We're going to have the best educated American people in the world.
George Bush
Congressional Watch
Kirk's Grade Disappoints
In a 40-page report from the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law , 225 members of Congress scored A or A+ on 15 critical votes focusing on poverty issues in the United States. Over one-half of the Illinois Congressional delegation scored an A grade or better. Rep. Mark Kirk scored a disappointing grade of "C".
Former Sen. John Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat who made poverty the focus of his recent bid for president, spoke to reporters about the scorecard during a phone conference Monday. He called poverty a "moral issue" the country must face.
He said that many of the bills, such as increasing the minimum wage and making it easier for workers to unionize, that failed in Congress last year would have easily helped pull Americans out of poverty. These policy changes reflect the belief that if you are working full-time, you shouldn't be struggling to pay the bills, Edwards said.
"People who are working ought to be able to provide for their family," he said. "People who are working full-time should not be in poverty."
Progress will only come with political leadership, warned Edwards, who quickly added that the top two Democrats still in the presidential race - Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton - told him they would make poverty an issue in the campaign and a focus of the White House if elected.
"We can get the national leadership and we can get the congressional leadership we need," Edwards said. "But first voters need to be educated as to who is doing the work and who is not."
Kirk Has Left the Building,
Now He Must Leave the House.
The next addition to the Blue Majority page is Dan Seals, who is running in Illinois's 10th district against Republican Mark Kirk. The district is one of the bluest in the country held by a Republican, going for Kerry over Bush in 2004 by 53-47. Seals ran a hard race in 2006, and had a heart-breaking and narrow loss. Running for office is incredibly difficult; you must work 14 hour days for months, with almost no income, no sleep, limited family time, and no exercise.
You have to beg for money from anyone you've ever met, and you get yelled at by activists on both sides. Meanwhile, voters are looking to be persuaded that they can trust you, and while your arguments make sense to you and your staff, you can never tell if voters believe you. It is incredibly difficult, and almost everyone loses their first time out. A successful political movement helps not just those who win, but those who take risks and lose, because without risk-taking, change cannot happen. And that's why we're in this. Seals gave up his career, his family life, and his privacy in 2006, and we're going to make sure that he, like Eric Massa, Darcy Burner, and Charlie Brown, gets to finish the job.
As for Kirk, it's pretty simple why this guy has to go. He's considered a 'moderate' Republican by many anonymous strategists in insider publications, because apparently in DC, up is down. Sometimes he breaks with his party when we don't need his vote, but the reality is closer to the video above, where Kirk ran away from an Iraq veteran so he wouldn't have to answer questions about his stance on the war. The camera man is an AAEI organizer named Josh Lansdale, who also happens to be an Iraq vet. I wrote this episode up in July.
Kirk likes to portray himself as a moderate Republican, and he even went to the White House earlier this year to talk about Iraq with George Bush. In fact, The Hill reported that Karl Rove came down on Kirk hard for leaking this 'confrontation' to the press, and Kirk has quieted down.
Josh is an organizer for AAEI, and his goal is to stop the war by getting members of Congress to come out on Iraq. In this case, he went to the event trying to get Kirk to go on the record with what he said in the White House and what his current position is on Iraq. Does he support a withdrawal? Does he support timelines? Where is he on the surge? People who attended the event said that Kirk was wishy washy, but Josh couldn't get a direct report. This episode took place at an event where Kirk keynoted eight local Chambers of Commerce coming together. Josh had bought a ticket online, but was not allowed to attend, with organizers claiming the event had been sold out as they were selling tickets nearby. So Josh eventually had to find Kirk out back, with this video camera.
The district, blue and getting bluer, is going to eat Kirk alive on Iraq, and he's pushing extremely hard to be perceived of as moderate. He's even going so far as to propose 'bipartisan' solutions with Bush Dog Democrat Dan Lipinski, as Kos noted earlier this month.
The Lipinski-Kirk plan calls for a phased withdrawal similar to the one that U.S. Gen. David Petraeus outlined on Monday. Under the plan, one troop brigade would return to the U.S. in December and three more would be removed in the spring, without replacement. It would provide for troop levels in July 2008 of about 130,000, which is equal to "pre-surge" troop levels.
