Capitol View: November 15, 2011 Archive

Congressional wealth: How the Minnesota delegation stacks up

Posted at 10:31 AM on November 15, 2011 by Catharine Richert (1 Comments)
Filed under: U.S. House, U.S. Senate

A new report by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that nearly half of all members of Congress are millionaires.

That's 249 of 530 members of the House and Senate included in CRP's study.

Here's CRP's entire list. Because lawmakers are only required to list their income and assets in ranges, it's hard to pin down exactly how much each member of Congress is worth.

So, CRP ranks lawmakers by average net worth.

By that measure, at least three members of the Minnesota delegation are part of the millionaires club, according to CRP's data.

They include:

DFL Sen. Al Franken in 62nd place with an average net worth of $8,747,525;

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann in 194th place with an average net worth of $1,783,508;

and Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack in 217th place with an average net worth of $1,391,551.

Here's how the rest of the Minnesota delegation stacks up:

296th place: DFL Sen. Amy Klobuchar with an average net worth of $724,514 (though she could also be among the Senate's millionaires if her net worth is closer to her maximum of $1,104,000).

346th place: Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen with an average net worth of $487,017.

351st place: Republican Rep. John Kline with an average net worth of $471,006.

402nd place: DFL Rep. Collin C. Peterson with an average net worth of $263,005.

410th place: DFL Rep. Tim Walz with an average net worth of $247,502.

461st place: DFL Rep. Betty McCollum with an average net worth of $88,005.

506th place: DFL Rep. Keith Ellison who carries debt and has an average net worth of negative $14,497 as a result. If his assets are on the high end, he has a maximum net worth of $18,999.

Peterson hopes farm bill can be resolved by end of the week

Posted at 3:44 PM on November 15, 2011 by Brett Neely
Filed under: U.S. House

WASHINGTON - Two weeks after a self-imposed deadline by congressional agriculture leaders to come up with $23 billion in cuts to farm programs, DFL Rep. Collin Peterson said Tuesday that he hopes an agreement can be worked out by the end of the week.

Peterson, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, has been working behind closed doors with his House and Senate counterparts on a plan that would essentially be the next five year farm bill.

In October, the quartet promised the deliver legislation by early November that could tucked into the much larger much larger deficit reduction bill currently under negotiation by the special 12 member "super committee." That legislation is must be drafted by Nov. 23.

"Certain senators have brought problems to the table," said Peterson, who said the House members involved in the talks are agreed on the bill. Peterson said the sticking point remains the commodity chapter of the bill, which covers farm payments.

As is often the case with agricultural issues, Peterson said regional differences were at the heart of the disagreement, pointing to a variety of crops most commonly found in the South.

"Cotton, rice and peanuts need a different program than the rest of the crops," said Peterson.

The framework under negotiation would bring an end to to direct payments to farmers, a system in place since the 1990s, and replace it with expanded crop insurance and a so-called "shallow loss" revenue protection program that would compensate farmers when crop prices fall by a specified amount.

That proposal has drawn fire from some House members, including DFL Rep. Keith Ellison, and environmental groups opposed to farm subsidies who say the super committee legislation should not be used as a vehicle to create new spending programs. Under the special rules created for the committee last summer, the super committee's legislation is also immune to a Senate filibuster and cannot be amended.