“You watch,” Adam Brandon said. “This is the idea that’s going to change the election.”

Organizer Jebb Young addresses conservative activists at the FreedomWorks office in Washington, D.C. (Photo by David Weigel/Washington Independent).

In this room, Hecker, a lawyer and Tea Party activist, had an easy sell. His idea, fleshed out over four months, was to produce an election manifesto along the lines of the Contract with America launched by Republicans shortly before the 1994 elections, or the 1961 Sharon statement drafted by Young Americans for Freedom. First, Tea Party activists — and anyone else who was interested — would submit ideas at the ContractFromAmerica or Spiritof94 websites. Then they’d be whittled down to 50 ideas with an online vote. When he brought the draft contract to this meeting, it was down to 20 user-selected ideas. “I had four ideas,” Hecker chuckled. “None of them made it in here.”

The draft contract was a hit — at first. When FreedomWorks vice president of policy Max Pappas asked what people thought of the name, the dissent started to rumble.

“I just think if there’s anybody who has negative thoughts toward Gingrich or that group,” said Charlotte Fitzgerald, a Maryland activist, “this has associations with that. If you start with a clean slate, you can be more credible to independents.”

Hecker stepped up to explain himself. “My reason for ‘contract’ — maybe it’s just the attorney in me — is that I like the idea that it’s binding. With the Contract with America, a lot of it ended up not being enacted.”

Adam Brandon offered that the “Contract” name would make more sense to Washington politicians. “When I say ‘Contract from America,’ they know exactly what I’m talking about. When I say ‘American Manifesto,’ they say, What’s that?”

“‘American Manifesto’ sounds socialist,” sniffed Lynn Collins, a Delaware activist.

It was a friendly argument that didn’t go off the rails — within a few minutes, activists were voting on which in-progress Contract items they supported. That was business as usual at the Liberty Leadership Summit, an inaugural effort by FreedomWorks to bring together Tea Party activists from state to state to meet, share ideas, and craft an agenda. From Saturday through Monday, 63 activists gathered in the free-market group’s offices to strategize for the 2010 elections, participate in workshops like titles like “What You Can and Can’t Say: How to Stay Out of Jail This Year,” and break occasionally for pizza or Chinese food.

Despite the high level of the discussion — the Contract draft was marked “confidential,” and activists openly debated which incumbents they were ready to challenge in 2010 — FreedomWorks invited reporters inside to see how their movement worked. On Monday morning, the activists would sit down with reporters from The New York Times, CNN and other media outlets to explain who they were and what they were doing. After a year of liberal pundits bashing FreedomWorks as an “astroturf” group and attacking the credibility of Tea Party activists for working with it, the group’s leaders have stopped caring about MSNBC or liberal bloggers attacking them as a force behind a popular anti-government movement.

“We’re the shadowy roots!” laughed Brandon. “What I always tell people is that we’re a service center. There’s only 18 of us. Our model is that we’re going to help you and your network.”

The Liberty Leadership Summit was a perfect demonstration of how FreedomWorks amplifies and aids the work that Tea Party activists already want to do. On their way into the offices for Sunday’s meeting, activists grabbed copies of the latest Cook Political Report rankings of House and Senate races, copies of G. Edward Griffin’s seminal anti-Federal Reserve tome “The Creature from Jekyl Island,” and copies of a memo from Pappas laying out the “fiscal policy outlook” of the coming year. That memo laid out the cases against the Democratic agenda on issues ranging from energy to financial regulation, warning activists against the majority party’s proposals to answer voters’ concerns.

“Bush’s ‘Wall Street Bailout’ was the spark that lit the Tea Party grassfire,” wrote Pappas in a section on financial regulation, “and the Obama administration has so far been successful in continuing to increase the ties between Wall Street and Washington while at the same time demonizing bankers for political gain. This presents a big opportunity for the right to throw off the image of being owned by business interests when what we really support are free markets.”

Some Tea Party activists at the meeting, like Fitzgerald, blanched at the thought of their agenda matching up with the Republican agenda. There was audible grumbling when Hecker announced that Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions was on board with the Contract from America as soon as it was ready to launch — Hecker mollified that by explaining that the group was not “tied” to Gingrich. When Florida activist Robin Stublen worried that Republicans might try and beat Tea Party activists to the punch with their own Contract, Brandon told him not to worry.

“They don’t have the credibility to do that,” Brandon said.

At the same time, in the wake of Scott Brown’s upset victory in the Massachusetts special election — a victory that came after Democrats tried and failed to negatively tie Brown to Tea Parties — activists were thrilled at the prospects of taking down long-serving incumbents. Sketching out the primary and general election calender for 2010, activists speculated that the Florida seat of retiring Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., could be up for grabs, along with the Senate seats held by Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and House seats held by Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., and Rep. Michael Mahon, D-N.Y. Every Democratic committee chairman, they argued, should be looked at for a challenge. According to Virginia activist Lisa Miller, former Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., was talking to Tea Party activists about challenging Perriello, the man who beat him.

