The campaign of Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, looked childish and desperate in sending out an e-mail falsely claiming that Senate rival Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, had been endorsed by the Communist Party USA. But as Washburn University political science professor Robert Beatty hoped, perhaps the incident may lead to an intelligent discussion about U.S. policy. Perhaps — though probably not. As Moran correctly argues, decades of U.S. embargoes haven’t brought an end to communist rule in Cuba and actually may have helped prop it up. Lifting some trade and travel bans to Cuba would benefit Kansas farmers and could help spread democracy.
In 2003, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., made a principled argument against filibustering judicial nominations. “We are really changing the constitutional design of what it takes to basically nominate and approve any judge,” he said. In 2005, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., also correctly argued that “all of the president’s nominees — both now and in the future — deserve a fair up or down vote.” So shouldn’t that mean that they both were among the 10 GOP lawmakers who voted Tuesday to end the filibuster of President Obama’s nomination of U.S. District Judge David Hamilton (in photo)? It should, but they weren’t.
Native Kansan and Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., hopes that lawmakers from both parties will finally declare a truce in their partisan fights over judicial nominations, thus ending such hypocrisy. “The Hamilton nomination would be a good time to do that,” he said. But apparently not for Roberts and Brownback.
Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, was one of nearly four dozen Republican and Democratic House members who submitted statements into the official record about health care reform that were written, in whole or in part, by lobbyists for a biotechnology company, the New York Times reported. Jenkins and Reps. K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, and Lee Terry, R-Neb., used nearly identical words in criticizing the health care reform bill, but each also said: “I do believe the sections relating to the creation of a market for biosimilar products is one area of the bill that strikes the appropriate balance in providing lower cost options.” So not only do lobbyists help write bills, they help write what lawmakers say.
UPDATE: Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., also submitted text written by lobbyists.
Unlike the former vice president, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., wouldn’t describe President Obama’s decision-making on Afghanistan troop levels as “dithering,” but Roberts told Topeka TV station WIBW that Obama has “got to get off the dime. He’s got to make a decision.” While Obama goes through one comprehensive review after another, Roberts said, “you’re endangering the support of our allies, who wonder if we’re really going to be there. You’re certainly endangering our relationship with (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai, regardless of what you think of him, and I think you’re endangering a lot of young men and women who are under a great deal of pressure over there and their lives are at stake.”
The wealthiest member of Kansas’ congressional delegation, Sen. Sam Brownback, ranks 77th overall among congressional and executive officials in Washington, D.C., with a net worth ranging from $3.1 million to $9.2 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The other Kansans’ standings: Republican Sen. Pat Roberts was 211th, with more than $1.4 million; Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, was 295th, with more than $718,000; Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Lenexa, was 336th, with more than $506,000; Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, was 435th, with more than $186,000; and Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, was 470th, with more than $105,000.
If President Obama were President Johnson, he would have used his signature on the spending bill that included $32 million for the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan as leverage over Kansas Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts. Kansas City Star columnist Steve Kraske noted that “Johnson, the master pol, would have demanded something: a tough vote, more cooperation or fewer criticisms in exchange for his help on something as major as NBAF.” Instead, Obama recently signed the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.
When Sen. Sam Brownback gives up his job to run for governor next year, it could be Kansas’ only open seat for a while. The Hutchinson News reported that Sen. Pat Roberts, who is officially Kansas’ “junior senator,” already plans to run for a fourth term in 2014 and had $82,256 in campaign cash as of September. If Roberts won in 2014 and served the full six years, by the way, he’d be 84 when his term ended in early 2021. At that point, Roberts’ 24 years in the Senate would make his longevity among Kansans second only to Bob Dole’s 27 years.
“I had a tremendous time looking at fossils.” — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (in photo), in Lawrence, saying KU’s Dyche Hall “may be the best university natural history museum in the United States”
“My name has been besmirched.” — Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, in Pittsburg, saying an earmarks-related ethics probe was started by an anonymous accusation
“We hurt people. I can tell you who didn’t share in the pain: corporate interests.” — Rep. Ann Mah, D-Topeka, on the 2009 Legislature’s spending cuts
“I was just reading this interesting story that I was going to run for the Senate in Kansas as a Democrat. I don’t know where that came from. I’m a lifelong Republican.” — Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
To hear the GOP members of the Kansas congressional delegation tell it, passage of health reform will end liberty as we know it. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, is already talking about trying to repeal or defund any bill that makes it into law. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger (in photo), also a Republican, has concerns about the unlevel playing field a public option could create, but she remains optimistic about reform overall, telling the Topeka Capital-Journal: “If we go with a plan that retains as much flexibility as possible, keeps the states are regulators, allows us to continue to be there for consumers, and we could get a national system in place in terms of no pre-existing condition exclusions and everybody have coverage and meaningful subsidies, I think we’d all be better.”
