Photo: Graham Moomaw, The Washington Independent

There’s word that “Stunning” Steve King, congressman from Iowa, wants a Saturday reprise of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “Superbowl of Freedom” rally against health care reform. Before a second “House Call” protest blurs memories of the original, here is a sampling of reportage from a pair of eyewitnesses to Bachmann’s achievement on Thursday.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein sought to mix freely with the folks Bachmann brought out, but he found his reporter’s notebook — and eventually, his sought-after business cards — gave him away:

On Thursday, I ventured down to Capitol Hill with a professional death wish. I was going to mingle with a group of tea partiers to get a sense of what, exactly, keeps their clocks ticking. For two-and-a-half hours, I got the Glenn Beck treatment — accused of, among other things, subverting freedom, working for a communist propaganda outlet, and having a soulless devotion to slander and scandal.

One woman picked up her items and moved away — taking her family with her — after I settled down on the Capitol’s front lawn. At another point a man, who seemed generally concerned about my safety, whispered in my ear: “You’re a sheep amidst the wolves in this crowd, son.”

And yet, a funny thing happened on the way to Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) “Super Bowl of freedom.” I was adopted — in a way — by a group of tea baggers. Sure, the politics they spoke seemed dripped in abject paranoia. But there was, at the very least, a sense of mutual respect. How else, after all, should one feel about people so devoted to a cause that they would skip work and travel hundreds of miles for a milquetoast protest?

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank asked if it didn’t “send the wrong message for House Republicans to hold an event on the Capitol grounds full of hateful and gruesome words and images,” noting in any case that it wasn’t technically a rally.

Technically, Thursday’s GOP-sponsored rally at the Capitol was a “press conference” (a Capitol Police spokeswoman explained that the lawmakers didn’t have a permit for a demonstration). The speakers took no questions at this news conference, instead calling, at least a dozen times, for the Pelosi bill’s death.

But, as with a similar rally by Democrats a week before, unpredictable things tend to happen in the wide-open spaces of the Capitol’s West Front. Minutes into the rally, a breeze toppled the American flag from the stage.

More ominously, a man standing just beyond the TV cameras apparently suffered a heart attack 20 minutes after event began. Medical personnel from the Capitol physician’s office — an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care — rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip. This turned into an unwanted visual for the speakers, as a D.C. ambulance and firetruck, lights flashing, pulled in just behind the lawmakers. A path was made through the media section, and the patient, attended to by about 10 government medical personnel, was being wheeled away on a stretcher just as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped to the microphone. “Join us in defeating Pelosi care!” he exhorted. A few members stole a glance at the stretcher.

Photo: Minnesota Independent

But Rybak’s political gamesmanship — running for re-election as mayor, while coyly hinting at a 2010 bid for the state’s top office — could prove too clever for his own good. Today the state’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board issued a ruling that the Democrat wrongly utilized funds from his mayoral committee to pursue his gubernatorial ambitions.

In particular, the board faulted Rybak’s campaign for a poll commissioned in May that quizzed citizens outside of Minneapolis on questions that clearly seemed designed to test the waters for 2010. The watchdog agency ordered Rybak’s gubernatorial campaign committee to reimburse his mayoral committee $26,500 in order to cover the costs of the poll.

The Republican Party of Minnesota, which initially filed the complaint against Rybak’s campaign with the board, reacted gleefully to the ruling.

“Today’s ruling holding R.T. Rybak accountable for his deliberate attempt to circumvent our state’s campaign finance laws is to be commended,” said state GOP chairman Tony Sutton in a statement. “Rybak campaigned for governor across Minnesota for months without lawfully establishing a campaign committee and recording his expenditures. It appears that the sole purpose of his campaign for mayor was to provide a slush fund for gubernatorial ambitions.”

Rybak’s campaign countered with its own statement taking issue with the board’s findings. “Mayor R.T. Rybak has been honest and forthcoming regarding his consideration of a run for governor, and our campaign has been careful to not raise contributions or make expenditures for the purpose of influencing a campaign for governor until a formal decision was made,” it said. “The Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board has found that certain expenses incurred by the mayor’s campaign should be counted as expenses related to a governor’s campaign. Although we disagree with the basis, we will accept the board’s finding and take action to account for these expenses and reimburse the mayor’s campaign for them.”

Rybak’s flirtation with a gubernatorial run failed to have any negative repercussions on Tuesday’s mayoral contest. He romped to a third term with more than 70 percent of the vote. But will the campaign finance board’s ruling have any detrimental impact on his political viability for 2010?

