Matt, Zack, Megan and I had the opportunity to sit down with Senator Al Franken shortly after his Netroots Nation speech on Saturday morning.  We had our audience with Al immediately after the estimable Robin Marty.  

On Friday we solicited questions from readers for the Senator; and we had a couple great ones that got worked into our Q&A time with Al.  A recap after the jump.  

Being as it was very early in the morning and we were looking for some positivity, we started with the looming budget showdown.  When asked what he was looking for in the budget deal/debt ceiling raise that have become inextricably linked, Franken responded that he wanted to see an appropriate mix of cuts and revenues used to lower the deficit. The first item he suggested was allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug manufacturers for better rates to lower their Part D costs.  He also suggested that cuts to the billions in subsidies already profitable oil companies receive should be revisited. Defense was identified as another place that spending reductions could come from (because it’s not like the US doesn’t spend more money on defense than the next 17 countries combined).  

The follow up was obvious enough— what would make him less likely to support the bill?  Franken answered quickly, “The Ryan Plan.”  He stopped and thought about his answer while playing with a piece of fruit his press secretary had laid out on the table.  “The President cannot play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States for the short term political gain of the Republican party.”  He went on to stress the importance of compromise, and that everyone had to give something. He commented that it seemed like the Republican leadership has gotten the unmistakable signals from their business friends that they need to raise the debt ceiling and sooner rather than later. The byzantine machinations of the Republican caucus in the House made it difficult to gauge what was going to happen.

We turned to the Location Privacy Act, legislation that was just introduced by Senator Franken and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.  The question was admittedly a softball, because I wanted to hear more about why he introduced the bill.  Senator Franken said that the bill was simply trying to get rules of the road for integrated location based applications.  In early May he held hearings where executives from Google and Apple spoke to his subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law about their security standards for location based data.  He didn’t feel as though the companies were just trying to appease him in their testimony, but after sending them several letters asking for the companies to enforce standard privacy policies in their app stores.  After hearing back “No”, Franken, who wasn’t intending to introduce legislation introduced this bill.  The Senator emphasized this isn’t just about protecting your mobile devices and location based data from hackers, but also that the Minnesota Coalition of Battered Women were supportive of the legislation because of its impact on stalking.  

We ended our chat with Al on Senatorial appointments.  We discussed the resignation of FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker to go lobby on behalf of Kabletown/NBC, which she had voted to approve the merger of just a few months ago.  Franken started by dryly noting the failures of the revolving door in Washington, but described this move to the corporate sector as particularly egregious.  Senator Franken also reiterated his opposition to the merger itself saying that there was “nothing good about it, except apparently, that it wasn’t illegal”.  

We moved on to Goodwin Liu, one of President Obama’s judicial appointees.  Liu withdrew his nomination after the Republican Senators in a wholly unexpected turn of events went back on their commitment to never filibuster Judicial appointees who they said deserved an up or down vote filibustered Liu’s nomination.  Franken seemed most disappointed by the fact that instead of just a tit for tat (‘you blocked Miguel Estrada, we’ll block Goodwin Liu’) the Republican caucus has actually started to view blocking nominations as a means to an end.  Several times throughout our talk Franken came back to Mitch McConnell’s comment that the Senate Republicans legislative goals are to ‘make Obama a one term President’ and that there are few better ways of doing just that than kneecapping his administration by not approving Presidential appointees.  

The Publius team didn’t have a lot of time with the Senator, and DanTheMan, I’m sorry we didn’t get to a rewritten version of your question about bipartisanship (I wrote a follow up specifically about the Tea Party and if there were any legislative initiatives of theirs Franken thought the Democratic party could get behind) but we all hope to sit down with the Senator again soon— when we do we’ll come back to you for more questions you want to ask Senator Al Franken.