henry — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:08:52 +0000

MinnPost photo by James NordCommissioner Lucinda Jesson

WASHINGTON — Gov. Mark Dayton’s human services commissioner on Wednesday faced a combative congressional panel that accused Minnesota officials of requesting an improper amount of Medicaid money from the federal government.

At the heart of the hearing were years of overpayments in Medicaid reimbursements from the federal government to managed care organizations in Minnesota.

The impetus for the hearing was a $30 million gift to the state from UCare, one of those HMOs, that state officials considered to be a donation. State officials had planned to keep it all, but the federal government said it was a reimbursement for Medicaid overpayments and asked for half of it. The state eventually relented this week.

The state considered the UCare money a “bona fide donation,” DHS Commissioner Lucinda Jesson said, and intended to put the full amount in the Minnesota general fund.

Congressional panel members suggested Minnesota officials were scheming to keep the money for the state, pointing to an email in which Jesson instructed a staffer to call the money a refund when making public comments.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., accused the state of trying to “keep as much of other people’s money as you possibly can even if it means recharacterizing something.”

“This was a very unique situation and one which we didn’t have a playbook for,” Jesson said. “There wasn’t a clear answer.”

Jesson didn’t find any relief from the Democrats on the committee.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, for one, said that he had “questions about how you got to the point of believing and acting to keep all of the UCare funds for Minnesota when many believed at the time and we now can see that the funds needed to be divided with the federal government.”

The larger issue at the heart of the hearing was Minnesota’s oversight of its Medicaid spending.

A congressional investigation, spearheaded by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, found the state to be spending less of its money on in-state health care plans while overcharging the federal government, through Medicaid reimbursements, to make up the difference.

“Minnesota was using this accounting trick in order to leverage the federal reimbursement of state Medicaid spending,” a congressional report concluded, saying that the state could end up owing the federal government “hundreds of millions of dollars” for such a system.

Lawmakers by and large acknowledged that there was a problem and were left trying to figure out how it all happened.

Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum accused former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration of “negotiating Medicaid contracts with health plans with little to no transparency” and said his officials should be the ones testifying before the committee.

McCollum and Jesson said the Dayton administration had been working to change the system.

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, warned that the problem extended beyond just Minnesota, citing a 2010 Government Accountability Office report that warned, “[the federal government] cannot ensure that states’ managed care rates are appropriate, which places billions of federal and state dollars at risk for misspending.”

“This is not just a Minnesota problem. This appears to be a problem around the country,” Rep. Michele Bachmann told the committee. She said she will introduce a bill requiring third-party audits of managed care financial statements and state contracts with them.

U.S. House passes bill freeing up land in Cook County

Devin Henry — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:45:35 +0000

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House passed a bill Tuesday allowing land around the airport in Cook County, Minn. to be used for a highway development project.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Chip Cravaack, would reverse an "unintentional consequence" of a deed granted to the state of Minnesota in the 1950s to build an airport in Cook County. The government wants to build a portion of County Highway 8 on part of the airport's land, but the terms of the deed prevent it from doing so right now. Cravaack's bill removes that part of the deed and will allow the project to go forward.

County highway engineer David Betts said in March that the county highway department would purchase the land from the airport once the bill passes.

The bill is not controversial and the House passed it on a voice vote.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Republicans add Cravaack to incumbent support program

Devin Henry — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:13:55 +0000

WASHINGTON — The National Republican Congressional Committee has added first-term Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack to its incumbent-supporting "Patriot Program."

The Patriot Program was established by the NRCC to provide campaigning and fundraising support to incumbents in tough re-election contests. Cravaack is one of 34 House Republicans, and the only Minnesotan, on the list.

Cravaack was added on Tuesday along with four other Republicans, including three from New York and one from Wisconsin. It's the fourth round of incumbents added to the program and the first since Minnesota finalized its redistricting process in February, leaving Cravaack in a district that leans Democratic and one where Republicans have long been expecting a bruising re-election contest.

Three Democrats — former state Sen. Tarryl Clark, former Duluth City Council president Jeff Anderson and former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan — are expected to compete in an August primary for the chance to take on Cravaack. He holds a fundraising edge on all three, having raised $1 million for his re-election campaign, but Clark outraised him during the last fundraising quarter, $320,000 to $246,000.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Minnesota's big-dollar donors to presidential candidates

Devin Henry — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:11:44 +0000

WASHINGTON — Between January and March, the heart of the Republican presidential nomination contest, the final four Republican candidates together raised about $310,000 from big-dollar donors in Minnesota, according to the latest round of fundraising reports collected by the Federal Election Commission.

President Obama’s re-election campaign, meanwhile, brought in nearly $425,000 from those who gave more than $500.

Among Republicans, the presumptive nominee Mitt Romney raised $124,500 from this pool of donors, by far the most in the state. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum (who has since dropped out of the race) both raised around $81,000 and Newt Gingrich brought in only about $20,800.

Romney’s big donors gave, on average, the most to their candidate ($1,946), followed closely by Obama donors ($1,849). Ron Paul’s biggest donors give comparatively little — their average donation was $1,015.

So, who was giving to whom?

A MinnPost breakdown of the FEC data showed that Obama got two big checks from two major Native American tribes, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and the Fond Du Lac Band Of Lake Superior Chippewa, who cut him $10,000 and $5,000 checks respectively. Five Pohlads, of Minnesota Twins fame, gave a total of $25,000 to Obama, too.

David Homer

Only eight people gave the maximum $5,000 to Mitt Romney during the first quarter, among them, David Homer, a senior vice president at General Mills and the president of General Mills Canada. Rick Santorum got $5,000 total from Republican mega-donors Robert and Joan Cummins.

Collectively, Minnesotans have now donated more than $3 million to presidential candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Obama and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty are still the only ones to have broken $1 million in the state.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Bachmann visits diplomats, troops on Middle East trip

Devin Henry — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:56:46 +0000

WASHINGTON — Michele Bachmann is returning home from the Middle East today, having spent the weekend in Afghanistan meeting with diplomats, military leaders and service members from Minnesota.

Bachmann travelled to the region as part of a congressional delegation there to meet with Gen. John Allen and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. In a conference call with the media, she said Allen had invited her to the region after testifying before Congress last year.

The trip comes the same weekend as the United States and the Afghan government agreed to a long-term deal on American commitments in the country beyond 2014, the deadline for troop withdrawal from the region.

Specifics of the deal have not been released, but generally, it has Americans providing financial and ancillary military support to the Afghan government and its fighting force for at least 10 years after 2014. Whatever American presence is left in the country beyond 2014 will play a supporting role to the Afghan forces, Bachmann said.

In the past, especially during her presidential run, Bachman has accused President Obama of playing politics in the region, making decisions based on their political, rather than military, ramifications. But Bachmann was more diplomatic on Monday, and though she didn’t embrace the 2014 drawdown plan, she called the situation “very, very fluid” and said that long-term success in the region depends on the ability of the Afghan forces to beat back the lingering Taliban threat on their own, without the United States taking the lead.

“I am supportive that we see this effort come to an end as quickly as we can and as successfully as we can,” she said. “We don’t want to walk away prematurely, but at the same time, we don’t wish to extend our stay here one hour longer than we need to.”

The question is, “what will be the right amount of time?” she said.

Bachmann spoke in generally positive terms about Sunday’s agreement: “It won’t be that we are completely leaving … Our role in combat will cease, but we will remain there in a support position.”

Beyond the diplomatic reasons for the trip, Bachmann said she spent a lot of her time meeting with troops from Minnesota, stationed at Camp Leatherneck in the Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan. She ate most of her meals with the troops, she said, a group hailing from all over Minnesota and not just Bachmann’s 6^th Congressional District (though one woman she met is a former staffer from her district office).

“They are very committed to their mission,” she said. “You will not believe the level of dedication that they have.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Long convention produces no GOP challenger for Walz

Devin Henry — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:35:08 +0000

After a seemingly endless day of politicking and ballot-casting in the 1^st District, Republicans are no closer to finding a nominee to challenge Tim Walz in November.

Party delegates met Saturday to nominate a candidate to take on the third-term Democrat, but after more than 14 hours and 23 ballots, activists could not coalesce behind either state Sen. Mike Parry or activist Allen Quist. To win the nomination, a candidate needed to receive 60 percent of the vote, but neither ever got close — on the last ballot of the night, Quist led with 52 percent of the vote.

The endorsement race was always expected to be a close one, but perhaps not this close. Just before 2 a.m., delegates approved a motion to call a new convention within the next few weeks to eventually decide a winner.

Here’s the play-by-play, from the Rochester Post-Bulletin:

At first, Parry, a state senator from Waseca, appeared to have the advantage. He led Quist by 19 votes on the first ballot. But as the evening wore on, Parry’s lead eroded. After 10 hours and 15 ballots, Quist took the lead and held it. The swing in support came after the former state representative from St. Peter challenged Parry to a debate where each candidate asked each other five questions. Parry declined.

Quist asked the delegates, “Why would you want to endorse a candidate to debate Tim Walz when that candidate is afraid to debate Allen Quist?”

Parry responded that the focus needs to be on beating Walz. He took Quist to task for waving list of questions in front of stage while he was addressing the delegates.

“I would never in my wildest dreams thought about disrespecting a candidate up on the stage,” he said. “We need to come together, we need to rally together.”

Saturday’s long (and still unresolved) proceedings have already made political history: delegates told the Post-Bulletin it was the longest nomination fight in the 1^st District since 1982, and it surpassed those for the Republican nomination for governor in 2002 (12 ballots between Tim Pawlenty and Brian Sullivan) and for U.S. Senate in 1996 (14 ballots between Rudy Boschwitz and Bert McKasy).

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Bachmann: Obama 'waving a tar baby in the air' on gas prices

Devin Henry — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:50:54 +0000

WASHINGTON — President Obama is “waving a tar baby over his head” by blaming oil speculators for the rising price of gasoline, Rep. Michele Bachmann said in an interview released Wednesday.

Bachmann was discussing oil prices with The Shark Tank, a conservative news website from Florida. She said Obama was a “complete and utter fraud” for blaming oil speculators in part for the rising cost of gas when he hasn’t supported policies that Republicans say could help bring prices down.

“This is just about waving a tar baby in the air and saying that something else is a problem,” Bachmann said, adding later: “The president is a complete and utter fraud and a hypocrite on this issue, with all due respect to the president."

The “tar baby” remark is a reference to a doll made of tar used to trap Br’er Rabbit in an Uncle Remus folktale, and has come to represent a sticky situation, which was what Bachmann was trying to say, spokeswoman Becky Rogness said.

But the term has negative racial connotations, as well. Politico has a recap of politicians who have used the phrase (and, in some cases, who have subsequently apologized for it), including Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kerry and, most recently, Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, who said associating with Obama was like “touching a tar baby and you get it, you’re stuck, and you’re a part of the problem now and you can’t get away.”

Rogness said Bachmann’s remark was meant to be innocuous.

“The Congresswoman values all human life – regardless of race, color or creed,” she said in an email. “If you listen to the interview, Rep. Bachmann was making a point about the President’s poor understanding of oil prices, which has nothing to do with race. The President doesn’t understand the oil market and, hence, has gotten himself into a sticky situation.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

House passes GOP small business tax plan

Devin Henry — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:37:51 +0000

WASHINGTON — House Republicans responded to Senate Democrats’ attempt to pass a high-income tax increase on Thursday, passing a bill of their own that would provide a tax cut of up to 20 percent for small businesses employing fewer than 500 people.

Republicans say the tax cut would spur hiring and ease pressure on businesses that were hit hardest by, and are recovering slowest from, the economic downturn.

The final vote was 235-173; all Minnesotans voted with their party, except for Rep. Tim Walz, who was one of 18 Democrats to vote for the bill.

Minnesota Republican Erik Paulsen, who sits on the tax writing Ways and Means Committee, called the bill a solution to small business owners’ concerns.

“I’ve been listening to what small businesses have been asking for, I’ve been attentive to their needs, and they’re asking for help investing in their people and their employees and to invest in their companies and their operations,” Paulsen said at a Thursday press conference.

“This is where the vast majority of our jobs come from, the small business community. Out of every other economic recession we’ve had in the past, small business has led the way, and we’re not seeing small business lead the way in the manner that they have in the past.”

Republicans passed the legislation just days after Senate Democrats tried and failed to pass a much-hyped bill requiring millionaires to pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent. Republicans argued the tax increase would not only affect millionaires but also hurt small businesses that file tax returns as individuals.

The Senate, where Democrats are in the majority, is not likely to take up the House bill, called the Small Business Tax Cut Act. This time, Democrats flipped the Republican Buffett Rule argument on its head: they say the bill would provide tax breaks not only for small businesses but for high-income individuals as well.

The White House threatened a veto on Tuesday, saying the bill is “not focused on cutting taxes for small businesses, but instead would provide tax cuts to the most fortunate. … The proposal is a giveaway that will cost $46 billion and could, in fact, lead to delays and reductions in investment and hiring.”

The bill’s chances of becoming law before November’s elections are the same as the Buffett Rule’s — next to none. But Republicans acknowledged Thursday that it plays an important political role going forward.

“Certainly, if [Senate] Majority Leader Harry Reid can make time to tax the successful individuals and businesses in America, he can certainly find the time to provide a tax cut to the small businesses who drive our economy,” Texas Republican Kevin Brady said. “If the American public, as they head to the polls, want to know the key difference between the Republicans in Congress and Senate Democrats and the president, this makes it crystal clear."

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Congressional fundraising: Clark crushes the 8th and Bachmann's big return

Devin Henry — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:14:20 +0000

Tarryl Clark

WASHINGTON — First quarter fundraising numbers for congressional candidates are in, so let’s take our traditional look at how each incumbent and candidate fared.

A couple of takeaways from the first three months of 2012:

The 8^th District race is, by all accounts, expected to be the most competitive of the cycle in Minnesota, and the fundraising totals indicate just that. Rep. Chip Cravaack has raised nearly $1 million this cycle, but he’s twice had weaker fundraising quarters than one of his would-be DFL competitors, former state Sen. Tarryl Clark. She raised $320,000, about $65,000 more than Cravaack and almost three times as much as her two DFL primary opponents combined.

Michele Bachmann’s failed presidential bid has not driven away donors. She raised $570,000 in two months, more than any other U.S. House incumbent in the state during the entire quarter.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hegseth entered the race on March 1 and raised $160,000 that month alone. That’s more money than former state Rep. Dan Severson raised all last year (though he put together his best quarter of the cycle, as well). It’s still chump change compared to incumbent Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s haul — she raised nearly $1 million and has $5.2 million in the bank.

Here’s a district-by-district breakdown:

U.S. Senate

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Democrat: Raised: $983,000. On Hand: $5.2 million.

Pete Hegseth, Republican: Raised: $160,000 (since March 1). On Hand: $130,000.

Dan Severson, Republican: Raised: $54,000. On Hand: $40,300.

Kurt Bills, Republican: Raised: $45,500 (since mid-March). On Hand: $34,000.

Klobuchar has raised in the neighborhood of $1 million each quarter since the beginning of last year and has assembled a war chest that dwarfs her opponents. By most counts, Klobuchar is popular among voters and seen as a safe incumbent come November, and the fundraising advantage she has over her would-be challengers is going to be a tough for the eventual Republican candidate to overcome.

On the Republican side, both Hegseth and Bills entered the race in March and got underway fundraising immediately. Hegseth’s $160,000 figure is more than all Republicans in the race had previously raised, combined. Bills received an endorsement from presidential candidate Ron Paul, who emailed his donor list on March 30 soliciting donations for Bills, two days before the end of the fundraising quarter. Paul supporters are notoriously small-dollar donors who contribute online, so it’s likely they helped (and will continue to help) boast Bills’s numbers.

1^st District

Rep. Tim Walz, Democrat: Raised: $217,000. On Hand: $708,000.

Al Quist, Republican: Raised: $38,000. On Hand: $59,000.

Mike Parry, Republican: Raised: $17,000. On Hand: $36,000.

Nationally, Republicans had hoped to make the 1^st District race competitive, and Parry, a state senator, was seen as a candidate who could pose a significant challenge to Walz. But Parry’s fundraising ability has disappointed — he raised half has much over the last three months as he did in the first two months of his campaign — while Walz has quietly built up a sizable cash advantage over his two Republican opponents. He has raised more than $1.2 million this cycle and has $708,000 on hand.

Quist, meanwhile, doubled up Parry this quarter. His campaign is still $25,000 in debt.

The 1^st District Republican endorsing convention is this weekend.

2^nd District

Rep. John Kline, Republican: Raised: $255,000. On Hand: $1 million.

Kline is the second House incumbent to report a cash-on-hand total topping $1 million, joining Republican Erik Paulsen.

Three Democrats have announced campaigns to run against Kline: former Minnesota Rep. Mike Obermueller, Dakota County Commissioner Kathleen Gaylord and Northfield City Councilman Patrick Ganey. Whichever is endorsed to challenge Kline will start off significantly in-the-hole financially.

3^rd District

Rep. Erik Paulsen, Republican: Raised: $322,000. On Hand: $1.3 million.

Brian Barnes, Democrat: Raised: $30,000. On Hand: $30,800.

Paulsen has the fattest pockets of any House incumbent from Minnesota, and he’s raised more than $300,000 for the fifth straight quarter. He has a nearly 42-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over newly endorsed challenger Brian Barnes.

4^th District

Rep. Betty McCollum, Democrat: Raised: $123,000. On Hand: $222,000.

Daniel Flood, Republican: Raised: $595. On Hand: -$1,275.

Anthony Hernandez, Republican: No FEC filing.

Betty McCollum has raised less money than any Minnesota House incumbent this cycle and has the second-lowest cash-on-hand total, but she’s in a safe Democratic district and won’t need to worry about significant Republican opposition.

5^th District

Rep. Keith Ellison, Democrat: Raised: $232,500. On Hand: $133,000.

Chris Fields, Republican: Raised: $10,400. On Hand: $5,000.

Like McCollum, Ellison’s district is strongly Democratic and he isn’t too concerned with turning in gaudy fundraising figures.

6^th District

Rep. Michele Bachmann, Republican: Raised: $570,000. On Hand: $642,000.

Jim Graves, Democrat: On Hand: $85,000.

Bachmann formally launched her congressional re-election campaign in February and returned to her place as the undisputed top fundraiser among the House delegation. Bachmann’s $570,000 came in only two months, and it’s still the most raised among her colleagues last quarter.

Bachmann, of course, is a historically strong fundraiser, raising a record $12.3 million in her re-election bid two years ago.

Graves, Bachmann’s DFL challenger, loaned his campaign $100,000 to get off the ground.

(Bachmann's presidential campaign, meanwhile, raised $25,500 between the end of January and March. She has $250,000 on hand and remains more than $1 million in debt.)

7^th District

Rep. Collin Peterson, Democrat: Raised: $116,000. On Hand: $752,000.

Lee Byberg, Republican: Raised: $53,500. On Hand: $91,000.

Byberg is taking his second shot at Peterson, who opens up the general election campaign with an 8-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage.

Peterson beat Byberg by 18 points in 2010, and Byberg still has $78,000 in debt left over from that campaign.

8^th District

Rep. Chip Cravaack, Republican: Raised: $246,000. On Hand: $629,000.

Tarryl Clark, Democrat: Raised: $321,000. On Hand: $418,000.

Rick Nolan, Democrat: Raised: $77,000. On Hand: $40,500.

Jeff Anderson, Democrat: Raised: $38,000. On Hand: $20,000.

For context’s sake, Tarryl Clark’s $321,000 effort last quarter was:

Her best fundraising quarter of the campaign;

More than the other two DFL candidates in this race have raised all cycle;

More than every other Minnesota U.S. House challenger this quarter combined, and;

The second time she’s outraised Cravaack this cycle.

Both Anderson and Nolan turned in their best fundraising performances of the cycle, but they are sitting in Clark’s shadow right now. The three candidates will face off in an August primary.

The Clark campaign says it received 5,000 donations last quarter, including those from 3,100 new donors. Two national Democratic groups helped her on her way: EMILY’s List bundled $82,000 in contributions for Clark, and the ActBlue PAC brought in another $91,000. Clark is never going to raise as much money this cycle as she did in 2010 running against Bachmann, but if this quarter is any indication, she can still count on national dollars if she wins the DFL primary.

For Cravaack’s part, he’s raised nearly $1 million and has a $200,000 cash-on-hand advantage over Clark. The 1^st quarter was the best of his campaign.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Ellison testifies on racial profiling

Devin Henry — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:11:48 +0000

WASHINGTON — When Rep. Keith Ellison read about the New York City Police Department’s monitoring of Muslim students at the city’s universities, his first thoughts were for his son.

“I was very proud when my son was elected president of the Muslim Student Association at his college, but I wonder: was my 18-year-old son under surveillance like the kids were at Yale, Columbia and Penn?” he told a Senate Judiciary Committee panel on Tuesday. “I worry to think that he might be in somebody’s files simply because he wanted to be active on campus.”

Ellison, testifying on the issue of racial profiling, called it not only a discriminatory practice, but a waste of law enforcement resources. He called on the Justice Department to cut down on investigations based on race and endorsed a bill that would ban profiling based on race, religion, ethnicity and national origin.

The hearing was the first in the Senate on the issue of racial profiling in more than 10 years. Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, was called on to testify alongside a panel of Democratic lawmakers.

Ellison’s remarks revolved around profiling against religious minorities, most notably Muslim Americans.

“Up to 6 million Americans know what it’s like to be looked upon with suspicion in the post-9/11 America, perhaps even before,” he said. “Many know all too well what it means to be pulled off of an airline, pulled out of line, denied service, called names or even physically attacked."

He rattled off a list of questions he said law enforcement agents have asked of Muslims: “Where do you go to mosque? Why did you give them $200? Do you fast? Do you pray? How often?”

“No American should be forced to answer questions about how they worship,” he said.

The impetus for Tuesday’s hearing was Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager whose February shooting death and the subsequent investigation has attracted worldwide attention.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin noted that the affidavit filed against George Zimmerman accused him of “profiling” Martin and that he “assumed Martin was a criminal.”

Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder in the shooting, and his lawyers dispute that race was a factor, but Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson said the incident “will go down in history as a textbook example of racial profiling.”

The hearing opened with Durbin unveiling a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking him to close loopholes in Justice Department racial profiling guidelines that allow profiling based on religion and national origin, and when it relates to investigations of national security and border control matters. Ellison and Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum signed the letter to Holder and are co-sponsors of the End Racial Profiling Act, which would ban the practice at all levels of government.

The Justice Department racial profiling rules was issued under Attorney General John Ashcroft, who chaired the first-ever Senate hearing on racial profile in 2001. Lawmakers lauded President Bush for speaking out on the matter in his first speech to Congress in 2001: “It's wrong, and we will end it in America,” Bush said then. “In so doing, we will not hinder the work of our nation's brave police officers. They protect us every day -- often at great risk. But by stopping the abuses of a few, we will add to the public confidence our police officers earn and deserve.''

Ellison’s testimony is the same vein as those he’s given on other issues facing Muslim Americans, most notably last year before the House Homeland Security Committee, which was investigating radicalized Islam in the United States.

“Given the unique circumstances of my election and given that I’m one of two [Muslims] out of 535 [members of Congress], the issues that come my way have often to do with religious profiling,” he said Tuesday. “I’m very happy to talk about how America can be one America and I think racial profiling can be a barrier to that.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Buffett Rule dies in Senate, but Minnesota Democrats say issue lives on

Devin Henry — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:02:48 +0000

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans defeated President Obama’s high-income tax plan, the Buffett Rule, on Monday night, blocking it on a procedural vote. In all, 50 Democrats, including Minnesotans Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, and one Republican backed the proposal; 44 Republicans and one Democrat voted no. Sixty votes were required for passage.

The Buffett Rule as policy is dead, at least for now, but as a political talking point and a part of the larger election year debate over taxing and spending, it lives on. Polls show strong support for the Buffett Rule among voters, and Democrats are hoping to cash in on that “tax-the-rich” sentiment come November.

Democratic lawmakers say the Buffett Rule is a matter of fairness, ensuring people who make more than $1 million a year pay at least 30 percent in income taxes. After the vote Monday night, they said it was also a component of paying down the federal deficit in a “balanced” way, combining spending cuts with increased revenue.

Sen. Franken, who co-sponsored the defeated Buffett Rule provision, said voters will invariably need to compare the Democrats’ approach with that put forward by House Republicans, who passed a budget that couples lowered tax rates across the board with deep cuts to federal spending. Franken said he preferred to raise revenue through taxes on high-income earners to prevent deeper cuts from coming elsewhere.

“Anybody who’s been on the ground looking at what the economy has been doing knows that we have to make investments in education and infrastructure and innovation,” Franken said. “If you don’t have some more revenue coming in you can’t do that without increasing the deficit.”

A matter of fairness

The White House’s basic refrain on the Buffett Rule goes back to that issue of fairness, that those who make more money should pay a similar tax rate to those who make less.

“This idea of fairness and making everyone play by the same set of rules is going to be something we’re going to keep talking about,” said Kristin Sosanie, the spokeswoman for the Obama campaign in Minnesota. “It’s what the president really believes and it’s what Minnesotans are really clambering for.”

Politically, they see the issue as winner, and they have the polling to back them up — 60 percent of respondents told Gallup that they support the Buffett Rule; 72 percent said the same to CNN.

So it’s no surprise that Democrats desperately want it to be a top issue this fall.

“It will be a huge issue,” said Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota DFL Party, one that’s already “proven to be successful for Minnesota Democrats” like Gov. Mark Dayton, whose 2010 gubernatorial campaign was based around raising taxes on high-income earners to close state budget deficits.

Martin said Minnesotans are especially sensitive to the high-income earner taxation debate, given the way the state government shutdown unfolded last year.

Republicans see it as a ‘gimmick’

But Republicans say the November campaign is going to be more of a referendum on President Obama’s overall handling of the economy than about a debate on the tax rate for millionaires.

Republican strategist Ben Golnik said issues like gas prices, unemployment, the Affordable Care Act and the ballooning national debt will take priority over the Buffett Rule in voters’ minds. He called it a political “gimmick” from Democrats, who would have been better suited to move such a proposal during the first two years of Obama’s term, when they had a bigger presence on Capitol Hill.

House Republicans seemed to take on that approach Monday, highlighting their efforts to ease the tax burden on small businesses and reduce the cost of gas, even as their Senate colleagues took up the doomed Buffett Rule.

When it comes to the tax code, the slate of Republicans looking to challenge Sen. Klobuchar this fall have tacked a more conservative position.

Pete Hegseth said he’d push for a simpler tax code consisting of fewer and lower tax brackets. He said Democrats wrongly see the Buffett Rule as “a political asset, but it does nothing to solve the problems facing this country.”

“It’s not a revenue problem we have right now,” he said, “it’s a spending problem.”

Former state Rep. Dan Severson (who received a Tax Day thank you from Grover Norquist after he signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge) struck on a similar tone: “It’s not about increasing taxes; it’s about decreasing spending.”

His simple message for would-be voters: “We pay enough already.”

A means for reducing the deficit

To be sure, the Buffett Rule, or some form of it, could resurface in the intervening months between the Nov. 6 election and the swearing in of a new Congress next January. Congress will have to confront the fate of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts that expire on Dec. 31.

Klobuchar said that between rolling back those tax cuts (for people making more than $250,000), closing of tax loopholes, ending subsidies to oil companies and revisiting the Buffett Rule, Congress could put together a solid deficit-reduction package. All told, that adds up to about $800 billion in new revenue over 10 years, she said, coupled with the $2.2 trillion in cuts Congress has already approved.

“The issue here is, you have to do this in a balanced way,” she said. “I think Minnesotans understand that you have to look at both spending cuts and revenue.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Main Gingrich backer now bankrolling Norm Coleman's super PAC

Devin Henry — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:17:09 +0000

WASHINGTON — Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate known in the political world as the main donor to a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC, has donated $5 million to a group backing Republican House candidates chaired by former Minnesota U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

On February 15, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, each gave $2.5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC "focused solely and exclusively on maintaining the Republican majority in the House of Representatives," according to its website. Coleman is the chairman of the group; former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber also sits on its board.

The Congressional Leadership Fund was formed last fall to much fanfare among Washington Republicans. The top three Republicans in the House — Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Whip Kevin McCarthy — headlined the group's kick-off fundraiser in November.

The group's fundraising has been unremarkable outside of the Adelsons, whose $5 million gift accounts for the lion's share of the group's funding, according to FEC reports filed Sunday. The group brought in $130,000 last fall and, the Adlesons withstanding, only $93,000 between January and March. The group has $5.1 million on hand.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Buffett Rule: primer on the policy and the politics

Devin Henry — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:46:05 +0000

WASHINGTON — When the Senate takes up the Obama administration’s so-called Buffett Rule on Monday, no one expects the measure to pass. Democrats would need several Republican defectors to break a filibuster, and there is simply no support for the high-income tax plan on that side of the aisle.

Both of Minnesota’s Democratic U.S. Senators will vote for the measure — Sen. Al Franken is a co-sponsor of the actual bill — one of the most high-profile policies President Obama has pushed this election year.

Obama’s plan would create a series of new high-income tax rates that ensures people who make more than $1 million a year pay a minimum tax rate of at least 30 percent, a rate much more in line with those paid by middle-income Americans. By the White House’s count, 22,000 households making more than $1 million paid less than 15 percent in taxes in 2009.

The Buffett Rule is so-named because the Omaha billionaire famously says he pays a lower tax rate than that of his secretary. Obama has been pushing the proposal since an August op-ed in which Buffett himself complained about the lower tax rate he pays, relative to the people who work for him. The president called for the plan last fall when the so-called congressional “super committee” was trying — and would eventually fail — to craft a deficit reduction plan.

Obama revived the Buffett Rule in his State of the Union address and has been on the offensive ever since, betting that even if Congress rejects the plan — which it will — voters will embrace it come November.

Democrats from the president on down have said the plan is less about directly paying down the federal deficit than it is about making the tax code fairer — those who make more money would pay taxes at a rate similar to middle class Americans, they say. Right now, about one-quarter of millionaires have a lower tax burden than many in the middle class, according to White House projections.

“We should have a principle in our tax code that those people who make more than $1 million a year shouldn’t pay less as a share of their income in income tax than middle class families,” Council of Economic Advisers chairman Alan Krueger said last week.

Small businesses

Republicans have adamantly opposed tax hikes, and have argued that the Buffett Rule will unfairly hurt small businesses that file tax returns like individuals.

The GOP is working to contrast their preferred tax policies with the president’s. Just Sunday night, likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney began outlining the details of his tax plan, which includes a 20 percent across-the-board income tax cut. In Washington, House Republicans are scheduled to take up legislation this week that provides a 20 percent tax cut for up to 22 million small businesses. Republicans have argued that it’s a necessary measure meant to stimulate job growth. Two Minnesotans, Reps. John Kline and Chip Cravaack, are co-sponsors of the plan.

Republicans have also accused Obama of falsely masquerading the Buffett Rule as a deficit reduction measure, when the plan would raise only $46 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (the current deficit is around $1.3 trillion). They’ve charged that Democrats are pushing the plan for purely political purposes.

That’s true, to a point. Obama used the Buffett Ryle to try and apply political pressure on Republicans last week, giving three speeches focused solely on the plan (two of them, not coincidentally, in the swing state of Florida). Democrats see it as a winning issue — a Gallup poll released Friday found 60 percent of voters support the plan, so there’s no doubt that politics play a key role in the heavy emphasis Democrats have placed on the Buffett Rule this year.

But the White House worked to dispel the idea that the Buffett Rule is more about politics than policy. Officials call the $47 billion figure significant in its own right, and point out that the plan would actually raise even more revenue — $160 billion over 10 years — if the George W. Bush-era high-income tax cuts are continued (they’re due to expire at the end of the year).

“The Buffett Rule is first and foremost a principle of fairness in the tax code, but it does raise a nontrivial amount of revenue,” Krueger said.

On Twitter, Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar put it another way: “That’s not chump change.”

“There are others who are saying, well, this is just a gimmick,” Obama said last week. “Just taxing millionaires and billionaires, just imposing the Buffett Rule won’t do enough to close the deficit. Well, I agree. That’s not all we have to do to close the deficit. But the notion that it doesn’t solve the entire problem doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it at all.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Congressional fundraising reports start trickling in

Devin Henry — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:01:57 +0000

Minnesota's members of Congress and their challengers are slowly starting to file fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission ahead of Sunday's deadline.

Five of the state's eight U.S. House members have reported their fundraising figures:

In the 2nd District, Republican Rep. John Kline raised more than $255,000 between January and March and he has more than $1 million on hand. Three DFLers have announced their intention to challenge Kline, though all did so during April and will not announce fundraising numbers this weekend.

Democrat Betty McCollum raised nearly $123,500 and has more than $222,000 in the bank. McCollum represents the Democratic stronghold of St. Paul.

Republican Michele Bachmann raised $550,000 during February and March. Her re-election campaign has $650,000 on hand. Three Democrats have announced challenges to Bachmann. One of them, Jim Graves, loaned his campaign $100,000 to get it off the ground, according to his FEC report.
Bachmann's presidential campaign, meanwhile, raised $25,500 between the end of January and March. She has $250,000 on hand but is still more than $1 million in debt, according to her FEC filing.

7th District Democrat Collin Peterson raised $116,000 during the first quarter. He has $752,000 on hand. His challenger is Republican Lee Byberg.
GOP Rep. Chip Cravaack raised $246,000 and has $629,000 on hand, according to his campaign. Cravaack has raised more than $1 million for the cycle. Cravaack's $246,000 haul is his biggest yet, but less than the $321,000 DFL candidate Tarryl Clark raised. She has $418,000 on hand. Two other DFL candidates, Rick Nolan and Jeff Anderson, have yet to file their reports.

On the Senate side, Democrat Amy Klobuchar raised $1 million and has nearly $5.2 million on hand, according to her campaign. Only one of her three would-be Republican challengers has announced his fundraising total: Pete Hegseth raised $160,000 during the month of March.

We'll update this as more reports come in.

Ellison, Progressive Caucus: West's communism remarks McCarthy-esque

Devin Henry — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:48:23 +0000

WASHINGTON — Keith Ellison, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which U.S. Rep. Allen West categorized as “communist” on Tuesday, released a statement Wednesday calling the remarks from the Florida Republican a callback to the days of Joe McCarthy.

At an event in his district Tuesday evening, a constituent asked West, “What percentage of the American Legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists?” He responded that he believed “78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party … are members of the Communist Party.”

A spokesman later told Politico that West was referring to the members of the Progressive Caucus, a group of Democrats and left-leaning independents that back policies predominantly more liberal than those advanced by Republicans and even many Democrats.

Ellison and Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva of Arizona released a statement calling the remarks “reminiscent of the days when Joe McCarthy divided Americans with name-calling and modern-day witch hunts that don’t advance policies to benefit people’s lives.”

McCarthy, of course, was the Republican U.S. Senator who investigated the reach of communism in the United States during the Cold War.

Here’s the statement:

“Allen West is denigrating the millions of Americans who voted to elect Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) members, and he is ignoring the oath they took to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution—just like he did. Calling fellow Members of Congress ‘communists’ is reminiscent of the days when Joe McCarthy divided Americans with name-calling and modern-day witch hunts that don’t advance policies to benefit people’s lives.

“We hope the people of Florida’s 22^nd Congressional District will note that he repeatedly polarizes the American people instead of focusing on their interests. When people like Rep. West have no ideals or principles, they rely on personal attacks. The CPC is proud to stand up for economic equality and civil and human rights for all Americans. Congress is having, and will continue to have, an ongoing debate about job creation, home foreclosures and the issues that concern working families. But we will not engage in base and childish conversations that lower the high level of discourse Americans rightly expect from their representatives.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Clark raises $320,000 in 1st Quarter

Devin Henry — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:34:34 +0000

Tarryl Clark, a Democrat running for the party's nomination in the 8th Congressional District, raised nearly $321,000 between January and March. Her campaign has more than $418,000 on hand.

The haul is Clark's best since she entered the race last spring. The campaign said they had 3,100 new donors and 93 percent of contributors gave less than $100.

"It’s clear that Tarryl’s commitment to fighting for Minnesota’s families and communities is resonating," campaign manager Joe Fox said in a statement. "These grassroots supporters will give again and again to power the campaign through November.”

Clark is one of three Democrats seeking the party's nomination against incumbent freshman Rep. Chip Cravaack. She and former Duluth City Council member Jeff Anderson announced last month that they would run in an August primary. Former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan is also running.

Cravaack, Anderson and Nolan have until Sunday to file fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission.

Santorum plugs Bemidji Woolen Mills in concession speech

Devin Henry — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:50:39 +0000

WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum ended his presidential run in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, thanking campaign volunteers and regaling stories from the campaign trail — among them, his trip to Bemidji Woolen Mills, the manufacturer of his famed sweater vests.

Santorum's sweater vests were a thing of legend on the campaign trail, so much so that at one point during his presidential run, Santorum was offering a sweater vest to anyone who donated $100 to his campaign. When he visited Bemidji Woolen Mills in February, its workers were filling an order for 1,000 sweater vests embossed with Santorum's custom logo.

Here's how Santorum (clad in a black suit, blue shirt and red tie, but, incidentally, no sweater vest) told the tale:

Amazing thing that sweater vest. It happened on a night I was doing an event for Mike Huckabee in Des Moines. I showed up and everybody was in shirts and ties and I showed up in a sweater vest. Turned out I gave a pretty good speech that night, and all of a sudden the Twitterverse went wild, saying it must be the sweater vest. From that point on, the sweater vest became the official wardrobe of the Santorum campaign.

And the cool thing was, obviously a big part of our campaign was the manufacturing base of the economy, so we of course sourced that sweater vest in a company that was making them here in the United States. We ended up going to that little company up in Bemidji, Minn., in the middle of winter, it was a beautiful day and we got the chance to see that little plant that had been around for almost 100 years.

It turned out we were the best customer that Bemidji Woolen Mills has ever had, in their entire history.

Santorum's sweater vests were so much a part of his persona that minutes after his announcement on Tuesday, #sweatervest was briefly the number one trending topic on Twitter in the United States.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Pawlenty pays off debt, closes campaign

Devin Henry — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:03:14 +0000

Eight months after he dropped out of the presidential race, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has paid for his debt and formally closed his campaign committee.

Pawlenty was $450,000 in debt after he ended his presidential campaign in August. He paid off the final $24,300 of that during March, and closed his formally terminated his campaign with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday.

Pawlenty was considered a top-tier candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but he racked up loads of debt campaigning for a strong showing in the August Iowa straw poll. He finished third, and dropped out of the presidential race the next day.

In October, Pawlenty endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Romney and associates donated $66,000 to Pawlenty last fall.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Hegseth raises $160,000 during March

Devin Henry — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:37:31 +0000

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hegseth raised $160,000 during the month of March, his campaign announced Monday. He has $130,000 in the bank.

Hegseth is one of three Republicans seeking the party's nomination in the race to unseat Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar. He joined the race on March 1 and had a $100,000 fundraising goal for the month, his campaign manager said in a statement.

Other Republicans in the race include state Rep. Kurt Bills and former state Rep. Dan Severson. Bills entered the race in March and has yet to file a fundraising report (they're due to the Federal Election Commission next week); Severson raised $85,500 during the last nine months of 2011 and had $34,000 on hand at the end of the year.

Klobuchar has a significant fundraising edge over the pack of Republicans running against her — she raised more than $4.1 million last year and had $4.6 million on hand on Dec. 31.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com

Lee Byberg gears up to take his second shot at Peterson

Devin Henry — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:22:36 +0000

http://bybergforcongress.comLee Byberg

WASHINGTON — The easy part is over for Lee Byberg, who secured the Republican Party’s endorsement last weekend to challenge Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson for a second straight time.

That’s the hard part.

In 2010, a historically good year for Republicans nationally, Peterson beat Byberg by more than 17 points in a district that leans to the right. His advisers are planning a different outcome this fall.

“There’s an external sense that it can be done,” Byberg spokesman David Strom said. “We’re acquiring the resources that will be necessary to do it and we’ve got a guy who has been around the block.”

Byberg is running on a platform of fiscal conservatism — he would have voted to repeal President Obama's health care reform law and is "in line with the basic principles" of the Republican budget plan the House approved last week, Strom said. He'd like to work on agriculture policy if elected, like Peterson does now — but Byberg says the 11-term incumbent has lost touch with what farmers in the district want and need.

Nationally, Republicans want to defeat Peterson and conservatives in and out of the district insist its demographics make that possible. Strom said Byberg has proven both an effective fundraiser and coalition-builder and that he’s learned his lessons from the thumping he received two years ago.

Byberg’s not entirely off base in his assessment. Through December, he’d raised more money than all but one congressional challenger in Minnesota so far this cycle, and he has an organization of supporters that was strong enough to secure his party’s endorsement on the first ballot at convention. Though it’s no secret in Republican circles that many would have preferred state Sen. Gretchen Hoffman win the party’s endorsement in the race, the National Republican Congressional Committee wants to make the race competitive either way, and just finished running a week’s worth of ads against Peterson.

The NRCC liked Byberg enough to name him to its “Young Gun” program in 2010, presenting him to national donors as a trustworthy candidate in what it viewed as a potentially competitive race. He hasn’t been named to the 2012 iteration of the program, and if Byberg’s ugly loss drove away any potential supporters nationally, Strom said the campaign will try to redeem itself.

“We have every intention of proving to the donor community, to supporters and to the people of Washington that we’ve got a good operation,” he said. “If we can’t show the organization, the fundraising and the propensity to take [Peterson] out, then we won’t have earned their support.”

Peterson a different type of candidate

As bad as Byberg’s 2010 loss was, it was actually the first time a Republican has broken 30 percent against Peterson since 2004, and his tiniest margin of victory since 1994.

For his part, Peterson attributes that to poor Democratic turnout — he lost about 94,000 votes between 2008 (a presidential election year) and 2010, while Byberg gained only about 3,600 votes. He promised a similar a drop-off wont happen this year.

Generally, the 7^th District leans Republican — John McCain won it with 50 percent of the vote in 2008; George W. Bush won it 55-43 in 2004 — but it’s pleased with Peterson. Much of that can be attributed to his position as the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, but he’s also famously moderate, a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a dwindling group of centrist Democrats known for their fiscal responsibility. As badly as the district’s demographics should be for Peterson, he’s always managed to come out ahead, and by sizable margins.

“I’m sent to Washington to represent my people and bring their point of view into the debates and that’s what I do,” Peterson said. “I look at things based on what I think is right for my district and what a majority of people in my district would think is the right thing to do and I think that translates into electoral support.”

Strom said Byberg’s plan is to give voters a steady dose of the message he used in 2010 and the one employed by the NRCC last week — that Peterson has drifted to the left over his two decades in Congress.

“Collin Peterson likes to talk about how he’s a voice for fiscal conservatism, he likes to talk about how he’s an independent voice in Washington, D.C., for the 7^th District, but he’s been there for almost a quarter of a century. I think most people in the 7^th District think that during that time we’ve moved in the wrong direction,” Strom said. “When push comes to shove, Collin Peterson votes with Obama and Nancy Pelosi the vast majority of the time.”

Most ratings say Peterson votes with his party around 56 percent of the time, and he’s quick to rattle off the major areas where he’s broken with his party, primarily the 2009 stimulus, the bank bailout and the Affordable Care Act.

“I think it’s a stretch,” he said. “I’ve been around a long time and people know better than that.”

Looking for a strong Republican

Peterson’s success also lies in the relatively unknown candidates Republicans pick to run against him. Byberg has never held elected office; neither did Peterson’s 2008 opponent, Glen Menze, or Republican Michael Barrett in 2006. The last Peterson challenger to hold any political office at all was David Sturrock in 2004. He was a city councilman in Marshall.