David Schultz, a political science and law professor at Hamline University, doesn’t believe it will prove significant. “Does he have a scarlet A on his forehead? I doubt it,” Schultz says. “Except for some insiders most people aren’t going to care about this issue.”

Indeed, candidates have been rebuked by the campaign finance board in the past for infractions and not suffered electoral consequences. In 2002, for instance, then-state Rep. Tim Pawlenty’s gubernatorial campaign was fined $100,000 for improperly coordinating efforts with the Minnesota GOP. Of course, he’s now serving his second term in the state’s top office and eyeing a national presidential bid.

Schultz does believe, however, that the Rybak snafu highlights the need for changes to the state’s campaign finance laws in order to increase transparency and accountability. In particular, he thinks there should be more frequent disclosure requirements for political contributions and expedited hearings on potential violations of campaign statutes.

“We still have this incredible opaqueness and lack of transparency in terms of our campaigns,” Schultz says. “This is the kind of thing that should have been caught, policed and dealt with months ago.”

He notes that the mayoral contest was already decided by the time the campaign finance board ruling was issued, meaning voters weren’t aware of the violation when they cast their ballots. “Maybe this might have made a difference to some people in the mayor’s race,” Schultz says. “I don’t know if it would have put him under 50 percent, but it might have made a difference.”

The “Draft Bob Fletcher for MN Governor in 2010″ Facebook page currently has 334 friends. The “DraftFletcher” Twitter feed has attracted 44 followers.

But unlike recent campaigns to entice R.T. Rybak and John Choi into political contests, the sincerity of the effort to woo Ramsey County’s top cop seems a bit questionable.

The most recent tweet, for instance, declares Fletcher “the only candidate who is honest about their corruption!” The Facebook page lists his title at the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office as “supreme leader.” Then there are the pictures of the young woman being blasted in the face with pepper spray by a cop during last year’s Republican National Convention.

Not exactly the image most politicians seek to convey.

It’s unclear who’s behind the mock campaign. An email to the Facebook account received no immediate response.

But Fletcher earned the enduring enmity of protesters for his department’s heavy-handed tactics leading up to the Republican National Convention. More recently he’s been criticized for failing to provide proper oversight of the beleaguered (and now defunct) Metro Gang Strike Force.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Photo: WDCpix

WASHINGTON, D.C.  – How effectively will the 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.”

“Much of the House bill is good, but on CHIP they only did half a loaf,” said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, a children’s health advocacy group. “They protected kids in some of the states, but not in the others.”

CHIP would end in 2014

Created in 1997, the state-federal CHIP partnership was designed to cover kids in families too wealthy to qualify for Medicaid but not wealthy enough to afford private insurance. States were granted broad discretion to fashion the program to fit their needs, with some carving out a separate CHIP program, some using CHIP funds to expand Medicaid eligibility, and still others opting for some combination of the two.

The House bill, which would eliminate CHIP in 2014, approaches those models very differently. While it expands Medicaid eligibility to 150 percent of poverty and shifts all kids living above that level to private plans contained on a proposed insurance marketplace, or exchange, the proposal also carves out an exception in states which augmented Medicaid in lieu of creating a separate CHIP program. In those cases, the youngsters would remain in Medicaid.

The distinction carries both coverage and cost implications. Under current law, all state Medicaid programs are required to offer a blanket system of preventative care known as the early periodic screening, diagnosis and treatment program, or EPSDT. The exchange plans, on the other hand, don’t have the same mandate. (Although states with stand-alone CHIP programs are not bound to cover EPSDT services, some of them do.)

And because states have vastly different income-eligibility levels for Medicaid and CHIP, the House bill offers no guarantee that the most vulnerable kids would receive the most robust benefits. In New Jersey, for example, Medicaid covers youngsters up to 200 percent of poverty, at which point CHIP takes over and covers kids up to 350 percent. Minnesota, by contrast, covers kids up to 275 percent of poverty under Medicaid but has no stand-alone CHIP plan.

The result? Children living at 275 percent of poverty in Minnesota would, under the House bill, still pay almost nothing for care under Medicaid — including EPSDT coverage — while families living at the same income level in New Jersey will be responsible for 22 percent (pdf) of the cost of their exchange plans, without the assurance of EPSDT services.

The patchwork has led some state health departments to support the House proposal and others to oppose it.

