“Of the 39 Democrats who voted against the bill, 33 represent districts with higher-than-average rural populations,” report Julie Ardery and Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder. “Six nay votes came from Democrats in the 20 most rural districts in the nation.”

A direct urban-rural comparison of votes within the Iowa delegation is not possible since lawmakers from the Hawkeye State split along party lines — there was no Democratic opposition.

Many of the Democratic legislators who did vote against the final reform bill voiced their concerns that provisions in the bill would have an adverse impact on the unique health care challenges facing rural America. In the build up to the weekend vote, however, several advocacy groups with ties to geographically rural areas applauded the move toward health care reform in a joint letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The groups noted certain aspects of the plan, such as the increase in Medicaid coverage to 150 percent of the poverty line and the addition of long-term care insurance programs for adults with disabilities, as key to drawing their support.

Rural experts aren’t ready to call the current health care reform bill a panacea for rural Americans, but support seems to be pulled between one camp that is willing to accept partial solutions and one that is not.

For instance, the bill does seek to stem provider drain in rural areas by offering incentives such as the National Health Service Corps, graduate medical education and other primary care initiatives. Such incentives, however, continue to be mostly tied to physicians and do not always include opportunities to increase rural workforces through support staff initiatives.

The bill also expands the 340B prescription drug discount drug program to programs that typically serve geographically rural areas, and provides new life for some Medicare programs that were slated to expire. Most importantly, the House bill restructures payments connected to the public option to allow for negotiated rates, an item that is considered key to providing a level reimbursement playing field between urban and rural providers.

Key provisions missing from the House bill, however, include incentives related to Critical Access Hospitals such as flexible bed counts, local control on identifying such facilities and a reconfiguration of stimulus monies that many rural providers felt provided an unfair advantage to urban or non-CAHs.

Perhaps the missing provision that has most angered rural advocates is a clause that would have provided for equal representation on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and the proposed health commission. Although an amendment to that effect was proposed by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) it was not included in the final bill, and the amendment was not brought up for a full vote before the final bill was passed.

Just like all other health care advocates throughout the nation, rural interests have now turned their attention toward the final Senate bill, expected to begin debate either late week or early next week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Creative Commons photo by Cosmic Smudge via Flickr)

WASHINGTON — How effectively will the U.S. House health care bill cover children? Turns out, it depends on where they live.

The $894 billion health reform bill working its way toward a House vote this week would repeal the Children’s Health Insurance Program, shifting some low-income kids into Medicaid and others into private plans that would both cost more and guarantee fewer benefits. Which program the youngsters tumble into hinges, not on need, but on the state where they live — a design some advocates call “the lottery of geography.”

Read more at The Iowa Independent’s sister site, The Washington Independent.

Christopher Reed, who narrowly won a three-way Republican primary to challenge U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin in 2008, will officially become a candidate for the U.S. House on Thursday, with a planned announcement in Ottumwa. Following the first stop, Reed also plans to visit the communities of Solon, his hometown, and Cedar Rapids, a part of the metropolitan area where he and his family currently live.

The tour, which the campaign has dubbed as “Defending our Children’s Future Tour,” will set the stage for a campaign that Reed said will focus on fiscal issues.

Christopher Reed was the only political candidate to take part in an anti-immigration rally in Postville following a massive 2008 immigration raid at a meatpacking plant. Reed, who was then a U.S. Senate candidate for Republicans, will announce his candidacy for U.S. House this week.

This appears to be a switch of tactics from his campaign against Harkin. During that race, Reed made national news for his personal attacks on Harkin, especially his proclamation that Harkin was the “Tokyo Rose of Al-Qaeda” during an October 2008 debate.

Reed, however, is not the only individual who has been mentioned as a Republican candidate for Iowa’s 2nd district.

Steve Rathje, a Cedar Rapids businessman who faced Reed for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, has also been making statements on social networking sites that seem to indicate an interest in a congressional run. Although the titles of the pages on Rathje’s website continues to reference his past U.S. Senate aspirations, the overall theme of the site now simply references Congress, leaving open which chamber he is considering.

