This is an absolutely classic bit of messaging failure for the MN Republican party. Did you think they stood behind Pawlenty’s illegal unallotments from the last session? Well, apparently they don’t support the move, because they’re suing liberal group Alliance for a Better Minnesota for connecting Republican legislators to the budget-slashing maneuver:
The online advertisement in question refers to the state renters’ credit that was unalloted by Gov. Tim Pawlenty after the 2009 legislative session.
The advertisements, according to memorandum, said “Tim Pawlenty and His GOP Friends Took Money from Minnesota Renters” and included a photograph GOP Reps. Tom Emmer, Marty Seifert and Kurt Zellers with Pawlenty.
HRCC contends the advertisement was “false” because Pawlenty alone cut the renters’ credit.
So House Republicans claim that they have nothing to do with the unallotment. Are they planning to campaign against it? Will they side with the DFL in this year’s budget battle to overturn a Pawlenty veto? Or is their plan to hide behind Pawlenty, asking him to take all of the blame because he doesn’t have to run for re-election?
How will the Supreme court’s ruling on unallotment play out? Nobody knows for sure yet, but Eric Black has a very thoughful, detailed take on the most plausible options. It’s well worth a read; check it out here.
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As I wrote yesterday, GOP leader Mitch McConnell decided the Republicans would unanimously oppose Obama’s entire agenda before Obama was even sworn in. Now the Democratic National Committee has picked up on that story with a new ad blasting McConnell as “what’s wrong with Washington.”
The ad isn’t very good in my opinion, but that’s not really the point. this is something big that I think Democrats can really start to push. Branding the Republicans the “party of no” has been relatively successful — well, this gives the Dems license to ratchet up that criticism by an order of magnitude.
The message is simple: The GOP isn’t just the party of no. They don’t even care enough to think about their constituents’ needs. They said “no” back in early 2009, and they haven’t given any policy so much as a passing thought since then.
Marty Seifert, in an interview with MinnPost, says he has some “innovative ideas”:
Seifert: …[Minnesotans] want strong managers to come in with innovative ideas.
MinnPost: What kind of innovative ideas?
Seifert: Using the private sector for government-service delivery. Reform. Downsizing government, just like the private sector has done.
Really, Marty? That’s all you’ve got?
As a liberal, I obviously don’t much care for these ideas. But whether you support them or not, one thing is for sure — they’re most definitely not “innovative.” In fact, they haven’t been innovative since Barry Goldwater. And it seems to me that the Republican playbook is wearing pretty thin. Year after year, Republicans trot out the exact same language, but after watching our economy collapse, income inequalities soar, infrastructure crumble, and so on, this sort of “innovation” gets less and less enticing each year.
For anyone who wants to look through the reconciliation bill, it is posted here. It’s being made available for 72 hours before the House votes on it. It was posted yesterday, which will mean a Sunday vote.
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The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has produced an analysis of the impacts of health reform on every single congressional district in the country. And the benefits will be legion. Here’s the summary for my district, CD5:
In Rep. Ellison’s district, the health care reform bill will:
Improve coverage for 358,000 residents with health insurance.
Give tax credits and other assistance to up to 159,000 families and 18,400 small businesses to help them afford coverage.
Improve Medicare for 76,000 beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole.
Extend coverage to 40,500 uninsured residents.
Guarantee that 9,700 residents with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.
Protect 900 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.
Allow 57,000 young adults to obtain coverage on their parents’ insurance plans.
Provide millions of dollars in new funding for 28 community health centers.
Reduce the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers by $101 million annually.
There’s an analysis for each district in Minnesota. See the impact on your district by following the links below: MN-1; MN-2; MN-3; MN-4; MN-5; MN-6; MN-7; MN-8.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post on this earlier. There was huge news this morning as the CBO estimated the final health care bill would cover 95 percent of all Americans and save $130 billion in the first 10 years. In the next 10 years, it would save $1.2 trillion.
Seems like a good reason to support reform. What’s the GOP’s argument against it now? Chairman Michael Steele claims the CBO is lying.
A New York Times article Tuesday revealed a couple of shocking things about the Republicans’ unprecedented unity in opposing every single bill offered by the Democrats:
It didn’t just arise spontaneously as the result of policy differences; it was a calculated political strategy by minority leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell decided on the strategy before Obama was ever sworn in.