When Politico blogger Ben Smith heard that Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, was among the more than two dozen House members who are the subject of an ethics inquiry, he wondered whether it meant Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, will be a senator soon. “It’s tough enough running in a GOP primary in a conservative state as an appropriator. . . . And when you have even a whiff of scandal surrounding your role as a congressional spender, you’re in an even tougher spot,” Smith wrote. “Tiahrt will need to clear his name quickly on this.”
Scott Paradise, campaign manager for 4th Congressional District candidate Wink Hartman, dismissed the endorsement of fellow GOP candidate Mike Pompeo by state Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, as one career politician endorsing another political insider. “If we want our government to change, then we have to stop sending those same career politicians to Washington,” Paradise said in a statement. Pompeo’s campaign manager, Aaron Jack, responded that Pompeo is a businessman and a first-time candidate for office, not a politician. “Here we are, 52 weeks to the day from the general election, and already Wink Hartman has decided to launch a negative campaign,” Jack said.
During a Monday town hall meeting in Pittsburg, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, said that Democrats wanted to get people “into a life of dependency” from “cradle to the grave,” using the terms “communism” and “socialism” to describe them. “That didn’t work in Russia,” Tiahrt said. “And it didn’t work in Germany.” On his battle against the health reform bill, he said: “This is about freedom. . . . Nobody in America should ever have to go to a public official to get health care.” Nor did Tiahrt measure his words in discussing his rival for the U.S. Senate seat, Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays. Tiahrt said: “We need somebody to fight for us. We need somebody who is going to ride toward the sound of the guns.”
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., responded to those who’ve criticized his role in health care reform as partisan and unproductive. “This is not my first rodeo. I know how things can be achieved in the minority,” he wrote in a letter, noting his work on behalf of helping the contaminated town of Treece, securing funding for the national biolab at Kansas State University and keeping terror detainees out of Fort Leavenworth. “But this time, the deck was stacked very firmly against the minority voice. . . . Efforts to negotiate a better health care reform bill had already collapsed when the Obama administration set a rushed and arbitrary deadline for signing a reform bill into law. Despite the fact that compromise negotiations were under way with colleagues who I deeply respect, including the chairs and ranking members of the two committees, it was made clear there were going to be no compromises. Even now, Majority Leader Harry Reid and a select few are merging the two Senate versions of the bill behind closed doors, contrary to the president’s promise that the creation of the bill would be on C-SPAN for all to see.” Roberts concluded: “Rest assured, as the debate — which I expect to get even more heated — continues, you will hear my voice loud and clear. I’ll stand up for what’s right. I’ll offer and support alternative measures that I think make better sense and I’ll continue urging Kansans to share their concerns with me. I am saddled up and ready to ride.”
Good for Congress for deciding to buy out residents of Treece. Lead, zinc and other chemical contamination from past mining operations made the southeast Kansas town unsafe and isolated. Kudos to the Kansas delegation, particularly Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Lynn Jenkins, for pushing for the buyout and for standing up for residents who needed help.
“It will not be me.” — Gov. Mark Parkinson (in photo), on the identity of the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate
“We lack a farm team.”— Sen. Chris Steineger, D-Kansas City, Kan., on his party, as he tests the waters to run either for governor or secretary of state
“Instead of a fresh proposal, we got an additional 1,000 pages of government intrusion.” — Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, on the health care compromise bill unveiled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
It’s troubling that Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, reportedly is under investigation by two ethics panels for steering federal funds to clients of a lobbying firm that made donations to his campaign. Tiahrt secured $5 million and helped steer another $2 million in earmarks to clients of the PMA Group between 2001 and 2008, while receiving $21,250 in campaign donations from PMA Group during that period. The Center for Public Integrity also complained this year that Tiahrt directed earmarks to a company represented by a former Tiahrt aide. It included Tiahrt among other House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee members “in circles of relationships fraught with potential conflicts of interest, involving former congressional staffers-turned lobbyists, earmarks and campaign cash.”
UPDATE: Tiahrt issued a statement this afternoon saying that the Office of Congressional Ethics asked about the process his office followed for submitting defense-related project requests to the House Appropriations Committee, and that he had fully complied with the request. But he had “no reason whatsoever to believe that we are subject to a House Ethics Committee investigation.” Tiahrt said he takes “pride in our professional and ethical process for reviewing requests made to my office — a process that we undertake to ensure the highest level of integrity is part of all our conduct.”
