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With an insider’s eye, Hot Dish tracks the tastiest bits of Minnesota’s political scene and keep you up-to-date on those elected to serve you.
Contributors in Minnesota: Jennifer Brooks, Baird Helgeson, Mike Kaszuba, Patricia Lopez, Jim Ragsdale, Brad Schrade and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger. Contributors in D.C.: Kevin Diaz and Corey Mitchell.
Contributors in Minnesota: Jennifer Brooks, Baird Helgeson, Mike Kaszuba, Patricia Lopez, Jim Ragsdale, Brad Schrade and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger. Contributors in D.C.: Kevin Diaz and Corey Mitchell.
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Posts about 5th District
Two DFL takes on the 'Plan B' debacle
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: December 21, 2012 - 2:28 PM
“We still have to find a solution,” Walz said. “I refuse to believe we cannot do it.”
Walz was one of only two Minnesotans in Congress to talk publicly Friday about Boehner’s failed attempt to vote on so-called “Plan B” legislation.
The other one was Democrat Keith Ellison, who issued a statement saying, “Instead of Plan A—a bipartisan agreement with the President—Speaker Boehner tried to bring a Tea Party wish list to the floor last night known as ‘Plan B.’”
Walz and Ellison, however, represent two different sides of the Democratic coin. Walz said Democrats will have to consider reforms to federal health and retirement plans as part of a larger deal on new taxes and spending cuts. Ellison, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has ruled out voting for any benefit cuts.
Walz, however, said Republicans have not shown much willingness to negotiate, no matter how much centrist Democrats are willing to bend. “It’s become obvious it doesn’t matter what we said,” Walz told Minnesota reporters Friday. “I could have proposed a trillion-to-one on revenue to cuts, and they still would have rejected it. This is ideological rigidness.”
Meanwhile, Minnesota Republicans in Congress stayed mum on the Plan B debacle, which has raised questions about Boehner’s speakership. But departing one-term Rep. Chip Cravaack said early Thursday he was prepared to vote against the Plan B proposal unless it was paired with significant cuts on the spending side.
Alas, the Plan B vote was cancelled for lack of support from Republicans.
Ellison vows not to budge on entitlements in fiscal cliff
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: December 19, 2012 - 2:09 PM
President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have cast the GOP as being intransigent on a new tax and spending deal to avert a so-called fiscal cliff, saying the Republicans “keep on finding ways to say no as opposed to finding ways to say yes.”
Meanwhile Democrat Keith Ellison vowed to continue to say no to any efforts to cut safety-net programs like Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid -- all top targets of GOP negotiators.
“We don’t have to sacrifice the interests of the most vulnerable in order to solve our budgetary problems,” Ellison told Minnesota reporters Wednesday, adding that he would not go along with cuts just to prove his bipartisan bone fides.
“It translates to people who already have very little, to get by with even less so that people who have a lot can keep even more,” he said.
Ellison part of filibuster challenge
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: December 11, 2012 - 4:32 PM
Several groups, including Common Cause and several Democratic lawmakers, argue that Congress is constitutionally required to pass legislation by a simple majority vote, instead of a 60-vote supermajority that can hold up debate indefinitely.
The challenge is now before U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington, D.C.
Senate attorneys argue that the Constitution’s provisions for separation of powers prevent the courts from intervening in the internal deliberations of Congress. All previous challenges have failed.
Senate Democrats, who control the Senate, have vowed to reform the filibuster rule when a new Congress convenes in January.
Defenders of the filibuster (usually the minority party at any given time) say it protects the rights of minority parties.
Ellison stands out on 'fiscal cliff,' opposes benefit cuts
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: November 30, 2012 - 5:53 PM
Republicans have been wrestling among themselves about abandoning the Grover Norquist anti-tax pledge, with Minnesotans John Kline, Erik Paulsen and Chip Cravaack suggesting they’re willing to look at ways of raising new tax dollars by cutting deductions and credits.
But as talks progress, Democrats too could eventually face divisions over Republican demands to make significant cuts in entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Obama’s proposal on Thursday calling for more taxes and spending offered few if any concessions to Republicans, who dismissed it out of hand.
While the show goes on, Minnesotans in Congress have tended to remain bystanders. Some, including Sen. Al Franken, have contributed to the chatter about how a year-end fiscal cliff deal needs to include a comprehensive farm bill.
The most outspoken member of the Minnesota delegation – on either side – has been Minneapolis DFLer Keith Ellison, who has taken to the airwaves and cable channels as a newly re-elected co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Ellison is scheduled to appear on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday with Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican who has made waves in the GOP caucus by suggesting that Republicans bow to political reality and take Obama’s offer to extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the top 2 percent of income earners, and then conclude a more sweeping deal later.
But while most Republicans are holding out for Democratic concessions on entitlement cuts, Ellison argues that no deal can get done without a “large portion” of the House Democratic Caucus. And the liberals in that caucus, he said, “will not support any deal that cuts benefits for families and seniors who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”
Ellison seems to have support among many of his fellow Minnesota Democrats. While some have suggested reforms to Social Security, such as raising the income gap on payroll taxes, most seem to think that a high-pressure, weeks-long budget crisis is not the best time to deal with long-term entitlement reform.
One exception is rural Democrat Tim Walz. "I'm willing to look at anything, and that has gotten me into trouble with some on the left," he said in an interview Friday. "I think it's disingenuous of folks to complain about the tax pledge, and then say other things are off the table."
The problem, Walz said, is that Republicans have not yet put any specific cuts on the table. But Walz believes that eventually they will, and then Democrats will have to listen. "At the end of the day, Republicans are going to vote for a [tax] rate increase," he said. "With that realization sinking into people, they're probably going to want some serious changes. And my thing is if it makes econonomic sense to do so, and it helps balance the budget without crushing those who are most vulnerable, I'm certainly willing to look at it."
Another Minnesotan both sides are watching warily is centrist Democrat Collin Peterson, a fiscal hawk who has been known to side with Republicans on some budget issues. But as House members headed home for the weekend, Peterson wasn’t saying much in public.
Let the show go on.
Ellison recalls Reagan on the 'Third Rail' of American politics
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: November 28, 2012 - 1:54 PMMinnesota Democrat Keith Ellison and U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, delivered a letter Wednesday to every House Republican office urging them to listen to President Reagan and take Social Security off the table in current negotiations about the year-end “fiscal cliff.”
The letter quotes Reagan from a 1984 presidential debate:
“Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee. If you reduce the outgo [payments] of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund to reduce the deficit. It would go into the Social Security Trust Fund…Social Security has nothing to do with balancing a budget or erasing or lowering the deficit.”
A host of experts, however, have challenged the claim that Social Security doesn’t contribute to the deficit.
While that might have been true in Reagan’s time, it’s a suspect argument today. By most estimates, Social Security passed the tipping point between income and outgo in 2010. It now relies on annual infusions of borrowed federal funds to pay benefits.
Some of that money is owed to Social Security because of government borrowing from years past, when the system was flush and Congress could use it as a piggy bank to pay for other things. But that doesn’t change the fact that Social Security is no longer funded by payroll taxes alone.
It’s a predicament made worse by the retiring Baby Boom generation -- and the temporary “payroll tax holiday,” which is also up for discussion as part of the fiscal cliff talks.
Where liberals are on more solid ground is in arguing that Social Security is not nearly as big a drag on the budget as Medicare and Medicaid. But Social Security’s own trustees reported earlier this year that the program’s trust fund will be depleted by 2033, the point at which either scheduled benefits would have to be cut or more money borrowed.
For memory's sake, here's Reagan:
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