Category: Senate

Posted: December 3, 2013 at 7:19 am

A Moron

Although accepting federal funds to extend health coverage to the working poor would help small businesses, TEA Party Congressman Steve Daines has refused to hear the truth–even when told to him by business owners at a recent listening session.

Last week, a Billings small business owner told Daines he was concerned that Montana policies that may be discouraging his workers from keeping their jobs at a small business “listening session” set up by the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

Here’s what the owner of Valet Today, a local dry cleaning business with 27 employees, told Daines. The business hires “mostly women with high school diplomas and a few without” to do unskilled work that doesn’t pay much. The business owner told Daines that he has “lost workers who said they were earning too much to qualify for government assistance, but not enough to make it without federal assistance, the requirements of which shouldn’t discourage workers from remaining employed.”

But it doesn’t sound like Daines was listening–or else he’s too dumb to realize by refusing the Medicaid expansion for Montana, Daines’ fellow tricorn wearers in the Montana Legislature have created just such a requirement. These workers could get health care benefits–and remain on the job–if the Montana legislature had passed the Medicaid expansion. Without the expansion, they only way these workers would qualify for healthcare is if they had kids and made very little money–less than $10,000 a year for a family of three. A minimum wage worker in Montana earns about $16,000 annually.

Daines did not address the business owner’s concerns. Nor did he reconsider his own imbecilic opposition to health care for the working poor–low paid employees of small businesses. Instead Daines, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, decided to remain deaf and dumb to the concerns of small businesses and instead gave the man some of his usual mumbo-jumbo:

“Congress is actively reviewing government agencies,” Daines said.

Gee, thanks.

Posted: November 13, 2013 at 10:23 pm

Two Facts Republicans Are Hoping You Never Find Out

You can’t pick up a rock these days without encountering a misinformed mob of RWNJs repeating Fox News anger points about the Affordable Care Act. The main themes lately are cancelled junk plans and bad information about prices.

First, we go to the right-wing media frenzy around the “cancelled insurance plan” story arc. What Republicans are hoping that nobody tells you is this. Before the reforms were passed, insurance companies had been turning away about 20% of people who wanted to be insured. These were people who had pre-existing conditions, people who were considered good customers until they got sick and the bills came in, or people that the insurance companies thought would be likely to have higher cost health care needs.

So when you read in the NY Times that hundreds of thousands of people in the individual market are receiving cancellation notices– from insurance companies who had been selling plans that actually provide very little coverage mind you–remember this. The individual market is made up of 19 million people. So if hundreds of thousands lose a junk plan now, that’s about 5% of the market – not 20% who were refused, kicked, off, or denied before. Besides, new consumer protections mean that losing a bad plan no longer can means you can’t get health care. Insurers can no longer refuse to cover 20% of Americans. They can no longer refuse people who hadn’t had insurance in a while, and they can no longer kick you out if you get sick.

Then there’s the specter of the crazy astronomical rate increases, or “rate shock.” The facts don’t support this one either. You see, here in Montana, we got better rates. Prices are lower now than they were before the new health care law.

For the first time, we’re getting some competition in the market. Before the ACA, one insurance company controlled most of the market share: Blue Cross Blue Shield. Now, there are three companies, and this exchange “marketplace” competition has resulted in competitive prices. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, because companies can no longer turn people away to increase profits, they’re competing over price instead instead of what they call “risk selection”–cherry-picking the people a company bets are least likely to get sick.

Besides, in most states in the U.S. the past, there were false price standards due to the practice of male vs. female quoting, discriminatory prices based on whether you were a woman or a man, which is now illegal. Many states allowed companies to change lower prices for some (men) and increase them for others (women) so people had a false sense of what insurance actually cost.

Of course, we all know that the reason some of these myths are so pervasive is that the president has basically sat back and let the opposition frame the entire discussion about the Affordable Care Act. Doing so was a grave mistake. In politics, it doesn’t work to play “correct the record” after the fact by digging into the minutia of a complicated policy to “educate” people over to your point of view – and Obama isn’t even doing that much.

The myths won’t go away until the President stops letting everyone else define the debate. The truth won’t start to spread until people start telling their friends about the $25/month health plans they got–and of course, until the website starts working more consistently.

Posted: November 9, 2013 at 9:04 am

Congress Deciding How Much More to Punish Hungry Poor People

More than 130,000 low-income people in Montana saw a cut to assistance buying food for their families on November 1st.

Now, a group of Senators and Congressmen are working out how much more they will cut help for hungry families, just in time for the holiday season.

Please call Senator Max Baucus’s office on this issue. You can email too but it’s better if you call. He currently sits on the conference committee for the Farm Bill that is working on a “compromise” between the House’s $40 billion cut and the Senate’s $4 billion cut to SNAP – on top of the cuts implemented at the first of the month.

Posted: November 6, 2013 at 10:07 pm

The Old Man and the Senate

In a surprising and fascinating development, John Bohlinger, 77, has jumped into the U.S. Senate race. He’ll face off in the primary against the man who took his job, the current Lt. Governor John Walsh.

It’s an interesting contest. If the election were today, Bohlinger would likely win because he is known by many more people in Montana than Walsh. But Walsh has spent the last several months working the gears in Washington, DC, to get finances and get the blessing of the power brokers, as well as traveling the state making himself known. All in all, one has to expect that it is possible, if not probable, that we will see a seriously competitive race in the primary.

Bohlinger has strengths. He is a natural politician and is well liked by most everybody who meets him, including many moderate and liberal Republicans and liberal democrats too.

The dirty secret about Bohlinger is that despite his effort to make the Schweitzer administration a bipartisan affair, he is quite a liberal fellow. He was a voice for LGBT equality, for example, long before most Democrats found the courage to speak up about the issue. He sponsored and supported hate crimes legislation as a Republican, is a vocal opponent of the death penalty, and was virtually ostracized from the Republican party as a result of it. He has been known to be openly scornful of the modern Republican party, even while trying to remain technically a member of that party during the Schweitzer years.

He is pro-choice, but he has at times in the past said that he is personally against abortion, in line with his Catholic beliefs. His voting record on abortion is mixed, not pure, although on the central issue of reproductive rights he seems to be in the right place-keeping the government out of the decision altogether.

He has often called for universal health coverage, has been a supporter of the Affordable Care Act, and has championed more aide for the poor, specifically more food stamp funding. He has also voiced opposition to both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Conservatives and GOP operatives are not big fans of Bohlinger. He tried on occasion to invite himself to their annual convention, and was usually rebuffed. He was asked by John McCain to be his state campaign chairman in 2008, and served briefly in that role until Conrad Burns informed McCain that Bohlinger was a democrat at heart, and Bohlinger was then kicked out.

Being a former Republican means two things for Bohlinger: that he will have to gain some trust among skeptics in the primary, but that he could expect an enormous windfall of moderate voters in the general election. Steve Daines, having shit all over himself by stupidly voting with the Tea Party to shut down the government, is going to have a tough time getting moderate voters. He is now at 39% in the polls and is quite beatable.

Bohlinger is also not afraid to speak his mind. Today, for example, he was quoted in the Helena IR as saying that Steve Daines’s shutting down of the government is the economic equivalent to the Taliban.

And perhaps his strongest selling point is his participation in the Schweitzer administration. In effect, Bohlinger could run a campaign with similar content to what a Schweitzer Senate campaign might have consisted of. Bohlinger can describe the successes of the Schweitzer-Bohlinger administration, and then promise to bring a Schweitzer-Bohlinger mentality to Washington.

And if you are a country music fan, realize that his son is John Bohlinger III, the musician and bandleader on the show Nashville Star.

True, age is a factor. Bohlinger is 77 and would be 78 if inaugurated, and politics is definitely a young person’s game. But he is in good shape apparently, and held his announcement press conference today at a gymnasium where he works out every day.

