Al Franken's Blog, page 72
December 7, 2012
Winona Daily News: Walz, Klobuchar, Franken push to expand program
Four members of Congress’ Minnesota delegation are working together to expand the National Child Protection Training Center, with the goal of replicating its work at centers across the country.
U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken and U.S. Reps. Tim Walz and Betty McCollum introduced legislation this week to found regional centers that would train teachers, health-care and law-enforcement professionals, and day-care providers to identify, report and ultimately prevent child abuse.
“It really hit home to me that these kids are completely vulnerable, sometimes they’re babies, and we have to step in and protect them,” Klobuchar said in an interview Wednesday. Klobuchar, who served eight years as as Hennepin County’s chief prosecutor, said such training is critical to protecting victims who can’t necessarily speak for themselves.
© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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December 4, 2012
AgriNews: Franken speaks at MFU banquet
Sen. Al Franken is optimistic the farm bill will be passed in the lame duck session of Congress.
Franken spoke at the 71st annual Minnesota Farmers Union banquet on Nov. 17.
He talked of visiting farms across the state where he learns from farmers. He visited the Jostock farm in southeast Minnesota, where they raise hogs and crops and milk cows; and more recently, the Roger and Karen Strom farm near Dawson, where he met their 12-year-old grandson, Braxton, who gave the senator a farmyard tour by tractor.
“I’ve met so many wonderful people of all ages,” Franken said.
He said it’s important to help beginning farmers, like the Strom’s grandson, which can be accomplished through the farm bill.
Franken, who is not on the agriculture committee, did author legislation that is included in the Senate version of the bill. His legislation, called the Renewable Energy for America Program, would provide grants and loans to rural areas for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Blender pumps would be funded under this legislation. The program has been around for a while and is used most by Minnesota and Iowa, he said.
Franken said it’s likely that direct payments will go away in the new farm bill.
The bill passed the Senate in June and the House agriculture committee, but it was never brought up for a vote in the full Senate.
The Senate bill eliminates direct payments and cuts $23 billion over its five-year life.
Senators and House members also need to find a solution to the nation’s budget conundrum before the nation slides off the fiscal cliff or fiscal slope, as some are calling the mix of tax increases and budget cuts due to take effect Dec. 31. The cuts and tax increases are the result of a budget deal reached to avoid a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.
© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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December 3, 2012
MinnPost: Klobuchar, Franken cheer potential filibuster reform
While most of Washington is focused on the “fiscal cliff,” the Senate has been engaged in a debate this week over the function of the most notable and notorious procedural trick in the chamber’s rulebooks: the filibuster.
The filibuster allows minority party senators to block consideration of legislation unless supporters are able to secure 60 votes for passage. Republicans, with their 47 members, have used the filibuster, by Democrats’ count, more than 300 times since Democrats took back control of the chamber in 2007, to block everything from legislation introduced by Democrats to White House judicial appointments.
The filibuster has become such a thorn in Democrats’ sides that for the first time, Majority Leader Harry Reid has said it’s time to change the way it works, by changing which Senate procedures are subject to the filibuster and requiring actual talking filibusters on the Senate floor — a proposal that has led to understandable opposition from Republicans.
Minnesota’s two senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, both pitched plans to reform the filibuster before the 112th Congress started back in January 2011. Their efforts largely failed then, but both said they’re heartened by Reid’s openness to changing the rule now.
“I think now it’s pretty clear that you’ve got a majority of Democrats supporting a change,” congressional scholar Norm Ornstein said. “They have to be careful that they do it right.”
Filibuster and past reform efforts
The filibuster has its roots in an early 19th century re-writing of the Senate rulebook. The change, coupled with a new rule added in the 1910s, allowed for unlimited debate on an issue unless enough senators, two-thirds at first, voted to end debate and move forward with consideration of legislation (a move that’s now called “invoking cloture”).
The filibuster was used infrequently during the next 150 or so years: it gained notoriety, perhaps, not because of its actual usage, but its appearance in the 1939 film “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington,” in which Jimmy Stewart’s character gives an hours-long speech to hold up action on the floor of the Senate.