Got that? We'd simply hit the "reset" button, taking 10 months to get us back to the pre-surge status quo. And somehow, this "bipartisan" bill (which Bush will announce this week anyway) is supposed to be a solution to anything?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Kirk Countdown: Day 15, Mark Kirk Ducks the Press
On May 8, Illinois 10th District Congressman Mark Kirk met with President Bush to reportedly deliver a tough message about the war in Iraq. Yet, two days later, Kirk voted against funding for America’s troops and veterans and against holding the President accountable for his misguided Iraq policy. Now, according to press accounts, Kirk is ducking the press on his White House encounter.
“Why is Mark Kirk ducking questions about the Iraq War?” asks Lauren Beth Gash, the head of the Tenth Congressional District Democrats (Tenth Dems), a local Democratic grassroots group in the home district of Republican Congressman Kirk. “Why doesn’t he want to tell his constituents what he told the President?”
Gash, a former Illinois State Representative who lost to Kirk in a very close race to fill an open seat in the 2000 election, says she was disappointed, but not surprised, that Kirk again backed Bush’s Iraq policy just two days after meeting with the President.
“Mark Kirk has been a reliable rubber stamp in Congress for every step that George Bush has taken on the war in Iraq,” Gash said. ”The real question is, what did he tell the President when they met on May 8th?”
Some press reports have said that Kirk, and the other Republican congressmen who accompanied him to the White House, expressed a concern about the impact the President’s Iraq policies will have on their chances for re-election.
If that’s the case, Dan Seals, the 10th district Democratic nominee for Congress in 2006, says Kirk seems more concerned about getting re-elected than about doing what’s right.
“When I talk to people,” Seals was quoted as saying in the Daily Herald, one of Chicago’s suburban newspapers, “none of them are saying ‘Let’s talk about how this war plays politically.’ When you have troops in the field and an issue so critical, you can’t talk about politics. You have to talk about your convictions on this war. He should have had a policy discussion, not a political one.”
Gash says she is also not surprised that Kirk has been avoiding media questions about his recent visit to the White House. She says ever since the war began, Kirk has rarely held public meetings in his district, and when he has, they have not been on the tough issues like Iraq. “If he believes in the war, then he should at least come home and explain why, and listen to those who feel otherwise. But he has avoided any public discussion about the war in his home district, so why should I be surprised that he doesn’t want to talk to the media about it?”
Most political experts expected Kirk to easily win re-election in 2006, but he won with only 53-percent of the vote despite being a three-term incumbent who outspent political-newcomer Seals by a two-to-one margin. The close results apparently got Kirk’s attention. As soon as the 2006 election ended, Kirk started his 2008 re-election campaign, focusing heavily on fund-raising since returning to Congress for his fourth term.
Gash says that Tenth Dems, the grassroots political group which she heads, has over 1,500 volunteers who are ready to work in 2008 to defeat Kirk in this district that is located in Chicago’s north suburbs. She says many of these volunteers came into the group because they opposed the Bush Administration’s war policies.
In 2006, Tenth Dems brought numerous volunteers into the campaign to work for Seals and other Democrats on the local, state and national ticket. The 10th District, which has been reliably Republican in recent decades at the congressional level (and which includes communities that sent Donald Rumsfeld to Congress in the 1960s), was one of the few suburban congressional districts in America to give John Kerry a higher percentage of victory than Al Gore received in 2000.
Tenth District Residents React to Bush / Kirk's Endless War
WILMETTE, Il., May 29 — Through four elections, Debbie Thompson has supported Representative Mark Steven Kirk, a Republican and staunch backer of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.
But Ms. Thompson, a mother of two from this affluent suburb of Chicago, says her views on the war have evolved, and she now wants Mr. Kirk to change, too.
“My patience for this war, it’s run out,” said Ms. Thompson, 53. “I think this is the most expensive, stupidest thing ever done. My frustration has reached a level that is so unsettling, something has to be done.”
Though voters here in the 10th Congressional District have elected a Republican to the House for as long as anyone can remember, there is a newfound hostility about the war that is being directed toward Mr. Kirk, who was narrowly re-elected to a fourth term last November.
Nor is Mr. Kirk alone in his struggle to appease increasingly restless constituents. He and 10 other Republicans in Congress recently delivered a warning to President Bush that conditions in Iraq needed to improve soon because public support of the war was crumbling.
While a majority of Republican voters continue to support Mr. Bush and the Iraq war, including the recent increase in American troops deployed, there are concerns that the war is undermining the party’s political position. A majority of Republicans who were interviewed for a New York Times/CBS News poll this month said that things were going badly in Iraq and that Congress should allow financing only on the condition that the Iraqi government met benchmarks for progress.