That’s why Hoffman, a state Senator, had so much promise — but even then, analysts say Republicans may have missed their chance by not fielding a stronger challenger in 2010, the biggest Republican wave year since 1994.

“Republicans are hoping that a credible candidate is all they need to put this seat in their column,” said David Wasserman, the House editor at the Cook Political Report. “Rematch campaigns are not typically successful unless there has been a [favorable] underlying shift in the political climate. [Byberg’s] not going to get that.”

Republicans have a 5-point edge in the district, but the Cook Political Report declares the district a likely Democratic hold come November. Roll Call says the same — and noted last month that Republicans saw Hoffman as the best equipped to take him on:

National Republicans say the difference this year is in their recruiting. They are touting state Sen. Gretchen Hoffman, calling her “the best challenger we’ve had to date.”
But Peterson is prepared, and it is hard to see how he could fare worse than he did in a dreadful Democratic year such as 2010.

But Byberg is unfazed. Strom insists he has the organization, the experience and the means to pull an upset come Nov. 6.

He offered up a bold prediction: “We’re going to take it. Lee Byberg will be the next congressman from the 7^th District.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Obama signs into law STOCK Act championed by Tim Walz

Devin Henry — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:03:53 +0000

WASHINGTON — The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, a congressional insider trading ban championed by Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz, is now law, signed by President Obama at a White House ceremony Wednesday morning.

“The idea that everybody plays by the same rules is one of our most cherished American values,” Obama said. “It’s the notion that the powerful shouldn’t get to create one set of rules for themselves and another set of rules for everybody else, and if we expect that to apply to our biggest corporations and to our most successful citizens, it certainly should apply to our elected officials — especially at a time when there is a deficit of trust between this city and the rest of the country.”

Obama assembled a bipartisan group of lawmakers to join him at the signing, including Walz. The bill has strong bipartisan support in Congress — it passed with only five no votes between both the House and the Senate. Obama said it was a rare example of bipartisanship from a Congress that has been bitterly divided on most issues for more than a year.

“It shows that when an idea is right that we can still accomplish something on behalf of the American people and to make our government and our country stronger,” he said.

Walz congratulated current and former staffers involved with crafting the legislation on Wednesday. He called the winding path the bill took toward passage — a “60 Minutes” report that inspired a surge of co-sponsors, a call from the president for Congress to pass the bill, and a game of political pingpong between the House and Senate before the bill’s final passage — a “microcosm” of how a bill becomes a law.

During congressional deliberations on the STOCK Act, there was a prevailing sense among most members that the bill was seeking to solve an overblown problem, that allegations of insider trading among members — including those in the “60 Minutes” report — were off the mark.

Still, outside ethics organizations said the bill could be stronger — the group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW) put out a statement Wednesday declaring it was “lukewarm” on the new law.

“The version of the STOCK Act signed today is only a shadow of the strong bill initially passed by the Senate,” Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a statement.

Both Obama and Walz said the STOCK Act was only one stop toward strengthening ethics laws on Capitol Hill.

Obama said lawmakers should be banned from owning stock in industries they are charged with regulating, and fundraisers who bundle contributions for lawmakers and candidates should be banned from lobbying.

Walz said he’d like to see tighter regulations on “political intelligence” firms that sell information they glean from lawmakers and staffers, and backed more disclosure among donors to so-called SuperPACs.

“I disagree with some of my colleagues who think, when you bring these ethics bills forward, that you’re planting a seed in people’s minds that this whole place is corrupt,” he said. “I don’t think that people think that, but they do believe that the laws can be strengthened to make sure it’s not."

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Walz to attend STOCK Act signing

Devin Henry — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:15:54 +0000

WASHINGTON — Rep. Tim Walz will be at the White House on Wednesday when President Obama signs the STOCK Act into law.

Walz is a lead sponsor of a version of the congressional insider trading ban legislation, which Congress passed last month. The bill bans lawmakers, staffers and administration officials from trading on the stock market using non-public information they receive on the job and requires greater disclosure of stock trades.

“After years of fighting for this commonsense and important reform, I am honored and humbled to be present when the President signs it into law," Walz said in a statement. “It's my sincere hope that this moment of bipartisan cooperation will begin to restore the American people's faith in the work of democracy. Moving forward, Congress should renew this bipartisan spirit and reach across the aisle and work together to solve the most pressing problems facing our country."

Some version of the STOCK Act has been introduced since 2006. The current version of the bill had only about a half-dozen co-sponsors before a fall “60 Minutes” report shed light on the trading habits of members of Congress. Support for the bill ballooned, President Obama endorsed it in his State of the Union address and Congress passed the bill (albeit a watered-down version, supporters said) last month.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Democrats hit Minnesotans on budget votes

Devin Henry — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:15:01 +0000

WASHINGTON — Democratic-aligned campaign committees have targeted two Minnesota Republicans over their votes in favor of a Republican budget plan (See update below).

Americans United for Change and the government workers union AFSCME released a television ad Monday hitting freshman Rep. Chip Cravaack and three other congressmen for their votes on the Paul Ryan budget plan, which has drawn Democratic opposition for its proposed changes to Medicare. The ad will run on Duluth television until Wednesday.

It’s a reasonably small ad buy — only $50,000 spread over four congressional districts (compared to the $40,000 buy national Republicans took out last week to target Rep. Collin Peterson alone), but it’s indicative of the way Democrats will target vulnerable Republicans for their votes on the budget.

Here’s the ad:

"These types of political attacks are why Minnesota seniors are so frustrated with Washington special interests groups and their scare campaigns," Cravaack campaign adviser Ben Golnik said. "While Congressman Cravaack is working with Democrats and Republicans to protect Medicare, these special interest groups back a plan that cuts Medicare by $500 billion and gives control over seniors' care to 15 unelected bureaucrats in Washington.”

Meanwhile, Rep. John Kline finds himself the target of a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee radio ad on his budget vote. From The Hill:

The DCCC is targeting more Republicans in potentially vulnerable seats with radio ads: Dan Benishek (R-Mich.) and Reps. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), Tom Latham (R-Iowa), John Kline (R-Minn.), Joe Heck (R-Nev.), Francisco "Quico" Canseco (R-Texas) and Reid Ribble (R-Wis.). Most of those districts are slightly Republican-leaning, and Democrats indicate with this attack they believe it can play well with senior swing voters who might be more conservative on other issues.

Update: Republican sources note that the DCCC's ad buy is a mere $100 in the Twin Cities — just enough to say they're going on the airwaves. National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Andrea Bozek said Minnesotans "can't even buy a tank of gas" for what the DCCC is spending on the buy.

Kline’s district gained a sizable contingency of Democratic voters after redistricting and is technically a toss-up, but most analysts leave the fifth-term lawmaker off lists of vulnerable Republicans this fall.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

McCollum: Republican budget a ‘millionaires manifesto’

Devin Henry — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:46:08 +0000

Rep. Betty McCollum

WASHINGTON — Democratic U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum is no fan of the Republican-backed budget proposal passed by the House of Representatives Thursday afternoon: the bill is a “millionaire’s manifesto,” she said, and is “forcing seniors to decide between food and medicine.”

The budget plan, introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan and supported by all but 10 Republicans in the House, cuts domestic spending, reduces tax rates and changes the funding mechanism for Medicare. Democrats unanimously opposed the bill, and a group of liberal Budget Committee members, including McCollum, took aim at the budget plan in a press conference after the vote.

“The Grand Old Party’s budget sounds extreme, and it is, because it reflects the core values of the Tea Party Republicans: protect the rich, cut off the poor and walk away from the middle class,” McCollum said. “Every American deserves to know that the Republicans are choosing tax subsidies for the ultra-wealthy over deficit reduction.”

Democrats offered an alternative budget that adhered to the spending caps established by Congress last summer, but cut less than the Republican plan. The bill also raised taxes by allowing high-income tax cuts established under President Bush to sunset, closing tax loopholes and instituting the so-called “Buffet Rule” that those making more than $1 million a year pay at least a 30 percent tax rate.

McCollum backed the bill, but it failed 163-262 in the House.

Since the Senate is controlled by Democrats and will certainly not adopt the Republican budget plan, its most pertinent purpose going forward is a political one: within minutes of the bill’s passage Thursday afternoon, each party had already begun using targeted lawmakers’ votes on the budget against them.

EMILY’s List and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, liberal groups opposing Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack, put out statements accusing him of voting to end Medicare. The Minnesota DFL Party hammered all four Minnesota Republicans for backing the bill, and the National Republican Congressional Committee accused Democrat Collin Peterson of “again [voting] to protect his Democrat taxing, spending and borrowing spree.”

With an election just seven months away, the politics behind the budget vote certainly aren’t lost on lawmakers.

“This is a clear choice,” Kentucky Democrat John Yarmuth said at the Budget Committee press conference. “It’s going to be an enormous campaign issue and each of us are anxious to take this on the road.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Minnesota delegation splits on Ryan budget plan

Devin Henry — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:57:49 +0000

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives approved a Republican-backed $3.5 trillion budget plan on Thursday.

The plan, introduced by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, passed 228-191, a largely party-line vote that saw united Democratic opposition and only 10 defections among Republicans. All four Minnesota Republicans voted for the bill; all four Democrats cast votes against it.

The bill cuts spending and lowers tax rates and has drawn opposition from Democrats because of its proposed changes to Medicare. The plan is dead on arrival in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority.

Despite the Senate's certain dismissal, the bill will play an important role in this fall's elections. Republicans will use the bill to position themselves as fiscally-responsible stewards of the economy while Democrats will hit them hard for voting to "end Medicare," a mantra the party employed last year after Republicans introduced a similar plan.

President Obama also introduced a budget plan, but the House defeated it Wednesday night. A series of other budget proposals, including a Democratic alternative and ones from coalitions like the conservative Republican Study Committee and the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus, also failed.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Congress passes short-term highway bill

Devin Henry — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:31:41 +0000

Congress approved a stopgap bill to fund federal highway projects for the next three months on Thursday, three days before federal funding was set to run out.

The Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate have been unable to agree on a long-term highway bill, despite the Senate's previous passage of a bipartisan two-year plan. House Republicans want a five-year bill, but leadership hasn't secured the votes to pass that plan.

Without an extension, federal highway funding would have expired this weekend. A three-month extension gives Congress time to try hammering out a final deal after its two-week recess, which starts this weekend.

In the House, all four Minnesota Republicans and Democrats Collin Peterson and Tim Walz voted for the three-month plan. The Senate passed the bill on a voice vote.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

House votes down Progressive Caucus budget

Devin Henry — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:42:37 +0000

WASHINGTON — This one was never really in doubt.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted down a budget plan offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Thursday. Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison is a co-chair of the caucus.

The CPC pitched its budget as an alternative to the one offered by House Republicans, containing a litany of proposals that conservatives found, at best, unacceptable. Whereas the Republicans cut spending to reduce federal deficits and flatten and simplify the tax code to spur job creation, the Progressive Caucus budget includes $2.9 trillion in spending meant to create jobs — through federal infrastructure spending and tax incentives supported by President Obama, among other things — and it raises taxes on high earners and cuts defense spending to reduce the deficit.

The CPC says its budget would create 3.3 million jobs and reduce the deficit by $6.8 trillion. It failed on a 78-346 vote.

“We’re dealing with unemployment, and this budget is no decent budget at all unless it deals with jobs,” Ellison said during debate on the bill Wednesday night. “Now, the Budget for All, which is the Progressive Caucus budget, is all about jobs. We make investments in people developing our workforce, developing education and putting Americans back to work.”

Rep. Tom McClintock, the Republican charged with leading debate on the plan, actually commended the Progressive Caucus for working to reduce the deficit, but quickly pushed back against the bill’s higher taxes.

“No nation has ever taxed and spent its way to prosperity, but many nations have taxed and spent their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy,” he said.

In the end, every Republican agreed with him and voted against the bill. Most Democrats joined them, too: only 78 of the 180 House Democrats ended up voting for the budget.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

National Republicans target Peterson in new ad

Devin Henry — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:41:50 +0000

WASHINGTON — National Republicans have launched an ad campaign against Democratic U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, the latest sign the GOP is serious about its intention to target him early and often ahead of this fall’s elections.

The National Republican Congressional Committee is spending $41,000 on a week-long ad buy in the Fargo television market. The ad will start running on Thursday. The NRCC had previously named Peterson one of their top targets in Minnesota, along with Tim Walz.

The spot accuses Peterson of having changed his position on key issues, specifically federal spending and President Obama’s health care reform measures. The bill hits Peterson for voting against the GOP’s 2012 budget resolution and a Republican-lead effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The NRCC’s ad coincides with this weekend’s 7^th District Republican endorsing convention. Two Republicans — Lee Byberg and state Sen. Gretchen Hoffman, are seeking the party’s endorsement in the race.

Peterson is a moderate Blue Dog Democrat in a Republican-leaning district, but his position as the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee has endeared him to both voters and fundraisers. He beat Byberg by 17 points in the 2010 general election, and he had nearly $550,000 more cash on hand than Byberg in December. Hoffman announced her congressional campaign in February and will file her first fundraising report after the current quarter ends on Saturday.

Here's the ad:

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Presidential run over, Bachmann returns as Tea Party darling

Devin Henry — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:19:41 +0000

WASHINGTON — The Tea Party was back in Washington on Tuesday — and at the center of its chanting crowds and their “Don’t Tread on Me” signs, Rep. Michele Bachmann was back leading the charge.

The Tea Party had gathered here to rally opposition to the Affordable Care Act, just as the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the law’s most controversial aspect, the mandate requiring all citizens purchase some form of health insurance.

For Bachmann, it was a return to her wheelhouse — before her failed presidential campaign, she was a Tea Party darling who made her name as an anti-“Obamacare” firebrand, leading rallies and marches with speeches just like those she gave Tuesday.

“I’ve been involved in this issue before the bill passed,” Bachmann told MinnPost. “I lead 40,000 Americans here to Washington, D.C., to protest the bill passing in the first place. I’m also the first member of Congress to introduce the full-scale repeal of Obamacare. … If this bill stands, this will be that we are choosing to not recover and go on financially. This will tie us down and weight us down.”

Bachmann spoke to a large Americans for Prosperity rally in a park next to the Capitol, promising that the Supreme Court would rule against the health care law and bring about “the end of the crown jewel of socialism, which is socialized medicine.”

But if it doesn’t, Bachmann warned of the dire consequences that would follow: crippling debt, expanded government overreach and the election of a “health care dictator” as president.

The speech was as significant a campaign rally as Bachmann has held since the end of her presidential run, both in style — she entered and exited the stage to Elvis’ “Promised Land,” a song she used to launch speeches during her campaign — and in substance.

“Power comes from us, not the marble building behind us,” she said. “Now the Supreme Court will hear from us, and Congress will hear from us, and they will all hear from us come this November … and we will tell them: it is the full-scale repeal of Obamacare and nothing else.”

Activists were optimistic about their prospects before the high court.

“I think there is jubilation for the hope of it being called what it is, and the fact that [Congress] does not have the right to mandate us, as individuals, to buy a product,” Tom Melonic, a manufacturing agent from East Auroua, N.Y., said. Melonic carried a sign (with Bachmann’s signature on it) reading, “Justices- Judge Obamacare from the bench … on this side of the Atlantic!”

“I really am hopeful, like all of us, that our justices will see that — that they’ll abide by the Constitution and see that.”

Activists: Bachmann should have stuck it out

This was Bachmann’s audience, the brand of grassroots Tea Party activists her presidential campaign tried so hard to energize last summer and fall. Republican voters on the campaign trail were quick to sing Bachmann’s praises as a leader among conservatives, but rarely would they commit to giving the third-term congresswoman their support in the voting booth.

But in Washington on Tuesday, many in the Tea Party said they had been pining to vote for her.

“I was very disappointed that she didn’t” continue her presidential campaign, New Jersey resident Rita Frusco said. “I think she’s 100 percent excellent, she really is. She’s for the people. She’s very sincere.”

Bachmann was mobbed by supporters looking for photos and autographs for 20 minutes after her speech. Many said they’ve attended other health care rallies in Washington, often with Bachmann at the microphone.

O.P. Ditch of Maryland came away with a Bachmann autograph on his sign. Ditch said he’s backed the Tea Party since it began — three years ago next month — and called Bachmann “definitely one of the leaders, if not the leader” of the movement.

“She’s always awesome,” he said. “She knows the topic, for sure. It’s too bad she didn’t continue her campaign.”

This was Doug Baker’s fourth D.C. health care rally. Afterwards, he approached Bachmann with a homemade pitchfork that he called his “patriot stick.” Its handle is decorated with the signatures of fellow Tea Party activists, and on Tuesday, he added Bachmann’s.

“I’ve been here three years for her, I send money to her campaign and I wish she was my congresswoman,” the Chester, Va., native said. “I’m very sorry I live in Virginia. She dropped out of the race [before I could vote for her], but she was my candidate. ... The men don’t seem to have the gonads like the women have now.”

Drawing Democrats' ire

Bachmann is not without her detractors, of course. The AFP rally was Bachmann’s second of the day — she spoke to a group of Tea Party activists marooned in a sea of Affordable Care Act supporters outside the Supreme Court building Tuesday morning.

The law’s supporters chanted wildly during speeches from Bachmann and other lawmakers, completely drowning them out at points. Bachmann got the biggest applause from the Tea Party crowd, but drew jeers when she walked through the crowd of protesters back to the Capitol. One demonstrator walked alongside her, waving a sign advocating a single-payer health care plan at Bachmann and her aides.

“These are the people who benefit from socialism,” Bachmann said. “That’s not what we believe.”

One of Bachmann’s DFL challengers, Brian McGoldrick, put out a statement accusing her of an “absolute lack of leadership.”

“This kind of rhetoric is not what the people of Minnesota’s 6th District want in their representative to Washington,” McGoldrick said. “Michele says, ‘…we are divided as a country.’ She should know. She’s the one doing the dividing. One can argue, that’s all she’s been doing the past six years.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Bachmann: 'We are surrounded by those who benefit from socialism'

Devin Henry — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:24:06 +0000

WASHINGTON — On the second day of health care arguments at the Supreme Court, activists on both sides of the issue took over the sidewalk in front of the building, and Minnesota's Michele Bachmann was right in the middle of it all.

Today's competing rallies created a chaotic, rambunctious scene.

Here’s one example: The Tea Party Patriots scheduled a press conference for 10:15 a.m. on the building’s steps, just minutes after arguments over the legality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate began inside. They had a podium and probably 30 to 50 supporters carrying signs reading, “Keep politics out of my healthcare” and “Real women buy their own birth control,” and at least one “Don’t tread on me” flag. Activists and a slate of lawmakers were scheduled to speak, and Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann was their headliner.

Television cameras and reporters formed a semicircle around the group, blocking, incidentally, the much larger, much louder crowd that came out to show their support for the health care law. President Obama’s re-election campaign has worked to win back the “Obamacare” label Republicans have assigned to the Affordable Care Act, and the law’s supporters had taken the cue, marching and chanting, “We love Obamacare.”

That crowd, probably triple the size of the anti-ACA protesters, drowned out the tea party supporters and their speakers, chanting no matter who was speaking. Bachmann received a grand reception from the tea party crowd, but when the pro-ACA crowd realized who was at the podium, they literally turned their megaphones toward the scrum of reporters and drowned her out.

Bachmann’s speech was similar to those she’s given at other health care rallies and on the presidential campaign trail — she recounted introducing the first bill to repeal the health care law, and called on the justices to reject it as unconstitutional, calling it “one of the most consequential decisions that will ever come before the court.”

Bachmann said the dueling demonstrations — the tea party decrying Obamacare, and its supporters embracing it — illustrated just how divisive the issue has become. She warned her audience that the crowd surrounding them had a vastly different agenda from their own.

“We are surrounded by those who benefit from socialism,” she said. “That’s not what we believe.”

Bachmann is scheduled to speak at a second rally this afternoon.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

First up for the Supreme Court: deciding if it can rule on health care reform

Devin Henry — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:34:21 +0000

WASHINGTON — Day one of health care reform arguments at the Supreme Court are done. They forbade cameras in the courtroom but, in exchange, offered to promptly post argument audio and transcripts online, and you can find them here.

The court heard 89 minutes of discussion today on whether or not they can even rule on the constitutionality of President Obama’s landmark legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act. By most accounts, the justices will rule that they can (Here’s Reuters’ story, and a more technical legal analysis from SCOTUSblog).

Essentially the question before the court today was on an 1867 law barring lawsuits against a federal tax law until that tax took effect. Because the Affordable Care Act penalizes citizens who fail to buy health insurance by 2014, some have argued the courts can’t rule on the legality of the individual mandate until said penalties have been instituted.

Several justices appeared ready to brush aside that argument. From Rueters:

"Here, they did not use that word tax," liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said, referring both to lawmakers who crafted the legislation in Congress and to their intent.

Another liberal Democratic appointee to the high court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also expressed skepticism. "This is not a revenue-raising measure," she said.

Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia was also among those justices who suggested by his questions that allowing the case to go forward would not broadly undercut federal tax policy.

"There will be no parade of horribles," he said, noting that lower court judges would be able to determine when to make exceptions to the usual rules governing general tax penalties and law.

Tomorrow’s arguments revolve around the individual mandate, the most pressing matter before the court.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Cravaack proposes doubling funds for armed pilot program

Devin Henry — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:38:47 +0000

WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack is taking on an Obama administration plan to downsize a federal program that allows specially trained commercial airline pilots to carry guns in the cockpit.

Obama’s proposed 2013 budget would cut funding for the $25 million-a-year Federal Flight Deck Officers program in half. In a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Friday, Cravaack said even the current figure isn’t enough to certify all the pilots who want into the program, and he’s introducing a bill doubling it's funding, offsetting the new spending with cuts elsewhere.

Rep. Chip Cravaack

“This is a challenge for us: the FFDO program is not expanding,” he said. “We are introducing this bill and we will lobby hard for this program.”

