Capitol View: February 3, 2009 Archive

Paper cuts or rotten sandwiches?

Posted at 10:16 AM on February 3, 2009 by Tom Scheck (2 Comments)

The Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing on Gov. Pawlenty's budget proposal and it's providing interesting comments from lawmakers. DFL Sen. Steve Murphy is working pretty hard to offer a few analogies of Pawlenty's budget. Here are two:

Do you want to die of a bloody hatchet or a million paper cuts?

It's a rotten sandwich that everyone has to take a bite of.

Vote now! Which is better?

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Singing from a different choir sheet.

Posted at 10:28 AM on February 3, 2009 by Tom Scheck

Gov. Pawlenty has been speaking mostly to business groups since he released his budget proposal last week. Pawlenty usually gets amped up reminding the audience how Minnesota's tax climate is making the state unattractive to businesses and job creation.

He usually poses a few rhetorical questions to the crowd. But one business leader from the Burnsville Chamber was off message when he answered a few of Pawlenty's questions.

Listen

Down goes Daschle

Posted at 11:53 AM on February 3, 2009 by Tom Scheck

WASHINGTON (AP) - Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary.

That's according to a joint White House statement from President Barack Obama and his former nominee.

Obama said Tuesday he accepted the withdrawal "with sadness and regret."

Daschle has been battling for his nomination since it was disclosed he failed to pay more than $120,000 in taxes.

He said he's withdrawing because he's not a leader who has the full faith of Congress and will be a distraction.

Update: Some Republicans use an old Daschle campaign commercial against him.

Using Pawlenty's words against him

Posted at 12:02 PM on February 3, 2009 by Tom Scheck (3 Comments)

DFL lawmakers are distributing a recent column written by Gov. Pawlenty that criticized the federal government for driving up the federal deficit. One lawmaker said the column is timely since Pawlenty's budget plan proposed borrowing $1 billion through the sale of state bonds. He would use future revenue from the state's tobacco lawsuit to pay off the debt (read about the plan here).

In particular, lawmakers pointed to this portion of Pawlenty's column:

But it all starts by putting first things first. A cornerstone of the Republican Party must be fiscal responsibility - living within our means like most Americans do. Wall Street and the federal government chronically disregard this principle and have substantially contributed to our current economic mess.

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Americans don't need a Nobel Prize winner to understand we can't solve a crisis caused by the reckless issuance of debt by then recklessly issuing even more debt.

Lawmakers will raise this column during a hearing on the issue this afternoon.

DFLers are raising these questions even though they have not proposed their own budget solutions yet.

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Three judge panel allows review of some absentee ballots

Posted at 3:29 PM on February 3, 2009 by Tom Scheck

The judges in the Senate recount trial won't allow Republican Norm Coleman's request to review 11,000 rejected absentee ballots. The court will allow, however, the review of about 4,800 ballots. Coleman's campaign praised the ruling calling it "a strong step in the right direction." Here's the story.