In a poll in March, a majority of Republicans said that a candidate who backed Mr. Bush’s war policies would be at a decided disadvantage in 2008. They also suggested that they were open to supporting a candidate who broke with the president on the war.
That change of heart can be seen in many ways around the country. When the North Shore Women for Peace, a small group of antiwar activists from around here, first stood in the breezeway of a high-end strip mall in nearby Highland Park in the months leading up to the war, they drew sneers, expletives and many a thumbs-down.
By 2005, members said, they had found a more neutral audience, given to stares but little else. Recently, people smiled in support, honked their car horns and volunteered to join the cause at a peace rally.
“Anything I can sign?” asked one shopper, Lynne Black, a retiree from Wilmette. “I feel desperation at this point.”
Those feelings are reflected in Congressional districts across the country where Republican backers of the war are taking more political heat. Mr. Kirk would not be interviewed, but one of his biggest backers, the mayor of nearby Kenilworth, Tolbert Chisum, a Republican, described as “remarkable” the meeting between the 11 congressmen and Mr. Bush.
“Given a choice, none of us would want to be at war,” said Mr. Chisum, the committeeman of the largest Republican organization in the North Shore suburbs.
Mr. Chisum expressed confidence that Mr. Kirk would win re-election in 2008 but acknowledged that the battle was shaping up to be fierce, particularly since Democrats won control of both houses of Congress last November.
“I’m a realist,” Mr. Chisum said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and the next election. Who would have thought there would be a complete rollover in the House and Senate?”
Interviews with voters, elected officials and others in Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania — home to 4 of the 11 Republican congressmen who met with Mr. Bush about the war — suggest that more Republican voters are opposing the war, and that independents who might have voted Republican are moving toward supporting a Democrat.
Emmett F. Vanslyke, a musician from Syracuse, is typical of some of the independent voters in those districts. Mr. Vanslyke said he would support his Republican congressman, Representative James T. Walsh, only if Mr. Walsh changed positions on the war by the next election.
“We’ve been over there with the lost cause,” Mr. Vanslyke said. “I would support anybody that would get the soldiers out.”
Democratic voters who opposed the war still do so, they say, and more passionately than ever. The North Shore Women for Peace, for instance, had never gone so far as to call for Mr. Bush’s impeachment — until recently. Now they carry yellow signs with black letters that say “Impeach.”
“Things have changed a lot,” said a member, Annette Jacobson, a retired court reporter from Highland Park. “We have a terrible feeling of anguish that more people are coming to understand.”
A slightly less hawkish Mr. Kirk has emerged in recent months. He voted against the troop surge backed by Congress early this year and wrote on his blog, “The United States should increase the responsibilities of the elected Iraqi government to solve its own problems, while reducing the number of American combat troops sent overseas.”
To some voters, that only made him seem less committed to his convictions, highlighting some of the pitfalls of changing course.
“He’s all over the place,” said Sally Walshe, a psychiatrist and a member of the North Shore peace group. “Wants to have his cake and eat it, too.”
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Mr. Kirk’s case in Illinois is not helped by his being in an overwhelmingly Democratic state where political experts expect large numbers to turn out in 2008 for the Democratic presidential nominee. It will be even harder for Mr. Kirk to hold his seat if that nominee turns out to be Senator Barack Obama of Illinois or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is a native of Chicago.
Bill Wallin is a retired lawyer for the State of Illinois and the Republican precinct captain for his area of Wilmette. Mr. Wallin said his wife, formerly a Republican, now calls herself an independent. He said he thought Mr. Kirk was right to petition the White House.
“We can demand progress,” Mr. Wallin said. “When the war started, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a bad idea. Everything the Bush administration was telling us, I believed. Now I think the war was a mistake. I just think it is a horrendous situation.”
Kirk and the Vulnerable 11 Give In?
House Republicans , in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months.
But Even Bush is Cynical About Mark Kirk's Blatant Politicism
Mr. Bush, who on Tuesday received a blunt assessment from Republican moderates about rising voter unrest over Iraq, acknowledged the public’s impatience with the war. But he said he could not allow political considerations like "the latest opinion poll, or how we can get our members elected" to drive his thinking.
