For Ramstad and Kennedy, the legislation is deeply personal.

Ramstad sought treatment for alcoholism early in his political career while Kennedy has struggled with bipolar disorder and drugs and alcohol. After Kennedy crashed his car into a police barrier at 2:45 a.m. in 2006, Ramstad befriended the son of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and encouraged him to seek treatment.

For Ramstad, a nine-term lawmaker who is retiring at year’s end, the bill’s passage cements his legacy. He labored for 12 years to pass the bill and, at times, he grew frustrated with the previous House Republican leadership for not acting on the bill.

“Our leadership refused to recognize the overwhelming empirical data. Ideology trumped personal pain and suffering,” Ramstad told The Hill newspaper in 2007.

President Bush promised in 2002 to sign a mental health parity bill at an event in New Mexico with Sen. Pete Domenici, a Republican, whose daughter suffers from schizophrenia.

“Our health insurance system must treat serious mental illness like any other disease,” Bush said at the time.

Jonathan E. Kaplan is Washington correspondent for the Center for Independent Media’s network of online news sites.

There’s a fresh wave of discussion in Washington and Minnesota of the possibility that U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad may change his annnounced plans to retire and seek another term. A very good source of mine has stated that this active reconsideration is occurring. My colleague Joe Bodell has the same information from a different Capitol Hill source.

Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, has decided to retire. Ramstad currently ranks three seniority notches lower, but could be offered the ranking position as an inducement to stay.

[JB]:  Apparently, the two Republicans ahead of Ramstad on the seniority totem pole — Wally Herger of California and Dave Camp of Michigan — are seen as minor roadblocks to Ramstad’s ascension, especially if the position of ranking member is dangled as a carrot to entice him out of retirement. 

Ramstad’s seat is currently seen as one of the most competitive open seat races in the nation.  An unretirement would call that status into question:  with the NRCC strapped for cash, caucus leaders will be looking for any opportunity to save money by turning a toss-up race into a likely hold for the GOP.

Surrounded by friends and family, in a well-staged event at Hopkins High School, Bonoff paid tribute to Ramstad, described herself as a fiscal moderate/conservative and social liberal, and roughed out a few policy positions, namely…Her first priority in Congress will be to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home (she didn’t say much about how or when, and emphasized the need for an orderly transition to Iraqi self-rule);

On Iraq and on foreign policy generally, Bonoff advocated diplomacy over military force (when asked after her speech, Bonoff said she favors opening U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran);

Endorsed universal health insurance, without specifying a plan, but said it shouldn’t be done of the backs of business. (When asked after the speech how to make progress toward that goal, it definitely didn’t sound like she was a single-payer advocate, but favored a mixture of subsidies and tax incentives, leading gradually to a universal mandate);

Vowed to pay down the national debt. Bonoff said securing the fiscal future of the next generation is the key to real security. (When asked later, she didn’t specify any spending cuts or tax increases. She said the idea of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest Americans should remain “on the table.” As for spending cuts, she gave examples of how she found redundancies in state spending and promised to look for similar efficiencies in federal spending).

An overview, with little detail, of her issue positions is available on her campaign website.

As is now traditional for such occasions, officials of the Minnesota GOP attended the event and passed out a press release attacking the newly declared candidate, in this case for being a phony moderate who supported higher taxes as a state senator. GOP spokester Mark Drake also impugned Bonoff’s claim to moderation by pointing that she has the support of Emily’s List, which generally endorses pro-choice women candidates. Bonoff is pro-choice. I’m not in a position to fact-check any of these claims for this post. I’ll add a link to the full GOP press release here when it goes up online.

As far as I know, Bonoff has only one declared opponent for the DFL nomination, Iraq war vet Ashwin Madia. Bonoff pledged to abide by the party endorsement, which she is expected to receive. Edina Mayor James Hovland, who is also considering getting into the race, was unavailable today to update his plans.

On the Republican side, state Rep. Erik Paulsen is in a commanding position to receive the Republican nomination, unless Ramstad changes his mind and decides to seek another term. Ramstad has been considering pleas by the National Republican Congressional Committee to reconsider his decision to retire, but as time passes it seems less likely he will change his plans.

Bonoff was a business executive before taking time off to raise her teenaged children and become a community activist. That led to a 2005 candidacy in a special Senate election in the suburban District 43. She was reelected to a full term in 2006, and does not have to give up her Senate seat to run for Congress.

University of Minnesota political scientist Kathryn Pearson said Bonoff meets the classic definition of a “quality candidate” and may have some advantages based on the amount of money she can raise (Emily’s endorsement is very big in that picture) and the fact that nationally, the Republicans have so many more endangered seats to defend.

