I’m feeling vindicated for suggesting the bonding bill was not going to be done as quickly as legislators had hoped. Negotiations are continuing , but I have a feeling there’s not going to be an agreement any time soon. Pawlenty’s opening offer was $685 million, and the DFL’s original bill was $1 billion. Pawlenty then said he could go as high as $725 million, and now a legislative working group has come up with a new bonding proposal:
A capital investment working group approved an offer that brings the bill total down slightly and contains the six core projects identified by the governor. However, the overall cost of the bill does not meet his desired amount.
The working group report calls for nearly $986.43 million in general obligation bonding, a decrease of about $13.5 million from the amount in HF2700*/ SF2360.
At this rate, it’s going to take a long time for the two sides to meet.
I think the implication of the legislature’s response is pretty interesting. By making a much smaller concession than the Governor, they seem to be signaling that they don’t plan on meeting the Governor right in the middle at $842 million, but that they want the final bill to be closed to their original figure than the Governor’s. If the two sides were to keep moving toward a compromise at the same rate as their first moves, they would meet at around $920 million.
I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, because for the last seven years we’ve had nothing but Pawlenty-style compromises — i.e. give the Governor everything he wants, and get nothing in return. But according to the Star Tribune, for some reason it appears the administration is negotiating in good faith on the bonding bill:
[Budget Commissioner Tom] Hanson said that Pawlenty, who earlier proposed spending $685 million, ultimately wants a bill “in the $725 million range.”
“What that means is the governor wants his bill,” said Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon.
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.”
Like I’ve written a number of times, the time to spend on our infrastructure projects is right now, when people desperately need to work, interest rates are low, and we can get a good deal on construction costs. I’m hopeful that the Pawlenty administration will be willing to play ball and get us as large a savings as possible.
Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives. It’s about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people.
I wish everyone agreed with Wellstone that “Politics is about doing well for the people.” Unfortunately, for the GOP over the past decade or so, it’s much more about baseless attacks against their opponents. Like the candidate for the Republican nomination in SD 18, who called army veteran and DFL-endorsed candidate Hal Kimball a “dangerous guy”.
Here’s a suggestion for Tim Benoit, the candidate who made that comment. Either provide some evidence to show that Kimball is, indeed, “dangerous,” or try campaigning like you have something positive to say. You clearly don’t, but just pretend.
Senate leaders finally got Jim Bunning to consent to allow a vote on extending unemployment benefits yesterday (Side note: Do you realize how insane that sounds?), ending nearly a week of outrageous obstruction. But don’t worry, America — Jim Bunning still has plenty of obstruction to keep him occupied:
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY)… apparently placed a hold on all presidential nominees last week.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office confirms to TPMDC that Bunning has placed the holds.
“It turns out that not only has he been blocking the unemployment insurance bill, he has also been blocking the confirmation of nominees since last week as well,” said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.
First is was Richard Shelby holding Obama’s nominees hostage, and now it’s Bunning. When Shelby placed his holds, I wrote “Surely this will be the last straw for people who are fed up with Republicans’ outrageous abuse of arcane Senate procedures.” Now we’ve had Bunning do far worse. How long will we allow Republicans, who have a tiny minority, completely subvert Senate business?
If this isn’t the final nail in the coffin, I don’t know what is:
While MDE has always been the site of “let’s throw this mostly-inaccurate-spin out there and see if it sticks with the media,” things keep getting worse and worse. It’s now flat-out lies from MDE, most from Luke Hellier, andit’swidelydocumented. By the way, if you haven’t figured it out yet, the site they’re linking to today goes to a parody site of the Communist Party, not the official site.
MDE was incredibly effective for the GOP with Michael Brodkorb at the helm as he’s incredibly media savvy and disgustingly manipulative. Brodkorb was able to use MDE to get the media and the public to believe things that weren’t true and have that spin reported. Now I don’t know if MDE is more of a joke than a failure.
Awesome! Our budget deficit on an off year when the budget should already be dealt with is “only” $1 billion. I guess that’s good news; at least things have improved a bit. But frankly, it just takes our budget crisis from really, really terrible to just plain really terrible.
And the slightly good news is outweighed by the fact that the budget forecast has actually gotten worse for the next biennium. Including inflation, we will have a $7 billion budget deficit in the next biennium.
Our budget crisis is the direct result of a failure of leadership in St. Paul. Both Republican and DFL policymakers have relied for far too long on one-time fixes and accounting gimmicks to kick the can down the road. Well, they’re not going to be able to do that anymore. As I’ve been arguing for several years now, we desperately need some leaders in St. Paul who are willing to make the tough choices to balance the budget. These are going to be unpopular with just about everyone in Minnesota, but we no longer have any choice.
Wow. MPR’s Tom Scheck relays some words from Grant Stevensen, a Pastor at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in St. Paul, who is furious at Tim Pawlenty’s veto of GAMC. And he has some strong words for the Governor, to say the least:
I have a personal request of the governor. Governor please, stop talking to us about God. the governor is going around saying ‘God is in control.’ We elected you. We elected you to be making decisions for this state that will help everyone in this state. Things that will lift up the poorest in this state. Don’t pass this on to God. That’s no God we’ve ever heard of.