All 11 Vulnerable Republicans responded on Thursday by voting with the Administration against the McGovern bill to end the war in Iraq. Had the bill become law, it would have mandated the beginning of withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq within 90 days. Incredibly, these 11 also voted against supplemental funding for our troops in Iraq which include any provisions for accountability!
While it seems increasingly difficult for Congress to hold the Bush Administration accountable for illegal activity such as Karl Rove / Dick Cheney's outing a CIA agent's covert identity or Rove / Alberto Gonzolez obstruction of Justice Department investigations, there is one certain way to hold members of the rubber-stamp 109th Congress, who continue to be obstructionist in the 110th Congress, accountable.
Vote them out in November, 2008.
Kirk-Seals rematch will be top suburban race in ’08
The biggest congressional race next year in Illinois will be the rematch between Republican Rep. Mark Kirk and Democratic challenger Dan Seals.
This assumes Seals will make the 10th Congressional District contest, but my strong sense is that he will. I saw him recently at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee event in Chicago. If Seals wanted to just fade away, he wouldn’t have been working the room. I also asked him this week if he’s running again. “I’m considering running again,” is as far as he would go on the record.
A race between the two would be huge not only because Seals came unexpectedly close last year, scoring nearly 47 percent against a respected, three-term incumbent in Kirk, but also because there’s not expected to be much else vying for local media attention.
There’s unlikely to be a 6th District rematch between Republican Rep. Peter Roskam and Democrat Tammy Duckworth. And in the 8th District, Democratic Rep. Melissa Bean appears to have fallen off the GOP radar screen. Sen. Dick Durbin is up for re-election, but Republicans have yet to find anyone to oppose him.
With no governor or statewide offices on the ballot, that leaves just the presidential race. And while interest will be high, the candidates themselves will hit Chicago only occasionally. All of which means Kirk and Seals will get attention that was lacking in 2006.
Seals raised an impressive $1.9 million, getting some help from Obama and Durbin. But he didn’t get much help from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee outside of a few direct mail pieces at the end. This time, the party probably won’t have to spend millions on the 6th and 8th District races, although nationally the Democrats have many newly won seats to defend. Seals will need the party to run some of those highly expensive and highly inefficient — but potentially highly effective — broadcast TV attack ads.
The DCCC has taken a renewed interest in Kirk, judging by the press releases landing in my inbox, releases that disappeared when Kirk seemed invincible after winning by lopsided margins in ’02 and’04.
Seals lost Lake County by 1,400 votes and Cook County by about 10,000 votes. He felt that if he’d had more cash to get his message out, he would’ve won, given the Democratic tidal wave last year.
With 2008 potentially another Democratic year and with Park Ridge native Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama as possible presidential nominees increasing turnout in Illinois, Seals is well-positioned for an upset.
So far in 2007, there have been numerous votes on actual pieces of legislation where the majority position among Democrats in the House was different from the majority position among Republicans in the House. In essence, those votes provide the answer to the age-old question: how are Republicans different from Democrats? Well, here is how:
That is how Democrats are different than Republicans, or at least how the majority of Democrats in the House were different than the majority of Republicans in the House in 2007. In all of these votes, the majority Democratic position was different than the majority Republican position.
Kirk voted against final passage of the Congressional Budget of 2008.
Kirk voted for final passage of the Rail and Public Transportation
Security Act but voted against clarifying the relationship between
the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation, against
minimizing the need for transportation of toxic inhalation hazardous
materials by rail, and for prohibiting funds used by Amtrak for any of the
Top 10 worst revenue losing long-distance routes.
Kirk voted against the Emergency Supplemental for Sept.2007
Kirk continues to votes against HUD housing assistance to Native Hawaiians and against DC representation in Congress.
Although Kirk voted for final passage of the Gulf Coast Hurricane
Housing Recovery Act of 2007, he also voted for amendments to
only replace the number of public housing units occupied pre-Katrina
rather than replacing all pre-Katrina public housing units, against
extending FEMA housing assistance for evacuees of Hurricanes
Katrina, Rita, and Wilma until December 31, 2007, and not to authorize
funds for eligible families to continue receiving voucher assistance
after the termination of the Disaster Voucher Program.
Kirk voted for the Whistleblower Protection Act, tho that was after several procedure moves aimed at preventing the bill from coming to the floor and voting against including the example of preventing a federal scientist or grantee from publishing or presenting their research regarding global warming.