By the 1970s, it was used or threatened with enough regularity that a group of senators, led by Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale, sought, successfully, to lower the threshold to invoke cloture from 67 votes to 60. That was the last meaningful change to the filibuster rule, and now Mondale says it’s time for the Senate to reform it again.
“We’ve got to get some movement in the Congress,” Mondale said in an interview. “The rule leads to a paralysis. It’s really gotten to the point where deep reforms are needed.”
© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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MinnPost: Minnesota Democrats honor Wellstones at D.C. reception
Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken and the Democratic members of the state’s U.S. House delegation hosted a reception for Paul and Sheila Wellstone in Washington on Wednesday night, highlight the couple’s energetic liberal activism and legislative accomplishments.
The Wellstones, heroes of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, died in a plane crash 10 years and one month ago. Between colorful Wellstone anecdotes and brief, friendly imitations of both Paul (from Franken) and Sheila (from Klobuchar), the senators said they’re working to preserve the Wellstones’ legacy through legislation they’ve worked on over the past several years.
Franken said he’s overseeing the implementation of a law named for Wellstone that require health insurance providers give equal coverage for mental health and substance abuse treatments as they do for physical problems.
“He was just electric, and you could see the passion, and he was never more passionate than when he was talking about access to mental health and substance abuse treatment,” Franken said.
© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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Star News: Senator Al Franken pays a visit
U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., visited an Elk River family and spoke with officials from Accurate Home Care in Otsego during a recent stop in the area.
The visit was intended as a chance for Franken to see firsthand the benefits of home health care. He is a member of the Senate Health Committee.
Mark and Julie Martindale and their children were the family Franken met. The Martindales have adopted nine children with special needs.
The senator’s state staff includes an aide assigned to central Minnesota who has a son studying physical therapy and exercise science at Concordia College-Moorhead, and the son worked as a personal care attendant (PCA) for Accurate Home Care between college terms last summer.
Accurate employs a total of about 400 RNs, LPNs and PCAs from its offices in Otsego and Elk River, and around 1,800 of those field staff agency-wide including from branches that opened in Burnsville and St. Cloud in the past year, plus offices in Peoria, Ill., and Moline, Ill., where Accurate’s services reach clients in Iowa.
The senator told the Star News that the subject of home health care was not high on his radar as his term began in 2009, but that he has grown to understand its value and the importance of preserving it as an option for households with medical needs, from children to senior citizens.
And Accurate’s clients range across those generations. They may cover their costs for the care from a variety of sources including out-of-pocket, private insurance or Medicaid (because of how they adopted their children, the Martindales are supported by state Medical Assistance), but currently home care cannot be covered by Medicare in Minnesota, said Amy Nelson, Accurate Home Care founder, president and CEO.
“We want to make sure people are taken care of, that seniors can stay in their homes if they want to, which I think saves money, rather than moving them into a nursing home,” Nelson told Franken across an agency conference table in Otsego.
Another struggle for the home care industry is that nurses generally are finding more compensation in hospital work, Nelson said. “How do we compete with hospitals so we’re not losing people?
“How do you make it a career focus?” she asked.
But also, Nelson told the senator that increasing regulations and the requirements for PCA licensure would strengthen that care.
Now, she said, a person can pay a $125 application fee and merely pass an online exam to enter the field. “We’ve got to make it harder to get into than that,” Nelson said. “We still have to preserve quality.”
She added that the nurses working in home care can become more valuable. “They’re critical thinkers,” Nelson said. “They can do everything.”
The senator said his eyes were opened further to the values of home health care by the chat in Accurate’s headquarters, and even more by what he heard and saw in the Martindale home, where he got to meet Lisa McKee, one of the youngest child Isaac Martindale’s nurses.
“My job is really a constant learning experience,” Franken told the Star News. “This was very moving today. This family is pretty amazing. I’ve not been in a home like this as a senator.”
He recognized benefits that the Martindale family’s Elijah, Maisy and Isaac are getting from the service. “You can see what a difference Lisa is making for Isaac,” Franken said. “We have to make sure our most vulnerable citizens have proper care.”
© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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November 26, 2012
WDIO: Hibbing Businesses See Benefits of ‘Weatherization’ Program
What kind of a difference can a new look make for an old building? U.S. Senator Al Franken believes quite a lot. Changes that can even translate into more jobs for the Northland.