When all of this was boiled down, the activists came up with three goals. The first: “No tax & spend incumbent goes unchallenged.” The second: “Take over the Republican Party,” which meant scouting out “strategic opportunities to put fiscal conservatives in the House and Senate.” The third: “Fiscal conservatives will take back the House and Senate.”

If the short debate over the Contract from America did anything, it demonstrated that the Tea Party vision of “fiscal conservatism” is one that Republicans are primed to run on. Asked to vote whether the first batch of possible Contract items were in their “top ten” or “bottom ten,” the activists heavily favored items that promised more government transparency (putting every bill online for seven days before votes) and lower taxes (making the Bush tax cuts permanent and replacing the tax code with one “no longer than 4,543 words — the length of the original Constitution). The transparency item, in particular, sounded like a no-brainer.

“I thought we voted for Obama to do that!” said Everett Wilkinson, a Florida activist.

The less popular items were ones that smacked of federal government intervention in the economy. The group voted down a tight term limits rule, a “Committee on Constitutional Authority” that would rule on whether bills passed muster, and waivers from the EPA “in order to allow states flexibility in establishing environmental priorities.” That prompted activists to argue that they should simply support abolishing the EPA. After no one supported a “corporate welfare commission” to scour wasteful spending, Pennsylvania activist John Stahl suggested that the movement campaign against corporate welfare altogether. And Stahl worried that the Contract was missing a major action item.

“There are assaults underway by the Obama administration, and others, on our Constitutional right to vote,” said Stahl. He rattled off examples — the motor voter law, giving the vote to “anybody who’s on the dole,” amnesty to undocumented immigrants — and argued that it needed to become an issue or there would be “a lot of disappointed people out there.”

“That’s a good point,” said Hecker. “One of the ideas that’s not in this, that was on the site, is an ID for voting.”

By the end of the meeting, Tea Party activists had a handle on the issues they’d demand answers on when politicians got fully into gear. And they’d started to determine how the Tea Parties of 2010 would not merely repeat the ones that broke out in 2009. Arkansas activists, said organizer Jebb Young, would hold a rally on the one-year anniversary of the day Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) called protesters “un-American.” They’d meet and greet legislators when they showed up to the next session. After he described ways for Tea Party activists to show their political heft, New York activist Tom Borrelli argued that the movement needed to pick one major corporation and start a boycott of its products. The dozens of Tea Party activists scribbled down notes.

“I think the people that you see here are going to change the direction of the country this year,” said Brendan Steinhauser, FreedomWorks’ director of federal and state campaigns.

David Weigel covers the conservative movement for The Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

For the groups that provide services to the state’s most vulnerable populations — from those with disabilities to those most affected by the economic downturn — the hard reality is setting in. Without real leadership in Des Moines more cuts could be inevitable and services could be at risk.

“Historically we have been able to get by with putting our finger in the dike,” explained Dale Todd, a Cedar Rapids resident who serves as chairman of the Iowa Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Developmental Disabilities and Brain Injury Commission. “We’ve seen in the last year that when we plug one hole, another piece pops out. It is becoming apparent to me that we are going to need real leadership to make change happen.

“The problems [emerging now] have been out there, but they are becoming more visible,” he continued. “They’ve always been out there, but now it has gotten to the point that you can’t hide them anymore. It’s obvious that things are happening, and that social services for those with disabilities or those in need of assistance are taking some hits — hits that we really can’t afford because we have a moral and ethical obligation as Iowans to make sure that we do the best we can to help the folks that need help the most.”

Organized groups like the commission Todd leads attempt to speak on behalf of and advocate for safety net policies for segments of society not in a position to hire lobbyists or personally rally at the statehouse.

“One of the problems, at least in my eyes, is that when it comes to mental health issues there really seems to be no unified voice that can speak to the degree that other special interest groups speak,” he said. “I’m the father of a kid with a disability and, I’ll be honest, when we meet as a group — those folks that provide care for someone with special needs or those who are coping with mental illness — there simply isn’t a lot of political clout in that room when you compare it to a room filled with lobbyists for the insurance companies or other special interest groups.”

Lutheran Services in Iowa is one of the state’s largest nonprofit human service agencies that provides preventative care, crisis intervention, education and outreach to tens of thousands of Iowans. According to Amy Juhnke, director of marketing communications, the organization’s total revenue and support stream was $34.4 million prior to budget cuts mandated by Gov. Chet Culver. More than 90 percent of the money it receives comes from payment for the services it provides, and roughly 8 percent is received through donations.

“I want you to know that we have amazing donors,” Juhnke said. “We have been able to, even during these economic times, increase our donations this year over last year. That’s amazing, but it is not enough to cover the reduction in payment rates. And, as we look ahead to the 2010-2011 state budget it is pretty likely that we are going to see another dip.”

