They were discussing the new monthly crew flight scheduling system that was now in place as a result of the merger. The discussion began at cruise altitude. Both said they lost track of time. Each pilot accessed and used his personal laptop computer while they discussed the airline crew flight scheduling procedure.

Northwest bans use of personal laptops while flying.

Kline gave the GOP response to President Obama’s weekly address, reaching a bit for Labor Day relevance by tying fears about health care reform to fears about job losses. (Gov. Pawlenty had his turn delivering the Republican message last April before another holiday — Tax Day.)

It’s a new role for Kline, a strong, silent type whose conservative credentials helped him leapfrog more senior Republicans in June to become the ranking member on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Now he’s the GOP’s official point man attacking Democrats’ efforts to reform health care — though he’s outdone almost daily by his colleague in Minnesota’s Congressional delegation: Michele Bachmann.

She held a townhall on the topic; he won’t. But the man who once carried the suitcase containing the presidential Denny’s-style menu for nuclear war told a telephone townhall meeting that Senate Democrats passing health care reform by simple majority would be “the nuclear option, because it would cause the Senate to explode.”

The video of Kline’s Republican address is below. Here are the main themes:

Be very afraid

American families are worried … If you think that’s frightening, I’m sorry to say it could get even worse … No wonder Americans are scared … They also fear, and rightly so …

Au revoir, doc

What will happen to my coverage, and my choice of doctors? … the comfort of a familiar physician … Democrats’ plans may cost patients the right to see their family doctor …

Did I mention the re-set button?

It’s time to press the ‘reset’ button … It’s not too late to start over … honor American workers by hitting the ‘reset’ button on health care reform …

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

ST. PAUL: Governor now touts medical-info website he once threatened to axe. Any information at that website about gallstones? [ECM Publications]

MINNEAPOLIS: Somalis who returned home to fight were patriots, not terrorists. Incursions by Ethiopia, not Islamist jihad, motivated immigrants to fight in their homeland. [Minnesota Public Radio]

ROCHESTER: Train plan halted. It wasn’t anything the Mayo Clinic said: The Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railroad (DM&E) blames the economy for stalling immediate-term plans to send coal rumbling across southern Minnesota. [Rochester Post-Bulletin]

KOOCHICHING COUNTY: State sweetens highway-turnback pot. The budget crunch has caused the Minnesota Department of Transportation to offer counties a deal they can’t refuse: cash to take state highways off MNDOT’s hands. [International Falls Daily Journal]

BIG LAKE: Big fares to ride the train. Round-trip tickets to Minneapolis on the new Northstar Commuter Rail line will top out at $16. [Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal]

STATEWIDE: Beautiful barns sought. Nominations are open for Barn of the Year. [St. Cloud Times]

Logo: Wikpedia

Nearly two weeks after a Continental Airlines flight left 47 people stranded on a Rochester tarmac for six hours, a plane filled with Minnesotans spent the same amount of time awaiting takeoff in New York on Friday. The Sun Country flight opened boarding for its 100 passengers an hour late and took off six hours after that, due to construction and weather delays.

Sun Country says it’ll issue refunds to passengers, who were eventually offered the opportunity to buy food as they waited for takeoff (although one passenger tells USA Today supplies were gone by the time the food cart made its way to him). The airline announced yesterday it would voluntarily implement a four-hour limit on how long passengers can be confined to an on-the-ground plane.

The delay follows an Aug. 8 incident in which a Continental flight, run by ExpressJet and bound from Houston to Minneapols-St. Paul, was grounded in Rochester at midnight, stranding 47 passengers on the tarmac for six hours without food or the ability to de-plane. The U.S. Department of Transportation found that a representative for Mesaba Airlines, the only carrier staffing the airport at that time, “improperly refused the requests of the ExpressJet captain to let her passengers off the plane, telling the captain that the airport was closed to passengers for security reasons.”

(Via The Consumerist.)