Last night, Ramstad’s top Washington aide, Dean Peterson, emailed me this statement, in full:

“Jim has been overwhelmed by the huge number of Minnesotans urging him to reconsider, but he has no plans to run for re-election.”

If that strikes you as confirmation of Ramstad’s Sept. 17 retirement announcement, read on:Late last week, a  well-plugged-in source tipped me off to rumors on Capitol Hill that the National Republican Congressional Committee was urging Ramstad, 61, to reconsider his decision and seek another term and that Ramstad was seriously considering it.

The NRCC part of the story makes perfect sense. At this point, the Republicans have more vulnerable incumbents and are being out-fund-raised by the Democrats at every level. They sit in a leaking ship trying to figure out which holes to try to plug.

With Ramstad’s retirement announcement, the GOP boat sprung another pretty big leak. Three moderate Republicans (Clark McGregor, Bill Frenzel and Ramstad) have held Minnesota’s suburban 3rd District since 1960. (That’s 24 terms of GOP control.) Ramstad has won his recent races by laughably easy margins (65-35 in the Democratic tide election of 2006.)

Although the 3rd has been blue-ing up over recent cycles (it went for Gore in 2000 and Klobuchar in 2006), the GOP felt confident of holding the seat as long as the likable, moderate Ramstad was on the ticket.

Without him, the NRCC faces spending a million dollars or more on a race that is a toss-up at best. The party would rather keep the seat and spend the money elsewhere. Of course they would ask him to, but would Ramstad reconsider?

Starting Friday night and through the three-day weekend (federal employees get Columbus Day off), I left phone calls and emails for Ramstad and his top aides every day. On Sunday and Monday, the messages stated what I had heard about Ramstad reconsidering his decision and asking the congressman or his aides to please stop me from posting this if it was untrue.

I have had friendly, respectful exchanges with Ramstad and these aides in the past. If they were able to say there was nothing to the story, they wouldn’t have let four days pass. I was prepared to post this piece this morning, based on the non-response.

Then came Peterson’s email:

“Jim has been overwhelmed by the huge number of Minnesotans urging him to reconsider, but he has no plans to run for re-election.”

Peterson sent it as the congressional office was closing, and didn’t respond to emails asking to discuss more precisely what it does and doesn’t mean. So let’s take it at face value:

Ramstad is being urged to reconsider. He’s touched by it. He didn’t say that he won’t do it. But he has “no plans” to do it.

On Tuesday night, I ran the language of the email past several experienced decoders of politicalese. They agreed that Ramstad had left the door open, that the “no plans” formulation was a familiar way of not committing yourself, and that if someone wants to make a Shermanesque statement of non-candidacy, they can easily make a clearer one than that.

I’m not saying Ramstad is going to unretire. He says he has “no plans” to do so. I don’t know what the odds are. But he is listening to people urging him to seek a 10th term in the U.S. House, and he is thinking about it.

Ramstad, 61, a moderate Republican representing the suburban Third Congressional District, is in the middle of his ninth term. Ramstad, who once described himself to me jokingly as a RINO (that’s “Republican in name only) was about as moderate as you’ll see in today’s Congress.

At his recent presentation at the Humphrey Institute, he described his reaction when he learned that the Democrats had taken control of the House last year, along the lines of: Well, at least now I can get some of my bills passed. He was especially a champion of a bill to require that addiction and mental illness be treated equally with other medical conditions in health insurance. He said this was a bill that would pass if it could come to a vote, but that was blocked by the GOP leadership.

Story continues at Eric Black Ink.

“Now wait a minute,” says the editorial board at the Mankato Free Press. Allowing the government to be a player in negotiating for better drug prices is expanding the free market, not shutting it down. In its Sunday editorial this week titled “Medicate drug makers with markets,” the paper writes:

more inside

U.S. drug companies have for too long been on a diet filled with government fat. Their appetite for government desserts has swelled their underbelly. It’s time to medicate these drug makers with the remedy of the free market.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed Friday a bill to allow the government to negotiate drug prices with drug companies, something that was prohibited under the new Medicare prescription drug law.

The vote was 255-170 with 24 Republicans voting with Democrats, none of whom voted against the bill. Minnesota Republicans Michele Bachmann and John Kline voted against the free market solution to a price-gouging problem. [Republican Jim Ramstad voted for it.]

Still, it’s refreshing to see Congress adopt an idea right out of a Business 101 textbook. If you buy in large volumes, you should be able to negotiate a lower price per unit with the seller. The seller sees this as a good deal too. They can make as much profit, if they sell more units, even if the profit margin per unit is somewhat lower.

This should be a “Well, duh!” moment for most free marketers. Even deposed 1st District congressman Gil Gutknecht, long an advocate for opening the domestic drug market to foreign competition, favored allowing the U.S. government to compete in this multi-billion dollar market. And why not? The governments of every other major industrialized country