For the back-story, we need to go back to 9/11.

Cravaack, then a pilot with Northwest Airlines, was holding his eight-month-old child when a babysitter told him about a plane hitting the World Trader Center. Cravaack assumed it was a small personal craft, accidentally steering into one of the twin towers on a sightseeing flight. The babysitter told it was a commercial jet.

“I’m racing through all the scenarios in my mind as to how that could occur,” he said in his speech. “Then I turn on the television and saw the second plane hit. … That’s how it started.”

At the time, pilots were barred from bringing firearms onto the flight deck, and had been since 1987. Before then, it was commonplace for pilots to be armed while flying — and when U.S. mail was on board, it was required, said Tracy Price, the director of the Airline Security Consulting Group.

But after 9/11, Congress passed laws establishing the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. Along the way, it established the Federal Flight Deck Officer program. Its $25 million funding level has been flat since then, and Cravaack said it generally costs the government only $15 per flight to operate.

Most pilots have to pay out-of-pocket for their twice-yearly certification and Cravaack said the system is backlogged with new pilots waiting to get licenses. The program didn’t certify a single officer last year, he said.

It’s rare for a pilot to actually need his or her gun when flying — a panel of air safety advocates at the Heritage event was unable to name a single instance in which it’s happened — but FFDO supporters say it’s just another way to keep flyers safe.

“There are many and varied threats when a passenger gets on that aircraft and the pilot fires up those engines,” Cravaack said.

‘We just think we could do it for less’

The Obama administration is focusing more on a risk-based approach to air travel security in which would-be threats are pre-screened before boarding an aircraft. Under that a system, a program like FFDO isn’t needed.

During testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee in February, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said risk-based programs would take first priority when the Obama administration sets its budgets.

“The program is not risk-based. You will have a FFDO whether [a threat] is on the flight or not,” Napolitano said. “We have not predicted its demise, we just think we could do it for less.”

At the time, Cravaack asked Napolitano what she considers to be the last line of defense for air travelers. Her response — a reinforced cockpit door — was panned at Friday’s Heritage event.

Cravaack said armed pilots serve as both a deterrent for would-be terrorists and a “safety net” for flyers, a last line of defense in case someone managed to get into the cockpit.

The panel backed Cravaack, equating the layers of air travel security — from risk-based measures and airport screening to the reinforced cockpit door and the FFDO program — to the redundant mechanical systems built into aircraft as safety measures. The panel said they backed risked-based screening techniques, but said the government shouldn’t move away from programs that work right now.

“When you’re up there in an aircraft,” FFDO Association Vice President Mike Karn said, “you can’t open the window and ask for help."

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Arguments – pro and con – justices will hear on the individual mandate

Devin Henry — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:00:11 +0000

WASHINGTON — Starting Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear six-hours of arguments on President Obama’s health care reform legislation.

The arguments will be the longest in decades, and for good reason: The court is tasked with determining the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the highlight legislative accomplishment of Obama’s first term and one that will dramatically affect the lives of the 50 million Americans without health insurance, the companies that employ them and the pool of individuals already covered by health insurance — in other words, pretty much everybody.

At the heart of the case, the justices will need to decide if the law’s mandate that everyone purchase health insurance is permissible under the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate commerce that occurs both across state lines and within one state if it affects the broader national economy. There are other issues in the case, but the individual mandate is the most pressing one the court will consider, University of Minnesota constitutional law professor Timothy Johnson said.

“It really is going to be a discussion of whether or not Congress has the power under the commerce clause to mandate that every individual in the United States needs to buy health insurance,” he said. “In the end, this case comes down to the individual mandate.”

The court has been taking commerce clause cases since the 1820s, and except for a brief period of conservative jurisprudence in the 1930s, it has generally given a lot of leeway to the federal government to regulate commerce. The court will use several cases as precedent, Johnson said, but two will play a bigger role than others:

Wickard v. Filburn: In 1942, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government has the right to regulate economic activities as simple as the crops a farmer grows for his own private use, since such an action would change what he purchases on the open market, and therefore have an effect on the economy at large;

Gonzales v. Raich: In 2005, the court ruled that a federal law superseded a California statue legalizing medical marijuana. Individuals growing and distributing their own marijuana were influencing the national marijuana market, and thus, Congress has the right to step in regulate the practice.

Both cases affirmed Congress’s right to regulate activities even on that smallest scale since they can inevitably influence the economy as a whole.

“The majority made very clear that anything that’s really economic in nature, illegal or legal, is regulable by Congress,” Johnson said. “The court has had a pretty extensive reading of the commerce clause, even in the conservative era.”

A different type of case

But opponents have argued that the Affordable Care Act case is different than any the court has heard before: rather than passing a law banning individuals from activities that affect the economy, Congress is instead requiring them to do something — in this case, buying health insurance.

That’s the argument the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals made when it struck down the individual mandate in a 2-1 decision last August.

Timothy R. Johnson

“This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives,” the majority wrote.

Other courts, however, have backed the mandate, and Reuters notes that conservative jurists have, in two occasions, written the opinions that upheld it, finding that Congress has an interest in regulating an individual’s insurance coverage because everyone, with or without insurance, will enter and influence the health care market at some point.

“The argument is that the decision not to purchase health care insurance is effectively an economic decision,” Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Sheldon Nahmod said in a video previewing next week’s cases for the Oyez Supreme Court website. “The decision not to buy health care insurance in a situation when everyone, at some point, with our without health care insurance, is going to need health care means that people without health care insurance are costing money that the rest of us are paying for. The argument is that that’s just not fair.”

How will they rule?

So in a nutshell: precedent suggests the court will side with Congress, upholding its ability to require insurance coverage because without it, the uninsured have an indelible impact on the broader health care industry. But conservatives have argued that Congress cannot compel a citizen to purchase anything, and at least one court sided with their argument.

The only people who matter now are the nine members of the Supreme Court, and we can use their voting record to at least hint as to where they’ll come down in this case.

Most observers predict the court’s four liberals to uphold the law, and at least two conservatives — Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — to overturn it. Anthony Kennedy is expected to be a swing vote (he upheld Congress’s regulatory authority in the marijuana case above), and Reuters suggests that John Roberts and even the conservative Antonin Scalia could be, too.

That last name’s a bit surprising — Scalia is a bastion of conservatism on the court, but he did side with the federal government in the Gonzales case. Oyez highlights Scalia’s concurring opinion: “Where economic activity substantially affects interstate commerce, legislation regulating that activity will be sustained."

A final decision from the court is expected to come down over the summer.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Senate sends STOCK Act to Obama

Devin Henry — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:33:57 +0000

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a ban on insider trading among members of Congress and administration officials on Thursday, sending a version of the bill introduced by Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz to President Barack Obama for his signature into law.

The Senate approved a House-passed version of the STOCK Act, one that removed regulations on the “political intelligence” industry that the bill’s original sponsors had supported. Senators had added a political intelligence provision to their bill, but the House removed it when it passed the legislation in February. Walz supported the provision, but has said he's content to see the bill become law in this form.

Lawmakers have introduced versions of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act several times over the past few years, but it never garnered more than a handful of co-sponsors. A November “60 Minutes” report on the trading habits of lawmakers moved the bill to the top of government accountability advocates’ agendas, and members of Congress and President Obama quickly called for its passage.

Most members have said the restrictions are largely unnecessary and insist their trading habits are all above-board. But given Congress's record-low approval ratings, backers, including Walz, said a measure like this would indicate to the American people that representatives are in Washington to protect constituents’ interests, not their own.

Obama announced his support for the bill in his January State of the Union address. With the Senate’s passage, on a 96-3 to vote, Obama will now have the opportunity to sign it into law.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Bachmann to attend Supreme Court health care arguments

Devin Henry — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:03:47 +0000

WASHINGTON — Michele Bachmann will be in the room when the Supreme Court debates the legality of President Obama’s health care reform law next week.

Normally, attending a session of the Supreme Court is one of the hottest tickets, so to speak, in Washington, and the court gave congressional leadership a few passes for next week's arguments. The health care reform case is huge, both in terms of the policy and political implications it carries with it and the unusually long six hours of arguments the court will hear, and lawmakers have been clamoring to get a tickets for them.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Bachmann had been angling to get a seat for the arguments, and her office tweeted Thursday that she’ll end up attending Wednesday’s session.

“So grateful to learn that I’ll be in the courtroom on 3/28 for the SCOTUS Obamacare arguments,” Bachmann’s congressional office tweeted on Thursday, adding a hashtag: “#REPEAL.”

Friday is the two-year anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and Bachmann has marked the occasion with fundraising appeals (two this week, including one today entitled: “This is not an anniversary I wanted to celebrate”) and promises to repeal the law even if the Supreme Court rules in its favor.

“American people: the President of the United States, down the street at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, may not be listening to you, but we in Congress have not forgotten you,” Bachmann said at a Wednesday press conference. She held up a page of the bill and ripped it in half, saying, “We’re listening. We’re not giving up until we repeal this bill.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Franken, Democrats announce super PAC disclosure bill

Devin Henry — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:29:56 +0000

WASHINGTON — Sen. Al Franken joined a group of his fellow Senate Democrats in announcing legislation on Wednesday to force so-called super PACs to disclose more information about their donors.

Current Federal Election Commission rules require super PACs to disclose anyone who gives more than $200, but there are loopholes allowing outside organizations to donate to them with their financiers hidden.

The Senate bill, called the “Disclose Act,” requires corporations and unions to file reports with the FEC whenever they spend $1,000 on a race and file the names of donors who give $10,000 or more. The bill also requires organizations list their top funders in television or radio ads they purchase, and the head of the organization would be required to appear in the ad and approve the message, just as candidates do.

Super PACs are political action committees allowed to raise and spend as much money as they can, but they are barred from coordinating with individual campaigns. They were created following the Citizens United Supreme Court decision in 2010, and opponents say the lack of donation limitations and weak disclosure laws have made Super PACs a corrupting force in elections.

The Disclose Act sponsors, led by Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Charles Schumer of New York, said enhanced disclosure laws such as this are allowed under the ruling. A version of the bill fell one vote short of passing the Senate in 2010, but the current version is cleaned up and simplified, sponsors said.

“If I get a contribution for $200 from a contributor, I disclose it and I have to do it in a timely way,” Franken said at a press conference Wednesday morning. “For every Sheldon Adelson [who has openly donated at least $16 million to a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC], there are hundreds if not thousands of corporations and large individual donors who are not disclosing.”

Since 2012 is the first presidential election since the Citizens United decision, it’s the first big opportunity for super PACs and their backers to flex their muscles. The three leading remaining Republican presidential candidates have at least one super PAC backing their campaigns, and President Obama gave his blessing to one of his own last month. Several others are focusing on congressional races or organizing efforts. According to the Center for Responsive Politics: “386 groups organized as Super PACs have reported total receipts of $139,197,784 and total independent expenditures of $79,452,775 in the 2012 cycle.”

Thirty-four Senators — all Democrats, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar — have sponsored the bill, but bill sponsors contend they can secure support from Republican members.

“I think if we can channel the public’s impatience with what they’re seeing out there, and the public’s concern about what’s happening to this great American democracy, we can find people who will come across the aisle with us,” Whitehouse said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Klobuchar, Franken focus on oil speculators

Devin Henry — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:21:33 +0000

WASHINGTON — Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken are taking on oil speculators.

The two Minnesota Democrats joined a group of liberal senators in introducing legislation meant to force federal regulators to stop excessive oil speculation, which they say is the cause of the rising price of gasoline. The senators, lead by Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, blamed speculators with controlling more than 80 percent of the energy futures market, driving up the price of oil when the basic rules of supply and demand should logically be pushing prices down.

“We have more supply than we did three years ago, less demand than since 1997,” Sanders said. “If you’re looking at the fundamentals of supply and demand, oil prices should be going down, not up.”

The bill would set a 14-day deadline for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to implement rules combating Wall Street oil speculation, a measure similar to one the House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly in 2008. The Dodd-Frank financial reform package had required such measures to be in place by January 2011, but the commission has yet to implement the rules.

Two weeks ago, 70 lawmakers, including both Minnesota senators, wrote the CFTC asking them to take action on speculation, but it’s held back. The legislation introduced today would set 14-day deadline for them to do so.

The average price of gas in Minnesota is $3.74 per gallon, Klobuchar said, and she pointed to a study from Goldman Sachs that said speculation is responsible at least 56 cents of that. Lawmakers and President Obama have called for an “all of the above” approach to reducing oil prices, including long-term measures like increased oil drilling and investments in clean and renewable fuel, but Klobuchar said a crackdown on oil speculation would help relieve the pressure at the pump.

“To just say, we’re only moving on that side, when even the increased supply hasn’t brought down prices would just be wrong. You can’t just say, we’re not going to do anything on speculation but we’ll do all these other things,” Klobuchar said.

Lawmakers have a cross-section of companies and lobbying groups backing their speculation claim, including Exxon Mobil, Delta Airlines, the American Trucking Association and the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, according to a release from Sanders’ office.

“The people who spend every day looking at these markets are the ones who are saying speculators are driving up the cost of gasoline,” Franken said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Senate to vote on the STOCK Act this week

Devin Henry — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:31:44 +0000

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brought the STOCK Act back to the Senate floor on Tuesday.

The Senate will consider the House-passed congressional insider trading ban, a version of which was introduced by Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz, on Thursday. The Senate had passed its own version of the bill in February, but House Republican leadership changed it when it came to the floor of that chamber, removing a section applying the bill to members of “political intelligence” firms that collect and sell insider tips from people on Capitol Hill.

Democrats were livid with the section’s removal (it had been introduced by a Republican in the Senate, and passed 60-39) saying it weakened the underlying bill. Gor his part, Walz said he preferred Congress pass a version of the bill without political intelligence than not pass one at all.

Reid took the same stance on the Senate floor on Tuesday when he brought up the House-passed bill and asked the Senate to agree to it.

“It’s my hope than we can resolve this matter expeditiously, thereby making clear Congress’s intent to prohibit insider trading by members of Congress,” he said.

The Senate originally voted 96-3 to pass its version of the STOCK Act. The House followed with a 417-2 vote in favor of its bill. President Obama supports the legislation, highlighting it in his January State of the Union address.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com

Mayo wins Supreme Court case

Devin Henry — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:23:04 +0000

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the Mayo Clinic in a case involving patents on blood tests.

The court unanimously sided with Mayo in a case brought against it by a California company called Prometheus Laboratories. In 2004, Mayo had improved on two blood tests for which Prometheus held a patent. Prometheus sued for patent infringement, but Mayo argued that the tests revolved around a natural occurrence and thus, are not subject to patents. The court agreed.

“We must determine whether the claimed processes have transformed these unpatentable natural laws into patent-eligible applications of those laws. We conclude that they have not done so and that therefore the processes are not patentable,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court. “Upholding the patents would risk disproportionately tying up the use of the underlying natural laws, inhibiting their use in the making of further discoveries.”

Here’s MinnPost's recap of the oral arguments before the court. To read the court’s full decision, click here.

Peterson: Ryan budget means no farm bill in 2012

Devin Henry — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:50:33 +0000

WASHINGTON — The Republican budget proposal introduced Tuesday virtually guarantees there will not be a farm bill in 2012, Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson said.

Peterson, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, called the proposal “appalling” because it asks his committee to cut spending on agriculture programs in order to prevent funding cuts to the military.

“The Ryan budget proposes significant cuts in the farm safety net and conservation programs, and slashes spending on nutrition programs that provide food for millions of Americans,” Peterson said in a statement. “It is appalling that in an attempt to avoid defense cuts the Republican leadership has elected to leave farmers and hungry families hurting.”

The Republican budget, introduced by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, would offset $55 billion in future Defense Department cuts by asking six committees, including Agriculture, to cut spending instead. He proposed reducing direct payments to farmers and reforming the crop insurance program, and if enacted, the bill would cut $33.2 billion in agriculture spending over the next 10 years.

The House and Senate Agriculture Committees have been working on a five-year farm policy bill for Congress to consider this year, but Peterson said Ryan’s budget proposal precludes the possibly of getting one done.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Ryan budget plan: lower spending, lower taxes and changes to Medicare

Devin Henry — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:03:21 +0000

WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Paul Ryan introduced the second iteration of his “Path to Prosperity” budget plan on Tuesday, a 2013 version of the budget he introduced last year. The two plans share the same name, and they’re likely to garner the same reaction from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The budget contains a trove of proposals favored by Republicans but dispelled by Democrats, the biggest of which are the changes to Medicare. The Ryan plan would replace the current Medicare structure with a voucher system in which the government would subsidize the premiums individuals pay for private insurance instead, though the traditional Medicare system is an option for purchase. (This plan is for workers under the age of 55 — current and soon-to-be retirees will be grandfathered into the old system.)

The plan is a modified version of the one Ryan proposed last spring, one Democrats seized on as an “end to Medicare,” a tome the White House and House Democrats have already repeated Tuesday morning.

The proposal also replaces a forthcoming $55 billion cut to defense department spending with cuts to discretionary spending in areas like agriculture, energy, financial services, etc. The cut was mandated by the debt ceiling deal President Obama and Congress agreed to over the summer, but Republicans have vehemently opposed allowing the defense cut to take effect.

One of the plan’s highlights is a simplified, flattened tax code, in which the current code is dispensed with and replaced with two individual income tax brackets of 10 percent and 25 percent. The corporate tax rate would decrease from 35 percent to 25 percent. Such a plan would invariably result in lower government revenues, but Ryan said the plan would make up for that by closing tax loopholes. It’s the lower rate and broader base frequently proposed by lawmakers over the summer, and one that all Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee — a group that includes Minnesota Rep. Erik Paulsen — approved, Ryan said.

Even with the closed loopholes, Ryan’s plan would reduce federal revenues by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years, relative to President Obama’s budget proposal. It reduces spending by $5 trillion versus Obama’s budget, most of which comes from repealing the Affordable Care Act health care law ($1.5 trillion in savings) and cutting funds for Medicaid ($770 trillion) and other mandatory government spending ($1.9 trillion).

In all, Ryan’s budget spends $1.028 trillion during the upcoming fiscal year, less than the $1.047 trillion cap approved by Congress last year and built into Obama’s budget. In the long run, it reduces federal spending from 24 percent of the GDP to 20 percent by 2015 and will balance by 2040.

Democrats united

So where does that leave us? House Democrats were united in voting against Ryan’s 2012 budget and certainly won’t support this year’s plan. Only four Republicans defected when the House took up the 2012 plan, but there is a risk that the chamber’s most conservative members will revolt this year — the conservative Club for Growth has already warned that the plan doesn’t cut deeply enough, and should balance within the decade, instead of waiting until 2040.

Democrats see the Medicare argument as a winner, and will likely squeeze as much out of the “Ryan ends Medicare” message as they can. The budget could be a politically risky one for Republican candidates this fall as well.

The House budget committee will consider the bill Wednesday and it could come up for a full House vote as early as next week.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Roll Call: 8th District race a toss-up

Devin Henry — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:50:31 +0000

WASHINGTON — Roll Call has rated the 8^th District race between Rep. Chip Cravaack and one of three Democratic challengers as a toss-up this November, and the first-term Republican was named an honorable mention to their list of the top ten most vulnerable incumbents this November.

Democrats desperately want to defeat Cravaack, who knocked off 35-year incumbent Democrat Jim Oberstar in 2010, and he’s easily their biggest target in Minnesota this year. But an August primary between former state Rep. Tarryl Clark (who has committed to running in one), former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (who has said he will abide by the DFL’s endorsement) and Duluth City Councilman Jeff Anderson (who hasn’t said either way) could “be bruising,” Roll Call predicts:

Cravaack’s 2010 win was a political stunner, and because he got no relief in redistricting, this is the most competitive seat in the North Star State.

That 2010 race was a squeaker, but it was enough to defeat longtime Rep. James Oberstar (D).

Democrats say Cravaack is too conservative for the district and are making hay over the fact that his family moved to New Hampshire because of his wife’s employment.

Republicans are concerned about holding the seat. Still, they say the Democratic primary between former state Sen. Tarryl Clark, former Rep. Rick Nolan and Duluth City Councilor Jeff Anderson could be bruising. Clark recently irked the state party establishment when she announced that she would bypass the DFL Party endorsement process and press on to the August primary.

Clark previously ran against Rep. Michele Bachmann and moved to Duluth to challenge Cravaack before the new map was complete. Should Nolan get the nomination, Republicans are eager to mine his voting record and paint him as a Washington, D.C., insider.

Cravaack was named a runner-up for the most vulnerable incumbents list, which includes four other first-term Republicans.

Roll Call projects other Minnesotans — including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, running for re-election for the first time, Rep. Tim Walz, who Republicans have targeted, John Kline, whose district received an influx of Democratic voters through redistricting, and Collin Peterson, a moderate Democrat whose district leans Republican — to hold their seats.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Coleman meets with mayors, Obama at the White House

Devin Henry — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:24:33 +0000

WASHINGTON — St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman was at the White House on Thursday to be the “good example” for a small group of cities participating in an Obama administration program meant to break down barriers between different government agencies.

The program, called Strong Cities, Strong Communities (or SC2), was founded in June and is, according to the White House, “aimed at creating new partnerships between federal agencies and localities to spark economic development in communities that have faced significant long-term challenges in developing and implementing their economic strategies.” Participating cities include: Chester, Pa.; Cleveland/Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit; Fresno, Calif.; Memphis, Tenn.; and New Orleans.

Coleman and the mayors of those cities met with White House officials, including President Obama, on Thursday to talk about different isues facing their communities, ranging from job creation and crime to health care and transportation projects. Coleman said St. Paul’s relative success when it comes to navigating government beuracracy made the city a good model for other communities to follow.

Coleman said the Central Corridor Light Rail project is the most high-profile example of that effort.

“Because of the work that the Department of Transportation did, because of the work that [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] did, because of the work that the funders in the philanthropic community have done … we are not just building a transit corridor, we are changing a community,” he said.