Impacting the state’s most fragile

Lutheran Services, like many providers in the state, receives its payments through the Iowa Department of Human Services, an agency that is the heart of most safety net programs. Roger Munns, a department public information officer, said the department has “bent over backwards to provide the needed cuts in a way that would least impact the state’s most fragile.”

The department was able to lessen the impact of mandated cuts during this fiscal year by shifting funds, including monies earmarked for next year. Despite the fact that Iowa already has one of the lowest Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates in the nation, the department has also decided to reduce the rate it pays local providers in an attempt to keep as many Iowans as possible with health and other coverage.

The DHS, like most state agencies, elected not to fill existing employment vacancies, but still had to terminate more than 50 employees, Munns said. The agency also made other “basic” reductions, such as limited travel, and streamlined department duties and oversight.

The governor’s office also intervened and was able to offer certain programs a 50 percent backfill from the originally mandated reductions, Munns said, adding: “The legislature could decide that there is something so out of proportion that they must act to rectify the situation, but the truth is that not very many [of the cuts already made] will be visited again. What we do want to stress is that, despite the cuts, all eligible people will receive full benefits. The criteria hasn’t changed and the benefits haven’t changed. If you need help and you are eligible, you’ll receive the benefits.”

At least for now, full benefits do remain available through Lutheran Services and other providers because they are continuing to offer those services despite payment decreases. Exactly how long they can continue to operate in that fashion, or, more aptly, how long the same level of service can be provided, is one of the big unknowns these groups face.

“As far as gaps in services go, we worry about that every single day,” Juhnke said, noting that nonprofits in general and LSI in particular has become very good at filling such gaps. “But when your financial resources get slimmer and slimmer how much can you continue to do? We absolutely are worried about the children that won’t have access to certain services — and we don’t just treat the child. When we have a child in one of our residential treatment programs, for instance, it is a family approach. We are bringing those families on campus and teaching them how to deal with situations and environments. So not only will that child not be getting services, it could be the entire family.”

In order to continue to offer a full range of services, LSI has cut internal expenses, including letting go of its paid lobbying staff, a move that could have ramifications on future funding.

“We continue to have organizations like the Coalition for Children and Family Services in Iowa, but they have to make their priorities and can’t advocate on behalf of or watch over all the programs,” Juhnke said. LSI will continue to hold its once-a-year rally day at the statehouse and legislative advocacy forums at service sites throughout the state.

“We invite legislators to come in, and we try to communicate directly with local legislators,” she said. “We need all the organizations, and not just LSI to do that. … When someone isn’t talking about this, we aren’t the squeaky wheel.”

Todd agrees, and believes it will come down to “how much political muscle” the organizations can muster.

“Talking about a mental illness or taking care of someone with a behavioral health issue is a often very personal, complex and delicate,” he said. “But now more than ever, we need to be able to talk about these issues with members of our legislature and the people responsible for the decisions that impact our loved ones.”

Revenue problem

According to a December survey commissioned by nonpartisan Iowa Fiscal Partnership, six out of 10 Iowans favor using some tax and fees mix in an effort to resolve the state’s current budget crisis, with 51 percent favoring a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases. Charles Bruner, executive director of the affiliated Child & Family Policy Center, said this means that “voters understand the state budget includes both spending and revenues, and that we need to address both to meet our challenges.”

Taking a balanced approach to the budget crisis by addressing both revenue and expenditures is one that not only makes sense to Peter Fisher, research director at the Iowa Policy Project, but one that he believes can help stem the flow of revenue away from programs viewed as necessary by the majority of residents.

“One of the things that we’d like to see is the maintenance of services to people who are already hurting because of the recession — those who have lost their job and fallen into poverty,” Fisher said. “It will be difficult to to continue to serve those groups because the demands for social services and child care are going to go up as the recession drags on.”

In the past year, according to figures from the Iowa Department of Human Services, the number of residents seeking assistance through the Family Investment Program has blossomed. Of the current enrollment of roughly 17,000 Iowans, which is higher than even one year ago, most of those new to the program have never previously needed public assistance.

“We’ve had cuts two years in a row and everybody is saying that this year will be even worse,” Fisher said. “It is hard to see how we are going to get by without further cuts unless the legislature shows some willingness to do something on the revenue side in closing loopholes and cutting tax credits. I’m optimistic that they will do something to rein in that part of the budget. Hopefully that will patch some holes in other parts of the budget where the expenditure cuts might be coming, but that remains to be seen.”

Both Todd and Juhnke want to be clear that they understand the financial realities faced by the state, and that they also understand that legislators can’t appropriate what they don’t have. They are also cautiously optimistic that the inability by some groups to have a consistent presence at the statehouse won’t place them at a disadvantage during the budgeting process. Todd, specifically, says he will be asking Culver to show leadership on this issue.

