DCCC brings it in the 6th and 3rd.

Posted at 10:36 PM on October 21, 2008 by Tom Scheck

Here's the first DCCC ad criticizing GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann. It focuses on the financial crisis.

Meanwhile, the DCCC also goes after Erik Paulsen for voting for voting for "huge cash bonuses for his political pals" in this ad. The vote in question was related to a House Rules Committee vote that increased pay to House staff members. Here's some greater explanation from a Star Tribune story from 12/20/2003:

The Legislature enacted record spending cuts this year and the state faces another projected budget shortfall, but those economic realities didn't prevent the House Rules Committee from approving almost a half-million dollars in bonuses for House staff members earlier this month.

The bonuses amounted to $1,750 apiece for most of about 250 staff members, or well over $400,000. The House also bumped up its monthly housing allowance, for rural members staying temporarily in the Twin Cities during the session, from $1,000 to $1,100.

The largesse was approved early in December, just a few days after state Finance Department officials announced a projected budget shortfall of $185 million. Committee leaders say they awarded the bonuses because they discovered they had overestimated the costs of health-care benefits and had money left over.

Leaders of the state's public employee labor unions, who recently settled for pay freezes for many employees, strongly criticized the bonuses Friday. (House staffers aren't unionized.) So did a leader of a group of fiscal conservatives.

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