In a way, St. Paul’s proximity to its neighbor, Minneapolis, complicates its relationship with federal government entities — the two cities need to coordinate on Twin Cities-wide projects in order to secure funding and bypass the red tape that comes with them. But Coleman said he’s worked well with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and that relationship has opened the door to more cooperation from the federal government.

Coleman is in Washington for National League of Cities meetings and met twice with Obama this week. On Tuesday, Coleman told the president to continue his focus on direct federal in schools and praised the success of the Build America Bonds program that ended in 2010.

Coleman also met with HUD and Department of Labor officials, where he inquired about the future status of St. Paul’s Community Development Block Grants. He said a lot of his focus this week has been on youth summer employment and reforming the way vocational schools and community colleges train the workforce.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Obama's top Minnesota fundraisers invited to state dinner

Devin Henry — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:12:52 +0000

WASHINGTON — Only two Minnesotans were invited to last night’s state dinner at the White House, and they’re two of the biggest fundraisers for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

Sam Heins and Stacey Mills of the Minneapolis law firm Heins, Mills and Olson were among the Obama “bundlers” who attended the White House’s state dinner in honor of British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday night. Bundlers are fundraisers who not only donate the legal maximum to a candidate, but solicit contributions from others and deliver them to the campaign. Heins and Mills are Obama’s top Minnesota bundlers, bringing in $251,458 for the president’s re-election effort, according to OpenSecrets.

The White House announced a guest list of 364 people for last night’s state dinner. By ABC News’s count, 41 of them were bundlers, including seven people who have raised more than $500,000 for Obama.

After Heins and Mills, three other Minnesotans have bundled donations for Obama, according to OpenSecrets: Dean Phillips of Phillips Distilling ($197,050), attorney Richard Cohen ($27,875) and Dorsey and Whitney’s Amy Sterner ($2,950).

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Jim Ramstad calls for more extensive mental health coverage

Devin Henry — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:05:35 +0000

WASHINGTON — In fall 2008, with the economy collapsing around them, members of Congress worked quickly on a bailout for the nation’s banks.

Lawmakers needed an existing bill to act a vehicle for the bailout, and the one they picked was named for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and introduced by Minnesota’s Jim Ramstad, requiring health insurance plans to provide equal coverage for mental health and substance abuse treatments as they do for physical aliments. President Bush signed the bill into law on Oct. 3, 2008.

Nearly four years later, after it was expanded, in part, by the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the bill’s supporters say federal regulators have moved too slowly in instituting rules that ensure the bill’s mission is carried out. Ramstad and the bill’s co-sponsor, former Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy, were in Washington on Wednesday to announce a series of field hearings to put pressure on them to do just that. The first confirmed hearing is scheduled for July 17 in the Twin Cities.

“The reality of this effort is that we’re not there yet,” Ramstad said in a speech at the National Press Club. “It’s about time we treat diseases of the brain the same as diseases of the body.”

Last year, federal regulators put in place interim rules for implementing the bill, called the Mental Health Parity Act. Kennedy said at least one-third of affected employers have already changed their healthcare plans so they conform with the law, by providing equal coverage for mental health and substance abuse programs as they do for physical treatments and ensuring similar financial requirements (such as co-pays and deductibles) for the two types of care.

Vague rules

But advocates say that the interim rules are overly vague and allow too many companies to avoid changing their plans. When regulators eventually put forward their final parity rules — there’s no set timetable for them to do so, and observers say it’s unlikely they will before this fall’s elections — advocates want them to be stronger than they are now.

“I don’t know [why it’s taken so long]. We have been very, very frustrated,” Ramstad said. “I’ve asked probably 100 people and gotten probably 100 different answers.”

Regulators from the Treasury, Labor and Health and Human Service Departments put together the rules that are now under fire and Obama administration officials committed to working with Ramstad and Kennedy to institute stronger rules and participate in this summer’s field hearings. Pam Hyde, the head of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said her department would use the hearings as a chance to walk employers and health care providers through the new regulations.

“No law and no regulation is going to be as good as it can be unless we get the word out that it’s there and that it can be used,” Hyde said.

Part of the problem also rests is in how the bill was written — those affected by the parity law, primarily insurance companies, say it’s too vague and are moving slowly to adapt it, but Ramstad says that criticism comes with any new law.

“Opponents can always argue vagueness. That’s a standard argument you learn in Poli Sci 101 or first-year legislative process in law school,” Ramstad said. “There are parts that could have been stronger, but it was a collaborative effort. If I wrote the bill unilaterally, it would have been stronger, if Patrick Kennedy had written the bill unilaterally it would have been stronger.”

Advocates have a long list of ways in which they'd strengthen the law. The Parity Implementation Coalition has identified four main areas where the rules fall short, mostly relating to how insurance companies approve the necessity and form of mental health and substance abuse treatments and expanding the scope of benefits offered (beyond a slate of inpatient, outpatient, prescription drugs and emergency care services already provided).

For his part, Ramstad said he’d like to see the rules extend to Medicare and Medicaid patients as well as members of the armed services returning from the Middle East. As it stands now, mental health parity is only required for those in health care plans.

“We want to see teeth in the parity law,” Ramstad said. “I know in my heart and whatever Norwegian intellect that I have left that we can get this done.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Obama signs St. Croix Bridge bill

Devin Henry — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:04:50 +0000

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed a bill authorizing the construction of a new bridge over the St. Croix River, ending a project that supporters say is decades over-due.

Obama signed the bill into law on Wednesday, according to the White House. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the chief author of the legislation, called the conclusion of the process a "victory for the residents and businesses along the St. Croix River Valley.”

“This effort is an example of what can get done when people put politics aside and do what is best for our state,” she said in a statement. “I appreciate the work of my colleagues in the House and Senate as well as Gov. Mark Dayton who helped get this project over the finish line.”

The bill passed Congress with bipartisan support, first in the Senate, which approved it unanimously in January, and then in the House, which voted 339-80 to send the bill to the president on March 1. Klobuchar was the author of the bill Obama eventually signed; Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann had introduced the House version of the bill.

Though it had broad bipartisan support in Congress as a whole, it was a Minnesota Democrat who led the charge against the bill: Rep. Betty McCollum, whose newly redrawn district will include the St. Croix Bridge project, says the $690 million four-lane bridge was too large and too expensive. She backed a smaller project instead.

Obama administration officials had insisted the competing factions of lawmakers work together on a compromise before trying to move the bill through Congress, but a March 15 deadline from Dayton sped up the bill’s final passage.

Minnesota officials have been preparing for the bridge’s construction since Congress acted earlier this month. Yesterday, the Minnesota Department of Transportation named Jon Chiglo the project manager. Construction will begin in 2014.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Minnesota mayors, businesses talk policy with the White House

Devin Henry — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:05:33 +0000

WASHINGTON — Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman joined a group of Minnesota businesses at the White House on Tuesday for a roundtable discussion on economic policy.

Rybak said the meeting “was a listening session for the White House to hear from the voices of Minnesota business, and the Minnesotans weren’t shy.” Businesses present included firms in areas like banking and healthcare and companies both large (Cargill and General Mills) and small (Surly Brewing).

The roundtable focused on freeing up more capital for businesses, cutting regulations and investing in new infrastructure, Rybak said. Officials from the treasury, commerce and transportation departments were involved in the talks.

The half-day meeting was part of series of economic policy discussions the White House has hosted with officials from states from around the nation.

“I’m very happy that there’s been 24 months of private sector job growth, but it’s probably more important to bring in the people who are creating the jobs out there in Minnesota to give advice,” Rybak said. “I don’t think this is one of those things where something is going to come out tomorrow. It’s really more about having the voices of Minnesota business influencing the White House over the next few months and, hopefully the next couple years, whoever is here.”

Rybak and Coleman were also involved in League of Cities meetings, the Minneapolis mayor said. Rybak, a vice chairman for the Democratic National Committee and a major national surrogate for Obama’s re-election effort, said his trip to Washington was focused on policy, not politics.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Michelle Obama to visit Minneapolis on Friday

Devin Henry — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:24:32 +0000

First Lady Michelle Obama will visit Minneapolis on Friday to meet with members of the armed forces and veterans groups, the White House announced today.

Obama will hold a roundtable discussion with National Guard members and their families, Serving our Troops and a trio of military support groups on "Minnesota’s best practices that can be replicated nationally," according to the White House.

The three groups — the Armed Forces Service Center, Defending the Blue Line and GreenCare for Troops —were named finalists in Michelle Obama and Jill Biden's "Joining Forces Community Challenge," which recognizes individuals and groups working to support members of the military and their families. Finalists were announced last month.

Obama will speak at a Democratic National Committee event that evening.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Transportation bill would bring $1.4 billion to Minnesota

Devin Henry — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:47:03 +0000

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate took Congress’ first steps toward overcoming one of the biggest policy hurdles this session on Thursday: passing a surface transportation bill, one that could provide upwards of $1.4 billion to Minnesota over the next two years.

The Senate bill is a $109 billion package that would extend surface transportation programs for another two years, and it has bipartisan support in the upper chamber. Lawmakers offered a slew of amendments to the bill, and senators voted on eight of them Thursday; they’ll vote on another 22 next week.

The House has been considering a longer-term deal that appropriated less money year-over-year, but the bill has drawn opposition from both sides of the aisle, so much so that Speaker John Boehner said he would provisionally plan on bringing the Senate’s bill up for a vote in the House unless a deal can be reached.

“The current plan is to see what the Senate can produce and to bring their bill up,” Boehner said Thursday. “And in the meantime, we are going to continue to have conversations with members about a longer term approach, which frankly most of our members want. But at this point in time, the plan is to bring up the Senate bill or something like it.”

Congress needs to approve an extension to federal transportation projects before the end of the month, when the government loses the authority to spend money on infrastructure projects. Minnesota received about $676 million in transportation funding last year and under the Senate bill, the Minnesota Department of Transportation projects that figure could max out at $702.6 million in fiscal year 2012 and $714.5 million in 2013. The House bill, by comparison, would provide about $51 million less in 2012, according to an analysis from Transportation Weekly.

“There are some good things in [this bill],” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a member of the Senate Transportation Committee. “For our state, no one knows better than Minnesota how important bridges and roads are.”

The Senate bill has enjoyed broad bipartisan support (it passed a procedural vote 85-11 in February) that the House version has never received. Both bills consolidate federal transportation programs and remove some of the bureaucratic red tape that traditionally delays projects. But the Senate’s bill maintains current levels of funding, plus inflation, and keeps in place a dedicated funding source for mass transit projects, which the original House bill would have ended. Sue Haigh, the chairwoman of the Metropolitan Council, said the council supports a bill that keeps guaranteed mass transit funding in place.

The biggest drawback to the Senate bill is that it’s only a two-year extension. Nearly everyone wants to pass a long-term transportation bill, from Boehner and House Republicans to Democrats in the Senate and federal and state transportation groups like MnDOT. Rep. Tim Walz, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in a statement that he preferred a longer-term bill but was heartened by the way the Senate bill was progressing with bipartisan support. Klobuchar said she wants a transportation equivalent to the farm bill, which usually authorize federal farm programs in five-year increments.

“That’s always been very positive. We need the same [five-year] window for other investments,” she said. “Right now, it is so hard to get things done, but we get what we can.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Klobuchar, Democratic women urge Boehner to skip contraception vote

Devin Henry — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:08:54 +0000

WASHINGTON — Sen. Amy Klobuchar joined her 11 fellow Senate Democratic women in asking House Republican leadership to not bring up for a vote controversial legislation allowing employers to opt out of extending health care coverage to contraception.

The senators wrote House Speaker John Boehner asking him to "abandon the promise you have made to bring legislation to the House floor similar to the Blunt amendment, which was defeated in the Senate last week, and which would turn the clock back on women’s access to health care."

The legislation in question would allow employers to deny certain kinds of health care coverage on religious grounds and it would overturn an Obama administration rule requiring employers cover contraception. The Senate voted down the measure last week, but Boehner said he would consider bringing a similar bill up for a vote in the House. No vote has been scheduled.

"For most American women, the battle over contraception was settled a half century ago," the letter said. "Yet, over the course of the past month alone, women have watched as panels on birth control have been convened without women, a young woman that dared to speak out in defense of birth control was subjected to vile name-calling, and extreme legislation, like the Blunt amendment, has been pushed to deny access."

All 12 Democratic women in the Senate, including Klobuchar, signed the letter, which they sent (not coincidentally) on International Women's Day.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Franken, Cravaack share hot dish title

Devin Henry — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:35:32 +0000

WASHINGTON — Your grandma’s tater tot hot dish this was not — and don’t you dare call it a casserole.

Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Chip Cravaack were named the co-winners of the Minnesota congressional delegation’s second-annual “hot dish off” on Wednesday, which attracted dishes from eight of the state’s 10 members of Congress. Cravaack’s dish was a cheesy, egg-y concoction and Franken’s consisted of wild rice and cream of mushroom soup (Franken’s office organized the event and posted complete recipes here). Former U.S. Rep. Vin Weber and the House Chaplain, the Rev. Patrick Conroy, presided as judges.

The competing members worked to get Minnesota staples into their rather elaborate dishes. Rep. Tim Walz’s hot dish was Spam-based, since his 1st District is home to the Austin, Minn. facility that produces it. Rep. Erik Paulsen made a hot dish using pheasant that he shot personally.

MinnPost photo by Devin HenrySen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Michele Bachmann

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who won last year’s contest, said her dish was inspired by Ted the Turkey, the Minnesota bird that was set to be “pardoned” by President Obama at Thanksgiving before it literally flew the coup and attacked onlookers at a send-off event at the State Capitol. The turkey was processed and donated to a food shelf instead. Rep. Michele Bachmann joked that her dish was named after the St. Croix River Bridge project that Congress approved last week.

The lawmakers made some good-natured jokes at the others’ expense. Franken, alluding to the 2008 recount after his U.S. Senate race, said he was hoping there wouldn’t be a tie at the top because Republicans would spend millions of dollars in legal fees trying to figure out who won. Walz, a Democrat, feigned pride that Paulsen, a Republican, had to come to his district to hunt the pheasant for his hot dish.

In the end, though, the event was meant to highlight bipartisanship. The lawmakers stood together joking as Weber and Conroy judged the dishes, and the assembled crowd of staffers and journalists groaned when Franken insisted the judges award eight first-place awards instead of trying to pick a favorite.

And as they walked out of the room, Klobuchar and Bachmann wished each other good luck in next year’s competition, even as their two parties hope to unseat the other in November’s elections.

Will Hegseth's college columns become campaign fodder?

Devin Henry — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:47:42 +0000

WASHINGTON — As a student at Princeton University during the early 2000s, Pete Hegseth rankled liberals as publisher of the school’s conservative newspaper, the Princeton Tory, and his former sparring partners on campus warn that his writings could become an issue in his race to unseat Sen. Amy Klobuchar this fall.

The Daily Princetonian recapped Hegseth’s time at the paper on Tuesday, talking to former classmates who praised the Republican as sharp-witted and personable, though the Tory he published occasionally veered into contentious territory with its critiques of the liberal culture on campus and in the country at large.

“Congratulations to Halle Berry for her Oscar-worthy achievement this year. We only wish the performance itself was considered as important as the racial identity of the actor doing it,” the editors of the Tory wrote in April 2002, criticizing Berry for “accepting the award on behalf of an entire race.”

In September, Hegseth and the other editors reacted to The New York Times’ announcement that it would print gay marriage announcements in its pages by arguing that the Times could then logically print announcements of other “marriages.”

“The [New York Times’] explanation sounds nice on the surface, but its logic is dangerous,” The Rant read. “At what point does the paper deem a ‘relationship’ unfit for publication? What if we ‘loved’ our sister and wanted to marry her? Or maybe two women at the same time? A 13-year-old? The family dog?”

…

Occasionally, the language in the Tory prompted counteractions that fed the paper’s publicity. In the October 2002 issue of the Tory, Hegseth and his colleagues wrote in The Rant that, “Boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.”

In response, USG president Nina Langsam ‘03 asked Hegseth and Tory editor-in-chief Brad Simmons ’03 to avoid attacking homosexual students specifically.

The leadership of the Tory accused the USG president of censoring the publication and sent a press release detailing Langsam’s actions to local media.

Hegseth walked back some of the paper’s contents in an interview with the Princetonian, saying, “We were pushing the envelope and a lot of times we gave our writers a lot of latitude and that’s going to come with differences of opinion ... There is obviously some phraseology or terms or language that [was] maybe too sharp.”

A pair of political commentators told the Princetonian that the Tory articles will probably become a campaign issue for Hegseth this year, though they’ll be unlikely to make much of an impact before the general election, should Hegseth get there. At that point, Hegseth’s underdog status is probably his best ally: a frontrunner as strong as Amy Klobuchar isn’t likely to dig up nearly 10-year-old college newspaper articles to attack her challenger as long as she keeps a respectable lead in the polls.

Controversial writings commonly become headaches for political campaigns. During the DFL U.S. Senate primary in 2008, for example, Republicans cried foul over a satirical Playboy article Al Franken had written eight years earlier. Franken was the Democratic frontrunner at the time, and Republicans were expecting a competitive general election.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Contraception issue is not going away on Capitol Hill

Devin Henry — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:02:33 +0000

WASHINGTON — Despite the Senate’s Thursday defeat of a controversial measure allowing employers to refuse health care coverage on religious or moral grounds, it may find new life elsewhere on Capitol Hill.

Politico reports that the House could be next to take up the measure, which provides an exemption to contraception coverage rules instituted by the Obama administration:

At a press conference shortly before the Senate vote, House Speaker John Boehner said he’s still looking at options for overturning the Obama administration’s policy.

He didn’t mention a bill introduced months ago by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) that would overturn the coverage requirements. A Fortenberry spokeswoman told POLITICO that Boehner had promised to move the bill during a Tuesday meeting of the Republican Conference.

The Senate measure, introduced as an amendment to a transportation bill by Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, fell by a 51-48 vote on Thursday, having attracted the ire of Democrats as an invasion of women’s health rights. Both Minnesota senators voted against the amendment, objecting both to the policy it sought to institute and the means by which it was brought to the floor.

“This is supposed to be the surface transportation bill the last time I checked, it’s about bridges and roads and things like that, but we were talking about contraception,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Thursday. “It wasn’t my choice, but that’s what happened for days on the floor of the Senate. I hope that this is now over … and now we can go on to work on the bill.”

Sen. Al Franken took the Senate floor on Tuesday to speak against the amendment, and the matter of religion’s influence on politics more generally, equating religious freedom to the right to stretch out your arm, but only until you hit someone else in the face.

“We're seeing an all-out attack on a woman's right to protect her health by using contraceptives,” he said. “This seems to be a clear case of one person's religious beliefs impinging on the rights of others. It's a deeply worrying case of one person's hand meeting another's face.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

House approves St. Croix bridge legislation

Devin Henry — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:25:08 +0000

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House of Representatives approved a new bridge over the St. Croix River on Thursday, voting 339-80 to send a bill authorizing the project to President Obama for his signature.

The bill provides an exemption to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which protects the St. Croix River and has prevented the bridge project from going forward for several decades. The $700 million four-lane bridge has bipartisan support from lawmakers in both parties — Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar was the lead architect of the legislation and steered it through the Senate in January, and Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann sponsored the bill in the House.

Klobuchar credited that bipartisan support and the coordination between Minnesota and Wisconsin officials with getting the bill through Congress.

“We really worked together: Republicans, Democrats, Wisconsin, Minnesota in a way that had never happened before,” she said. “This is [about] two states that have been struggling to get something done for years, towns that have had congestion with cars built up, an old bridge that is literally breaking parts into the river, and it was time to get it done and the federal government shouldn’t stand in the way of that.”

“This is the most important vote to affect the 6^th District of Minnesota in over 50 years,” Bachmann said. “I am absolutely thrilled because now we will finally get this commonsense bridge.”

Both Klobuchar and Bachmann said they’d talked to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who told them he expects Obama to sign the bill into law. Obama has not formally taken a position on the bill as of Thursday morning, according to the White House.

Gov. Mark Dayton, who had set a March 15 deadline for congressional action on the bridge, said in a statement that he was “delighted to see this important project move forward; this new bridge is urgently needed.”

Eighty lawmakers, 64 of them Democrats, voted against the bill, spurred on by opposition from Rep. Betty McCollum. The St. Paul Democrat led the charge against the bill during floor debate on Wednesday night and said she was disappointed with the result this morning.

“Every policy debate has two sides and I worked hard to reflect the voices of Minnesotans in the 4th District, as well as those Stillwater and Oak Park Heights residents who are deeply concerned about this mega-bridge project,” she said in a statement. “Congress’ passage of this $700 million bridge bill doesn’t diminish its excessive cost, size, negative effect on Highway 36 traffic congestion or its adverse impact on the St. Croix River.”

But pro-bridge Democrats worked to solidify support for the bill in the hours before the vote. Two Wisconsin Democrats, Reps. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Kind, sent a letter to lawmakers Wednesday plugging the support of labor unions like the AFL-CIO, which estimates the bridge’s construction will create 6,000 jobs.

In the end, only one Minnesotan, Democrat Keith Ellison, joined McCollum in voting against the bill.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Bachmann, McCollum clash over St. Croix Bridge

Devin Henry — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:49:46 +0000

Rep. Michele Bachmann

WASHINGTON — The stark divisions among Minnesota lawmakers over a new $700 million St. Croix River bridge were on stark display during a House debate on Wednesday night, all while their Wisconsin colleagues presented unified support for the project.

The House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill authorizing the construction of the new bridge on Thursday. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, said the bridge is one of the most delayed infrastructure projects in the nation and argued its chief opponent, Democrat Betty McCollum, would be solely to blame if it fails now.

“If Rep. McCollum gets her way, she will kill building the bridge over the St. Croix River,” she said. “The responsibility for the increased costs of building this bridge rests on the shoulders of Rep. McCollum and her compatriots who have fought for decades to kill the building of this bridge.”