Franken (D-MN) was in Hibbing on Monday night at the Carpet Plaza business. He’s talking about a new program that’s retro-fitting old buildings. In this case, the program will improve weatherization, something Franken said can create jobs, save energy, and cut costs.
“This is wonderful. This is a great thing. I hope it will become a model for everywhere on the Range, everywhere in Minnesota, and everywhere in the country,” Franken said.
Deb Lundin, owner of Carpet Plaza, said she’s thrilled to be part of the pilot program.
In 2011, Franken launched his Back to Work Minnesota initiative to spur retrofit projects by bringing together public and private resources to create jobs and improve buildings. Franken says the changes will help to cut costs and create jobs.
© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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November 21, 2012
Happy Thanksgiving
In our family, cooking is all about love. And I bet it’s the same in your family, too. So I love sending you these recipes each Thanksgiving season — I think it connects our families together.
You may have already tried these recipes — perhaps one is already among your family favorites. And if you haven’t, I hope you’ll try one this year.
Thanks for all the good wishes and hard work this year!
Franni Franken
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AUNT CARLA’S PUMPKIN CORNBREAD
It is impossible to just have one piece. Be sure to make it the night before so you can have some with your Thanksgiving morning coffee.
Ingredients
2 cups cornmeal
2 cups white flour
1 cup sugar
2 tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 1/4 cups pumpkin puree
1 cup milk
Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. On the first speed of a hand or standing mixer, beat together the eggs, oil, pumpkin puree, and milk.
4. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry in three batches with a rubber spatula. The batter will be smooth, and is more fluffy than liquidy.
5. Pour the batter into a 9 by 13 baking pan (or two loaf pans), and place in the middle rack of the oven.
6. Bake for 25 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick stuck in the middle of the cornbread comes out dry.
7. Let the cornbread cool for ten minutes, and then cut into pieces and serve.
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THOMASIN’S ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH
Ingredients
1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1 in. cubed chunks
3 tbs. unsalted butter, cut into small chunks, plus more for greasing the pan
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 tbs. light brown sugar
Preparation
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Grease a cookie sheet, and scatter the squash chunks on it.
3. Evenly spread out the chunks of butter among the squash, and sprinkle the cinnamon and brown sugar evenly on the squash.
4. Roast in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until the squash is tender. You can poke the squash with a cake tester, a fork, or a small knife to test.
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FRANNI’S PUREED BUTTERNUT SQUASH
Ingredients
1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 in. cubed chunks.
3 tbs. unsalted butter
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
1. Bring the butternut squash chunks to boil in a saucepan.
2. Turn the heat down to medium, and let cook until the squash is tender, approximately ten to fifteen minutes.
3. Drain the squash, and mash with a masher or a hand mixer.
4. Add the butter and salt and pepper to taste.
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AL’S WILD RICE STUFFING
It’s great alone, but Thomasin loves mixing it up with peas, mashed potatoes, and gravy.
Ingredients
1 lb. Wild rice (Mahnomen)
one stick butter
ten cloves of garlic
3 medium sized yellow onions
4 stalks of celery
2 lbs. White button mushrooms
salt to taste
Preparation
1. In a colander, rinse the wild rice.
2. Put the rice in a pot, and cover with 3 inches of water. Boil in a pot, uncovered, for about 20 to 25 minutes. If you’re using Mahnomen wild rice, it will cook more quickly than the paddy variety.
3. While the rice is boiling, slice (do not mince) the mushrooms, onions, garlic, and celery.
4. Melt the butter in a skillet, and sauté the onions, garlic, and celery until they begin to bleed a little liquid into the butter. Then add the mushrooms. The celery and onions should not be totally soft.
5. Once the rice has cooked, drain it and add to the sautéed vegetables.
6. Add salt to taste, and stuff into the turkey before roasting. The rest can be eaten as a side dish at dinner.
© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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October 18, 2012
Huffington Post: Keeping Discrimination Out of Minnesota’s Constitution
Earlier this month, Franni and I celebrated another wedding anniversary. We’ve been married for 37 years — many of them happy.