“My members are split,” said Ann Kohler, director of the National Association of State Medicaid Directors.

More New Jerseys than Minnesotas

Still, there are more New Jerseys out there than Minnesotas. Currently, about 5.3 million (or 72 percent) of the 7.4 million CHIP kids live in states with stand-alone CHIP programs, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families (pdf).

“They’re going to be paying a lot more out of their pockets and getting fewer benefits,” warned Alison Buist, director of child health at the Children’s Defense Fund.

Supporters of the shuffle from CHIP to private plans argue that it will increase enrollment by allowing entire families to gain coverage under the same plan. They also point out that CHIP must be reauthorized every few years, leaving the very existence of the program to the fancy of Congress. Still, the proposal to repeal CHIP has put Democrats in the uncomfortable spot of defending the elimination of a program they spent much of the last two years fighting to preserve.

Then there’s the cost issue. A recent report conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a financial consulting firm, found that most CHIP enrollees living at 175 percent of poverty pay nothing at all for their health services, while those living at 225 percent pay about 2 percent of costs. Shifted into private plans on the exchange, the researchers found, those same families would pay between 5 percent and 35 percent of health costs, respectively — a situation “greatly increasing their financial burden and leaving low-income children worse off as a result of health reform.”

Indeed, examining a similar CHIP repeal offered in the Senate, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf recently noted that “some of those children would be eligible for subsidized coverage in the exchanges but would not be enrolled in an exchange plan (owing at least in part to the higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket costs that they would typically face in such a plan).”

Fixes have mixed success

Some House lawmakers recognize the potential problems. During the markup of health reform legislation in the Education and Labor Committee, for example, lawmakers passed an amendment — offered by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) — requiring that all exchange plans offer EPSDT services. That proposal, however, was stripped out in the final bill.

Another amendment, offered by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Col.), would have prevented the shift from CHIP to private plans unless the White House provided certification that the private plans offered comparable benefits. That proposal passed the Energy and Commerce Committee, but was also removed in the final bill.

DeGette’s office said earlier this week that the certification language was removed “to reflect some budgetary constraints.”

Not that the end of CHIP is final. In the Senate, members of the Finance Committee last month passed an amendment to reauthorize CHIP through 2019. The sponsor of that amendment, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), is already vowing to fight for that provision all the way to the White House.

“We need to make sure children can keep their CHIP coverage and not be forced into untested private coverage,” Rockefeller said in a statement this week. “Health care reform should improve the coverage children have — not take their coverage away.”

The board announced the rulings today, but reached its decisions at a meeting on Thursday — the same day Rybak registered a gubernatorial campaign committee. He won re-election to a third term as mayor on Tuesday. The rulings were prompted by complaints filed by the Republican Party of Minnesota.

The board also heard evidence about Rybak driving to events around the state meant to showcase candidates for governor — with mileage costs that Rybak bore personally but that the Minnesota GOP said constituted an in-kind gift.

But it was the survey costs that the board focused on, and they didn’t buy Rybak’s defense that the polling work was on behalf of his mayoral campaign against much lesser-known challengers:

The response on behalf of Mayor Rybak contends that the survey was to support a re-election bid for Mayor of Minneapolis. But this response does not persuasively explain why a survey to support the Mayor’s re-election would have a geographic calling area that included metro area residents that are not eligible to vote in Minneapolis.

The board found the survey questions revealing:

As an example, the survey asks if the respondent voted in 2006, (the last time the office of Governor was on the ballot), and if the respondent intends to vote in 2010. The office of Governor is on the ballot in 2010, the office of Mayor of Minneapolis is on the ballot in odd numbered years (2005 and 2009).

The board ordered Rybak to form a gubernatorial campaign committee (which he did), which must transfer to his RT for Minneapolis mayoral campaign the cost of the conducting the survey last May.

The board also ruled (pdf) on whether St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman violated state statute by failing to register a fundraising committee while exploring a bid for governor. The complaint from the Minnesota GOP noted that Coleman had participated in gubernatorial forums with other candidates and openly discussed his plans for the state if elected to the office. The board determined that Coleman was indeed a candidate for governor earlier this year and spent personal funds in excess of $100 to support his campaign.

The Board considered possible reasons why Mayor Coleman would travel to locations throughout the state to participate in gubernatorial candidate forums and present information on what actions he would do if elected Governor. In the Board’s view the only reasonable explanation for those actions is that Mayor Coleman was seeking nomination or election to the office of Governor.