Kirk voted pro Corporation by first voting to recommit and then against the Employee Free Choice Act. Why not permit workers the right to form unions by simple signup?
After voting for 3 amendments to weaken the act, and a motion to recommit, Kirk voted for an act to strengthen Foreign Investment security and transparency.
Kirk voted against deploying an additional 20,000 troops in Iraq - after he voted procedurally not to discuss it?
It appears Mark Kirk's indecision about voting continues in 2007. Is he a moderate or a go-along Conservative Republican? A leader or is he being dragged along with a Progressive agenda? Why else vote against the development of biofuels and Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel fuel before voting with the Democrats for it on the final vote?
Once again(actually 6 more times again) Mark Kirk (R-Il-10) voted with the Republican minority against the Democratic majority in an attempt to prevent a vote on final passage of continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2007. When the resolution did finally come to a final vote, Kirk switched and voted with the Democratic majority.
In each case(5-21) ,except Stem Cell Research, Mark Kirk (R-Il-10) voted with the Republican minority against the Democratic majority.
In addition, Mark Kirk voted to table the bill allowing negotiation to provide lower prescription drug prices for seniors, before skipping a vote on final passage. His vote and the vote of other Republicans like him demonstrates the continuing power of the pharmaceutical lobby in Congress. Perhaps it's time to let Mr. Kirk know he is out of step with the thinking of people in the 10th Congressional district of Illinois.
Following suit on College Loan Relief, Mark Kirk voted with the Republican minority to table the bill cutting interest rates on College loans by 50%, before voting yea on final passage.
Similarly on ending billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Oil and investing in alternative energy research, Kirk three times voted with the Republican minority to kill the bill, before voting yea on final passage. Suggesting that, if the Republicans were still in the majority, Kirk would have voted to kill each of these bills. Instead, he voted for final passage - redefining a principled moderate position - first you vote against, then you vote for!
"Bully for the Democrats...They did what we didn't have the guts to do when it matters."
- Republican Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), January 5, 2007
Nancy Pelosi:
That is what one of my Republican colleagues had to say about the first act of the Democratic majority, clamping down on corruption, lobbying, and earmarks.
His sentiment was echoed in editorial pages across the country, along with many Republicans and millions of Americans, who are fully awakening to the optimism and possibility of a new direction in our government.
After endless foot-dragging, watering down, and turning of blind eyes in the 109th Congress on ethics, the first steps were taken to restore the public trust before the first legislative hour of the 110th Congress.
The two and a half years that Republicans spent ignoring most of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations came to an end with the passage of H.R. 1, as the Democratic majority set dozens of changes in motion for a comprehensive, effective, practical defense of our nation by passing the 9/11 Commission recommendations.
After a decade of Republican inaction, hard-working Americans got the raise they deserve when we voted for H.R. 2, increasing the minimum wage. No longer will a day's work barely pay for a tank of gas, nor a week's work barely pay for a child's check-up at the doctor. All who work a 40-hour week will now have a fairer shot at building a life and joining in our nation's prosperity.
We gave voice to the hopes of millions of Americans and their families who suffer the brunt of humanity's worst afflictions by passing expanded stem cell research with H.R. 3. President Bush will be challenged to join us in supporting this hope, and he will know that we cast our votes in support of the majority of the American people who will not give up. The potential for stem cell therapies to cure diseases and alleviate human suffering is enormous, and must be unlocked.
We passed H.R. 4 to require Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices on behalf of the American people. In doing so, Medicare Part D will begin to shift from a program that tightens the stranglehold of big drug companies to a program that gives desperately needed relief to our nation's seniors. In this vote, we put government back to work for the American people, not the special interests.
As we honored Martin Luther King's birthday this week, we carried his spirit of hope and opportunity, passing legislation to cut interest rates on student loans with H.R. 5 and eliminated subsidies for Big Oil with H.R. 6, investing the savings in renewable energy, leading our nation toward a brighter future, unbridled by dependence on foreign oil.
More than 40 years ago, Martin Luther King came to Washington to say, 'We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off....Now is the time to make justice a reality for all God's children.' Nowhere is the need to heed the fierce urgency of now greater than in Iraq.
As President Bush called for an escalation of the war, I made my position clear both in a joint letter with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to the President, and in an interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS' "Face the Nation": no escalation. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. The American people have spoken on this issue, and so too have President Bush's own generals. In November the American people sent a resounding message that they want a new direction in Iraq, not more of the same. In December, General Abizaid testified before the Senate that in his conversations with General Dempsey and with General Casey, they believe that adding more troops will not improve the situation.