By “compatriots,” Bachmann was referring to environmental organizations that have opposed building a new bridge because the St. Croix is a federally protected river. A few lawmakers argued against the bridge on those grounds Wednesday night, but McCollum was not one of them: she’s maintained that she supports replacing the 81-year-old Stillwater Lift Bridge and would vote for an exemption to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act for such a project, but the new bridge mandated by the bill is fiscally irresponsible.

“[The bridge project] represents wasteful government spending, bad transportation policy and bad environmental policy,” she said. “What would the Tea Party call an effective, efficient use of taxpayers’ dollars? Would they call this that?”

McCollum’s main argument against the bridge is that it’s too large — a four-lane bridge to support only 16,000 vehicles a day — and too costly — $700 million. She called the bill an earmark, a maneuver that is banned by House rules, because it mandates spending at a certain level for a specific project, all while carving out an exemption for the project in federal law.

McCollum said the money set aside to build the bridge could be better spent on other transportation projects throughout the state, as DFL Gov. Mark Dayton (a bridge supporter himself) said will happen if Congress can’t approve the Stillwater project. Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison backed her up on that point, arguing that some of the money set aside for the St. Croix project could be better spent on a pair of new bridge projects in Minneapolis alone.

“I am incredibly sensitive to the need to fix our state’s bridges, our nation’s bridges,” he said, invoking the 2007 collapse of the Interstate-35W bridge in downtown Minneapolis. “A $700 million bridge, when we have structurally deficit bridges all over the state of Minnesota, all over the United States. This is not a good use of taxpayer money.”

Support from Wisconsin lawmakers

While Minnesota’s lawmakers are conflicted, Wisconsin Democrats and Republicans both took the floor Wednesday to support the project.

“I am convinced that this legislation is necessary, reasonable and time-sensitive,” said Tammy Baldwin, a liberal Democrat from Madison who is running for U.S. Senate.

Rep. Betty McCollum

Sean Duffy, a conservative first-term Republican, argued that the unusual bipartisan support the bill has received — from Democrats like Dayton and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken to Republicans like Bachmann and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — should be enough to convince the rest of the House to support the project.

“This is a pretty special day; it’s Leap Day. It comes around only once every four years. … Bipartisanship doesn’t come around that often, but it is here tonight on the House floor,” he said, adding: “You have Vikings and Packers supporting this bill! This is a remarkable day.”

Bachmann alluded to the same thing.

“We have a historic opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime magic moment when we have governors that are Republican and Democrat, senators that are Republican and Democrat, representatives that are Republican and Democrat saying, ‘For once, let’s come together and do what the people expect,’” she said. “Let’s do what should have been done decades ago, and let’s build this commonsense bridge.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Minnesota lawmakers lobby colleagues ahead of St. Croix bridge vote

Devin Henry — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:39:04 +0000

WASHINGTON — One day before the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to debate on a bill authorizing the construction of a new $700 million bridge over the St. Croix River, lawmakers on both sides of the issue are trying to finesse their colleagues into voting with them.

GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann said she was “working the phones, we are pounding the pavement, I’m knocking on doors” trying to consolidate support for the bridge project, which will be considered under a procedural rule requiring two-thirds of the House to support the bill for its passage. A vote is planned for Thursday.

Bachmann has the backing of House leadership, which slipped the bill onto the House’s schedule on Monday night. Gov. Mark Dayton said last week that Congress must approve the bill before March 15 in order for the project to go forward. The Senate unanimously approved the project in January.

“It really is like Moses parting the waters to get this done,” Bachmann said. “We’ve never seen this bridge project as far along as it is now. … We didn’t want to see the window close.”

Bachmann said she had been reaching out to Republican colleagues, while Democratic supporters had been wrangling to get votes from that side of the aisle. Though the bill has broad bipartisan support among members of the Minnesota and Wisconsin congressional delegations, a sizable number of Democrats opposed the legislation when the House Natural Resources Committee considered it in November. She’ll need 48 Democrats to back the bill in order for it to pass, assuming full Republican support.

Dayton lobbies leaders

Dayton lobbied both House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday, asking them to back the plan.

“The urgent need for this connection between Wisconsin and Minnesota has united Members of Congress and the Governors from both states and both political parties,” he wrote in a letter to the lawmakers. “We ask for your support of this legislation and your assistance in securing its passage by the U.S. House of Representatives.”

On the other side of the St. Croix, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker reaffirmed his support for the project last week after Dayton imposed the March 15 deadline. Walker’s office said the entire Wisconsin Congressional delegation backs the plan.

The bill’s chief opponent, Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, was working just as hard Tuesday to convince lawmakers to vote against the bill. McCollum’s office sent a letter to colleagues asking them to vote against the “boondoggle bridge,” and plugged the opposition of the fiscal watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Letter from Mondale

McCollum and Rep. Keith Ellison also forwarded to House Democrats a letter from former Vice President Walter Mondale, who was a main sponsor of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which protects the St. Croix River and would need to be bypassed in order for the bridge project to go forward. Two environmental groups, the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association, circulated letters opposing the project as well.

The last minute barrage of opposition is designed to play to Democrats' sensibilities, but Democratic leadership is not instructing members how to vote one way or another, according to the Democratic whip's office.

McCollum remains opposed to the size and scope of the project. She said an exemption to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act should still pass, but that the current $700 million four-lane proposed bridge should shrink.

“I stress to everybody, Stillwater needs to have this bridge replaced, but we find ourselves in a circumstance where the only replacement option is $700 million and it only is going to be serving 18,000 cars,” she said. “It sets a terrible precedent by writing into law that the biggest exemption is the best exemption for the river.”

She’s setting expectations low for the vote on Thursday, acknowledging that Republican leadership wouldn’t have brought the bill to the floor unless they were confident they could get the votes to pass it.

Still, “my job is to do oversight, my job is to speak up and speak out when I think something could be done in a more cost-effective and better way, and I’m doing my job,” McCollum said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Despite problems elsewhere, Minnesota Republicans remain happy with caucuses

Devin Henry — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:01:31 +0000

WASHINGTON — Between the flubbed vote counting in Nevada and Maine and the topsy-turvy order of finish in Iowa, it hasn’t been the best year ever for the venerable caucus system.

Minnesota’s caucuses went off without a hitch — we had a winner on election night, thanks to quick and orderly vote counting and reporting. But only about 50,000 people showed up to support a Republican presidential candidate — well fewer than in 2008 and less than half of the voters who showed up to participate in the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary.

Caucuses are already a dying breed: they dominated the presidential nomination process in the 1960s and 1970s but only a few states still use the system today. Given the struggles at the polls and in the ballot rooms this year, could the caucuses finally be on the way out?

Most states use primaries instead of caucuses these days, and it would take an act of Congress the end the practice nationwide. That doesn’t seem likely, University of California law professor Richard Hasen said. State Legislatures can also step in and mandate a primary instead of a caucus as a means for determining presidential preference, but the parties still choose how to allocate their delegates.

One state, Nevada, is already considering legislation to end the caucuses there, after an unusual schedule, low turnout and more than a day of vote counting. But in Minnesota, with no such problems to speak of, Republicans remain happy with the caucus system.

“We build the ground game through those who attend the caucus and back our endorsed candidates,” Minnesota GOP Deputy Chair Kelly Fenton said. “To those people with the boots on the ground, that matters a lot. Yes, it’s worked well for us.”

49,000 in Minnesota

Fenton largely dismissed the common knocks against the system, primarily that their sizable time commitment and public nature drive away would-be participants and keep turnout low. In Minnesota, 49,000 Republicans showed up to cast their votes in a presidential nomination poll this month; 2008 was a record year, when more than 62,000 participated, but both pale in comparison to the 130,000 who voted in 2010’s Republican gubernatorial primary.

Fewer voters, of course, mean a less-accurate representation about how a state’s party actually feels about the slate of candidates before them.

“The idea that they somehow accurately represent the parties identities of the people of the state is absurd on its face,” Carleton College professor Steven Schier said. “I think we’ve just gotten a rather stark example of that this year.”

But caucus supporters say turnout and the accuracy of the election results are in the hands of the voters, and Fenton notes that the party wasn’t expecting nearly the turnout it saw in 2008.

“Being a caucus state puts the decisions in the hands of the people on the local level,” Fenton said. “So much is accomplished during our caucus system. There’s a lot of work that gets done leading up to the actual election, and much of that work and a lot of those decisions start at caucus night, in there in the room, and move forward from that … Those who show up do have the opportunity to make the greatest impact.”

There’s also the matter of how much those low-turnout events define the presidential contest. Two other states held caucuses the same day as Minnesota, and even though Rick Santorum swept the contests, not a single delegate was awarded. Even so, Santorum became a frontrunner overnight. Schier called the phenomenon an “unholy alliance” between the media and the parties, looking to add importance to even non-binding presidential preference polls.

“In the middle of February, three non-binding events that didn’t produce any delegates for any candidates become the biggest story in America and transforms the presidential election contest,” Schier said.

Problems in other states

That’s all before the errors in Iowa (where Mitt Romney was briefly declared the winner, only to find out he’d lost to Santorum several days latter), Nevada (where vote counting lasted a day and a half) and Maine (where missing ballots and delayed caucuses could have improperly given Romney a victory over Ron Paul), which only ramped up the criticism of the caucus system nationwide.

Hasen wrote an op-ed slamming caucuses and looking for an escape from them in mid-February. He said this year’s contests have been plagued by “a series of embarrassing mistakes that affect the outcome. It raises the question of whether the process is being fair to all the voters that want to participate.”

But Fenton said she couldn’t speak to the mistakes in other states. Minnesota Republicans trained meticulously for caucus night and coordinated with the secretary of state’s office to ensure orderly vote counting. Despite a drop in turnout from 2008, officials say the state’s caucuses were a success.

“It’s a great lesson of democracy: those who show up can have the greatest impact and have a say,” she said. “As long as we’re a caucus state, we have to encourage more and more people to show up to the caucus and be that voice and to make an impact.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Bachmann: St. Croix Bridge bill scheduled for a vote

Devin Henry — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:17:50 +0000

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a bill authorizing the construction of a new bridge over the St. Croix River and could act on it as early as Wednesday, according to Rep. Michele Bachmann's office.

Last week, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton set a March 15 deadline for final approval of the $700 million bridge project, warning that previously appropriated funds for the bridge would expire if construction does not get underway soon. The Senate unanimously approved the bridge project in January, and a House committee signed off on the project last fall.

Monday night, House leadership put the bill on this week's calandar. They intend to consider it under a procedural rule that will require a two-thirds vote from the House.

“I look forward to this vote and I thank leadership for bringing this up," Bachmann said in a statement. "I am confident now, 20 years after plans were drawn for the St. Croix River Crossing Project, we will finally see it brought to a successful resolution.”

Bachmann and Sen. Amy Klobuchar have been the leading supporters of a new bridge, which would replace an aging span in Stillwater. Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, whose congressional district will soon include Stillwater, opposes the project and has backed a less expensive replacement bridge.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com

Two Republicans drop U.S. Senate bids

Devin Henry — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:23:01 +0000

Two Republican candidates for U.S. Senate announced the end of their campaigns on Monday.

St. Bonifacius City Councilman Joe Arwood said he would end his campaign because "I can no longer devote adequate time and financial resources to this endeavor and do what is best for my family," according to a statement on his campaign website. Arwood joined the race in August.

Meanwhile, St. Paul businessman Anthony Hernandez told Minnesota Public Radio he's leaving the race to run for Congress in the 4th Congressional District.

Neither Arwood nor Hernandez made much of a splash in the race. Both had raised only about $10,000 and trailed incumbent U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar by at least 20 points in the most recent poll of the race. A third Republican candidate, Dan Severson, had a 4-to-1 fundraising advantage over Arwood and Hernandez but is performing similarly in head-to-head polling with Klobuchar.

U.S. Army veteran Pete Hegseth said last week that he'd filed paperwork to run for the Republican Senate nomination.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

National Journal: Ellison among the most liberal House Democrats in 2011

Devin Henry — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:07:28 +0000

WASHINGTON — Who has the most liberal voting record of the Minnesota Congressional delegation? The answer shouldn’t surprise you.

Rep. Keith Ellison, the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was not only the most liberal member of the Minnesota Congressional delegation in 2011 but is tied as the most liberal member of the whole House of Representatives, according to the National Journal’s annual Vote Ratings. He has a 93.3 “composite liberal score,” the same as 19 other Democrats and the highest in the House, according to the National Journal.

On the Republican side, John Kline is considered the most conservative member of the delegation, clocking in with a “composite conservative score” of 81.7. He was the 60^th most conservative member of the House. Michele Bachmann, who had been the most conservative Minnesotan each of the last three years, finished with a score of 76.7 (which essentially means her voting record is more conservative than 76.7 percent of the House).

In the Senate, Sen. Al Franken was rated the 13^th most liberal senator, with a score of 81.3. Amy Klobuchar finished with a score of 70.

The National Journal has been ranking Congressional partisanship for 30 years. They based this year’s rating on 105 House and 97 Senate votes considered to be especially partisan in nature.

Overall, the magazine found that Congress is staggeringly polarized right now, a conclusion that shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s paid attention to Congress this session. No senator of either party was deemed to have a voting record more conservative or liberal than a member of the opposite party, and only 16 House members had voting records between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat.

Among Minnesotans, there haven’t been any major swings toward either the right or left over the past five years. The average composite score for conservatives this year was 74.7, the lowest it’s been since 2008. Democrats averaged a score of 75.4, well in line with their scores going back to 2007.

Here are the liberal or conservative composite scores and their corresponding rankings, by party, for members of the Minnesota delegation:

Amy Klobuchar (D): 70.0 liberal score (34^th most liberal)

Al Franken (D): 81.3 (13^th)

Tim Walz (D): 64.3 (161^st)

John Kline (R): 81.7 conservative score (60^th most conservative)

Erik Paulsen (R): 76.3 (107^th)

Betty McCollum (D): 85.8 (61^st)

Keith Ellison (D): 93.3 (1^st)

Michele Bachmann (R): 76.7 (101^st)

Collin Peterson (D): 57.5 (183^rd)

Chip Cravaack (R): 64.2 (170^th)

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Dayton meets with Obama in D.C.

Devin Henry — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:03:23 +0000

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and more than a dozen fellow Democratic governors met with President Obama on Friday to talk about jobs and the economy. Dayton said it was a policy-first meeting, but in an election year, the meeting was an especially important opportunity for Obama and the Democratic state executives to rally around the president’s message of economic recovery.

The governors met with several Obama administration officials before talking with the president for about an hour and a half, Dayton said. Most of the meeting was about the economy and the focus stayed on national topics rather than state-specific concerns.

Dayton said he encouraged the president to simplify the message surrounding his landmark 2010 health care overhaul package, a topic Republican presidential contenders have often used to bash Obama on the campaign trail.

“I told him about the Affordable Care Act, if you ask audiences specifically, ‘do you approve of raising the age of dependents’ coverage to 26 years, do you approve of banishing pre-existing conditions,’ when told what’s really happening under the bill, people are really supportive,” Dayton said in an interview on the north lawn of the White House after the meeting.

Dayton praised Minnesota’s relatively low unemployment rate (5.7 percent, compared to 8.3 nationally) and said it could improve in the federal government works to improve the economy nationally.

“We’re doing a lot right in Minnesota,” he said. “Our businesses have been proactive in responding and we’ve got a good, diversified economy, and if the general economy improves, that will create more market opportunities for our businesses to sell more products and services throughout the country.”

Though Dayton said the meeting was more about policy than politics, Obama’s 2012 prospects were inevitably an important subject for the governors. At a press conference after the meeting, a series of governors from around the country spoke about the meeting with Obama, each highlighting the slowly strengthening economy and the way the president has worked to influence it.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley mentioned the 23 straight months of positive unemployment numbers; Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Obama “saved the auto industry from extinction, the financial industry from self-destruction and the economy from depression.” Gov. Chris Gregoire of Washington highlighted Obama’s recent visit to her state to talk about manufacturing, and Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy went as far as to say, “if the American voters vote on jobs, this guy is going to win with 75 percent of the vote.”

For Dayton’s part, he characteristically declined to predict Obama’s fortunes in Minnesota come November, but he made it clear he thinks Obama is due for a second term.

“I never try to predict the wisdom of the electorate, but he’s working very hard at being the best president we could possibly have,” Dayton said. “I’m personally, especially looking at the Republican line-up, persuaded that without any doubt at all he’s the best president we could possibly have.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Grand jury investigating alleged Twitter threat against Bachmann

Devin Henry — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:13:11 +0000

WASHINGTON — A federal grand jury is investigating a Twitter user for allegedly sending threatening tweets about Rep. Michele Bachmann.

The man, whose identity and Twitter username are redacted from a court order released Tuesday, allegedly sent a graphic and potentially threatening tweet about Bachmann last summer. A grand jury subpoenaed Twitter for the user’s personal information, and he filed a motion asking the court to stop the investigation. U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled against the man, identified only as “Mr. X,” in a ruling released Thursday.

Lamberth wrote that the government has the right to obtain the man’s identity in order to determine if he might actually follow through on his allegedly threatening tweet, given that it was directed at a presidential candidate.

Lamberth wrote that it’s unlikely the grand jury would actually indict the man for sending a “true threat,” since there doesn’t appear to be any chance he really intended to carry out what he said in the tweet.

Even still, “the government must take seriously all threats against a major presidential candidate such as Ms. Bachmann, unless and until it is satisfied that there is no likelihood that the threat was legitimate,” he wrote.

Regardless of the potential legal ramifications going forward, Lamberth strongly chided on the man for his tweets, calling them “extremely rude and in almost incomprehensibly poor taste.”

“More offensive than even Mr. X’s chosen vocabulary is the pathetic transparency and vapidity of his attempt to elicit the attention of the Internet that he surely lacks in real life,” Lamberth wrote. “Readers are free, though ill-advised, to form their own opinions of Mr. X’s output on their own free time.”

[h/t Washington Post]

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

District-by-district look at Minnesota's new congressional map

Devin Henry — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:37:22 +0000

Rep. Tim Walz

WASHINGTON — Michele Bachmann now lives in the 4^th Congressional District, but she’ll run for re-election in the newly-open 6^th.

That’s the predominant headline the day after a state court panel redrew Minnesota’s congressional district boundaries, but it’s basically the only one. The new map is what’s called a “least-change” map, and it means just that: the five-member court panel adjusted the district lines just enough to make the populations congruent and shied away from controversial measures like pitting lawmakers against one another or carving out favorable demographics for one incumbent or another.

“Our adoption of a least-change congressional plan is consistent with the legal principles governing a judicially created redistricting plan and with the urgings of numerous citizens throughout Minnesota who participated in the public hearing-andcomment process,” they wrote in their court order.

That means lawmakers and political watchers on both sides of the aisle are largely happy. It also means there’s not too much to say about the end product. With no residency requirement barring Bachmann from living in one district and representing another, she’s free to live in Rep. Betty McCollum’s highly liberal 4^th District and run for office in the more conservative 6^th, defusing one of the only potentially potent storylines in the whole congressional redistricting saga.

So beyond the residual Bachmann-McCollum drama, we have a Congressional map where the boundaries changed very little and the political make-up of the districts followed suit. Here’s what they look like:

1^st District

Democratic Rep. Tim Walz’s 1^st Congressional District lost Pipestone, Murray and half of Cottonwood counties to the rural 7^th District and traded Wabasha County to the 2^nd District for LeSueur and most of Rice. The district has always leaned slightly Republican, with a Partisan Voting Index rating of Republican+1. That doesn’t change under the new map.

State Sen. Mike Parry of Waseca is Mankato-based Walz’s top Republican challenger.

2^nd District

In terms of both area and politics, no district changed more than the 2^nd. In addition to LeSueur and Rice Counties, the district lost conservative Carver County to the 3^rd and 6^th and picked up parts of the old 4^th District, primarily West St. Paul and parts of South St. Paul, an area that mostly sided with Democrats in the Republican wave year of 2010.

Thus, Republican Rep. John Kline saw his comfortably conservative district (a GOP+4, where more than half of the voting population voted for John McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2004 and re-elected him to Congress with 63 percent of the vote in 2010) move a bit toward the middle, but not enough to bring pause to Republicans there.

“Congressman Kline felt it was a fair map,” spokesman Troy Young said. “Currently the 2^nd District is a swing district. It leans Republican, and after the changes, it continues to be a swing district that leans Republican.”

Democrats have yet to field a candidate to challenge Kline.

3^rd District

Two-term Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen is the big redistricting winner. His third district now covers conservative chunks of eastern Carver County and it’s rated GOP+2, a two-point improvement over its current rating. The district also shed a small pocket of Democratic voters from the northeastern metro area, which moved into the 5^th, solidifying the district even more for Paulsen.

Between the new district lines and Paulsen’s fundraising skill (he had over $1 million in the bank at the end of 2011), the Democrats looking to challenge him are in for an uphill battle.

4^th District

In adding Washington county, including Bachmann’s Stillwater, Democrat Betty McCollum’s district gained a handful of new conservative voters, but she’s still one of the safest incumbents in the delegation — Barack Obama beat John McCain by more than 27 points in the new 4th in 2008, only about 3 points less than his margin of victory in the old district.

The court panel did, of course, pair Bachmann and McCollum, but with an open 6^th, an actual head-to-head match-up between the two was never going to happen.

“For the last two weeks I’ve been letting it known to people that wherever the heart of the 6th district would be, that’s where I would be running for re-election,” Bachmann said Tuesday. “I would have loved to continue representing people of central Washington County. I would have loved to have done that, but the lines were drawn otherwise and I look very much forward to representing the people of the newly-configured Sixth Congressional District.”

McCollum has one Republican challenger, Daniel Flood.

5^th District

The solidly Democratic 5^th District ate into a bit of the old 3^rd District, mainly a few square miles in Edina, Minnetonka and Brooklyn Center. Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison’s new Edina voters, who are among the wealthiest in the state and favored Republicans in 2010, likely won’t be too happy with their new lawmaker, the head of Congress’s Progressive Caucus, but in a district that voted for Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 margin in 2008, there’s likely very little they can do about it.

6^th District

The new 6^th is, as we’ve established, technically an open seat, but since lawmakers are not required to live in the district they represent (only the state), Bachmann will run for re-election here in 2012.

The new district favors Republicans more than the old one. The district curls around the Twin Cities metropolitan area and now includes rural Carver County, a conservative stronghold. Beyond St. Cloud, the last liberal holdout in the district, Republican congressional candidates should have an easy go at it in the 6^th, which is now the most conservative district in the state.

The biggest question now is whether the DFL will be able to find a capable challenger to take on Bachmann. None have yet declared their candidacy, but with the map now set, that should theoretically change soon.

7^th District

The 7^th remains a Republican-leaning district (in fact, it’s rated as the second-most Republican district in the state), and perhaps the only Democrat that can consistently win here is its current incumbent, moderate Blue Dog Democrat Collin Peterson.

The 7^th picked up a few rural counties in southern Minnesota and stole some cities from both the 6^th and the 8^th, but the partisan make-up of the district didn’t change dramatically: more than 50 percent of voters cast ballots for McCain in 2008 and Bush in 2004.

Nationally, Republicans say they still hope to target Peterson in November. In 2010, he beat his current Republican challenger, Lee Byberg, by more than 17 points.

8^th District

Rep. Chip Cravaack remains in the highly competitive 8^th Congressional District even though two proposed maps would have moved him into safer territory: one created two parallel horizontal districts across northern Minnesota, putting him in the more conservative one, while the other pitted Bachmann against McCollum and gave Cravaack the safe 6th.

Both proposals were non-starters for a court panel looking to change the map as little as possible, and Cravaack and his political team seemed to realize that, actively campaigning across his current district ahead of the redistricting announcement. Earlier this month, he told the Mesabi Daily News that he disagreed with the Republican proposal to move him out of the district, which continues to lean to Democratic and will be the single biggest battleground in Minnesota politics this fall.

“With this new map, I will remain focused on improving the climate for job creation for Minnesotans and will continue to work on common-sense solutions to the problems facing the country,” Cravaack said in a statement through his campaign manager.

Gregg Peppin, a Republican redistricting analyst, said the new map wasn’t going to dramatically alter the state of the race in the 8^th District, where three DFLers are looking to challenge Cravaack.

“Redistricting is not a game changer one way or another for the 8^th Congressional District,” he said.

Looking ahead

In the end, the new map technically favors Republicans in five Congressional Districts (the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 6^th and 7^th) and Democrats in the rest, but three incumbents (Democrats Walz and Peterson and Republican Cravaack) represent areas that lean toward the opposing party. Nationally, the parties hope to make those mismatched districts battlegrounds in November. At this point, only two races — the 1^st and 8^th — are expected to be at all competitive, but they’re expected to be vigorously fought, especially the 8^th, where national advertising dollars have already begun pouring in.

There are 257 days until Election Day. With the board now set, the games can really begin.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Klobuchar picks up another Republican challenger

Devin Henry — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:50:19 +0000

Pete Hegseth, an Afghanistan war veteran who helped organize support for President George W. Bush's troop surge in Iraq, has filed paperwork to run against Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, he told the Star Tribune.

Hegseth, a 31-year-old political rookie, joins former state Rep. Dan Severson, St. Bonifacius City Councilman Joe Arwood and activist Anthony Hernandez in the campaign to find a Republican challenger to take on Klobuchar. The first-term Democrat is popular and well-funded, and Hegseth told the Strib he's not underestimating her:

"We understand the uphill battle," Hegseth said. "We understand she's perceived well. We understand she's got a lot of money, and that a lot of other candidates have decided to hold off and not run against her. But I've never been afraid of long odds, I've never been afraid of the David-versus-Goliath scenario." Klobuchar's campaign did not return calls for comment.

Like some of Klobuchar's critics on the left, Hegseth, running from the right, seems ready to attack Klobuchar on her greatest political asset: Her image as a likeable, non-controversial, centrist Democrat.

"I'm running to represent Minnesota, because we live in times of great consequence," Hegseth said. "I think we deserve leadership that doesn't shy away from large, important issues and problems facing our nation."

Anne Neu, a Republican operative who worked for Rep. Chip Cravaack during his upset congressional campaign in 2010, will run Hegseth's campaign, according to the Strib.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Bachmann to seek 6th District seat despite redistricting

Devin Henry — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:47:35 +0000

WASHINGTON — A state court panel has released the new congressional district lines, pairing up U.S. Reps. Betty McCollum and Michele Bachmann and leaving open the 6^th District Bachmann has represented since 2007. Bachmann says she plans on seeking the 6^th District seat anyway.

"For the last two weeks I’ve been letting it known to people that wherever the heart of the 6th District would be, that’s where I would be running for re-election," Bachmann told MinnPost. "What I wanted to do is make it unequivocally clear today that I am going to be seeking re-election in the 6th Congressional District."

All other congressional incumbents, including Republican Chip Cravaack, who represents liberal northern Minnesota but lives in the more conservative exurbs of Minneapolis, remain in their current districts.

The new map keeps the same basic design of the current one: one district for each Minneapolis and St. Paul, three suburban districts wrapping around the metropolitan area and three out-state districts, the southern 1^st, the western 7^th and the 8^th, which extends from the Iron Range through Duluth down to Chisago County.

The McCollum-Bachmann pairing was pushed by the state DFL Party, which was anxious to see the conservative Bachmann run against the liberal McCollum in a district that is heavily Democratic. But Congress does not have residency requirements (you only need to live in the state you plan to represent in Congress, not the specific district), so with her 6^th District still open, Bachmann said she will run there. She has not yet decided if she will move from Stillwater, now in the 4th District, to the 6th.

Republicans in the state Legislature had approved a redistricting plan that would have created an 8^th District spanning the entire northern portion of the state, from Duluth in the east to the Red River Valley along the North Dakota border. Doing so would have created a strongly Democratic district represented by current 7^th District Rep. Collin Peterson. The new seventh would have run along the middle portions of the state, and it would have been a more reliably conservative district for first-term incumbent Republican Cravaack, who lives in Chisago County. Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed the plan.

But the court panel charged with drawing the new lines rejected both the DFL and Republican maps, adapting “a least-change plan to the extent possible,” according to their ruling.

Check MinnPost for more updates.

Dayton: Congress must approve St. Croix bridge before March 15

Devin Henry — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:58:07 +0000

WASHINGTON — Congress must pass a bill authorizing the construction of a new bridge over the St. Croix River in Stillwater before March 15 or the state will not be able to provide funding for the project, Gov. Mark Dayton said Tuesday.

Dayton wrote U.S. Rep Michele Bachmann, who introduced legislation authorizing the new bridge, warning her that the House must approve the project in less than a month if it is to happen. Dayton also said the time it would take to research an alternate design to the $700 million planned bridge would delay construction by up to a decade, a blow to Democrats Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison, who oppose the bridge project and have called for a smaller, cheaper replacement.

Funding for the bridge project has already been approved, but the state only has a few years to use the funds before they expire. Dayton had previously set a fall deadline for congressional approval of the plan, but the Minnesota Department of Transportation since extended that deadline to March 15, at which time the state would repurpose the funding to other transit project, Dayton said.

“Everyone must understand, however, that if the March 15^th deadline cannot be met and the federal and state monies are reallocated to other Minnesota transportation projects, there will no longer be sufficient funding available to undertake the St. Croix River Crossing Project in the foreseeable future,” he said in his letter.

Bachmann said she’s been in contact with House leadership and members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who have had their hands full trying to push a controversial transportation bill through Congress. She said this is the “magic moment” for the bridge project.

“I have kept my eyes focused like a laser beam on building this Stillwater bridge and I think now is the time, more than ever, to get this done,” she said Tuesday.

The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the St. Croix bridge project in January. The $700 million four-lane bridge would replace an aging crossing in Stillwater. Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced the Senate’s version of the bill, which exempts the bridge project from the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which protects the St. Croix River. The bill has received bipartisan backing from an unlikely coalition of lawmakers: Democrats like Dayton, Klobuchar and Sen. Al Franken and Republicans like Bachmann and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

“We know that the strong bistate and bipartisan support for this project will help us meet Dayton’s deadline of March 15 and will allow the St. Croix River Valley to celebrate an important victory and avoid another generation of gridlock, pollution, and public safety risks,” Stillwater Mayor Ken Harycki said in a statement.

McCollum, a St. Paul Democrat who has opposed the bridge project as too large and costly, said in a statement that she’s “doubtful” the House would approve the project. Despite Dayton’s warning that the environmental and design research associated with pursuing a smaller and more cost-effective bridge would significantly delay the project, McCollum said she would keep pushing that option.

“I will continue working for a more fiscally-responsible, appropriately-scaled replacement bridge for Stillwater,” said McCollum, whose new congressional district will contain Stillwater starting with this November’s election. “The Governor’s letter is a signal that it is time to take Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood up on his offer of a working group and come to the table to reach a compromise.”

Jim Erkel, of the Sensible Stillwater Bridge Partnership, which opposes the $700 million bridge, said a less expensive bridge will free up money to put construction workers to work immediately on other projects throughout the state. He questioned Dayton's assertion that an environmental impact study would delay the project as much as the governor said it would.

"The Governor’s statement that it will take 10 years to build a fiscally and environmentally responsible alternative to the Boondoggle Bridge is a scare tactic intended to rush Congress into gutting the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act," he said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Pawlenty pays down nearly $60,000 in campaign debt

Devin Henry — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:12:53 +0000

WASHINGTON — Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty paid off nearly $60,000 of his remaining presidential campaign debt in January, according to new Federal Election Commission filings.

Pawlenty’s campaign committee still owes $44,670 as of Jan. 31, down from $103,000 at the end of last year. He raised $40,370 in January, and had more than $21,000 on hand at the end of the month.

Pawlenty racked up more than $450,000 in debt during the course of his presidential campaign, which ended in August. He was able to pay down nearly $350,000 of that during the fall, thanks in part to Mitt Romney associates, who gave Pawlenty more than $66,000. Pawlenty endorsed Romney in October.

[h/t Politico]

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Congress passes payroll tax cut plan

Devin Henry — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:21:54 +0000

WASHINGTON — The Congressional fight over extending a payroll tax credit appears to be over, with lawmakers passing a compromise deal on Friday.

The plan will extend a 2 percent cut in the payroll tax through the end of the year, as well preventing a decrease in Medicare payments to doctors and extending unemployment benefits (but cutting the length of time jobless Americans receive them).

Only three Minnesotans voted against the plan: Michele Bachmann, and Collin Peterson, who were cool to extending the tax break in the first place, and Keith Ellison. President Obama, who had made extending the tax cut one of his top priorities this year, is expected to sign the plan into law soon.

The average Minnesotan will save $525 a year because of the extension. Total, the $100 billion deal will reduce taxes for nearly 160 million people.

The bill also caps the length of time unemployed workers can receive federal unemployment benefits from the Emergency Unemployment Compensation and the Extended Benefits programs, from a maximum of 99 weeks in some states to 73 weeks by this fall. This shortened time period will have little affect on Minnesota, since the state’s three-month unemployment rate of 6.4 percent disqualified it from receiving the extended benefits in mid-January. That cut off an additional 13 weeks of benefits for 7,000 unemployed workers, stopping benefits after 73 weeks.

Gov. Mark Dayton had asked for a change in federal policy allowing an extension of the emergency benefits while the unemployment rate says above 5.5 percent. That did not happen.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

Minnesota officials await final word on transportation funding

Devin Henry — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:58:06 +0000

WASHINGTON — With two major transportation bills snagged by political clashes on Capitol Hill, Minnesota officials said they aren’t prepared to prognosticate about the future of federal transit funding for the state.

House Republican leadership delayed a vote on its version of the transportation bill this week after lawmakers and interest groups on both sides of the aisle protested to provisions it contained. The $260 billion five-year bill would cut federal transportation funds and cut Minnesota’s share by about $51 million, or about 8 percent, over last year’s funding, according to an analysis from Transportation Weekly. Funding for the state would steadily increase each subsequent year, according to the House Transportation Committee.

The Senate bill has more bipartisan support, but a flurry of amendments has delayed the chamber’s passage of the legislation. The bill would keep federal spending equal to its current levels, plus inflation (two years and $109 billion), and provide up to $26 million in new funds to Minnesota.

Because of the delays in Washington, Minnesota officials are more concerned with the bills’ structure than the amount of money they would end up spending on the state. The Minnesota Department of Transportation wants a long-term bill and one that provides maximum flexibility in allowing states to spend their funds, MnDOT government affairs director Scott Peterson said.

Under any new transportation bill, MnDOT expects to receive funding “in the ballpark” of what it receives right now, Peterson said, which is generally around $600 million, though it varies year to year. The state splits that figure between statewide projects and those chosen by local officials.

Both bills consolidate dozens of federal transportation programs, a move Peterson said would give states more freedom over how to use their funding. It also means the end for several popular programs, such as a transportation enhancement program, that states used to carve out funding for specific projects instead of forcing them to compete with other projects for money.

The state is also anxious to see how Congress plans on funding a mass transit account tucked inside the Highway Trust Fund. The transit account currently receives a portion of the gas tax that fuels the trust fund, but the House bill would stop that system and subject the account to a more complicated appropriations process that doesn’t guarantee such a secure funding allotment each year.

Mass transit advocates are vehemently opposed to the House’s maneuver. The National League of Cities said this week that it’s opposed to the measure, but a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Council, which administers the Twin Cities mass transit system, declined to comment until the bills were finalized. The change “makes no sense,” said Democratic Rep. Tim Walz, a member of the House Transportation Committee.

Both Walz and Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack, another member of the committee, stressed the importance of passing a long-term highway improvement bill, but issues like size, scope and how to pay for it remain largely unresolved, given the upheaval over the House’s bill.

“We’ve got to get a highway bill,” Cravaack said. “We’ve got to get long-term projections. We’ve got to get people back to work, we’ve got to get our bridges and our roads.”

Solving the Trust Fund problem

The increasing difficulty of paying for the Highway Trust Fund is central to the concerns over the funding for the nation’s infrastructure projects, most of which comes from the fund.

An 18.3 percent federal gasoline tax makes up about two-thirds of the trust fund’s roughly $40 billion in revenue each year, but with Americans driving less amid rising fuel prices increases, and with fuel efficiency standards increasing, the tax has become a less robust source of revenue than it has in the past. The Congressional Budget Office expects the fund to go broke sometime in 2013, and the government has already had to come up with several billion in non-gas tax funding for the trust fund every year, including using stimulus money and transfers from the general fund.

Congress has not increased the gas tax since 1993, and there is little political will to do so this session. Instead, the Senate has proposed closing tax loopholes and moving around other federal tax revenues to pay for the trust fund, while House Republicans are attempting to expand oil drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to increase revenue. The plan has, not surprisingly, angered Democrats, and even some Republicans.

Cravaack, meanwhile, postulated that the government could use royalties from oil companies to pay for the trust fund. Walz, for one, said he wasn’t upset by the drilling plan, but he said lawmakers had considered a litany of other revenue plans, including adding a surcharge to transitions on Wall Street, before landing on more oil.

“There was a lot of soul-searching and honest member-to-member work over the years, that we didn’t have things like ANWR because it simply didn’t make enough of the difference for the environmental threat that was there,” Walz said. “It’s the problem we’ve had all year of putting these ideologically unpalatable bills forward … not with any intent of moving it.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

Michele Bachmann will not appear on 'Dancing With the Stars'

Devin Henry — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:14:42 +0000

Michele Bachmann won a polka dancing contest in high school, but she says she's not interested in taking whatever dancing skills she might have to ABC’s "Dancing With the Stars."

On Monday, USA Today reported that producers had invited Bachmann and her fellow former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain to join the dancing competition. Cain said no yesterday, and Bachmann put out a press release declining the offer Wednesday morning.

“In full disclosure, I did win a polka dancing competition when I was in the tenth grade at my alma mater, Anoka High School in Anoka, Minn.," Bachmann said in a statement. "But, despite my tenth grade polka success and my lifelong love of ballroom dancing, the recent rumors are false. I will not be joining ‘Dancing with the Stars.’

“My time and attention remains committed to creating more private sector jobs, and higher paying jobs, in the Sixth Congressional District. Serious issues face our nation. I’m continuing to push for cutting wasteful government spending, a successful conclusion to the decades-long St. Croix River Crossing Project in my district, and repealing the government takeover of health care.”

Dancing With the Stars has featured only a few politically-inclined contestants in the past, most recently Bristol Palin, the daughter of former Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, in 2010.

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay competed in 2009 but pulled out with an injury. Political commentator Tucker Carlson was a contestant in 2006.

Obama budget: The politics — and Minnesota connections — behind the plan

Devin Henry — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:38:52 +0000

WASHINGTON — Politically, there’s a lot of red meat for both parties in the 2013 federal budget President Obama proposed on Monday.

Democrats will like the tax reform measures, which would raise $1.5 billion through a tax on high-income earners, helping the package reduce the federal deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years. The budget invests heavily in areas Democrats consider to be jobs engines, such as infrastructure ($476 billion over six years) and education. Obama and Democrats will be able to point to the budget and tell voters that they’re focused on job creation.

Republicans, meanwhile, have already cried foul over the proposal’s high taxes and not-steep-enough spending cuts, painting Democrats as unwilling to cut the budget in the face of high debt. Under Obama’s budget, the federal government would increase federal spending by $700 billion by 2017 (though as a percentage of GDP, discretionary spending falls from 8.7 percent in 2011 to 5 percent in 2022, with entitlement spending continuing to balloon), and even with Obama’s deficit reduction plan, would still run deficits higher than $600 billion annually between 2014 and 2017. By then, the national debt will hit $21.3 trillion.

In the end, Obama’s budget will be more about teeth gnashing than actual policy making. The proposal will go nowhere in Congress, which has already established spending limits for the 2013 fiscal year. Since the House is controlled by Republicans, it wouldn’t have come anywhere close to adopting Obama’s budget anyway. It’s a purely political proposal in a year set to be defined by how the parties present their platforms to the American people.

Only three Minnesotans in Congress put out formal statements about the budget on Monday: Republicans John Kline, Michele Bachmann and Erik Paulsen. Democrats were largely silent: look for them to make hay of whatever Republican budget plan is introduced in the coming months.

Key provisions

Obama was proposing, in one neat package, what he’s been trying to pass through Congress for months: targeted increases in government spending to spur the economy now. Much of it is borrowed from the American Jobs Act, a jobs proposal Obama introduced in September that has seen few of its provisions enacted, including:

• $50 billion in immediate spending on infrastructure repair.

• $60 billion to modernize schools and invest in teacher and first responder jobs.

• A full-year extension of the payroll tax cut (which it looks like Obama will get, without strings attached).

Only one Minnesotan, Democrat Betty McCollum, sits on the budget-writing appropriations committee, but Obama did propose budget items that have involved other Minnesotans. For example, he proposes a six-year, $476 billion transportation bill that’s larger than ones under consideration in both the House (five-years $260 billion) and the Senate (two-years, $109 billion).

That’s in addition to the $50 billion immediate infrastructure investment, which is similar to one the Senate voted down in October. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who sits on the Senate Transportation Committee, introduced that bill on the White House’s behalf.

“These initiatives are the kind of bold action we need to create better opportunities for our businesses so they have the network they need to move goods to market,” Klobuchar said in a statement to MinnPost. “I will continue to work to strengthen our nation’s infrastructure and ensure our competitiveness in the 21^st century economy.”

When it comes to agriculture, Obama proposes cutting direct subsidies to farmers and replacing it with a crop investment system, saving up to $32 billion over the next 10 years. The plan is very similar, (only about $9 billion more expansive) to one nearly reached by the leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees during the payroll tax cut extension debate in November. Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson, the ranking member of the House committee, supports such a proposal, though he wasn’t available to comment on Obama’s plan Monday.

Meanwhile, Obama’s budget provides more federal money for early education and incentive programs meant to reward states that are able to keep down the cost of both K-12 and higher education. Like his callbacks to the AJA, many of these are inspired by previous Obama proposals that have been batted back by Congressional Republicans.

'Short-term gain'

Kline, who heads the House Education and the Workforce Committee, called the budget proposal a “political document for Obama’s own short-term gain.” The budget expands the government’s role in education, running antithetical to the proposals Republicans on Kline’s committee have advanced.

“We all want to support better education opportunities for students, but we must also be wary of grand schemes that lead to empty promises,” Kline said in a statement.

Another nonstarter for Republicans: higher taxes on the rich, a key component to Obama’s deficit reduction plan. Obama would roll back the high-income 2001 and 2003 Bush-era tax cuts and push to increase taxes on those making more than $1 million to at least 30 percent. Republicans have resisted the proposal in the past and are unlikely to waver any time soon — Paulsen, for one, called it a nearly $2 trillion tax increase.

“Adding trillions of dollars in new debt to fund wasteful Washington spending is not a viable solution to our nation’s problems,” said Paulsen, a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means committee. “Minnesota families deserve better than more budget gimmicks and broken promises.”

After one last battle, House passes the STOCK Act

Devin Henry — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:13:41 +0000

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives passed Rep. Tim Walz’s STOCK Act 417-2 on Thursday, but for such a significant legislative victory and the strong bipartisan the bill inspired, no one seemed to be particularly excited about it.

The House-passed bill, which bans lawmakers and staffers from trading stock based on non-public information, looks much different than the one Walz introduced to little fanfare last spring. The underlying purpose is intact, but in the legislative hustle to pass the highly popular bill, introduced to the public in a "60 Minutes" segment last fall, new sections were quickly added and, in some cases, even more quickly taken away. Supporters worry that the end product is not as strong as it could be.

The U.S. Senate passed its version of the STOCK Act last week, inserting provisions that apply the bill to both the executive branch and firms specializing in “political intelligence,” the gleaning of insider tips from lawmakers and staff and using them for profit. Good government advocates vigorously supported the bill, which in certain ways was stronger and more expansive than the one Walz originally proposed.