But the board also ruled that Coleman did not improperly use funds from his mayoral campaign to support a gubernatorial bid. Coleman has since announced that he will not be running for governor, but the board stated that that decision did not alter its findings in the matter. The administrative body ordered Coleman to submit a detailed accounting of his expenditures on behalf of his gubernatorial campaign by February 1, 2010.

Minnesota Independent reporters Chris Steller and Paul Demko wrote this post.

Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

U.S. Sen. Al Franken introduced legislation Thursday that would encourage states to examine untested rape kits for DNA evidence. The bill would also provide for more health workers trained to administer rape-kit exams, particularly for Native American women.

Another aspect of the bill is that women couldn’t be made to pay for all or part of their rape kit exams — an issue that came up in the 2008 presidential campaign.

“We don’t bill criminals for fingerprint processing,” Franken said in a statement.

The Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Act is co-sponsored by Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, as well as Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California.

The bill follows by only a month Senate passage of Franken’s amendment defunding military contractors that make employees sign away their rights to take sexual assualt allegations to court.

Rape came up during Franken’s campaign for Senate when opponents publicized instances in his comedic past that touched on the topic.

Photo: Graham Moomaw, Washington Independent

In headlining Thursday’s “House call” protest against health-care reform, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann was going rogue on her own party’s leaders, who had hoped to focus the day’s attention on their own 12-hour, online health-care “town hall.”

David Weigel, of the Washington Independent (a Minnesota Independent sister site) writes:

This isn’t a surprising turn of events. In the run-up to the Sept. 12 march on Washington, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) were surprise guests at a Sept. 10 rally outside the Capitol. That event was actually identical to this one–protesters fanned out after the rally to talk to their members of Congress. But the crowd at that rally was smaller and more controlled, with most protesters holding FreedomWorks signs that had been passed out. The crowd at this rally was far less on-message. By the end of the day, the images that made it out of the rally were of protesters waving signs comparing health care reform to the Holocaust, and the video that made it out of the protest was heavy on Bachmann — one of the people Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) seemed to be referring to in a cryptic October comment about how to deal with a “problem member” who keeps making news.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MINNEAPOLIS: Rybak is DFL’s “strongest candidate” for governor. So says Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza. [The Fix]

HUGO: 10,000 loons? The crowd at U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House call” protest included a Hugo couple who call her “a very effective representative.” [St. Cloud Times]

ST. PAUL: Now his Trice will really get Dusty. Dems’ one-man answer to the Minnesota Democrats Exposed hangs up his spurs. [DustyTrice.com]

MINNEAPOLIS: “The K” is #1. The University of Minnesota’s student radio station, Radio K, has the nation’s best student media website. [UMNews]

DULUTH: Market improves for uninhabitable homes. City government will pay $40,000–60,000 each if the council accepts $3 million in federal funds to create a “blight-free Duluth.” [Northland's News Center]

ST. PAUL: “DFL: Pawlenty’s partying gift to MN is instability.” That typo (?) proves MN Publius doesn’t just parrot party pronouncements. [MN Publius]

In 2003, Pawlenty submitted a proposed general fund budget of $28.1 billion — or $2.8 billion more than the revenues received during the previous biennium. Two years later the governor offered up a $29.8 billion budgetary blueprint, roughly $1 billion more than the state took in during the previous budget cycle.

The pattern continued in Pawlenty’s second term. In 2007, he proposed a $34.4 billion general fund allotment, $2.2 billion more than the state’s cash inflow during the previous biennium. Finally in January of this year, the governor submitted a $33.6 billion budget, $1.4 billion more than revenues during the prior two-year cycle.

In total, Pawlenty’s budget proposals for the eight-year span would have exceeded revenues by $7.4 billion. In other words, when Pawlenty actually had the opportunity to adhere to the strict fiscal stringency that he’s now advocating he chose not to do so.

Photo: Graham Moomaw, The Washington Independent

The Minnesota Independent’s sister site, the Washington Independent, was on the scene Thursday for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House Call” protest against health care reform at the U.S. Capitol.

Here is a video of the rally by TWI’s Graham Moomaw:

Update: This video clip by Moomaw features interviews with protesters:

And here is a slideshow of photos by Moomaw from the event:

The crowd’s chant of “Kill the Bill” was also heard in August from a more confined but no less riled group of protesters at U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum’s St. Paul office (MnIndy video post).