I really don’t know what to say here. Why do the Republicans even bother showing up to the Capitol? If they don’t even care what’s in any of the bills, they may as well just stay home.
The non-partisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Urban Institute have just released a study that simulates the growth of health care costs in the absence of health reform. They found that within ten years, premiums could soar by as much as 79 percent, bringing the ranks of the uninsured from 49.4 million to 67.6 million by 2020.
Let’s compare that with the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of health care costs under health reform. The CBO estimated health care costs in 2016, so we’ll use the RWJF study’s estimates for 2015, instead of 2020. The RWJF study estimated that without reform, premiums could increase by 34 percent by 2015. The CBO estimated that with reform, they would increase by 10 to 13 percent, and that’s before subsidies that would be extended to millions of recipients.
Opponents of health reform are arguing that the system doesn’t need fixing. Whatever insurance plan they’re on, I want it, because the reality is that health care costs are out of control and nobody is doing anything about it. After more than a year of debate, and after nearly a century of attempts by various presidents, it’s time to finally pass health reform.
Al Franken was one of a number of Senate Democrats that went on the offensive yesterday, criticizing Republicans for their constant use of the filibuster in even the most routine situations. Franken highlighted one judicial nominee who was filibustered despite an eventual unanimous vote — 99 to 0 — to confirm her. He noted that the filibuster has become nothing but a crass stall tactic:
It used to be that the filibuster was reserved for matters of great principle. Today, it has become a way to run out the clock.
I’ll take it a step further than Franken. The filibuster used to be reserved for situations when Senators were strongly in disagreement with a proposed policy. Now, it’s used to stop Congress from enacting policy at all. The endless filibusters are a Republican effort to paralyze our government, so they can then claim that Obama has been ineffective.
I put my census in the mail today. If you haven’t already done so, please fill out yours today. The form took me maybe five minutes to fill out for my household.
This isn’t a political issue, or at least it shouldn’t be. This is about complying with our constitution and making sure our government has the information it needs to make decisions. It’s particularly important in Minnesota this year; any undercounting could easily lead us to lose a seat in Congress. Please do your civic duty and make sure very Minnesotan is counted.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) admitted yesterday that Senate Republicans will opt to win political points instead of trying to improve the health reform bill. Once the House passes the Senate’s health reform bill, health reform will become law with or without reconciliation. Reconciliation will simply make a number of small changes, most of which can be agreed on by both sides. The GOP, though, will of course vote against reconciliation en masse. Ezra Klein explains why this is ridiculous:
At that point, they’re not opposing health-care reform and instead opposing small, popular changes that make the bill better. They’re literally obstructing good government that fits with their recent rhetoric.
For instance, Alexander himself has railed against a deal in the Senate health bill made to gain Sen. Ben Nelson’s support, which he likes to refer to as the “Cornhusker Kickback.” Democrats will remove that kickback through reconciliation, but Alexander and his fellow Republicans will oppose reconciliation anyway. When asked to explain, Alexander’s answer was really quite shocking:
…basically, the Senate Republicans are not going to bail the House Democrats out by fixing a bill we all voted against.
Yesterday, I wrote that they would cost around 5,000 jobs, but I also said I’d go into a bit more detail.
Unfortunately, I don’t have access to any raw data to determine how many jobs the bonding bill will create. What I do have is access to a number of estimates by people who do have the data. Here are a few numbers I received from a source at the legislature.
At the beginning of the session, Tim Pawlenty proposed a $685 million bonding bill. In what appeared at the time to be an effort to negotiate in good faith, he said that he wouldn’t sign anything over $725 million. Then, after the Legislature passed a much larger bill, he appeared briefly to be willing to negotiate:
[Budget Commissioner Tom] Hanson replied that a $725 million bonding package is the governor’s “current position,” adding, “To come to an agreement we have to agree on size and scope. I’m not foolish enough to think that in the end it’s going to be $725 million.
So how in the world did it come to pass that Pawlenty cut the bonding bill down to $686 million? Was he simply lying when he appeared to be negotiating? Did something change his mind? Or, worst of all, did he do it because he’s angry with the DFL, and he decided to put our state citizens in the middle?
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