Ottumwa ophthalmologist Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who served as the 2008 Republican nominee for the 2nd district race, has also remained active — especially in the area of health care reform. While the domain associated with her former campaign site remains active, it automatically redirects to her personal blog, Doctor’s Notes, where she writes on numerous topics that are consistent with someone who is considering a second run.  Further, it is widely anticipated that she will be making her own announcement in relation to the 2nd district in the near future, and the fact that Reed has chosen her community of Ottumwa to spark his own campaign launch does little to tamper such speculation.

Since there doesn’t appear to be any Democrats positioning themselves for a primary run against incumbent U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, it is nearly certain that the Republican chosen during the primary process will challenge the Democratic incumbent. The 2008 election ended with Loebsack claiming 57 percent of the vote and, according to the Cook Political Report, Iowa’s 2nd district is considered the state’s most solid Democratic voting block with a partisan voting index of  D+7.

Among the 21 founding members are Braley’s fellow Iowa Democrats, Rep. Leonard Boswell and Rep. Dave Loebsack.

(Boswell is also a prominent member of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, a group that isn’t exactly known for it’s populist ideology. But, in politics, it appears Iowans stick together.)

In addition to Iowa’s delegation, the caucus includes Michael Arcuri (D-NY; Peter DeFazio (D-OR); Betty Sutton (D-OH); Steve Cohen (D-TN); Joe Courney (D-CT); Keith Ellison (D-MN); Bob Filner (D-CA); Phil Hare (D-IL); Mazie Hirono (D-HI); Hank Johnson (D-GA); Steve Kagan (D-WI); Eric Massa (D-NY); Linda Sanchez (D-CA); Jan Schakowsky (D-IL); Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH); Peter Welch (D-VT); and John Yarmouth (D-KY).

When Braley first announced the group would be formed he outlined it’s core principals.

1. Fighting for working families and the middle class through the establishment of an equitable tax structure, fair wages, proper benefits, a level playing field at the negotiating table, and secure, solvent retirement plans.
2. Providing affordable, accessible, quality health care to all Americans.
3. Ensuring accessible, quality primary education for all American children, and affordable college education for all who want it.
4. Protecting consumers, so that Americans can once again have faith in the safety and effectiveness of the products they purchase.
5. Defending American competitiveness by fighting for fair trade principles.
6. Creating and retaining good-paying jobs in America.

Braley said he is forming the group in order to renew focus on the issues of the middle class and working families.

“The middle class is the economic engine of America,” Braley wrote. “Unfortunately, the middle class has seen tough economic times lately, and it’s time for a renewed emphasis on those issues that serve to strengthen the middle class and improve the lives of working families.

He then laid out the platform for the new group:

1. Fighting for working families and the middle class through the establishment of an equitable tax structure, fair wages, proper benefits, a level playing field at the negotiating table, and secure, solvent retirement plans.
2. Providing affordable, accessible, quality health care to all Americans.
3. Ensuring accessible, quality primary education for all American children, and affordable college education for all who want it.
4. Protecting consumers, so that Americans can once again have faith in the safety and effectiveness of the products they purchase.
5. Defending American competitiveness by fighting for fair trade principles.
6. Creating and retaining good-paying jobs in America.

Braley is serving his second term representing Iowa’s First District.

(h/t Open Left)

Congress voted to reauthorize the Basic Pilot in January 2002 at roughly the same time as an independent evaluation of the Basic Pilot by Temple University and Westat was completed. The report outlined several concerns, but recommended continuing the program with modifications.

In December 2003 Congress passed the Basic Pilot Program Extension and Expansion Act. This legislation expanded the Basic Pilot to all 50 states and required the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, now partnering with the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to administer the program, to submit an evaluation report to the House and Senate by June 2004. Specifically, Congress wanted to know if the problems identified in the 2002 independent evaluation had been addressed.

The report was submitted, but questions about the accuracy of the databases behind the program and the potential for employee discrimination remained. The program is due for reauthorization by Congress in November.

The Bush Administration and the Department of Homeland Security have pushed for the program to become both permanent and mandatory for all U.S. employers. When it was discovered that a high percentage of federal government agencies were not using the program, Pres. George W. Bush signed an executive order requiring them to do so as of October 2007. His latest executive order, signed in early June, is an amendment to Executive Order 12989 from 1996 and would require all federal contractors — roughly 200,000 companies — to use E-Verify. Bush’s latest executive order has drawn the ire of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a typically friendly group to the administration. In addition, Bush’s 2009 budget includes $100 million specifically for “expansion and enhancement” of the E-Verify system.

States’ reactions have been mixed. The California Immigrant Policy Center and the Service Employees International Union are both backing legislation that would block the use of federal electronic employment verification systems by California employers. Arizona, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Mississippi, Minnesota and Missouri mandate at least employers of or above a certain size use the program to verify workers. Rod Blogojevich, governor of Illinois, signed a law in September 2007 that forbid use of the program by companies in his state. The federal government is suing Illinois to overturn the law and the state has agreed to non-enforcement until the case is settled. Mississippi went one step further by enacting the Mississippi Employment Protection Act, which is the first law to make it a felony to perform work as an undocumented immigrant.

In the final days before the August 2008 recess, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 407 to 2 to approve H.R. 6633, the Employee Verification Amendment Act of 2008, that reauthorizes E-Verify/Basic Pilot for five additional years and calls for two Government Accountability Office studies on the program. The legislation, considered a bipartisan compromise, has been sent to the Senate for consideration.

The Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008 (HR 5036) encourages states to conduct verifiable elections by converting to a paper ballot system, offering emergency paper ballots, and conducting hand-counted audits. Two weeks ago, the legislation passed the House Administration Committee with unanimous and bipartisan support.

“Congressman Latham believes it is important to ensure the integrity and accuracy of our nation’s election process,” said spokesman Fritz Chaleff. “To accomplish this, he also supports the concept of providing voters with verification of their ballot choices. To that end, he applauds the State of Iowa for already addressing this by enacting legislation on April 1, which provides uniform voting technology to all 99 counties in the state that will make available voter-marked paper ballots that could be recounted by hand if necessary.”

The state legislation that Chaleff cites requires Iowa’s county auditors to replace existing touchscreen voting machines with systems that use a paper ballot. The federal legislation that Latham and Congressman Steve King — Iowa’s two Republican Congressmen — voted against this week would have provided reimbursement to the state for the cost of replacing the touchscreens.

“This bill would represent a real step forward in our effort to protect the accuracy, integrity and security of the November elections,” said Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and one of the bill sponsors. “The bill that the House leadership scheduled for a vote today is the same one that passed two weeks ago without the objection of a single committee member. There is no reason why this should be a partisan issue, but the Republicans evidently have chose to make it so. The White House issued a statement opposing the bill and 176 of 203 Republicans voted that way.”

Chaleff contends the objection to the proposed legislation centered around cost and redundancy.

“Congressman Latham also believes in the importance of protecting Iowa taxpayers’ wallets from costly, redundant federal programs,” Chaleff said. “HR 5036 creates a new federal program that is redundant with an already existing law — the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was signed into law in 2002. Among other reforms, HAVA set minimum requirements for voting systems used in federal elections, created a new federal agency to assist in the administration of federal elections, and authorized billions of dollars in election-related grants to states to upgrade their voting systems. To date, approximately $3 billion in federal grants have already been provided to states to upgrade their voting systems. And, the fund still contains more than $1 billion in unspent funds, which remain available to states. Creating a new and redundant federal program at an additional cost to taxpayers of over a half a billion dollars (CBO scoring sets the bill

Mezvinsky, a lawyer by trade, served Iowa’s 1st District in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms, from 1973 to 1977. He was ultimately defeated in 1976 by Jim Leach. After serving in Congress, Mezvinsky worked at the United Nations Commission for Human Rights until 1979. He moved to Pennsylvania, married then NBC news reporter Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, and served as chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee. Mezvinsky made two more unsuccessful bids for statewide office in Pennsylvania — attorney general in 1988 and lieutenant governor in 1990.

Margolies-Mezvinsky served in Congress from 1993 to 1995, and was the Pennsylvania Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 1998. Her autobiography, “A Woman’s Place,” was published in 1993. The couple lived an affluent life in an 8,200-square-foot mansion in Narberth, a Philadelphia suburb. The couple raised 11 children, some internationally adopted. Both filed for bankruptcy in 2000 when various lawsuits alleged they owed over $7 million to banks and individuals.

On Sept. 27, 2002, Mezvinsky admitted that he had bilked investors — including friends, law clients and even his late mother-in-law — out of more than $10 million. The 129-page indictment was filed in March 2001 and alleged Mezvinsky committed fraud “by misusing attorney escrow accounts held in his name, engaging in schemes involving worthless checks deposited at banks, creating forged bank statements, using false financial statements, tax returns and accountant’s letters and giving false testimony under oath.” The indictment followed a two-year investigation by the FBI, Internal Revenue Service, Postal Service and other agencies. Mezvinsky was sentenced to seven years.

Margolies-Mezvinsky was not charged with any wrongdoing. In fact, Mezvinsky’s schemes dipped into her inheritance, her mother’s accounts and most of the family’s financial resources.

The Mezvinsky’s son, investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, has often been spotted on the arm of Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who continues to struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination. The families have been close for some time, the two older women basically double-teaming the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women. It was Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky who cast the the crucial 1993 vote that pushed Pres. Clinton’s budget package through the House — a move that most likely cost her re-election. Both Chelsea and Marc attended Stanford and have been close for many years. There is no evidence the Clintons knew of any illegal activity on the part of Mezvinsky.

Mezvinsky, now 71, is currently finishing his sentence in a Pittsburgh halfway house.

The Plain Language in Government Communications Act — H.R. 3584 — is a bipartisan bill that targets tax returns, federal college aid applications and Veterans Administration forms. Basically, any form, publication and publicly distributed document must be provided in a “clear, concise, well-organized” manner that follows the best practices of plain language writing. A complete description of the Federal Plain Language Guidelines is available online. There are also examples of before-and-after applications of the initiative.

“Anyone who’s done their own taxes knows the headache of trying to understand pages and pages of confusing forms and instructions,” said Braley, who represents Iowa’s 1st District. “There is no reason why the federal government can’t write these forms and other public documents in a way we can all understand.

“Writing government documents in plain language will increase government accountability and will save Americans time and money. Plain, straightforward language makes it easy for taxpayers to understand what the federal government is doing and what services it is offering.”

The bill has been referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Shortly before the August recess, Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minnesota, who serves as chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, tapped Braley for service as the vice-chairman of the subcommittee on highways and transit. Braley will serve as second-ranking majority member of the subcommittee, led by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon.

“I am excited to be named vice-chairman of this subcommittee,” Braley said. “It will allow me to have greater input on important transportation projects in Iowa and across the country. I look forward to working to promote the increased use of renewable energy and helping Chairman DeFazio tackle the important issue of highway safety in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge tragedy.”

House rules require a vice-chairman from the majority party to be named to each committee and subcommittee to preside when the chair is not present.

Braley made history in January when he became the first freshman congressman from Iowa picked to chair a committee or subcommittee since 1959. He will continue to serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Contracting and Technology, which is under the House Committee on Small Business.

Although members of Congress typically sit on two committees, Braley received a waiver so that he could serve on three: small business, transportation and infrastructure and oversight and government reform.

“These committee assignments allow me to have a direct impact on the needs of eastern Iowa, from strengthening our economy on the Small Business Committee, to promoting ethanol on the Transportation Committee, to investigating government waste, fraud and abuse on the Oversight Committee,” he said.