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MINNEAPOLIS: Ex-zombie vowed to kill RNC-protest snitch, say Texas officials. But it seems the woman — a former resident of Minneapolis, where in 2006 she was arrested along with six other Zombie Dance partiers — did not actually threaten to eat FBI informant Brandon Darby. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

ST. PAUL: Inspection skipped on circus bleachers. It may seem like 2006 was a long time ago, even in zombie years, but that’s the last time city inspectors took a look at the Circus Juventus bleachers that collapsed Sunday. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

FRIDLEY: Defense contractor BAE Systems delivers 314 pink slips. For people laid off from the Future Combat Systems project, that’s got to especially sting, coming on the same day President Obama told the VFW, “If a project doesn’t support our troops, we will not fund it. If a system doesn’t perform, we will terminate it.” [Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal; Stars and Stripes]

WORTHINGTON: “Don’t sleep in the subway, darling.” The subway Petula Clark was singing about in her 1967 hit was the kind of pedestrian tunnel that Worthington officials are proposing to go under Minnesota 60 — a state highway that is also getting a roundabout nearby. Very Euro. [Worthington Daily Globe]

DULUTH: Tribe calls casino contract bad, won’t pay city. The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will stop funding major street repairs from its take at downtown’s Fond-du-Luth Casino. (Insert your own broken-treaty gag here.) [Duluth News Tribune]

MINNEAPOLIS: Plank road to be history — again. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board — which is now seeking its own taxing authority via a voter referendum — will pay more than $400,000 to repave in concrete a block-long, wood-plank road it built as an historic replica only six years ago. [Downtown Journal]

The Hiawatha Light Rail Line, Minneapolis

A light rail service from downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie passed an important test on Monday: cost and ridership estimates show that parts of the project falls within the parameters to receive federal assistance. Only one proposed route of the Southwest Transitway would qualify for federal funding — between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles. Another proposed route through the Uptown neighborhood appears to be too expensive.

The cost-effectiveness index (CEI) for the project is $30 which is just above the federal assistance guideline of $29, according to a report by HDR Engineering, Inc. An uptown route would have a CEI of $44.

The report expects a ridership of 28,000 to 30,000 people each day.

The Southwest Transitway, scheduled for completion in 2015, would link with the existing Hiawatha light rail, as well as the soon to be completed Northstar commuter and Central Corridor light rail lines. Another possible light rail line is being proposed for the north side of Minneapolis into Maple Grove called the Bottineau Transitway.

(iStockphoto)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While Senate leaders have reached agreement on a $2 billion extension of the cash-for-clunkers program, many lawmakers are already bracing for a more distant confrontation: The likely debate over how to return that funding to another stimulus program that it came from.

The House last Friday provided a generous lifeline to the wildly popular clunkers program — which grants drivers up to $4,500 to scrap their gas guzzlers for more fuel efficient vehicles — and the Senate is poised to pass that bill Thursday. But there’s a glitch. The proposal steals its funding from a Department of Energy program encouraging the development of renewable energy technologies. That initiative, granted $6 billion under this year’s stimulus bill, provides federal loan guarantees to clean energy projects — including solar, wind and biofuel innovations — in hopes of spurring private investment in those industries. Tens of billions of dollars in loan applications are before the DOE, but the program funding was seen by lawmakers as low-hanging fruit because it wouldn’t be spent until next year, at the earliest.

The saga has created a dilemma for a number of lawmakers who support the cash for clunkers extension but don’t want to pilfer from the loan guarantee program to fund it. “I would hate to see us take money from that source,” Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told CNBC on Tuesday. “I hope we can find an alternative.”

They didn’t. Although seven amendments to the House proposal will be offered on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, none aims to locate a new source of the $2 billion. The Senate plans to vote on final passage later in the day, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Wednesday night.

Indeed, with the House having left town Friday for a five-week vacation, any changes at all to the House-passed bill are unlikely. The reason? If the Senate alters the proposal, then either (1) cash for clunkers will have to forego the additional funds until Congress returns in September, or (2) House lawmakers will have to return from recess to iron out the differences between the two bills. In light of the overwhelming popularity of the program, the former option is a political landmine. And on Wednesday, the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pretty much ruled out the latter scenario. “The House isn’t coming back,” said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly, “so that‘s just a dumb idea.”

More likely, the Senate will pass the House bill, and push to replenish the $2 billion loan funding at a later date. Indeed, Democratic leaders have gone out of their way to assure Bingaman and other loan guarantee supporters that the money will be replaced. Shortly after Friday’s House vote, for example, President Obama vowed to work with Congress to replace the funding “down the road.” On the same day, Pelosi promoted the importance of having all $6 billion available for the loan program. And, responding to concerns voiced by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) said Democratic leaders “have every intention of restoring these funds.”

But that might be easier said than done. With the Democrats hoping to pass a health reform agenda tickling the $1 trillion mark, finding ways to pay for another $2 billion program won’t be easy. And in the wake of spending hundreds of billions of dollars salvaging the economy, many in Congress have lost their tolerance for deficit spending. This is true not only in the eyes of conservative deficit hawks, but also some Democrats as well. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), for example, had hinged her support for cash for clunkers on a single mantra: No new spending. On her Twitter account, the Missouri Democrat said Monday that she “may support” the addition funding –”if it is $ already appropriated for stimulus.”

A failure to reinstall the “borrowed” $2 billion would spell bad news for the renewable fuels and technologies industries, which are banking on the loan program to jump-start the innovations that might wean the country from its current reliance on foreign oil.

“For the U.S. long-term auto and fuel needs, it seems counterproductive to limit the renewable fuels industry,” Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, said in a statement last week.

Supporters of the loan guarantee program also argue that, even if it lacks the catchy name and political appeal of cash for clunkers, it provides much more bang for the buck. Indeed, each $1 provided under the loan guarantee program is estimated to spur $10 in additional investment and spending.

“$2 billion in the cash for clunkers program results in $2 billion worth of economic activity,” Sam Jaffe, senior research analyst at IDC Energy Insights, a consulting firm, wrote for Greentech Media on Tuesday. “$2 billion in loan guarantees will result in at least $20 billion worth of economic activity, all of which will have to take place on U.S. soil.”

Not that cash for clunkers doesn’t have any environmental or stimulus benefits. On Wednesday, the Department of Transportation released figures revealing that, of the nearly 185,000 transactions prompted by the program, the average fuel efficiency of new purchases is 25.3 miles per gallon, while the average mileage for the trade-ins is 15.8 mpg.

But figures like those have alleviated some lawmakers’ criticisms that the program’s mileage requirements don’t go far enough to encourage the purchase of small, energy efficient vehicles. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), for example, had vowed to oppose any new funding unless the mileage thresholds were made more stringent. On Monday, however, the lawmakers backed off of their threat.

“The original intent of the ‘clunkers’ program was to encourage people to buy more fuel efficient vehicles, and the data so far tells us that’s exactly what’s happening,” Feinstein said in a statement announcing her support.

Still, there is growing recognition that, as a long-term environmental strategy, the DOE’s loan program will have much greater effect. “It is not appropriate for us to take money to do one thing for fuel efficiency,” Pelosi said, “out of an account that is designed to do just that.”

Mike Lillis is Congress reporter for the Washington Independent.

Based on the Minnesota Automobile Dealers Association numbers, federal funding has so far helped car owners replace 150 inefficient old cars, not two. That’s 2 percent of the 7,500 consumers who have signed on to participate in the program.

Carlson has a habit of drawing dubiously on her Minnesota roots — for example, citing her childhood experience of Christmas to advocate that free speech be suspended on that day, and claiming “the last time I checked, [former U.S. Sen.] Norm Coleman won the election after election night.”

Here’s today’s Fox News video clip:

CARLSON: By the way, I did my own crack research yesterday, spent a tremendous amount of time on this yesterday finding out information. In my home state of Minnesota, so far only two of these deals have actually been approved –

CO-HOST STEVE DOOCY: That’s all?

CARLSON: — by the government.

DOOCY: Wow.

CARLSON: Two in the entire state of Minnesota. And then you wonder about whether or not these dealers feel like they’re going to get their money from the government. Not so sure.

