The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

According to the McClatchy Newspapers and the Hill, there's a compromise brewing on S-CHIP.  Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch, who support S-CHIP, met with the staffs of 38 House members to add tweaks to tighten up restrictions on illegal aliens, adults and income levels. 

What's interesting is whether Randy Kuhl is one of the swing voters being courted.  According to a DCCC press release, Kuhl was one of the authors of a letter to the President urging compromise on S-CHIP.  I can't find the letter posted anywhere, so the details of the compromise Kuhl advocated are, for now, a bit of a mystery, and probably less important than the signal sent by the letter.

The Hill also reports that Kuhl is one of the members being targeted for yet another ad campaign by moveon.org.

I should change the title of this blog to "S-CHIP Diaries".  

I was able to connect with the Massa Press Conference this week.  Topics included S-CHIP, drivers licenses, Iraq and money.  

Massa began his press conference by remarking that he was glad to be in the 29th district today, given that his family (parents, brother and sister) had all been evacuated from their homes in San Diego.  They're all OK, but like the other half-million evacuees, the question is whether they'll have houses when this is over.

Massa then mentioned two issues: S-CHIP and drivers' licenses.

On S-CHIP, Massa concentrated on refuting a set of "false, slanderous Rush Limbaugh talking points." Massa said those points are "taking us back to the stone age."

The first talking point is the question of adults being convered by S-CHIP. Massa said that adults so covered are "severely developmentally disabled individuals." Massa said he sat with a number of those individuals recently in Chemung County. He recounted the example of one gentleman in his forties who had a ski accident in his twenties:

His tortured and twisted body could not function, but his brain was the intellectual equivalent of an adult. To use someone like him as a scapegoat is not just unethical and immoral, but criminal. This is not an argument about some hypothetical.

The second talking point Massa discussed was the one saying that families earning $80K per year would be eligible for S-CHIP. Massa noted that Governor Spitzer has said that a family of four earning $80K in New York City is earning a lower-middle-class wage. Moreover, "the legislature voted, in a bi-partisan manner, to request an increase". Massa noted that Governor Pataki ran ads in favor of S-CHIP, "now it is in jeopardy in New York State".

Massa called the S-CHIP vote a "telling moment" for Representative Kuhl, because

10,400 children [in the district] were voted out of the doctor's office. I think that's wrong. Randy Kuhl ran a campaign based on bringing home the pork, but the biggest piece he could bring home was denied because George Bush told him to.

Massa said he was "delighted to hear that Speaker Pelosi is going to send the bill back to the President." (Here's an article about that.)

Turning to the drivers' license imbroglio, Massa said that he doesn't agree with the governor. "Nobody thinks giving drivers' licenses to illegal aliens is a good idea." He said his main concern was that the governor is "asking county, city and state employees to violate federal law."

That said, Massa took the opportunity to get in a few licks on what he perceives as Kuhl's, and the President's, hypocrisy on the issue. He noted that Kuhl supported a guest worker program, but opposed a program that would allow those guest workers to get a drivers' license. (I asked a follow up on that - because I'm not sure that guest workers would be denied drivers' licenses since they have valid visas - but I don't think I expressed myself well, and we moved on.)

As for the President, Massa said the following:

We need to trace back to why we have this problem to begin with. Our government has had six years to secure the borders. George Bush has refused to do it with a wink and a nod. That's because he wants Tyson's Chicken to have illegal workers for sub-minimum-wage jobs, but he also wants to have the scarecrow of illegal immigrants.

I asked Massa a few questions about other issues that have been in the news recently. First, I asked for his take on Randy Kuhl's view that the Veterans' Appropriations bill is being stalled by Democrats. Massa characterized Republicans in the Senate as "obstructionist" and added, "Maybe he should walk across the Capitol and ask the Senate to pass it." Massa added that the House had passed more legislation in this session than in many previous Congresses.

I also asked Massa for his view on progress in Iraq, and the role of Blackwater. On Blackwater, Massa said, "I don't know any military officer who looks at a company like that as antying but a danger to our troops." He noted that Blackwater operates outside of military control and doesn't coordinate operations with the military. He said that he's concerned about the expansion of private armies, and though he believes there must be greater oversight, ultimately he'd like to see control of the American battlefield returned to the American military.

Massa said that Blackwater is the "end result of Dick Cheney and George Bush's culture of outsourcing" and characterized it as part of a "spiral to the bottom": Blackwater employees are "paid enormous salaries that entice our own service personnel to leave the military, creating incredible shortages, and dictating that Blackwater employees get higher wages."

On Iraq in general, Massa said that nobody is happier than he is to see fewer casualties, but he thinks the standard for progress in Iraq is whether the Iraqis are making progress towards a political solution.

We just saw Gen. Sanchez open up and tell the truth about what a failure the policies in Iraq are. Sanchez is probably one of the guys who briefed Kuhl during his 16-hour trip to Iraq. The guy who said that everything is wonderful is now saying that its failed. We're going backwards instead of forward.

Finally, I asked about the recent money numbers in the 29th. Massa said "this race has never been, nor will it ever be, about raising money." The issue is "not how much is raised, but how it is raised." The big difference, according to Massa, is that he doesn't take corporate PAC money, and Randy Kuhl continues to accept money from corporate PACs, and "recently accepted thousands of dollars from the tobacco lobby". Massa said he was returning an unsolicited corporate check today.

I was the only person on the call because of some issues coordinating it.