Plus, how can anybody not love a guy who reminds them of their grandpa?

Posted: November 5, 2013 at 11:11 pm

Waging War on the Poor

Republicans will tell you they don’t hate the poor–its the “deficit” they hate. But the deficit reduction crowd is for reducing the deficit only in the screeching that passes for their rhetoric. In reality, Republican Steve Daines is pushing deep cuts to the food-stamp program or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program (SNAP) as it is now known. He’s combined these cuts new with wacky new restrictions. All of this arose from long-standing hatred within the Republican Party toward poor people and minorities, as Elizabeth Drew brilliantly writes in a recent edition of Rolling Stone.

TEA Party effigy Ronald Reagan fabricated one of Republicans’ favorite fairy tales, Drew explains. That of the

“welfare queen” driving around in a Cadillac and the “strapping young bucks” said to be dining on T-bone steaks purchased with food stamps touched a racist nerve that is more prevalent in this country than we care to admit.

Of course, besides the racial element, among the True Believers, hurting poor people is also thought to be an effective hex against TEA Party primary challengers.

Proving once and for all that the snake on a yellow background is the perfect symbol for the TEA Party is Tom Burnett, a former state legislator who has become obsessed with preventing poor people from getting enough to eat. For a peek into the serpents’ nest of irrationality that is this guy’s brain, look no further than the Bozeman Chronicle, which has published the latest round of Burnett’s lies, unsubstantiated anecdotes, and incoherent wackiness. (I’m not linking to it. Reading his nonsense would mean taking 2 minutes of your life you could never get back.)

Burnett says the world’s richest nation shouldn’t help poor with a small amount of food each month because this help costs roughly $78 billion annually. Food stamps are far from an extravagant benefit–$1.40 per person per meal. One chicken breast will cost you about $2.50.

What neither Daines nor Burnett is telling you is that food stamps only account for 2 percent of the federal budget. Meanwhile, $154 billionin special corporate welfare went out to corporations courtesy of the GOP as part of the 2012 fiscal cliff debacle.

Burnett also wants you to believe that helping poor children get something to eat costs you thousands. Another lie. In 2012, the average American taxpayer making $50,000 per year paid just $36 towards the food stamps program. Meanwhile, the average American family pays a staggering $6,000 a year in corporate welfare to big corporations.

Congress is basically an army of incoherent Tom Burnett and Steve Daines clones who make policy by conspiracy theory or astroturfed anecdotes rather than facts. Both seem enraptured by the fantasy that hordes of freeloaders are getting benefits they don’t “deserve” or have decided to become dependent on food stamps rather than get a job. As Rolling Stone reports this is typical of the TEA Party GOP these days. But the facts show otherwise.

In 1996 Congress passed severe new restrictions on the SNAP program that meant adults without kids could only receive food stamps for three months within a three-year period–unless they were working at least 20 hours a week or participating in a job-training program.

This grim rule applied no matter how hard they tried to find a job and even if they hadn’t been able to get a slot in a training program… The average income of these people is about $2,500 a year, or 22 percent of the poverty level.

But if Tom Burnett is the prince of the policy by garbage anecdote ploy, Steve Daines is the king. Like Burnett Steve Daines’ attempt to justify the cuts to needy families is based on the myth that the program is full of ”fraud and abuse.” As the data shows:

SNAP error rates declined by 57% since 2000, from 9% in FY to a record low of less than 4% in 2011.

The accuracy rate of 96% (2011) is considerably higher than other major benefit programs, for example Medicare fee-for-service (91%) or Medicare Advantage Part C (89%). ” [Source]

What’s more –”two-thirds of all SNAP payment errors are a result of caseworker error. Nearly one-fifth are underpayments,” people getting less then they need and are eligible to receive. [Source]

You’re heard the “turn around shop in town” ads that explain how $1 dollar spent in a local store is turned over and re-spent many times to help the local economy? Works the same for food stamps. Department of Agriculture data shows that for every $5 spent on food stamps, up to $9 is generated in economic activity for local communities. Even George W. Bush understood the efficiencies, economic benefits and positive economic impact of food stamps. As FactCheck.org points out, 14.7 million Americans were added to the food stamp rolls by Bush.

Of 126,000 people statewide that get a small amount of help paying for food each month in Montana, nearly half are children 55,000 of those are children. Nine thousand are seniors. That’s a lot of people who will be impacted by Steve Daines’ most recent cuts.

Posted: November 5, 2013 at 7:35 am

When Hate is not Just a ‘Virtue,’ It Makes You a Viable Candidate

The man that may become the nation’s most wackjob candidate for U.S. Senate is also the darling of Montana right-wingers.

Texas pastor and nutjob radio host David Barton, dubbed “Ted Cruz 2.0″ by Politico, when the news magazine reported this week that he was being recruited to run against TX Sen. John Cornyn, who has fallen out of favor with the TEA Party crew. Barton was brought to Montana this year as the keynote speaker for the so-called 2013 Montana “Governor’s” Prayer Breakfast. (The event is not affiliated with the state government in any way, in spite of what Judy Martz may have wished).

In case you haven’t heard of Barton, he claims that the slaughter of American Indians was justified as “a defensive war against tribes who ‘declared war on all the white guys.’ ‘We had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over until they said ‘Oh, got the point,’ Barton said, claiming that the tactics were only necessary because Indians were resisting missionaries who were trying to ‘civilize’ them.”

He also believes that demons control parts of the U.S. capitol, that schools turn kids gay, and that the Bible opposes minimum wage. He holds a slew of other hateful and wackjob things, its definitely worth reading this whole list.

So this was no mainstream event–in fact the organizers of the “Governor’s Prayer Breakfast” made a point of refusing to read a letter from Montana Governor Steve Bullock [click here for the PDF] because he said that providing health care to poor people was consistent with biblical teachings. Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich has made a similar argument for the Medicaid expansion.

Not this guy’s Bible apparently. Barton says “tolerance is a bad thing and hate is a good thing.” “We’re tolerating a lot stuff that destroys our families, that destroys our own character and we can’t tolerate that stuff. We have to get back to the point where hate is a virtue, at least certain kinds of hate.” Barton said climate change is caused not by fossil fuels, but by a curse we brought on ourselves by permitting abortion rights. Yes, because the U.S. supports allowing women to choose whether and when to have a child we “‘opened the door to the curse,’ which includes floods, tornadoes, murder and pedophilia.”

Tim Fox, now Montana’s Attorney General, served as co-chair of the event to bring Barton to Montana. Scott Mendenhall, a Republican who represented House District 77 in Jefferson County for four terms, was the events chair. The Helena IR covered the event, and controversy, at the time, but for some reason neglected to report some of Barton’s most infamous beliefs and statements.

Posted: October 30, 2013 at 7:14 am

Cowgirl Caption Contest

Can you imagine what’s going on in the world class mind of Montana Congressman Steve Daines in this important TEA Party moment, captured in this Heritage Foundation photo of Steve Daines and Ted Cruz? How should glimpse of greatness be recorded in the annals of history?

Caption contest! Entries accepted in the comments or tweet them @TheMT_Cowgirl

Posted: October 29, 2013 at 7:17 pm

GUEST POST: Steve Daines Calls Montanans Stupid

[Note: This is a guest post by independent political blogger Moorcat, who has written some recent popular posts on Cowgirl about the Affordable Care Act.]

This evening, my wife received an email from Steve Daines – our lone House of Representatives Congressman. In this email, he states he is taking a “survey” of the reactions of Montanans to the Federal ACA insurance exchange. Everything you ever wanted to know about how Steve Daines’s position on the ACA can be found in that email. For brevity, I will simply provide a link to this message posted on his official Legislative website. Continue reading →