(WDCpix)

The plight of Minnesota’s dairy farmers occupied the time of Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Reps. Tim Walz, Collin Peterson and James Oberstar, who worked this week to find relief for farmers hard hit by economic and natural disaster. That and other highlights from Minnesota’s congressional delegation:

Rep. Tim Walz participated in an online health care discussion with the Mankato Free Press on Tuesday. “Southern Minnesotans that I’ve talked to know that something had to be done and soon, but they want to make sure that we’re getting it right,” he wrote. Walz echoed similar sentiments in a commentary at the Rochester Post-Bulletin.

Walz is a co-chair of the newly reformed Congressional Dairy Farmer Caucus, which was formed in 2006 but lapsed in January. Rep. James Oberstar is also mentioned as a caucus member.

Rep. John Kline says he will continue to fight a move to federalize student lending. “I have resisted and will continue to resist erasing private capital and the private sector from the student lending business,” said Kline. But he does acknowledge that the measure is likely to pass the House.

The Minnesota Daily had harsh words for Kline. “Kline and his colleagues are defending systemic cruelty toward college students, propped up by corporate subsidies for an industry which, not too long ago, was found to be in part a veritable criminal enterprise.”

Rep. Betty McCollum announced that she secured $1 million in federal money as part of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act to improve the Twin Lakes area in Roseville. The money will go to create a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use site with links to Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“I am pleased to be able to secure federal funding for important infrastructure improvements at Twin Lakes and to partner with the city of Roseville,” she said in a statement.

Rep. Keith Ellison attended a meeting with Muslim leaders in Minneapolis last Saturday to discuss some of the successes and challenges the Muslim community faces in Minneapolis.

Ellison announced Monday that he had secured $500,000 to finish the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway, a project that has been a century in the making. The appropriation was passed as part of the House transportation, housing and urban development appropriations bill and will connect connect St. Anthony Parkway to East River Parkway in Northeast Minneapolis.

Rep. Michele Bachmann succeeded in getting a resolution passed by the House on Wednesday. “Recognizing September as National Hydrocephalus Awareness Month will bring this disease to the public’s attention and encourage the discussions necessary to more effectively address the devastating effects of this disease and provide support to families who live with it each day,” she said in a statement.

Rep. Collin Peterson, along with Rep. Barney Frank unveiled their plan to regulate the derivatives market which is seen as a large part of the cause for the current recession. “I think we have come up with a responsible approach that bridges the differences between those members who want to completely eliminate the over-the-counter market and those who think that just greater transparency is all that is needed,” said Peterson in a statement on Friday. “Neither of those approaches is a real solution; what we are putting forth is.”

Rep. James Oberstar praised the House passage of $7 billion in highway funds. “Enactment of this legislation will ensure full funding of the highway investment levels authorized by current law, and prevent devastating slowdowns or cuts in each state’s federal highway funds,” he said on the House floor.

Oberstar continues to work end to end anti-trust immunity for airlines and sent a letter Monday to Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, that expressed “deep concern over the decline of airline competition in international markets.” Oberstar says that three airlines dominate U.S.-European travel.

Oberstar and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, both of Slovenian descent, met with Foreign Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Samuel Žbogar, on Tuesday.

Klobuchar announced on Friday that she helped secure relief for dairy farmers. “Across Minnesota, dairy farmers have been stung by rising production costs and falling product prices,” she said in a statement. “Today’s announcement of immediate relief for dairy farmers will help them during this crisis by providing targeted support to help stabilize prices. Along with Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson I will continue to advocate for Minnesota’s dairy farmers during these difficult times.”

Sen. Al Franken will address progressive activists in Duluth on Saturday for the Commonweal Institute’s 2009 Progressive Roundtable.

Franken introduced a bill with Klobuchar on Thursday. The Medicare Payment Fairness Act of 2009 aims to fix regional difference in Medicare payments, a system under which Minnesota loses money.

“As Congress considers national health care reform, they have a lot to learn from how we do things in Minnesota,” Franken said in a statement. “We understand that health care quality ought to be rewarded, and that patient-centered health care is better for Minnesotans than a profit-centered system. Implementing a Value Index is not just a critical step in reforming our national health care costs, it’s also a step towards ensuring that Minnesota doctors aren’t penalized for being ahead of the curve.”