The House voted this evening to rescind $14 billion worth of tax breaks and subsidies for oil drillers and channel the money into a fund that would finance renewable energy projects and new technologies for conserving energy.
Despite opposition from the oil industry and the Bush administration, which contended that the bill would unfairly single out oil companies for higher taxes and could increase the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, the measure passed, 264 to 163, with overwhelming support from Democrats and a considerable number of Republicans as well. But the measure may face a tougher time in the Senate, where the Democrats’ margin is much narrower.
The bill would rescind $7.6 billion worth of tax breaks for oil drillers that the Republican-led Congress had passed in 2004 and 2005, and it would raise another $6.3 billion in royalties from companies that pump oil and gas in publicly owned waters of the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
One key provision is aimed at correcting errors in offshore drilling leases signed by the Interior Department in the late 1990s that would allow oil companies to escape billions of dollars in royalties over the next decade. The provision, hotly opposed by the White House as well as the oil industry, would punish companies that refuse to change their leases by imposing a new “conservation fee” on each barrel they produce or by barring them from acquiring additional leases.
Big Oil is hitting American taxpayers in three ways, said Representative Nick V. Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the House Resources Committee. They are hitting them at the pump. They are hitting them at the Treasury, through the tax code. And they are hitting them through royalty holidays.
The oil vote marks the completion of a first wave of measures that House Democratic leaders wanted to pass in their first 100 hours of legislative activity after taking control of Congress.
Senate Democrats are moving more cautiously, but they have made it clear that they support most of the provisions and predicted that most would pass the Senate in one form or another.
As promised, the Democratically controlled Congress voted to cut the interest rate on selected student loans yesterday:
AP -- The House legislation, passed 356-71, would slice rates on the subsidized loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent in stages over five years at a cost to taxpayers of $6 billion. About 5.5 million students get the loans each year. ... Democrats conceded Congress needs to do more to make college more affordable. But they said reducing student loan interest rates was a significant step toward tuition relief.
The new Bill drew criticism from several Republicans, including Tom Price (R-Ga) who called it a "Bait and switch." An odd reaction -- especially in light of the fact that the GOP controlled Congress voted in June of 2006 to raise the interest rate on one of the most popular student loans, called Stafford Loans, from 5.3 percent to 6.8 percent. Yesterday's move reverses that change for the subsidized portion of certain student loans, potentially saving future, middle-income borrowers a ton of money:
LSU: The Daily Reveille -- This is not a small loan that affects a small percentage of the population. This is one of the nation's most utilized student aid programs. The analysis also estimates that the cut in interest rates, upon taking full effect in 2011, will result in a 14.5 percent decrease in the amount students would have to repay in a standard 10-year repayment plan, saving the student $4,000 by the end of repayment. This would undoubtedly make college a little more affordable for thousands of families.
IL-10: Mark Kirk Tries to Hide His Big Pharma Connections
Now that he has been saddled with minority status in the House, it will be interesting to see how Mark Kirk tries to hide his conservative bent with his moderate label. My efforts over the next two years will be dedicated to exposing his real voting record and build a case for change in 2008...and so it begins with his vote on the bill requiring the government to negotiate better prices with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of the users of Medicare.
Mark Kirk's week started out with unsurprising moderate votes of "yea" on bills to enact the 9/11 Commission recommendations (HR 1), increase the minimum wage (HR 2), and remove restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research (HR 3). Then came his vote on the Medicare Bill (HR 4), or should I say non-vote. Mark Kirk failed to vote on this legislation, even though he had the cover of the inevitable passage of the bill. Even Kirk's website has a dedicated paragraph to the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit that he supported in the 108th Congress (this is important to note, since the congressman rarely highlights national issues on his website). So why would he not vote on this legislation?
Well, IL-10 is home to the headquarters of Abbott Labs and Baxter Healthcare. A quick perusal of Kirk's FEC filings for his fundraising for the last election cycle reveals contributions from Abbott's PAC of $10,000, Baxter - $9,000, Caremark (another IL 10 company) $8,000, AMGEN $5,000, and SmithKlineGlaxo $1,000. Individual contributions include $4,200 from Abbott CEO Miles White and $2,000 from Baxter CEO Robert Parkinson. Now his non-vote becomes a little more clear. Mark Kirk wants to keep his moderate credentials, but can't vote for HR4 because it will upset his Big Pharma connections. So even though his vote would not change the outcome of the bill, he is trying to play both sides of the fence by not voting - staying off record. Fortunately, his FEC filings tell the real story.