I love that joke. But I love Franni even more. Being married to her is the best thing that ever happened to me.
And I’ve never understood why we would want to deny all the joys — and the challenges — of marriage to anyone. Which is why I think any loving, committed couple — gay or straight — should be able to get married.
It really is that simple for me. But it wasn’t for my Dad.
More than four decades ago, when I called to tell him that I’d met a special girl named Franni, I warned my Dad, with a little trepidation, that she wasn’t Jewish.
“Well,” he responded, “just as long as she isn’t a guy!”
I knew he was kidding, but he was kind of kidding on the square. My Dad wasn’t closed-minded. He just grew up in a different time.
The truth is that gay and lesbian Americans have always been part of our communities. But over the course of the last generation, more and more of them have felt comfortable being truly honest about who they are. And, too slowly but very surely, it’s changing our country for the better.
George F. Will once noted that, to his daughter, finding out that a friend was gay was roughly as interesting as finding out that he or she was left-handed.
To me, it’s slightly more interesting. But I’m 61. My kids just could not care less that someone lives their life a little differently than they do. And I’m confident that my grandkids are going to grow up in a country where people who love each other can get married, no matter who they are.
In fact, when they look back at our generation, I think they’re going to wonder why this was ever such a big deal. They’re going to wonder why people spent so much time, energy, and money fighting for constitutional amendments to limit the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. And they’re definitely going to wonder how on earth so many of those amendments got passed.
I want them to remember us not as the last generation to attack our fellow citizens’ individual and religious freedoms, but rather as the first one to defend the right to marry — for everyone. And, as a Minnesotan, I want future generations to remember my state not as the latest to pass an anti-marriage amendment to its constitution, but rather as the first to defeat such a hurtful measure.
That’s what’s at stake this November as Minnesota prepares to go to the polls. National anti-gay groups are spending a lot of money trying to get this divisive amendment passed. Our side is countering with a grassroots effort — one that includes Democrats and Republicans, labor and business groups, civil rights organizations and hundreds of religious communities — to defeat it.
© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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June 19, 2012
Pioneer Press: Al Franken: Speed up medical-device approval process to save lives
Bridget Cisneros’ parents thought she was a healthy baby girl when she was born in 2007. However, doctors soon discovered a hole in her tiny heart, and at a very young age Bridget faced risky and complex open-heart surgery.
Fortunately, for Bridget and her family there was another option. Skilled doctors at the University of Minnesota’s Amplatz Children’s Hospital were able to repair her problem by implanting a medical device, a much-less-invasive procedure that allowed her to avoid the traumatic surgery and lead a normal life with her family in Mendota Heights.
Her story illustrates how cutting-edge medical devices — many produced right here in Minnesota — are saving millions of lives across the country and around the world. In fact, Minnesota’s 400 medical device companies provide more than 30,000 good-paying jobs, and our state is home to more medical-device jobs per capita than any other state.
That’s why the medical device legislation that recently passed the Senate — and would unleash the innovation that drives this important industry — is critically important not only to patients like Bridget, but also to Minnesota’s economic well-being.
Central to this legislation are rules to make life-saving devices available to patients as quickly as possible while also ensuring they are safe for the people who use them.
For the companies in Minnesota and across the country that are developing new and innovative ways to treat medical problems, the current government-approval process to bring a device to market can be needlessly slow, frustrating, and costly. Minnesota device makers tell me that the long waits that accompany the current process not only deprive patients, but also stifle innovation at their companies and threaten jobs in our state.
This barrier to bringing a product to market, along with increasing cost pressures on device makers, threatens the vitality of this important industry. Today, many innovative Minnesota start-up companies are working to produce new life-saving devices, only to have federal red tape hurt their ability to thrive.
As a member of the Senate Health Committee, I’ve spent more than a year working on ways to make the approval process more responsive without compromising safety. In fact, the Senate-passed medical device legislation contains my provision to change how the federal agency that ensures devices are safe — the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — approaches this important task.
One of my provisions allows the FDA to tap a deeper well of expertise from the medical device industry during the approval process. Many of these devices are extremely complex and require expertise that the FDA simply may not have. By allowing the agency to more easily consult with the experts who best understand a device, we are able not only to shorten the time it takes to bring a device to market, but also to bolster support for a culture of innovation that has saved millions of lives.