“It is like a stool with four legs — organizations and commissions with similar goals, the department, the legislature and the governor’s office,” Todd said. “All of these entities need to be on the same page. Deep down inside I think that everyone wants to see that we make progress on this issue, but we have not yet reached a consensus on what progress is or how to get there. January will be an interesting month.”

Lori Cardella

In September, a video clip of school children singing a song praising President Obama became public, and conservatives became outraged. Apparently, a school teacher had some kids sing a song praising the country’s first black president for Black History Month, something many conservatives decried as “socialist indoctrination.”

The new clip, which was uploaded in November by the conservative blog Coralville Courier, features five women singing a parody of the school children’s song from last year, with lyrics that include “his teleprompter tells us lies,” “he wants one-world unity,” and “some wonder where he was born, long before he knew ACORN.”

Cardella, who also serves as the Johnson County chair for Republican Christopher Reed’s 2nd District Congressional campaign, is front row second from right in the video.

The Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering, a network of 34 farm organizations throughout the U.S., issued the report in advance of an unprecedented series of antitrust workshops co-sponsored by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Agriculture. The five workshops, which will begin in Ankeny in March and span four other states over the next year, are an opportunity for producers to speak directly to federal officials about antitrust concerns. The Iowa-based discussion will specifically focus on seeds and the few corporate giants that control that market.

According to the report, which attributes the current consolidation of the seed industry to lax antitrust enforcement and laws favorable to large corporations, 10 companies account for roughly two-thirds (65 percent) of the world’s proprietary seed for major crops. Of those 10 companies, four firms account for 50 percent of the proprietary market alone, and 43 percent of the commercial market, which includes both proprietary (branded seeds subject to intellectual property protection) and public varieties.

The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act allowed universities — for the first time — to patent inventions that result from publicly funded research projects on the theory that the law would increase innovation. With passage, industry funding of public research surged and public funding dropped dramatically. The result has been the privatization of public research … , leading to restrictions on the free exchange of basic research, less public analysis of new varieties, and diminished innovation. Though industry funding of universities may not be something to criticize on its own, these trends are troubling.

Dozens of mergers and acquisitions followed the expansion of agriculture biotechnology. … At least 200 independent  seed companies have been lost in the last 13 years alone. …

Due to the prevalence of soybean and corn in Iowa, most discussion in the state focuses on the Monsanto Co., whose genetically engineered seeds are planted on more than 80 percent of all U.S. corn acres and more than 90 percent of all U.S. soybean acres.

Monsanto's 2008 seed market share in corn and soybeans. (Source: Farmer to Farmer report, Monsanto's April 2009 supplemental toolkit for investors)

Such market dominance has left Iowa farmers holding the bag.

“[Genetically engineered] traits have spurred a rapid increase in seed prices, largely because firms have implemented a novel pricing structure through ‘technology fees’ charged on top of basic seed costs,” the report said, adding: “Prices farmers pay for seed have increased 146 percent since 1999, and 64 percent of that increase occurred in just the last three years. Prices of hybrid corn seed were more than 30 percent higher, and soybean seed about 25 percent higher, over 2008 prices.”

Monsanto and other large seed companies have argued that demand for their seed has driven the market to where it is. But critics point to anti-competitiveness clauses within agreements with seed distributors that require specific varieties of seed of its total corn seed inventory in order for the distributor to receive rebates.

By controlling the funnel of seeds to farmers, large corporations also have the luxury of pushing their latest products and making older formulas less available. In August 2009, for example, Monsanto announced that the royalty fee on its next generation Roundup Ready soybean seed would increase 42 percent in 2010 — an increase of roughly $75 per acre. It also announced that there would be a price hike on first generation Roundup Ready soybean seed to roughly $52 per acre, with anticipation that the first generation seed would eventually be phased out.

That same month, however, U.S. Department of Justice officials announced that they were investigating Monsanto for anti-trust actions. As reported by the New York Times, Monsanto has conceded that it will allow its first-generation soybeans, the first Roundup Ready crop, to go the way of generic prescription drugs and will allow farmers to continue to grow the seeds even after the patent expires in 2014. The seeds are the first widely utilized crop seed to lose patent protection, but loss of the patent itself is not likely to be enough to reduce Monsanto’s market share.

Glyphosate, a broad-spectrum herbicide, was initially patented and sold by Monsanto in the 1970s under the trade name Roundup. The seeds produced by Monsanto were specifically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide, allowing farmers to spray crops for weeds even after the crop had emerged from the ground. Although the patent for Roundup expired in 2000, the company has continued to market its brand and include the resistant trait in its seeds. In Iowa alone, the USDA estimates that 12.1 million pounds of glyphosate was applied to fields in 2006 — compared to 0.9 million in 1997.

Despite the expiration of the Roundup patent in 2000, which resulted in an initial cost reduction, farmers are now experiencing ever-inflating prices of the herbicide. Seed and chemical dealers told farmers, according to the report, that the increases — often double or triple the cost of just two years ago — are a result of demand, waning genetic production in China and a shortage of phosphorous, a key ingredient. When supply waned, Monsanto reacted by increasing the cost of its product, Roundup, by 30 percent in an effort to “ration supply.”

More troubling for Iowa and farmers throughout the U.S., however, is the fact that such wide use of glyphosate has enabled the emergence of several glyphosate-resistant weeds, and a lack of incentive or money within the herbicide industry to begin development of formulas to combat them.

Nationally, the department will distribute nearly $1.4 billion through its Continuum of Care program to help an unprecedented 6,445 programs continue to offer housing and services to homeless individuals and families. It is the first time ever, according to a press release from the department, that HUD is quickly providing renewal grants to prevent interruption in federal assistance. The department also anticipates announcement of new projects in early 2010.

“As we move into the coldest time of the year, it’s critical that no program risk running out of money to keep their doors open,” said Shaun Donovan, secretary of HUD. “These grants will make certain that those programs on the front lines of helping the homeless have the resources they need to house and serve persons who might otherwise be forced to turn to the streets.”

The Continuum of Care grants provide permanent and transitional housing to the homeless. In addition, they fund services such as job training, health care, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and child care. They are awarded competitively to local programs that meet the needs of their homeless clients.

Iowa programs receiving grants are:

Based on the Annual Homeless Assessment Report released by HUD in July 2009, nearly 1.6 million people use emergency or transitional housing programs over the course of a year, and, on any given night, roughly 664,000 people are homelesss. Of those who are homeless on any given night, 15 percent are estimated to be military veterans, about 37 percent are believed to have substance abuse addictions, and more than 25 percent are severely mentally ill.

After admitting on live television that he has “lived off the public tit” for decades as a member of congress, he attracted the attention of several satirical Web sites.

The Onion ‘reports’ that comments from Iowa’s senior senator are hurting Republican congressmen’s chances of attracting women at bars:

“Historically, Republicans have faced little opposition from willing and easily impressed single females, but Sen. Grassley’s untoward behavior poses a significant threat to the status quo,” Republican strategist Stanley Schilling said. “Whether because of his inappropriate remarks on the [dance] floor, or his stubborn unwillingness to take no for an answer, Sen. Grassley, frankly, has few real allies in either party at this point.”

Meanwhile, the blog Wonkette said, “This man was born to use the expression ‘living off the public tit’ on television at least once in his desperate, confusing life. Now he should rest in his corn fields for a bit, while we wait for the day.”

Roxanne Conlin, one of the Democrats hoping to unseat him next year, also jumped into the fray, writing on the Huffington Post that it’s “time to wean Grassley.”

The video of Grassley’s comment is below.

As tough as the upper-chamber debate promises to be, many of the thorniest conflicts will likely be re-contested when Democratic leaders in both chambers meet, probably in January, to iron out the differences between their bills. The legislative disparities revolve around such high-profile topics as the public option and coverage of abortion, but also include lesser-noticed issues, like whether to honor a White House deal with the pharmaceutical industry and how to approach the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Senate Republicans are also eyeing many of these hot-button issues, with hopes of using them to divide the Democrats in order to kill the larger bill. But with the considerable House-versus-Senate discrepancies awaiting conference negotiators, fending off opposition from Senate Republicans in the meantime could prove to be the least of the Democrats’ troubles as they attempt to pass the most consequential health-care reforms in generations.

Who Pays?

Chief among the differences between the Democrats’ bills is how each chamber has proposed to pay the considerable cost of covering tens-of-millions of uninsured Americans. The House pays the freight largely with a 5.4 percent tax on the nation’s highest earners — individuals making more than $500,000 per year, and families pulling in more than $1 million.

The Senate, on the other hand, has proposed an excise tax on the highest-cost insurance plans — those exceeding $8,500 for individual coverage and $23,000 for families. The Senate bill would also apply a 0.5 percent Medicare payroll tax to individuals earning more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000.

Liberals and labor unions have supported the House approach, arguing that an unprecedented tax on insurance plans would erode decades of work to secure comprehensive, employer-sponsored health-care coverage for workers. Conservatives, meanwhile, are warning that higher taxes on the wealthy will only exacerbate the nation’s economic troubles in the middle of an employment crisis.

Coverage vs. Care

Both the House and Senate bills rely heavily on a Medicaid expansion to cover the country’s poorest uninsured residents. The House would extend eligibility to 150 percent of the federal poverty level (net income), while Senate eligibility would expand to 133 percent of poverty (gross income).

The more significant difference, though, revolves around Medicaid reimbursement, which is so low in some states that many doctors and dentists now refuse to see Medicaid patients. The House bill recognizes the problem, bumping up Medicaid payments for primary care services to 100 percent of Medicare rates by 2012. Despite an effort to get similar language into the Senate legislation, a controversial funding proposal kept the provision out of the final bill.

The reimbursement increase doesn’t come cheap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the provision would cost $28.7 billion over the next five years and $57 billion over the next 10.