As an aside, let's take the two minutes to visit the hypocrisy of the GOP stance on this bill. The GOP, long time defender of free markets and deregulation, believes that it is necessary to interfere with the free market and regulate the government by prohibiting it from using its market power to negotiate better terms for the drugs medicare pays for. If the government was a corporation, its shareholders (taxpayers) would demand an efficient use of its assets (tax dollars). This prohibition is about as un-republican as you can get, but nobody seems to call them on it. Ahh, the hypocrisy.
WASHINGTON - The Democratic-controlled House Thursday passed a bill bolstering embryonic stem cell research that advocates say shows promise for numerous medical cures.
But the 253-174 vote fell short of the two-thirds margin required to overturn President Bush's promised veto, despite gains made by supporters in the November elections. Bush vetoed identical legislation last year and the White House on Thursday promised he would veto it again.
Rep. Mark Kirk (R- IL-10) voted against the motion to recommit the bill, as well as, for final passage.
The White House said the bill - the third bill of the Democrats' first 100 hours agenda to pass the House - "would use federal taxpayer dollars to support and encourage the destruction of human life for research."
At stake was whether research on cells taken from human embryos - considered by scientists to be the most promising approach to developing potential treatments or cures for dozens of diseases - should be underwritten with taxpayer funds.
The debate raises passions because the research typically involves the destruction of frozen embryos created for in vitro fertilization. It draws fierce opposition from anti-abortion lawmakers and like-minded constituents who believe their taxes should not fund such research. Proponents of the research said it is done on embryos that would otherwise be discarded from fertility clinics anyway.
Democrats Keep Their Word - U.S. House passes H.R. 2 (Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007)
H.R. 2 was introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) on January 5, 2007. A total of 214 Democrats and 7 Republicans co-sponsored (?) the bill. Pursuant to the rules set forward in H.Res. 6, the original House Rules package, the bill skipped the committee process and headed right to the floor for consideration. At 10:39 A.M. on January 10, 2007, the House proceeded with three hours of debate. Upon conclusion of the debate, the House postponed consideration of the bill for a lunch adjournment. When debate restarted at about 4 P.M., a motion was introduced by the Republican caucus to table the bill and recommit it to the House Committee on Education and Labor. That motion failed by a vote of 287-144. Mark Kirk (R- IL - 10) voted with the Republican causus to table the Fair Minimum Wage Act, before switching his vote to support the bill on the final vote. A final vote was called, and the bill was passed 315-116.
Legislative Summary
Currently, the federal minimum wage sits at $5.15 per hour. H.R. 2 raises the federal minimum wage to $7.25 per hour over 26 months. Sixty days after the President signs the bill into law, the federal minimum wage will rise to $5.85. A year following, the federal minimum wage will rise to $6.55. A year following that, the federal minimum wage will rise to $7.25. There are twenty-one states that have their state minimum wage below this level, and will be forced to comply with the new dollar amount.
Dems Keep First Promise: Anti-Terrorism Bill Passes
What the Republican Congress couldnt accomplish in five years, the Democratic Congress took care of in yes! the first 100 hours:
House easily passes anti-terror bill
WASHINGTON (AP) Anti-terror legislation sailed through the House on Tuesday, the first in a string of measures designed to fulfill campaign promises made by Democrats last fall.
The vote was a bipartisan 299-128. Mark Kirk (R-IL-10) however, voted with the Republican caucus to recommit the resolution to enhance intelligence oversight authoity(H.RES 35) and the bill to implement the 9/11 Commission Recommendations(H.R. 1), before reversing himself and voting for final passage.
Patterned on recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, the far-reaching measure includes commitments for inspection of all cargo carried aboard passenger aircraft and on ships bound for the United States.
Some of the more interesting reactions from Republicans:
Several Republicans criticized the legislation as little more than political posturing in the early hours of a new Democratic-controlled Congress.
Yes, compared with the flag-burning amendment and getting God locked into the Pledge of Allegiance, national security certainly should take a back seat as "political posturing."
"This bill will waste billions of dollars, and possibly harm homeland security by gumming up progress already underway," said Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.
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