As a member of the two U.S. Senate committees tasked with crafting health reform bills, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., has played the critic more than the architect, objecting noisily on cost and other grounds. That’s probably why he hasn’t been a go-to guy for reform champion and former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the Democrat now leading President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services. “Even though we know each other very well, she knows how I feel about how health reform, so she’s trying to go where she can get votes,” Roberts told the Kansas Health Institute News Service. “I would welcome — if she had the time — at least an hour discussion to go over these facts (about health reform) with the secretary. I can’t imagine if she were still in her previous role that she wouldn’t be jumping up and down about all this.” Perhaps, but Gov. Mark Parkinson has strongly advocated reform.
In an article on the bonds between residents at the C Street town house in Washington, D.C., Politico characterized Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, has having been “distraught” that prominent socially conservative Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., endorsed their fellow C Street resident Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, in the state’s GOP Senate primary next year. Tiahrt has attended C Street events but isn’t considered a regular at the house, known for its Bible study and fellowship.
DeMint said: “They’re both good guys, so I wouldn’t say anything bad about either one of them. I just know Jerry better. I think he might be able to help shake things up a bit.” Coburn said of Moran: “He’s not an appropriator. He’s in a farm state, and he voted against the farm bill. He demonstrates courage.”
Tiahrt told Politico: “A lot of people are focusing their attention on the candidates in the primary because they know it’s about the future of the party. It’s not based on roommates. It’s based on ideas. And when it’s based on ideas, I get more support.” He also said: “My roommate endorsed me — I’ve been married to her for 33 years.”
Reactions to any White House initiative tend to stay within party lines. So it was surprising to see how Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., regarded the Obama administration’s decision to restrict compensation for top executives at the biggest bailed-out banks. “I have no problem with greed being curtailed,” McCain said.
Apparently Sen. Pat Roberts (in photo), R-Kan., does: “It’s a bad precedent. You have government determining the pay of a company that may be in the business of trying to get the best employees they can to save the company. It’s very competitive out there. I’m not waving flags for people to get excessive pay or golden parachutes — what I object to is the government making that decision.”
“If ever there was a time for the unanimous passing of an amendment, the Franken anti-government contractor rape liability bill would seem to be that,” said Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” Stewart’s bit highlighted the 30 GOP male senators, including Kansas’ Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, who recently voted not to bar federal contracts to defense contractors if they prevent their employees from taking workplace sexual assault and discrimination cases to court. Among the 68 votes that carried the amendment to passage were the only four women Republicans in the chamber: Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Dan Glickman said this week he guesses he’ll “end up in the nonprofit or academic world” when he steps down next September after six years as chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. But does the 64-year-old former Democratic congressman from Wichita have politics in mind? The U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sam Brownback (and already fought over by Reps. Todd Tiahrt and Jerry Moran)? Or the governorship, toward which Brownback seems destined at this point? Of the Senate seat, Glickman said: “That’s probably not a very realistic option for me, (but) I never rule anything out,” noting he’d like to be a senator but doesn’t relish trying to raise campaign dollars. “We’ll see if there’s a groundswell from Kansas.” Glickman remains well-liked in his home state, but there are two potential roadblocks to statewide electability: He’s a Democrat, and now he’s also been a lobbyist — and for Hollywood, of all things.
Judging from the Kansas Republicans’ votes and statements on health reform this year in Congress, you’d think most of their constituents would be pro-status quo. But a new survey from the Docking Institute of Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University found that 56 percent of Kansas adults think the government has the responsibility to ensure that all Americans have health care coverage and that 88 percent think the Kansas health care system needs change — major change, according to 58 percent.
The Wild West-flavored criticism of the Senate Finance Committee’s health bill offered Tuesday by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., inspired Stephen Colbert to extend the metaphor on Wednesday’s “The Colbert Report.” Donning a cowboy hat and fancy boots, Colbert said: “You see, folks — we’re on a runaway stagecoach of big government, being chased by the coyotes of increased deficits and heading right into an ambush by the Comanche in chief and his hope Hopis. And unless the marshal of fiscal responsibility arrives on the noon train of free-market principles to drive these saloon girls of new taxes out, the pickup truck of high premiums will get eaten by the death panel prairie dogs and the Boot Hill tumbleweed sarsaparilla varmint six-shooter cattle-rustling. . . .” — you get the idea.
While most of the attention on next year’s 4th Congressional District race has been on all the Republicans entering the field, Democratic state Rep. Raj Goyle has been raking in donations. He announced Tuesday that he had raised more than $403,000 during his first three months as a candidate. Half of the contributions were $100 or less.
As the Senate Finance Committee prepared to vote on its health reform bill this afternoon, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., got in touch with his Dodge City roots oratorically: “I am terribly concerned that we are riding hell for leather into a health care box canyon, full of spending quicksand, cactus tax hikes, policy briar patches, complete with CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) regulatory scorpions, rattlesnakes and bad news bears — something like riding your pickup over a whole tangle of barbed wire. And getting out of this, Mr. Chairman, and back on solid ground to make Medicare solvent is going to be a mighty rough and long ride.”