Abortion

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) lit a firestorm earlier in the month when he amended the House bill to prohibit abortion coverage under subsidized exchange plans. The Senate bill would also ban federal funding of abortions, but would allow women receiving exchange-plan subsidies to segregate their premiums and co-payments in order to access abortion services. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has already said that he’ll offer the Stupak provision on the floor, though supporters will have the difficult task of rallying 60 votes to pass the measure.

Indeed, the Stupak provision is poised to cause more havoc in the House than the Senate, with some House liberals vowing to oppose the larger bill if the language survives the conference negotiations, while Stupak and other anti-abortion Democrats are hinging their support on the provision remaining intact. Satisfying both camps for the sake of the bill’s passage will likely require some delicate wording from Democratic leaders.

Illegal Immigrants

Both chambers propose to screen exchange-plan applicants to ensure that illegal immigrants don’t receive the federal subsidies available to those living below 400 percent of poverty. The Senate bill, however, goes a giant step further, proposing to exclude illegals from purchasing even unsubsidized insurance coverage on the exchange. That provision has riled a number of lawmakers and immigration advocates, who are wondering how allowing folks to buy insurance coverage from private companies with U.S. dollars could harm the country, fiscally or otherwise.

“It makes no sense for anybody,” said Jonathan Blazer, public policy attorney with the National Immigration Law Center. “Nobody’s willing to defend it on policy grounds.”

If the Senate language emerges from the conference negotiations, it will likely lead to a showdown with House members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who early in the debate had threatened to vote against the House bill if it excluded illegal aliens from unsubsidized exchange coverage.

CHIP

Though largely unmentioned throughout the health reform debate, the House bill would terminate the Children’s Health Insurance Program at the end of 2013, shifting those kids into Medicaid or private plans on the exchange. House leaders — who had championed CHIP for the past 12 years — say their proposal will expand coverage by getting kids and parents under the same plan.

But some children’s health-care advocates have raised alarms over that strategy, arguing that the private plans will likely be more expensive, thereby discouraging low-income parents from getting their kids any coverage at all. And Sen. Jay Rockefeller agrees. The West Virginia Democrat — who successfully amended the Senate bill to reauthorize CHIP through 2019 — is vowing to fight to keep the program intact.

“Health care reform should improve the coverage children have,” he said, “not take their coverage away.”

Rockefeller, though, has been a lonely voice in support of preserving CHIP, leaving the ultimate fate of his amendment in question.

The Big Deal with Big Pharma

In June, Democratic leaders in the White House and Senate caused a stir when they announced a deal with the pharmaceutical lobby. Under that bargain, the drug companies promised $80 billion over the next decade to close Medicare’s drug-coverage gap (partially) if the lawmakers agreed to oppose efforts to empower states to negotiate drug prices for residents enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid. The Senate bill keeps that agreement intact, with Finance Committee members shooting down an amendment allowing such price haggling for the sake of closing Medicare’s donut hole altogether.

House Democrats, on the other hand, have said all along that they weren’t a part of the discussions with the drug makers, and they don’t feel bound to any deal they never agreed to. As evidence, the House bill allows states to negotiate drug prices on behalf of their lowest-income seniors — a provision the CBO estimates would save more than $42 billion over the next decade.

The Public Option

At the heart of the debate over health-care reform this year has been the public option — a strategy, popular among liberals and consumer advocates, to create a public, non-profit insurance plan to compete with private companies. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) surprised many political observers last month when he proposed to create such state-based plans in the bill he weaved together from the different proposals passed by the Finance and health committees. Reid’s bill would empower the plans’ administrators to haggle directly with doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers over reimbursement rates, but it would also leave states the option not to participate.

The House bill is similar, but creates a national insurance option rather than numerous state-based plans. Additionally, the House bill doesn’t include the state opt-out language.

Unlike the other topics mentioned here, the toughest fight over the public option seems destined to occur on the Senate floor, rather than in conference. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has repeatedly vowed to filibuster any bill that includes a public plan, whether it’s opt-out, opt-in, trigger-based, or any other configuration. Meanwhile, some upper-chamber liberals — including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Roland Burris (D-Ill.) — are hinging their vote for the health reform package on the inclusion of a strong public option.

“This legislation cannot simply be a huge subsidy to private insurance companies that will get millions of new customers and be able to raise their rates as high as they want,” Sanders said in a statement last week. “I strongly suspect that there are number of senators, including myself, who would not support final passage without a strong public option.”

All of this, of course, could change. Although the House passed its health-care reform bill earlier in the month, the Senate proposal is just hitting the chamber floor today. The upper-chamber is expected to debate the measure through most of December, with hundreds of amendments likely to be offered from both sides of the aisle.

Democratic leaders hope to pass the bill out of the Senate before the holiday recess, pushing the conference negotiations to sometime in January. That 2010 is an election year won’t make those discussions any smoother.