Reader Elmer sends the Corning Leader story [pdf] detailing Randy Kuhl's town meetings in the Corning area this weekend.  A full list is available on Kuhl's official site.

Kuhl continues active posting on his blog.  Many of his latest postings concern the speed of legislative progress in Congress.  One factor in this speed is the use of what used to be called "filibuster threats" by the Republican minority in the Senate.  Earlier this year, McClatchy covered the greatly expanded use of delaying tactics by the Republicans, pointing out that the Senate was on track for a record number of cloture votes this year.   To help understand the use of cloture, I've added cloture votes as a category of tracked votes on CongressDB.  Here's an example for a happy warrior.  By my count, cloture has been invoked 48 times so far this year, which is more than the full session (two year) number for many recent Senate sessions.

The Rothenburg Political Report has two recent columns about close House races.  The first describes the challenges facing Republicans, which include the National Republican Congressional Committee's (NRCC) lack of money, and being on the wrong side of a number of issues:

Given the GOP’s image problem, the party’s failure to accomplish much of anything during its last two years in control of Congress and the party’s role in blocking additional funds for embryonic stem-cell research, immigration and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, it will be relatively easy for Democrats to position themselves once again as the party that is most likely to bring about change.

The second Rothenburg column is about Veterans running for Congress, and mentions Eric Massa. 

Yesterday's LA Times carried a story about the consequences of opposing the Iraq War for Congressional Republicans.   Using the examples of Walter Jones (NC-3), Wayne Gilchrest (MD-1) and Senator Chuck Hagel (NE), the Times shows that Republicans who opposed the war are now faced with well-funded primary challengers and hostile criticism from the rank-and-file and conservative commentators.

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader, which front-pages [pdf] State Assemblyman Jim Bacalles' complaint that Governor Spitzer is red-lighting some earmarks (here's the jump [pdf]).   Since Massa and Spitzer are pretty closely aligned, this might cause a little heartburn in the Massa camp.

Randy Kuhl has come out strongly against mandatory speed limiters in Canada, according to Land Line, the "Business Magazine for Professional Truckers".

Charlie Rangel is having a fundraiser for Eric Massa on Monday. 

What a refreshing change to write about something other than S-CHIP.  

With all of the media attention focused on the S-CHIP veto, the actual override got slight media attention in district newspapers.  When I pulled the paper Democrat & Chronicle from my front step this morning, I found a front-page AP story that didn't even bother to report how area representatives voted.  That's consistent with their usual low-quality political coverage.  The Elmira Star-Gazette has nothing that I can find.  The Corning Leader, which I'm beginning to think is the best paper in the district, actually took a wire story and inserted a couple of graphs about how the local Congressman voted.  That's what newspapers are supposed to do with national stories that have a local tie-in.

But I shouldn't be too hard on the local papers.  The lack of coverage actually confirms what everyone knew at the start:  there was no chance that Republicans would change their vote on this measure, and the failure of the override was a foregone conclusion.   The real question is whether the Democrats' decision to delay the override vote for two weeks helped or hurt their cause.  To answer that question, I pose another: Is the stench of unresponsiveness wafting from Congressional Republicans powerful enough to offset the whiff of impotence emanating from Congressional Democrats?   Only time will tell if voters' nostrils are sensitive enough to discern a difference, or if they'll just conclude that the whole thing stinks.

A new National Public Radio/Kaiser Foundation/Harvard poll on S-CHIP has been released, and pollster.com has a summary.   The results are somewhat different from the USAToday/Gallup cited by Randy Kuhl.   When asked about the possibility of S-CHIP leading to people dropping private insurance, 65% said still favored S-CHIP expansion.  64% said they supported the veto override, and 52% said they weren't concerned about S-CHIP expansion leading to government-run health care.   35% said they would be less likely to support their Member of Congress if he or she voted to sustain the veto.

The difference in the two surveys is in the phrasing of the questions.  This shows that one poll by itself proves very little, a lesson that all of us should remember when it comes to polls in the 29th next year.  The full detail on the NPR poll is here [pdf], and the USAToday/Gallup detail is here. 

In other news, the Hornell Evening Tribune carries a money roundup today, calling the money race "neck and neck". 

Finally, my inability to punch in a 5-digit code correctly prevented me from covering the Massa press conference yesterday.

Reader Vincent writes to say that he received a call last night inviting him to participate in a Kuhl telephone town meeting.  Apparently there was a glitch, and he was disconnected.   I participated in one of the meetings earlier this year, and describe it here.

Rep. Kuhl will also participate in some physical town meetings in Allegany, Steuben and Cattaraugus counties next weekend.  The full schedule is posted on his blog.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle covers a press conference by Rochester-area faith and health groups at the Rochester Roman Catholic Diocese.  All groups were urging Randy Kuhl and Tom Reynolds to override the S-CHIP veto.

There were protests yesterday in Syracuse and Fairport.  In Syracuse, medical students rallied to encourage Kuhl and Reynolds to join with Jim Walsh in a vote to override.  In Fairport, Kuhl's office was the subject of a protest by Metro Justice, as described by Rochesterturning.

Reader Elmer sends the Corning Leader's front-page coverage [pdf] (jump [pdf]) of yesterday's Spitzer news conference in Elmira.  According to Spitzer, there are 10,000 children in the 29th who lack health insurance coverage.   WETM-TV also has the story, and the Star-Gazette has posted an expanded version of yesterday's piece.

Today's New York Times quotes Randy Kuhl in a story about Congressional Republicans' morale.   According to Kuhl, “The president has let the debate on health care down by not offering an alternative.”