A second provision I championed will require the FDA to remove guidance that could have increased overly burdensome paperwork for companies by as much as 300 percent and caused even more delays.
For Minnesota, improving the approval process has the potential to create and sustain tens of thousands of jobs, and ensure that we remain a leader in this important industry.
A third needed provision I added to the medical device bill would streamline development of devices to treat patients with rare diseases by lifting the current profit cap on what are known as “humanitarian use devices.” Eliminating this cap will make it easier for companies to develop treatments for people with rare conditions, and in turn make those treatments more accessible to patients who urgently need them.
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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June 14, 2012
U.S. News and World Report: Significant Student Debt Reforms Quietly Take Flight
Once again, much of the press attention last week focused on the political posturing around the pending doubling of subsidized Stafford loan interest rates. President Obama flew off to address students in Las Vegas, telling them in part that “the No. 1 thing Congress should do for you is to stop interest rates on student loans from going up.”
That was followed by a Twitter chat on student loan interest rates and Income-Based Repayment. Meanwhile, a seemingly endless series of proposals and counterproposals continued to make the short but acrimonious flight between the House and Senate.
Unfortunately, as we wrote a few weeks ago, this resulted in more important systemic issues flying under the radar. So, hop on board the Student Loan Ranger Airborne Express and take a quick tour of the student debt landscape here in D.C.
We’ll start our trip with a flyby of the White House. The big news here is that the administration is finally working to increase enrollment in Income-Based Repayment (IBR) and the upcoming Pay As You Earn repayment plans.
Only a tiny percentage of the people who could greatly benefit from IBR are enrolled in it, in part because the complexity of the IBR application process bars many borrowers from completing their enrollment. (Check out the Department of Education’s IBR calculator to see if you are eligible and if it would reduce your monthly student loan payments.)
Currently, applying for IBR involves first requesting the plan from loan servicers, then collecting and submitting the required documents. To simplify this, the White House has issued a Presidential Memorandum directing the Secretary of Education to create, by September 12, 2012, an online IBR application process that will allow borrowers to directly import their Internal Revenue Service data and complete their application in a single sitting, directly through the Department of Education. This is a great step forward.
In addition, Federal Direct student loan servicers will be required to alert borrowers that IBR is a repayment option before they leave school and upon entering repayment. And within a year, the Department of Education has to create a model exit counseling module for schools that will help students understand and pick the best repayment plan for them.
The memorandum also directs the Secretary to create “integrated online and mobile resources for students and former students to use in learning about Federal student aid” by July 15, 2012. At least as envisioned, this tool would explain the advantages of IBR and Pay As You Earn, improve borrowers understanding of how their student debt impacts them financially, and link to their individual federal loan data to help them determine their best options for repayment. This seems like an ambitious project and a short timeline, but we are eager to see it in practice. We’ll let you know if there are any opportunities to provide feedback during or after its creation.
Next, on to the U.S. Senate, where Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) recently introduced the Understanding the True Cost of College Act. The bill attacks the monster of student debt with transparency. It would help prospective students understand the true cost of college by requiring the creation of a uniform financial aid award letter using standardized financial aid terms.
It would also establish basic minimums of information that must be included in the letter including: the costs of tuition, fees, room and board, books and supplies, transportation and miscellaneous personal expenses; the amount of financial aid that the student does not have to repay, (such as scholarships and grants); and the net amount the student will have to pay.
Institutions where more than 30 percent of the enrolled students borrow loans to pay for their education would have to reveal their most recent cohort default rate compared to the national average. And all institutions would have to disclose that federal student loans offer generally more favorable terms and beneficial repayment options than private loans.
Ten college presidents have already volunteered to provide a “shopping sheet” in the financial aid packages they send to incoming students starting during the 2013-2014 academic year. The shopping sheets will state the cost of a year of classes, the student’s net cost after grants and scholarships, financial aid options to pay that cost, the estimated monthly payments for federal loans, and information about the colleges’ retention, graduation, and default rates. While we still support Franken’s mandatory legislation, we’re glad to see these college presidents voluntarily doing the right thing.
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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