Mike Lillis covers congress for The Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

Sholom M. Rubashkin

Rubashkin, who is the 50-year-old son of Agriprocessors founder and president A. Aaron Rubashkin, was convicted of all possible money laundering and mail, wire and bank fraud charges. He was also convicted on 15 out of 20 counts of failing to provide timely pay to livestock auctions and providers.

The verdict followed nearly a month of testimony and evidence in which the government sought to paint Rubashkin as one, if not the, mastermind in a plot to defraud creditors. The defense team, in contrast, chose to portray Rubashkin as inexperienced, naive and unprepared to serve as day-to-day manager for such a large undertaking as the kosher meatpacking plant in Postville.

Following the lengthy reading of the verdict, Rubashkin was taken into federal custody, and his defense attorney, Guy Cook, pledged to appeal. Rubashkin is expected to return to eastern Iowa next week for sentencing and a possible bail hearing pending appeal. He faces a maximum sentence of more than 1,000 years in prison for the guilty verdicts.

An early December trial has been slated for an additional 72 federal immigration-related charges against Rubashkin, and he also faces a trial in state court this spring for possible child labor law violations.

All of the charges stem back to a massive May 12, 2008 immigration raid at the Postville facility. More than 300 immigrant workers detained by federal authorities pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to identity theft within days of their apprehension, and the bulk have been deported after serving brief federal prison sentences. Some immigrant workers, however, continue to live in and around Postville and are expected to be called by the prosecution in the upcoming trial.

The road between the actual raid and the federal trial in Sioux Falls, S.D., was long and has often wound its way through traditionally uncomfortable conversations for Americans regarding immigration, civil rights, religious expression and the composition and worth of charity.

The Rubashkin family, all ultra-orthodox Jews affiliated with the Hasidic Chabad Lubavitch movement, have at times suggested that the charges against them stem not from any alleged illegal activity, but from anti-Semitism. Throughout the investigation, and especially following the initial arrest and jailing of Sholom Rubashkin, many of the Jewish religious faithful, either through their own conscience or through the prodding and help of Chabad, have defended the Rubashkins from wrongdoing and stood as character witnesses for the family’s contributions.

Both inside and outside of Jewish circles, however, the Rubashkins have drawn criticism, many believing that generosity was born of ill-gotten-gains, harvested on the back of an underpaid and often mistreated immigrant workforce. Media reports, which prompted the move of the trials from Iowa to South Dakota, have given supposed victims of child labor and sexual harassment at the Postville plant a voice.

The company known as Agriprocessors fell into bankruptcy last year, and has re-emerged as AgriStar under the new ownership of SHF Industries, a venture of Canadian businessman Hershey Friedman. Heshy Rubaskin, brother to Sholom and son of Aaron, continues to work at the reborn business.

At least six former members of plant management or the human resources department have pleaded guilty in the wake of the 2008 immigration raid:

April 13, 2009 — Elizabeth Billmeyer, 48 and the former human resources manager, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to harbor undocumented aliens for profit and one count of knowingly accepting false resident alien cards.

March 19, 2009 — Penny Ann Hanson, 41 and a former human resources employee, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make false statements on immigration documents.

Dec. 10, 2008 — Karina Pilar Freund, 29 and a former human resources employee, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of aiding and abetting a pattern or practice of hiring undocumented aliens.

Oct. 29, 2008 — Laura Althouse, 38 and a former human resources employee, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to harbor undocumented aliens and one count of aggravated identity theft.

Aug. 27, 2008 — Martin De La Rosa-Loera, 43 and a former plant supervisor, pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting the harboring of undocumented aliens.

Aug. 20, 2008 — Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, 35 and a former plant supervisor, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to hire illegal aliens and one count of aiding and abetting the hiring of illegal aliens.

Former plant operations manager Brent Beebe, 51, will soon be tried on immigration-related charges in federal court. Two additional plant managers — Hosam Amara and Zeev Levi — also face criminal charges, but have yet to be apprehended by authorities.

Terry Branstad

And for a candidate whose last political campaign took place long before the Internet age and the prevalence of the blogosphere, the reaction on the Web is proving to be a valuable lesson in 21st century politics.

The pair of meetings, which included several pastors, social conservative activists and leaders Christian organizations, initially received poor reviews from at least two of those in attendance who called the former four-term governor “a Republican version of [Democrat incumbent Chet] Culver.”

On Monday, controversial Christian radio host Steve Deace offered more details about the meetings. His sources said Branstad came across as “arrogant” and as “no threat to the [liberal] status quo at all.”

One of the most amazing exchanges came during a discussion about Branstad introducing the destructive gambling industry to our state.  During one of the meetings, Branstad tried to defend his actions by saying he had vetoed it twice previously, but he was getting booed at Hawkeye football games and 70 percent of the voters wanted it so there was nothing else he could do.

That realpolitik answer didn’t sell this audience.

“Someone then asked him what else he was willing to give in on if the public wants it,” one little birdie told me.

It didn’t take long for Iowa Democrats to get in the mix.

Conservative blogger Shane Vander Hart posted audio from the meeting he attended and Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan honed in on one exchange in particular. When asked by former Des Moines School Board member Jonathan Narcisse about whether he had a specific plan prepared on how to fix or repair state government, Branstad replied “OK, well I don’t.”

Branstad pointed the Committee on Government Spending Reforms, which he established in 1991 in response to a projected $300 million budget deficit in fiscal year 1993. The commission identified nearly $400 million in spending cuts, although both Branstad and legislators disagreed with and ultimately ignored many of the group’s recommendations.

“Now we have to go further,” he said.

Branstad proposed creating another commission made up of Republicans and Democrats, as well as representatives from the private and public sector, to look at reforming state and local government.

Kiernan said that rather than confronting Iowa’s problems, Branstad “created commissions to avoid making tough decisions.”

“Branstad’s entry into the race may excite his wealthy far-right cronies who stand to profit from a Branstad administration, but it’s not good news for anyone who cares about the state’s financial well-being,” Kiernan said.

Rubashkin, the former day-to-day executive at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, recently had his federal trial moved from Iowa to Sioux Falls, S.D. in an effort to mitigate jury tainting due to excessive media coverage. He faces a host of immigration-related and fraud charges that stem from a May 2008 immigration raid at the Agriprocessors plant. On Thursday, a half-page advertisement ran on page 5 of The Des Moines Register that was paid for by “Friends of Sholom Rubashkin” using a Brooklyn, N.Y., address. It was a move which caught the ire of federal prosecutors as well as the judge who agreed to move the trial from Iowa to South Dakota to mitigate pre-trial publicity.

A half-page ad that ran Thursday in The Des Moines Register, linked to members of the Rubashkin family, has not appeared in Sioux Falls media where the trial of Sholom Rubashkin is scheduled to begin this month.

Chief Judge Linda R. Reade, according to The Gazette, said that if such an advertisement ran in the similarly Gannett-owned Sioux Falls newspaper, that she was “going to hit the roof.”

Guy Cook, defense attorney for Rubashkin, told the court that he was not aware of the advertisement and that it didn’t stem from the council of rabbis who are providing defense funding for his client. The address used in the advertisement, however, is also used by Rite Surgical Supplies, a company that has ties to the Rubashkin family. Levi Balkany, a grandson of Agriprocessors founder A. Aaron Rubashkin and nephew of Sholom M. Rubashkin, listed himself as vice president of Rite Surgical Supplies on forms required by the Federal Elections Commission by those who make political contributions.

Levi Balkany is the son of one of Aaron Rubashkin’s daughters and Milton Balkany, a Rabbi who was charged in 2003 with misappropriation of nearly $1 million in federal grant money intended for disabled students at a Jewish school. After Milton Balkany apologized and made restitution, he did not face prosecution. Milton Balkany has also been referred to as the “Brooklyn bundler” for his ability to gather and bundle numerous campaign donations (many from Rubashkin family members) for primarily Republican candidates, in exchange for consideration of issues important for Orthodox Jewish institutions. Part of the federal deal for deferring prosecution on the grant money was that Balkany would be barred from lobbying the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, although federal prosecutors declined to elaborate on why this particular activity was of importance.

Levi Balkany is one of 16 individuals, members of the Chabad Jewish Community in Brooklyn, that were named in December 2008 to “The Committee of Concerned Anash for Pidyon Shevuyim,” a group organized to create a top-notch legal team for Sholom Rubashkin and to mount a donation and public relations campaign on his behalf.

In a press release the committee said that they want “the public to know they are the official group to assist and aid the Rubashkins, endorsed by the family” and that they have “years of experience in dealing with pidyon shevuyim (prisoner of war) cases.”

Although the committee’s efforts have been prominent in Jewish circles, the half-page ad in Iowa is one of the few times the group has sought to sway overall public sentiment regarding the case. Weekday reach of The Des Moines Register into the Sioux Falls area is roughly 3,500 households, according to a company spokesperson.

Judge Reade, citing media accounts that prohibited seating an impartial jury in the case, decided in August to move the upcoming trial from Iowa to South Dakota. At that time, the court warned prosecutors and defense attorneys about tainting the Sioux Falls media prior to the start of the trial, which is scheduled for Oct. 10.

Defense attorneys during a pretrial hearing in Cedar Rapids on Thursday argued that prosecutors had already dismissed the court’s warning by sending out press releases announcing the guilty plea of Mitchel Meltzer, a former chief financial officer at the plant, to numerous press outlets, including those in Sioux Falls. Despite the press releases not being targeted to that specific media market, Judge Reade nonetheless admonished the prosecuting team.

Reporters covering the case in Sioux Falls, according to Reade, will not be allowed any access to immediate story filing through blogs or social networking sites like twitter. Laptops and cellphones will be barred.