And please stop lecturing us about god. It’s offensive. The only God we’re aware of is the one who says ‘If you want to follow me, you’ll look our for the widows, and the orphans, for the fatherless, for the poorest in the land.’ Please stop talking to us about God. It’s offensive. We can’t take it.
Joe Bodell at MN Progressive Project has been hard at work piecing together reports from all of the Senate District and County Unit conventions, trying to get a handle on where the delegates stand. According to his math, Margaret Anderson Kelliher is just ahead of R.T. Rybak, With Paul Thissen in a distant third.
That’s all I’m going to say here. Go check out the numbers for yourself over at MN Progressive Project.
A couple of weeks ago, Marty Seifert and Tom Emmer voted in favor of saving health care benefits for the poorest Minnesotans. In fact, the House voted for saving GAMC overwhelmingly, 125 to 9, with 38 Republicans voting for the bill. Now, however, all of those Republicans have voted against overriding Tim Pawlenty’s veto, including Seifert and Emmer, one of whom will be the MNGOP’s nominee for Governor.
However you slice it, this flip-flop says something about Seifert and Emmer’s politics. There are a few options, as I see it:
They support health care for the poor, but they’re not willing to stand up for their principles and oppose the Governor.
They oppose health care for the poor, but they’re not willing to stand up for their principles and vote against the bill when it has overwhelming support.
They don’t really give a damn either way.
They can’t possibly explain both votes, and I’m not sure which of these explanations would be worse for someone who would like to be Governor.
I’m starting to wonder if our Senate as it works right now can really still play a role in governing this country, or if it has become an obsolete relic of an earlier time. With hundreds of bills stalled in the Senate, now one single Senator is able to block legislation supported by 99 others — and, incredibly, there seems to be nothing they can do about it.
These are a few related issues; all of which come down to abuse of parliamentary tactics in an increasingly contentious environment. First, consider the filibuster, and this fact: There have been “the same number of cloture motions between January 2009 and today as between World War I and the moon landing.” While the filibuster is a long-standing procedure in the Senate, it has never been used with this intensity before, and it’s pushing the limits of what the Senate can withstand.
One of the many and varied reasons that our health care costs have gotten so high is the impact of the uninsured. Because the uninsured can’t get primary care, when they desperately need health care they have only one place to go: The emergency room, which by law can’t turn them away, even if they can’t pay. The rest of us, of course, ultimately pay that cost as part of our own hospital bills.
Appearing on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Sustren” last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.
“Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition,” Pawlenty said. “They should be — if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic.”
I don’t feel that I can adequately express just how horrible that is. Pawlenty doesn’t want to make it easier for people to get primary care, but then he wants to tell them they can’t get care from the one place that won’t turn them away, because they should be going to primary care. I’m sure they are painfully aware of that fact — Pawlenty’s plan adds insult to life-threatening injury.
Busted! The video below features Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, emphatically defending the process of reconciliation. Reconciliation, he says, is “the rule of the Senate,” and one that allows for “majority rule.” “Is there anything wrong with majority rule?” he asks. “I don’t think so.
South Metro Dem made a comment yesterday that we would all do well to remember:
HCR has already passed the senate with a supermajority. Budget reconciliation is the appropriate process for making small changes to reconcile it with house bill.
I know, now that Scott Brown has been elected, that the Republicans would like a do-over. But the Democrats already got their 60 votes, thank you very much.
I know that the American people want to Democrats to compromise in order to gain bipartisan support for health reform. But the word compromise implies a mutual decision. It’s impossible to compromise when the other side won’t budge.
CNN anchor Kiran Chetry twice tried to ask Cornyn if there is “anything Republicans would be willing to give on in return,” but Cornyn responded by criticizing the existing legislation:
CORNYN: Really, I think it’s not possible to take this bill or this proposal, this 11 page summary and to work with it around the edges. We’re going to have to put it on the shelf. That’s what the American people want us to do and start over and we would be glad to do that.
On Nov. 14, 2008, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service put out a report on reconciliation bills between 1981 and 2009. There have been 22 of them, including three that were vetoed by President Bill Clinton. It’s been used for health insurance portability (COBRA), nursing home standards, expanded Medicaid eligibility, increases in the earned income tax credit, welfare reform, start-up of the state Children’s Health Insurance Program, major tax cuts and student aid reform.
…
By our count, eight of the reconciliation bills were initiated by a Democratic-controlled Congress. The rest, 14, were done by a Republican-controlled Congress.
Now, some of you may want to point out that not all of those bills were particularly controversial. And PolitFact considered that. On bills that it says were passed via reconciliation to avoid a filibuster, Republicans lead 6 to 2.
But please, Republicans, don’t let that stop you from bellyaching about liberal tyranny.
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