But House leadership stripped the political intelligence provision, among others, and added a section that would ban lawmakers from getting a head start on initial public offerings of stock (it’s been dubbed the “Nancy Pelosi provision” after the "60 Minutes" report alleged she wrongfully benefitted from one such IPO in 2008. Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said on Twitter Wednesday that she supports the provision). The House voted on the legislation on Thursday under procedural rules preventing lawmakers from amending the bill, a point not lost on the bill’s original backers.

Walz and STOCK Act co-sponsor Louise Slaughter said they were disappointed more by the process than the bill it produced, even if they contended it’s weaker than it could be. In a press conference Wednesday, the pair hit House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for filing the bill “in the dark of night” and closing off the amendment process, which Slaughter said could have lead to the reinstatement of the political intelligence provision. They insisted that a conference committee convene to iron out any differences between the two bills once the House approved it is version on Thursday, which, with nearly 300 co-sponsors, is almost a certainty.

But frustrations aside, Walz said he was happy to see the legislation nearing passage, and he offered an olive branch to Cantor.

“I will always come to the conclusion that my bill was stronger, but that’s not the way it works around here,” Walz said. “You’ve got to be able to get people together. I think the leader’s making a good faith effort.”

Political Intelligence
The Senate version of the STOCK Act would subject political intelligence consultants to registration and reporting standards similar to those that apply to federal lobbyists to lobbyists.

The Senate passed the amendment on a 60-39 vote (both Minnesota senators voted yes), but against the wishes of both Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who opposed it.

After the Senate passed its bill (by a 96-3 vote), lawmakers and outside lobbying groups raised concerns that the political intelligence provision was too broad and could risk ensnaring innocent outside parties who might be privy to otherwise non-public information, like journalists and even groups listening to lawmakers’ speeches, opening them up to harsh penalties if they acted on the information they received.

“This provision was extremely broad and its impact would have raised more questions than it answered,” Cantor spokeswoman Laena Fallon said. “Worse, the unintended consequences of the provision could have affected the first amendment rights of everyone participating in local Rotaries to national media conglomerates.”

After Cantor posted his bill online, without the political intelligence provision, the blowback was swift.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who introduced the Senate amendment, called it “astonishing and extremely disappointing.”

“If Congress delays action, the political intelligence industry will stay in the shadows, just the way Wall Street likes it,” Grassley, a Republican, said in a statement.

Government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called the bill a “sham” and accused Cantor of “trying to take credit for finally responding to an issue that has outraged Americans, while behind closed doors he has taken the side of Wall Street and neutered the tough Senate bill.”

In the end, the House bill requires a study on the real impact of political intelligence firms, which Walz said could spur further legislation in the future.

A small step 'in the right direction'
But despite its bipartisan appeal, and the blessing of its lead sponsors, the STOCK Act remains a political pawn in the larger game of right versus left.

White House spokesman Jay Carney started his Wednesday press briefing by admonishing Republicans, saying he was “shocked to see that even this simple bill … that would ensure that everyone plays by the rules is being weakened, behind closed doors, by House Republicans, who seem to be caving to pressure from Wall Street lobbyists.” By Wednesday evening, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had encouraged supporters to sign a petition insisting the bill’s strongest provisions are reinstated before Thursday’s vote.

Cantor called Walz to discuss the STOCK Act on Wednesday, and by all accounts, the pair had a constructive conversation. Walz said he’ll still push for a conference committee to strengthen the bill to his liking, but given Congressional leadership's bipartisan opposition, he thinks it’s unlikely to reinstate the political intelligence restrictions. He's at peace with seeing the STOCK Act enacted in its current form, which in some ways (the IPO provision and one requiring lawmakers to disclose the details of their mortgages) add to Walz’s original bill.

“We certainly took a step,” Walz said. “Some would argue a small step, but that’s fine. It’s a step in the right direction.”

Michele Bachmann must overcome debt burden in re-election bid

Devin Henry — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:32:48 +0000

WASHINGTON — In her book, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann gushes with pride at the way she and her husband, Marcus, were able to quickly pay down their college loan debt.

“I had zero debt when I graduated college; Marcus owed $1,500,” she writes. “Our first paychecks went to pay off his student loan debt, and by Christmas, we were 100 percent debt free. ... Frugality and taking good care of things we had — that’s all in my blood.”

Frugality may be in Bachmann’s blood, but it’s not in her campaign’s balance sheets. Bachmann’s presidential run left her campaign arm nearly $450,000 in debt, a sum promising to test the reliability of one of politics’ best fundraising bases.

Bachmann raised more than $10.1 million for her presidential bid from contributors often donating no more than a hundred dollars each. She has one of the best grass-roots fundraising organizations of any House member — they made Bachmann’s 2010 re-election campaign the richest in history in 2010 — but the question is whether they’re willing to finance both a House re-election bid and Bachmann’s debt service after donating to a short-lived long-shot presidential campaign.

Appealing to small donors
Bachmann already has begun trying to replenish her depleted war chest. She sent out a note to supporters last week asking for contributions (small ones: $25 to $250) using a donor list that swelled while on the presidential campaign trail. Her new re-election campaign manager, Chase Kroll, said the results have been positive.

“One of the benefits of the presidential run was the significant expansion of her already impressive donor base,” he said in an email. “Avoiding specifics, I can tell you that the last fortnight has demonstrated the productivity of that new list. We remain highly confident in our fundraising.”

But Bachmann was already a national fundraiser before her presidential run, often attracting larger donations nationally than in Minnesota: 69 percent of contributions larger than $200 came from out-of-state donors in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Beyond that, much of Bachmann’s base consists of relentlessly small donors who have supported her because she was a rising tea party figure. Now that she’s balancing a House re-election campaign and the remnants of her presidential bid, she must convince those small donors that she’s not only deserving of their normal campaign contributions, but actually worthy of more financial support than they would have given in the past. That’s not an easy argument to make, given the embarrassing ending to her presidential campaign.

“When she ran for Congress two years ago, she was a rising star and people want to give money to rising stars,” Hamline University law professor David Schultz said of Bachmann’s 2010 run, when she raised $13.5 million. “She clearly doesn’t have the same star quality that she had two years ago that made it a lot easier to raise a lot of money.”

Also at play: the make-up of Bachmann’s district. A state court panel will unveil new congressional district lines later this month, and Bachmann’s 6th district needs to shed 100,000 voters. If the new lines are overly favorable to Republicans and scare off viable DFL competition, Bachmann might struggle to convince donors that she truly needs their support. But if Democrats are able to field a reputable challenger (or, worst case for her, if Bachmann is redistricted into neighboring Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum’s district), it could inspire larger contributions.

“If she’s in a really intense, bitterly fought battle, that might make it easier for her to make money,” Schultz said.

No repayment deadline
Legally, there’s no rush for Bachmann to pay off her presidential debts immediately. Indebted candidates can carry their debt for years, as long as they’re eventually able to keep their commitments to their vendors. Hillary Clinton, who racked up more than $25 million in debt during her primary battle with Barack Obama in 2008, still owes her campaign adviser’s firm $245,000, according to her most recent FEC filing.

“It’s not at all unusual for presidential candidates to have years elapse before everything is closed out,” Center for Responsive Politics senior analyst Bob Biersack said. “It can linger for a long period of time.”

Bachmann, obviously, has a much lighter debt burden than Clinton and still has fundraising momentum, given her decision to run for re-election to the House. Former presidential candidates who carry debt and have no back-up plan politically tend to have a tougher go at it.

But Biersack said most follow the model former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has adapted — liquidate resources, secure refunds for prepaid services, sell such assets as the campaign’s supporter database (which, in Pawlenty’s case, fetched a cool $45,000 from former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s American Action Network) and rely on donations from supporters and even former foes, who often encourage their backers to give financial support to fallen rivals.

Pawlenty, for example, received $66,000 from Mitt Romney cohorts during the last fundraising quarter, part of a $400,000 haul Pawlenty used to cut his post-campaign debt from $450,000 to just over $100,000 in three months.

But for Pawlenty, time is of the essence, Schultz said, since donors eventually look to direct their contributions to active candidates.

In that sense, Bachmann has plenty of time to inspire financial support from her backers. Now it’s a matter of whether they’re willing and able to help her pay her debts.

Bachmann parts ways with long-time staffer

Devin Henry — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:53:00 +0000

Michele Bachmann has parted ways with Andy Parrish, one of her long-time staffers and confidants.

Parrish was Bachmann's chief of staff until June when he departed her congressional office to work on her presidential campaign. He had worked on other Bachmann campaigns dating back to her initial 2006 run for Congress.

In October, he left Bachmann's presidential campaign and returned to her congressional staff as "special projects coordinator." His last day with the office was Friday, according to a spokeswoman.

Parrish told the Star Tribune he was informed Bachmann was “going in a new direction” and that he was “not part of the direction.” Bachmann’s office would not discuss the circumstances of Parrish’s departure.

Bachmann was a history of high turnover among her staffers. In October, her communications director and former presidential campaign staffer Doug Sachtleben left her office to work for a Louisiana congressman.

Santorum SuperPAC to air ads in Minnesota

Devin Henry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:59:00 +0000

A SuperPAC backing Rick Santorum's presidential campaign will begin airing a 30-second ad in Minnesota tying rivals Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney to President Barack Obama.

The Right, White and Blue Fund purchased $133,000 of air time to run the ad, the group's first negative spot, according to the Washington Post. The group also made a $61,000 ad buy in Missouri.

The Minnesota ad features a 10-second shot of Romney and Gingrich superimposed behind Obama. A narrator ominously warns, "they're not so different," before the focus shifts to Santorum's conservative chops.

The Minnesota caucuses are on Tuesday.

Minnesota congressional incumbents report a huge financial edge

Devin Henry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:09:02 +0000

WASHINGTON — The fourth-quarter fundraising numbers for Minnesota’s congressional candidates are in, and the incumbents have a large early fundraising advantage.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Sen. Amy Klobuchar has $4.6 million on hand for her re-election bid, giving her a financial advantage over her Republican opponents that’s equally as daunting as her early polling edge.

• Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign ended $1.05 million in debt. She has $615,000 in cash on hand, so she’ll start her House re-election campaign nearly $450,000 in debt.

• Not many congressional races are expected to be competitive next fall, but in the ones that are, the incumbents have a large early fundraising advantage. First District Democrat Tim Walz has $617,000 in the bank, compared with Republican state Sen. Mike Parry, who has $29,000 in the bank after the first two months of his campaign. Republican Chip Cravaack of the 8th District has a $240,000 advantage on his closest Democratic challenger, Tarryl Clark.

• Speaking of Clark, she raised $530,000 since May, which is $70,000 less than what she raised in the last half of 2009, when she was running against the much higher-profile Michele Bachmann.

• The seven Minnesotans who spent the fourth quarter actively seeking re-election to the House of Representatives collectively outraised their opponents by more than $1 million.

On to the numbers, which cover the October-to-December fundraising period:

U.S. Senate
Sen. Amy Klobuchar has $4.6 million in the bank after raising $1 million in the quarter. Klobuchar’s fundraising abilities have been consistent all year long; she raised at least $1 million, but no more than $1.1 million, during each quarter in 2011.

The FEC had published fundraising totals for only one of her potential opponents on Tuesday. Former state Rep. Dan Severson raised $46,300 and has $34,000 on hand.

Klobuchar is considered one of the safest incumbent Democratic senators going into this fall’s election. She is polling 20 points higher than each of her Republican challengers, including Severson, St. Bonifacius City Council Member Joe Arwood and activist Anthony Hernandez.

1st District
Democratic Rep. Tim Walz raised $209,000 last quarter and has $617,000 on hand.

Both of Walz’s Republican opponents, Mike Parry and Al Quist, announced their candidacies in November and filed their first fundraising reports of the cycle. Parry raised $32,500 and has more than $29,000 on hand. Quist raised a mere $2,200 and lent his campaign $4,000. He has $5,500 on hand.

Walz is one of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s two main targets in Minnesota next fall.

2nd District
Republican Rep. John Kline raised $260,000 and has $873,000 on hand, the second best cash-on-hand total in the delegation. Kline’s 2011 fundraising total ($1.02 million) is 40 percent higher than it was at that point in the 2009-10 election cycle, thanks in large part to the added attention he receives as a committee chairman.

Democrats have yet to field a candidate to challenge Kline.

3rd District
Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen continues to show his fundraising chops, raising $316,500 last quarter. He has just more than $1 million in the bank, the best figure of any House incumbent in Minnesota. Paulsen sits on the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee and has been an active supporter of the medical technology industry, opening him up for contributions from deep-pocketed donors.

Paulsen’s fundraising advantage over his two DFL opponents is simply massive. Navy veteran Brian Barnes has only $28,000 on hand and small business owner Sharon Sund has about half that.

4th District
The two Democrats representing the Twin Cities had their best fundraising quarters of the year this fall. St. Paul-based Betty McCollum raised $128,200 between October and December and has $175,300 in the bank.

Daniel Flood, her long-shot Republican challenger, raised only $4,000 last quarter. He has $1,200 on hand.

5th District
Over in Minneapolis, Keith Ellison raised $243,000 during the fourth quarter. His campaign has $142,000 on hand.

Both of Ellison’s Republican opponents have less than $10,000 in cash. Former Marine Chris Fields raised $20,300 last quarter and has $8,400 on hand. Lawyer and activist Lynne Torgerson has $6,500 in the bank after raising nearly $12,000 in the fourth quarter.

6th District
Michele Bachmann announced last week that she would run for re-election to her House seat. The 6th District needs to shed about 100,000 residents through redistricting, and given the uncertainty surrounding the district’s new lines, no Democrat has stepped up to run against Bachmann, whose fundraising skills makes her a formidable opponent regardless of the district’s boundaries.

But Bachmann will kick off her re-election bid nearly $450,000 in the red, her presidential campaign having racked up more than $1 million in debt. Bachmann has nearly $615,000 in cash between her two presidential campaign committees, and both the cash and the debt will transfer over to her congressional campaign.

If Democrats think Bachmann’s debt makes her at all vulnerable, you might see a top-flight candidate look to challenge the third-term congresswoman this fall. Really, though, it’s hard to predict electoral scenarios in the 6th until the district lines are finalized.

7th District
Democrat Rep. Collin Peterson has $676,000 on hand after raising $114,000 last quarter. At the moment, he’s staring at a rematch with Republican Lee Byberg, who raised $54,000 last quarter and has $128,600 on hand. Byberg still hasn’t paid off the $76,000 in debt he took on in 2010, when Peterson defeated him by 18 points.

8th District
Chip Cravaack has amassed a respectable war chest heading into what’s likely to be a tough re-election contest. The first-term Republican raised $206,000 last quarter and has $515,000 in the bank. In total, Cravaack raised $744,000 in 2011, more than the three Democrats looking to challenge him combined.

Among the DFL trio, former state Sen. Tarryl Clark has the best fundraising numbers by far. She pulled in $161,000 last quarter and has $275,000 on hand. Since May, Clark raised $530,000.

Former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan raised $60,000 during the fourth quarter and has $35,800 on hand. Duluth City Council Memmber Jeff Anderson raised $22,000 and has $13,000 in the bank.

The new redistricting lines will largely determine the competitiveness of this race. If the new 8th District contains Duluth and the Democratic-leaning blue-collar areas around it, outside spending on this race will be mammoth.

Walz looks to force House action on the STOCK Act

Devin Henry — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:20:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — The sponsors of the STOCK Act, a bill to ban lawmakers from using nonpublic information they receive in their official capacities to profit off of the stock market, will use a rarely successful procedural maneuver called a “discharge petition” to try forcing the House of Representatives to vote on the bill.

Rep. Tim Walz, a Minnesota Democrat who is the author of the bill, announced the decision on Wednesday afternoon as the Senate was debating its version of the STOCK Act. The Senate voted 93-2 to consider the bill on Monday and President Barack Obama has said he supports it. The House bill version has 271 co-sponsors, more than enough to pass the bill.

It’s rare for lawmakers to file a discharge petition, and rarer still for one to work. A majority of the House, 218 members, must publicly sign a discharge petition before it takes effect, dislodging a bill from committee consideration and bringing it directly to the floor for debate and a vote. The last successful discharge petition came in 2002; two introduced this Congress have so far fallen well short of passage.

Discharge petitions are commonly used when leadership or committee chairs refuse to consider or vote on a bill. Because they require the support of the majority of the House, it’s usually unnecessary for the majority to use a discharge petition to bring up legislation; if a party has enough votes in its caucus to pass a bill, leadership is usually willing to bring it to a vote.

But Democrats have spearheaded the STOCK Act, and though nearly 100 Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors, the bill’s original proponents, like Walz and fellow sponsor Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York , said they’re frustrated that it hasn’t progressed faster than it has.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Tuesday that he wants a stronger bill than the one under consideration in the Senate, and that if the Senate didn’t modify it, specifically by extending it to cover members of the executive branch, the House would. Cantor said he is aiming to bring the bill to the floor in February.

Walz said the petition will be formally introduced this evening.

Pawlenty still $100,000 in debt

Devin Henry — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:00:49 +0000

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty still has to pay off $103,000 in debt accrued by his presidential campaign, which ended in August.

Pawlenty raised $400,000 between October and December and spent nearly $374,000 during that time, according to new Federal Election Commission data. Pawlenty's debt stood at more than $450,000 in October.

Pawlenty's contributions included $45,000 from the American Action Network, a political action committee run by former Sen. Norm Coleman. The group purchased the Pawlenty campaign's supporter database.

Mitt Romney's family also donated heavily to Pawlenty, who endorsed the former Massachusetts governor in September. Fourteen Romneys donated a total of $33,000 to Pawlenty between October and December. Politico notes that Romney campaign staff, donors and business associates contributed to Pawlenty as well, bringing the total haul to $66,000.

Franken committee to examine calls to 'modernize' video privacy law

Devin Henry — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:02:25 +0000

WASHINGTON — In between photos and status updates, something new has been popping up on Facebook users’ news feeds recently: the music that friends are listening to, pushed automatically to Facebook by a program called Spotify whenever a user starts listening.

Netflix is barred by law from allowing its users to share what they’re watching as easily. The company wants social media integration, and it’s asked Congress to amend a decades-old law to allow it happen.

More than 300 members of the U.S. House agreed, passing a bill in December clearing the way for Netflix users to simply check a box that will automatically share with their friends what they’ve watched online. Sen. Al Franken will hold a hearing this morning to help decide if the Senate should follow suit, asking whether its possible to make it easier for users to post their activity on social media while also maintaining the high degree of privacy currently afforded to them under the law.

The Minnesota Democrat has yet to take a position on the bill, which would amend the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law barring video rental companies from disclosing the movies their customers take out. Congress enacted it in 1988 after a newspaper published Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental history; the law hasn’t been amended since then, even to account for changes in media technology.

The VPPA prevents video companies from actively disclosing what their consumers are watching unless they get permission (or are forced by a search warrant or court order) on a case-by-case basis. That means Netflix users can’t simply check a box on a blanket consent form and send their viewing history to their Facebook wall, a system supporters say would free up how people share what they view, but one that makes some Internet privacy activists bristle.

“It’s really important that users can see what kind of information they’re sharing and who is getting access to it,” Electronic Frontier Foundation activism coordinator Rainey Reitman said. “It shouldn’t be a guessing game for consumers about what they are broadcasting online.”

Finding a balance

If Netflix is intent on allowing its users to share what they watch, it could do so by building a “play and share” button into its user interface, University of Minnesota law professor Bill McGeveran said. But Netflix wants a more lax, one-time consent system, one McGeveran will tell Franken’s committee on Tuesday could lead to more accidental sharing beyond what users actively decide to disclose.

Reitman offered a relatively more archaic way to share one’s viewing habits: copying and pasting links onto one’s social media profile.

But companies like Netflix and Facebook say it’s time to amend the VPPA and make it easier than that to share. Google joined the two companies in writing to Congress in October urging changes to the 24-year-old VPPA, arguing it “does not reflect the transformative changes that have occurred in how consumers access content ... and how they communicate about that content.” In the past, word-of-mouth helped drive the buzz about movies, and, by extension, the video rental industry. But even though more people watch movies online and communicate by social media, federal law still bars certain sharing mechanisms that Netflix says will help drive business.

The Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington-based think-tank, argued that very point in a November op-ed for Roll Call.

“One of the most powerful ways consumers today discover online content is by learning about it online from their friends using social media,” co-chairmen Jules Polonetsky and Christopher Wolf wrote. “The antiquated law on the books is a hindrance to consumers and to the viral business models that have powered much of the recent technology economy.”

(As an aside, one of the op-ed’s main arguments in favor of the legislation — that it would allow users to give their consent online instead of having to do so using a physical document — is a bit irrelevant. Federal law considers electronic “signatures” as valid substitutes, according to privacy law experts.)

On Dec. 6, the House of Representatives passed a bill allowing companies to give share tools to their users in the form of a one-time blanket consent agreement. The bill’s Republican author and the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee spoke in support of the legislation, especially a provision that requires the sharing consent sign-up page to be distinct from other forms on a company’s website.

But critics say the cover-all consent provisions Netflix wants, and the bill passed by the House contains, prioritizes a business’s interests over individuals’ privacy rights.

In a letter to Congress, Marc Rotenberg, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argued that such provisions diminish the standard of privacy that laws like the VPPA were meant to establish.

“There is nothing in the proposal that would ‘modernize’ [the VPPA],” said Rotenberg, who is scheduled to testify before Franken’s committee. “It simply allows Netflix to post more information about the activity of its customers, whether or not the customers would choose to post such information themselves.”

Reitman said a system in which users are asked periodically to renew their sharing consent would be a more acceptable alternative, though she said Congress needs to consider the ramifications of any legislation before it becomes law.

Along those lines, McGeveran said Congress shouldn’t rush to change the law simply to help Netflix.

“There are a lot of statutes that have more danger of being out of date and out of step with technology than this one,” he said.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry