The study averaged the net worth of each member. When members file their financial disclosure statements, they list assets and liabilities as part of minimum and maximum bet worth and CRP averaged those. For example, Sen. Amy Klobuchar reported a minimum net worth of $345,029 and a maximum of $1,104,000 for an average net worth of $724,512.

In Minnesota politics, the Republican members are much wealthier than the DFLers.

The wealthiest member of Minnesota’s delegation was Sen. Al Franken with an average net worth of $8,747,525 followed by Rep. Michele Bachmann at $1,783,508 and Rep. Chip Cravaack in 217th place with an average net worth of $1,391,551.

Those three were in the top half of Congress’ 535 members.

After Klobuchar’s $724,512 comes Rep. Erik Paulsen with an average net worth of $487,017, Rep. John Kline had $471,006, Rep. Collin Peterson had $263,005, Rep. Tim Walz with $247,502, and Rep. Betty McCollum with an average net worth of $88,005.

Rep. Keith Ellison had the lowest net worth, with negative $14,497.

The generally accepted cutoff for the top 1 percent of Americans in terms of net worth is about $9 million on 2010, a threshold that none of the Minnesota delegation report.

Eleven percent of Congress is in the top 1 percent in terms of net worth.

Both testified that DOMA hurts same-sex couples who are legally married in several states. Franken told his colleagues that repealing the law would have not consequences for heterosexual couples, and that allowing same-sex marriage won’t make anyone gay.

The repeal effort passed the Senate Judiciary Committee 10-8. It still needs to pass a full vote on the Senate floor and faces opposition in the Republican-controlled House, although Minnesota Reps. Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum and Tim Walz are supporters of the House version.

Klobuchar said she was “struck” by the number of people who testified against DOMA in hearings last summer.

“They were discriminated against and unfairly harmed,” Klobuchar said. “They were denied protections like the ability to take off work to care for a dying partner and denied survivor benefits when a partner died.”

Klobuchar also said the issue wasn’t about religion.

“Whatever we vote on today and whatever happens today, the bill doesn’t require any church or mosque or synagogue to perform same-sex marriage. As the debate on this continues, we cannot lose sight of that,” she said.

Franken took issue with a statement by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who argued that marriage has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman. Franken argued that was false.

“In many cultures, men have been able to marry many women and young girls. For centuries, women have been treated as cattle in marriage. Further, if the religious purpose for marriage is procreation, why would we sanction marriage between an 89-year-old widower and an 80-year-old widow?” Franken said. “I just think we need to be accurate when we talk about the history of marriage, the history of man and woman, the history of our institutions.”

Franken spoke about couples in Minnesota who have been harmed by DOMA including a young couple who met in divinity school and married in Connecticut who have to lie on their federal tax forms and say they are single.

He talked about another Minnesota couple that married in Iowa, John and Jeff Westerfield. John was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

“Jeff won’t have the federal right to take a medical leave. If John passes, Jeff won’t see a dime from Social Security,” said Franken. “DOMA hurts people who love each other. DOMA hurts people who want to adopt kids and raise them and take care of them. DOMA hurts families.

“We need to pass this bill. Straight people aren’t suddenly going to become gay, Straight people aren’t going to stop getting married. We are going to be just fine. Really.”

The bill, dubbed the Respect for Marriage Act, passed the committee on a party-line vote.

Last December, the FCC implemented rules that limited the establishment a “fast-lane” by internet service provides available to those with the highest bid. Under the rules laid out in December by the FCC, telecommunications companies cannot discriminate in what internet content they allow their customers to access. Net neutrality advocates have said that without a framework, large businesses could pay large telecommunications companies to direct internet traffic to their businesses without the consumer knowing that other websites had been skipped over, a practice known as paid prioritization.

That rule takes effect on Nov. 20, but House and Senate Republicans have pushed to have that rule withdrawn through legislative means. The House already passed the bill, and Senate Republicans are pushing a similar one as the deadline approaches. They are using a procedural gimmick in the Senate to force a floor vote without the option of a filibuster.

Republicans have put the issue into a resolution that simply reads that the FCC rule “shall have no force or effect.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Franken penned an column explaining what he feels will be the result if Senate Republicans are successful.

“While millions of Americans have become familiar with the concept of net neutrality, it’s important that we’re all on the same page,” Franken wrote. “Net neutrality isn’t a government takeover of the Internet, as many of my Republican colleagues have alleged. It isn’t even a change from what we have now. Net neutrality has been in place since the very beginning of the Internet.”

He added, “But many Republicans want to change that so that the large corporations they represent can increase their profit margins at the expense of small businesses and consumers.”

Franken has been a champion of net neutrality since being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008.

But he also felt the net neutrality rules created by the FCC weren’t strong enough.

“The rule also contains almost no protections for mobile broadband service, remaining silent on the blocking of content, applications and devices,” Franken said in December. “Wireless technology is the future of the Internet, and for many rural Minnesotans, it’s often the only choice for broadband.”

The Obama administration pushed back on Tuesday as well, indicating to Senate Republicans that a veto any bill that weakened net neutrality would be likely.

“The Administration strongly opposes Senate passage of S.J. Res. 6, which would undermine a fundamental part of the Nation’s Open Internet and innovation strategy—an enforceable, effective but flexible policy for keeping the Internet free and open. Today more than ever, the open Internet is essential to job creation, economic growth, and global competitiveness,” the White House said on Tuesday. “If the President is presented with S.J. Res. 6, which would not safeguard the free and open Internet, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the Resolution.”

Paradoxically, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the author of the rules repeal, says her bill would encourage an open and free internet.

“The Internet and technology have produced more jobs in this country than just about any other sector. It has been the cradle of innovation, it does not have a problem, and it does not need fixing,” Hutchison said in a statement on Tuesday. “More regulation of the Internet is going to stop the investments, it’s going to stop the creativity — and put our businesses and our providers at a competitive disadvantage with Europeans and others that have kept their Internet free of over-regulation.”

Michele Bachmann, John Kline

Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline were among the signers of a letter to the U.S. Senate urging that body to pass an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit gay members of America’s Armed Forces from using military facilities for marriage ceremonies.

The Department of Defense, in the wake of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, has indicated that it will allow chaplains and same-sex couples to use facilities on a “sexual orientation-neutral basis,” something Republican members of the U.S. House oppose.

The letter was authored by Republican Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri and was signed by 86 members of the House.

“The Defense of Marriage Act was passed by a bipartisan vote in Congress and signed into law by President Clinton,” Akin said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this current administration is now directing the Department of Defense to ignore this law and perform gay marriages on military bases. I think this is wrong, which is why I offered an amendment to the House-passed defense bill making it clear that DOMA applies to the DOD. This letter calls for the Senate to add a similar amendment to their version of the bill. The Department of Defense should not be allowed to simply ignore laws they do not like.”

The House members complain that guidance by the Department of Defense General Counsel would make resources available to all members of the military. The general counsel guidance said that the “use of DoD real property and facilities for private functions, including religious and other ceremonies, should be made on a sexual orientation neutral basis.”

“This clear and deliberate violation of established U.S. law sets a dangerous precedent,” the letter states. “[The Defense of Marriage Act] makes it clear that for purposes of the federal government, marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. The use of federal property or federal employees to perform anything but opposite-sex ceremonies is a clear contravention of the law.”

The letter comes as same-sex couples in the military filed suit to overturn DOMA on Thursday in order to secure military benefits denied to them by the federal government.

In the run-up to last month’s Senate vote that likely denied the USDA the right to limit potatoes in school lunches, U.S. Sen. Al Franken and eight other Democratic senators from potato-growing regions pushed hard on the federal agency.

In a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack (below), the eight senators proposed that potatoes are healthier if topped with broccoli. The letter recommends that the USDA consider food preparation when compiling guidelines.

A Senate amendment to take away the agency’s ability to limit potatoes passed on Oct. 18, and will likely be merged with a House version.

The proposed rule limited kids’ lunches to one cup of starchy vegetables every week, which includes white potatoes, corn, lima beans and peas. The rule would also have removed starchy vegetables from breakfasts, limit sodium intake and mandate more non-starchy vegetables during lunches, among other nutritional improvements.

Franken said the rule change could “disproportionately affect” agricultural producers “without necessarily improving student nutrition,” according to a post Monday on his Senate site.

“While I applaud the USDA’s efforts to improve vegetable variety in our nation’s schools, it’s important that we consider the possible consequences of this rule on our farmers, and its disproportionate effect on Minnesota,” Franken said in the statement. “That’s why I urged the USDA to give our children the nutritious foods they need without making dramatic cuts to the dietary staples provided by Minnesota’s agricultural producers.”

The letter to Vilsack proposed that potatoes can be healthier if topped with broccoli. The letter recommends that the USDA consider food preparation when compiling guidelines.

The cost of the entire proposed rules, which covers many areas of nutrition, could have reached an addition $6.8 billion over five years, according to the USDA report. The revisions are designed to combat the childhood obesity epidemic and prevent related health problems.

Groups like the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine have advocated for healthier school lunches. Other advocates, like Chef Ann Cooper of the Food Family Farming Foundation, have said opposing the new limits on starchy vegetables doesn’t serve the best interest of children’s nutrition.

111031_USDA_vegetable_letter

“It’s an interesting idea, except for the fact that it’s illegal,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, which filed a brief in the case Wednesday with the Campaign Legal Center.

Under current FEC rules, a traditional PAC is allowed to have a separate segregated account for unlimited contributions if the funds are spent on independent expenditures — making it a so-called hybrid committee.

But Democracy 21, a nonprofit group working to eliminate the influence of corporate money in elections , says that because a Leadership PAC uses its independent expenditures to directly support candidates, and is sponsored by a lawmaker, it cannot accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals.

“The answer to this question is open and shut: the federal campaign finance laws clearly and unequivocally prohibit the Leadership PAC of a Member of Congress from soliciting or receiving unlimited contributions,” said Wertheimer.

He also pegged the advisory request as the most recent tactic in the fight against campaign finance regulations: a “throw everything you can think of against the wall and see what sticks” approach.

Lee’s Constitutional Conservatives Fund is “dedicated to the cause of finding, funding, and supporting conservative candidates” and is currently actively endorsing for Republican Senate candidates in states around the country.

A lawyer for the PAC argued in the advisory request that the Constitutional Conservatives Fund’s interest in accepting unlimited contributions wasn’t a “particularly novel or unique” request.

“The Constitution simply does not permit the government to suppress free speech by restricting the right to make contributions to Independent Expenditures,” said Dan Backer, the lawyer for Lee’s fund.

Tara Malloy, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, also says that there is a lot at stake in the FEC’s ruling on the issue.

“This judicial overreach, if left standing, will authorize large-scale circumvention of existing contribution limits and give rise to political corruption and the appearance of corruption,” Malloy said in a press release. “In the post-Citizens United world, corporate vehicles are already being misused to avoid disclosure…. We do not need another decision that will further undermine public faith in their elected officials and the judiciary.”

Hernandez joins former legislator Dan Severson and St. Bonafacius City Council member Joe Arwood. Hernandez said his platform includes bringing “moral principles” to government and praised Herman Cain’s 999 tax plan.

“I do not feel comfortable, given the course that we are on, handing to furute generations the current country that we have now,” he said at a press conference Tuesday. “We must restore a political system of moral principle back in America.”

He said “individual life and family” are the the most crucial units of society.

He called for term limits, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandating Congress pass a budget, a repeal of health care reform, an end to “unconstitutional wars” and tax reform.

“I like the idea of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan,” he said. “Is it perfect? No, but it’s a start.”

Hernandez last ran for office in one of St. Paul’s Senate districts in 2010, losing to DFL Sen. Dick Cohen.

He was also the Minnesota leader of Somos Republicans, a Latino Republican group. A representative of that group told the Minnesota Independent on Thursday that Hernandez has left the group.

On state issues, Hernandez supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

“In 2012, Minnesota voters will decide whether to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman,” he wrote on his campaign website. “I believe that government should have a very limited role in marriage. As a result, I support the referendum in that I believe it is best for the people of Minnesota, rather than politicians or activist judges, to decide this important cultural issue.”

He’s also an opponent of abortion rights.

“The right to life is a core principle described both within the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution,” he says. “As your U.S. Senator, I will work to protect the natural right to life from conception until natural death.”

Source: Flickr; Republicanconference (www.flickr.com/photos/republicanconference)

On the heels of the Minnesota Independent story last week about U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen’s cozy financial relationship with the medical device industry, the New York Times reported Tuesday that some health professionals are alarmed by Paulsen’s push to relax Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight.

“They have this unwritten assumption that every new device is innovative,” Dr. Rita Redberg, who is the editor of the Archives of Internal Medicine, said, referring to the venture capital funds. But some devices, she said, “are killing people or causing significant harm.”

The Times reports that 10 bills to speed up the FDA’s medical device approval process have already been introduced by House Republicans this month. In the Senate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced a similar bill.

The U.S. House of Representatives has held four hearings on F.D.A. device approval procedures since February, with the vast majority of witnesses being “investors, entrepreneurs, industry consultants, trade group officials or patients who said that agency delays in approving a device had harmed them or a loved one,” according to the New York Times. No one who was harmed by a faulty device was invited to testify.

As the Minnesota Independent reported last week, Paulsen has been rewarded for his advocacy for the industry with campaign donations from company PACs and executives. The Congressman is currently sitting on $900,000, according to Federal Election Commission records. The medical device and drug industry gives more generously to Paulsen than to other candidates or PACs in the district, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Times story shows a steep increase in donations from venture capitalists with an interest in health care after Paulsen testified to Congress in June that FDA processes should be streamlined.

As the Minnesota Independent reported, Paulsen has seen substantial increases in donations from the entire medical device industry since he became a member of the influential House Ways and Means Committee, with one medical private equity firm crowing that “his increasingly high profile in Congress may help bring additional visibility to the medtech sector.”

The intention is to come up with a concrete plan to make real the recent proposal from agricultural leaders, including Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, to voluntarily cut $23 billion from agriculture. That willingness to cut was spurred by a fear that the congressional “super committee,” which is tasked with chopping $1.2 trillion from the federal budget in the next decade, would otherwise cut even deeper into agriculture.

The bill will likely include cuts to direct commodity payments, conservation and nutrition plans. Lobbyists for agribusiness like the National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association are pushing for Congress to cease direct payments in favor of improved crop insurance, which the Associated Press reports is pitting farmers in the south, who grow crops like cotton that benefit from direct payments, against those in other parts of the country.

One lobbyist described the relationship between lobbyists and congressional aides as “free-flowing and open,” Gannett reports.

The bill, if taken up by the “super committee,” will be forced into an up-down vote, with no amendments to the legislation being possible. That’s drawing alarm from groups critical of farm subsidies, Gannett reports.

“Given the amount of money involved, and given the implications of the farm bill for our food and the quality of our environment, there’s a lot of folks in Congress that ought to have a voice in where this ends up other than the agriculture committees,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the Associated Press Monday that the administration wanted the farm bill to increase disaster aid, following a difficult season for farmers.

The congressional leaders plan to release details of the bill by Nov. 1.

Franken spoke of several recent suicides of LGBT students around the country, including Justin Aaberg who attended the Anoka-Hennepin School District.

“Our federal laws say you cannot discriminate based on religion, race, sex, disability or national origin, but they do not explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex orientation or gender identity,” Franken told the committee. “We are faced with a a group of students that is facing pervasive systemic discrimination. They are being viciously harassed and bullied, they are dropping out of school, staying home from school and they are literally killing themselves. Our schools aren’t doing enough to stop it.”

Franken said he was disappointed that the amendment wouldn’t be added to the No Child Left Behind bill but that he would press to have it included when the full Senate takes up the bill.

“I would like to make it clear that if it came up for a vote, it would pass by bipartisan support,” he said.

Here are Franken’s remarks during the committee meeting on Thursday: