Category: Maine
Collins Amendment Fails to Make It Into Senate Reform Bill
WASHINGTON, March 29-Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said that the lobbying reform bill that the Senate passed Wednesday by a vote of 90-8 was the most significant reform of ethics rules in a decade, but she added that the bill would have been stronger had her amendment to create an independent office to investigate ethics complaints passed on Tuesday.
The amendment to create an Office of Public Integrity, proposed by Collins and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), failed, 30 to 67.
“I’m disappointed,” Collins said at a press conference following the Wednesday vote. “I still think an Office of Public Integrity is a good idea, and it would have strengthened the enforcement leg of this bill and complemented the increase of penalties.”
She said her amendment failed because “members were very uneasy at having an independent entity do investigations of allegations of wrongdoing.”
Collins added that it often takes years for organizational reforms to go through.
The proposed office would have had an independent director who could conduct investigations and refer them to the Senate Ethics Committee. The proposal would have allowed investigations to be launched by a member, an outside party or the office itself. But the amendment would have allowed the Ethics Committee to overrule the office by a two-thirds vote.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R- Maine, who voted for the Collins amendment on Tuesday, said in a statement that while the Ethics Committee was doing its job, recent scandals have eroded the public’s trust in Congress.
“I believe the creation of an independent Office of Public Integrity will alleviate the genuine concern the American people have about the ability of Congress to address possible ethics violations, and I am disappointed that the Senate rejected this amendment today,” Snowe said.
Common Cause, a nonpartisan lobbying group promoting open government, supported the amendment, said Mike Surrusco, the director of ethics campaigns for the organization. But Surrusco said the amendment did not go as far as he would have liked and that Common Cause had favored an amendment by Obama that would have established a more independent office, incapable of being overruled by the Senate committee.
“People don’t want this independent office because then they can’t control it,” Surrusco said.
“We feel like the whole process of investigating their colleagues for members is just inherently conflicted,” he said.
Paul Miller, the president of the American League of Lobbyists, disagreed. He said the fact that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who sparked the recent ethics debate, was caught was proof that the old system was working.
“These folks can police themselves and their colleagues, and I think they’re in a position to do so,” Miller said of members of Congress. “I know you hear the stories that, well, one side won’t issue a complaint because there is an agreement that both sides have that they’re not going to do that. I think this is a new era that we’re entering into and I think you’re going to see that change.”
Surrusco said that the House and Senate Ethics Committees had been emasculated over the last 10 years. While the House committee has taken two complaints in the last decade, Surrusco said, the Senate committee has done more. Common Cause has filed several complaints, he said, but had not heard back on any of them.
Miller said that the ethics committees had not started looking into ethics complaints against Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Tom DeLay (R-Texas) because the Justice Department was already investigating them and “they did not want to reinvent the wheel.” Miller said an improved electronic filing system for lobbyists would help the current situation.
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Maine Delegation Reacts to White House Resignation
WASHINGTON, March 28 - Maine's two Republican senators had high praise Tuesday for outgoing White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, whose resignation President George W. Bush announced that morning.
" I have been privileged to call Andy a friend for over a quarter-century, and I wish him all the best as he prepares to embark on a new chapter in his life," Sen. Olympia Snowe said in statement. "He was always willing to listen and communicate, and he is an exceptional person who will be missed."
Card, a native of Massachusetts who served in the Massachusetts legislature, owns a summer house in Poland and has campaigned for Maine Republicans in the past.
Snowe said in an interview she met Card when she was first campaigning for the State Senate in 1976. She was going door to door on a bicycle when she happened to knock on his door. The two Republicans have remained friends since then, dining together and maintaining a strong professional relationship.
Sen. Susan Collins also had kind words for Card. "Andy Card's steady leadership, candor and professionalism over the past five years have distinguished him as one of the most dedicated public servants with whom I have had the privilege of working," she said in a statement. "I wish him well in his future endeavors and look forward to continuing our personal relationship when he visits his second home in my state of Maine."
Snowe said that she thought any future staff changes should be left up to President Bush, despite calls from some of her colleagues for a comprehensive staff shake up. She said that the key to better relations between the White House and Congress was open communication between the two branches, and she stressed the importance of the checks and balances system of government. Card always returned her phone calls, Snowe said.
Card has been the chief of staff at the White House since Bush got there in 2001. His five-year tenure is among the longest of any chief of staff; well beyond the average of about two years. Before serving in this White House, Card had been the Secretary of Transportation for President George H. W. Bush. He was also a deputy chief of staff in the first President Bush's administration.
According to a White House biography, Card worked in the automotive industry during the Clinton administration. Earlier in his career Card was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1975 to 1983. He grew up in Holbrook, Mass., and attended the University of South Carolina and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Maine's two Democratic Representatives also had reactions to Card's resignation.
Rep. Tom Allen (D) said that he did not know Card that well. He met Card in March 2001, when President Bush took the state's congressional delegation up to Maine on Air Force One.
Unlike Snowe, Allen favors more resignations in the Administration. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would be at the top of the list, Allen said, "because you should only have so many mistakes and bad policy decisions before the President finds someone else."
Rep. Michael Michaud (D) agreed with Allen on the need for "new blood" in the Administration and added that Bush's White House should work in a more bipartisan way. He had kind words for Card.
"I respect Andrew Card's commitment to public service and I thank him for it," Michaud said in a statement.
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Energy Lobby Pushes for More Offshore Drilling
WASHINGTON, March 22-Maine's congressional delegation is resisting the effort by the energy industry and its allies in Congress to lift a moratorium on drilling for natural gas and oil on the Outer Continental Shelf. While there are no current proposals to open up drilling off Maine, lifting the moratorium would enable energy companies to begin drilling if they chose to.
Congress in 1982 placed a moratorium on drilling on most of the Outer Continental Shelf, except for the Gulf of Mexico and waters off Alaska and has renewed the moratorium every year.
According to reports by the U.S. Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service, drilling has taken place in the past. In the late 1970s and early 1980s oil companies opened several rigs 80 to 140 miles southeast of Nantucket Island, Mass. These wells were abandoned because they were not commercially viable and the moratorium went into effect. But natural gas wells are operating in the Canadian waters of Georges Bank, and that could spark interest on the American side.
Lisa Flavin, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute, an energy lobbying group, said the ultimate goal is to get more energy to consumers. She said that lifting the moratoria on drilling along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts would help deal with energy demands, which are expected to rise in the next two decades. By 2025, the demand for oil will rise by 39 percent and for natural gas by 34 percent, Flavin said.
The institute estimates that there are 3.8 billion barrels of oil in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, which stretches from the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia to the tip of Florida, and there are about 37 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the same region. This is a fraction of the resources in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
Environmental groups disagree. Matt Prindiville, the federal policy advocate for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said that opening up drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf would do little to ease energy demands. The council favors developing alternative energy sources, making automobiles more efficient and making the drilling moratoria permanent.
Prindiville also said that having rigs off the coast of Maine could hurt fishing. "Oil drilling is a messy business," he said. "And the potential for spills to wreak havoc to fisheries and our coasts is certainly there."
The two Maine U.S. House members have signed a letter urging the House Appropriations Committee to maintain the moratoria. So far about 75 Democrats and 25 Republicans have signed the letter and more are expected to sign, according to a spokesman for Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine. A version of the letter circulates every year.
"Mining and oil drilling are profoundly inappropriate for the Gulf of Maine," Allen said in a statement. "Our tourism and fishing industries, so important to Maine's economy, are just too vital to put at risk. I will continue to fight to protect Maine's offshore areas from dangerous and inappropriate activities."
Maine's other representative, Democrat Michael Michaud said in a statement that last year many of his fellow members of Congress had abandoned the commitment to a moratorium for drilling.
"As a 29-year mill worker, I understand that there is no question that we have to do everything that we can to lower gas prices for Maine families, but turning the Gulf of Maine into an oil and gas field is not the way to go," Michaud said.
Both of Maine's Republican senators agree with the representatives on this issue. In a statement, Sen. Olympia Snowe said that she would be working with other senators to help protect the Atlantic Seaboard's environment.
"Many residents of coastal states such as Maine depend on the sea and all its natural resources for their very livelihoods," she said. "Given that we are not certain that oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf can be done in an environmentally friendly way, now is certainly not the time to lift the moratorium."
Sen. Susan Collins has been fighting efforts to open up the Outer Continental Shelf for years as well.
"Drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf presents a threat to the environment and could harm the livelihoods of many residents in Maine and other states," Collins said in a statement. "For this reason, I remain committed to making certain that the moratorium remains in place to preserve our natural resources for future generations."
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Common Cause President Brings Maine with her to Washington
WASHINGTON, March 21-The staff at Common Cause used to get tired of all the Down East stories the organization's president, Chellie Pingree would tell. That is, until last summer, when Pingree took them to her North Haven home for a retreat. They had a lobster bake on the beach, did some work and escaped Washington's oppressive summer heat for a breezy time on Penobscot Bay.
The office now mixes chatter about Allen's Coffee Brandy and hog's head cheese with talk of Washington corruption and bringing the Maine Clean Elections system to the national level.
Pingree, who served as the majority leader of the Maine Senate from 1996 to 2000, came to Common Cause after her failed attempt to unseat U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in 2002. After losing, Pingree was contacted by a firm of headhunters looking to fill the recently vacated position of Common Cause president.
Pingree was dubious at first about coming to Washington. "I'd lived in Maine for so long, and I still consider it my home," she said. But she quickly realized that she would have been here had she won against Collins, and she would be able to go back to Maine often.
Moreover, Common Cause, as one of the oldest people-power lobbying groups, fit well with Pingree's progressive politics.
"It's great to be one of the good guys when the bad guys are so bad," Pingree said in an interview in her office a few blocks from the lobbying den along K Street.
"From a lot of people's perspective this is one of the worst times in politics in Washington, particularly for the issues we work on," she said. "Most of our work is around the influence of money in politics, how elections are conducted, whether the votes get counted, things like the ethics of elected officials, and this year has been obviously incredibly busy for us."
Common Cause was founded by John Gardner, President Lyndon B. Johnson's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, in 1970. In a press release that hangs on Pingree's wall, Gardner spoke of his desire for "public officials to have literally millions of American citizens looking over their shoulders at every move they make."
Gardner wanted his organization to represent everyone, saying that "our agenda must be an agenda for all Americans - for the poor, the comfortable and those in between, for old and young, for black and white, for city dwellers and farmers, for men and women."
Pingree took over the organization at a time of transition. Just before she arrived, Common Cause had seen its efforts of the previous few years pay off in the form of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, according to Mary Boyle, the organization's press secretary.
According to Boyle and Chief Operating Officer Sarah Dufendach, Pingree took the group out of its "tunnel vision" and made it focus on issues such as media reform and wider campaign finance reform. Pingree also focused much of the group's work on the states, recently helping to pass a clean elections system in Connecticut.
Pingree is very hands-on with these issues, according to many on her staff. Barbara Burt, the vice president and director of election reform, who is from Newcastle, said Pingree wants to be treated as a "member of the team." and She is very engaged at staff meetings, wanting to know what everyone is working on.
Pingree, who is now 50, came to Maine right after she graduated from high school. She grew up in Minnesota on a farm and is a third-generation Scandinavian-American. Pingree met her husband, Charlie Pingree, on an Outward Bound course in Minnesota and soon followed him home to Maine. Mr. Pingree is a member of the Maine landowning family but has no connection with the land-owning company itself..
The Pingrees have since divorced, but not before having three children. Hannah serves North Haven and the surrounding area in the state legislature. Cecily is a filmmaker who is working with her mother on opening up the old Nebo Lodge on North Haven for business this summer. Her son, Asa, is an actor.
When Pingree first came to Maine with her husband in 1971, she recalled, the couple lived in North Haven in a wood cabin with no electricity and no running water. The two had a much-read copy of Helen and Scott Nearing's book, "Living the Good Life," and led what Republican gubernatorial candidate Peter Mills called "a hippy-dippy existence." Charlie got a job on a dump truck and Chellie kept busy making candles and raising vegetables. She also attempted to volunteer at the local high school.
The principal seemed excited, but when the issue came before the school board it took a vote and decided it did not want this aggressive young woman from another state-from "away," as Mainers sometimes refer to outsiders-to be near their children. This stunned Pingree, she said, and spurred her to go to college so that she could become a science teacher and get her foot in the door of the school.
Pingree has since come to understand what kept her out of the school at first.
"There's sort of a funny thing," she said. "I think people in a lot of small towns and in New England, they kinda kick you around a little bit, and if you stick with it and show them that you're really gonna be there for the long haul, then they accept you and say 'OK.' "
Pingree, after the school board affair, left the island and went to Portland, where she attended night school at the University of Southern Maine and worked the lunch shift at the old Deering's Ice Cream by the South Portland Bridge. She left southern Maine after one semester and transferred to the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. There she got a degree in farming.
She and her husband returned to the island after school. Chellie started a farm and delivered eggs to her neighbors, Charlie started building boats and the two of them started their family.
Pingree had cows, sheep, chicken and vegetables. She started using the wool from her sheep to make sweaters for her business, North Island Designs. Eventually she sold her products through 1,200 stores and mail-order catalogues like Lands' End. About 35 women on the island knit sweaters for her.
In 1992, Pingree ran for the Maine Senate. She had been busy working on the school board and running a business. But she was, as her daughter Hannah described her, a "political junkie" and she needed that fix. She won as a liberal Democrat in Knox County, where 40 percent of the people were Republicans, 40 percent independents and only 20 percent Democrats.
She went on to become the majority leader in her last two terms. Mills said that she often made efforts to reach across the aisle, even if she never altered her policies.
After leaving the state Senate, she ran against Collins in what Mills called impossibly difficult circumstances. But to her supporters, she was still able to inspire people. Dale McCormick, who had served with Pingree in the state senate and originally asked her to run for that legislative seat, said she heard a brilliant bit on the radio.
"I can remember one time I was driving along in Augusta and I heard Chellie on the radio," McCormick said. "And she in 20 seconds so clearly articulated how I was feeling, the problem with the current situation and a very clear solution. I was applauding at the end of it."
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City of Bangor Lobbies Feds
WASHINGTON, March 15 - Two Bangor officials came to the capital this week to lobby the Maine congressional delegation and take part in the National League of Cities' Congressional City Conference. Councilwoman Anne Allen and Rodney McKay, the director of Bangor's Department of Community and Economic Development, were here to push Bangor's interests in the fields of education, transportation, telecommunications and community development.
As members of the Maine Municipal Association, the two officials also belong to the National League of Cities, and Bangor and other cities and towns throughout the state regularly participate in this annual conference. Representatives of Augusta, Brewer, Lewiston and Portland attended as well.
Allen and McKay agreed that the biggest issue facing Bangor and the rest of Maine is the proposed 25 percent cut in Community Development Block Grants, which are disbursed to states and specific communities to spend on things like housing and job creation as they see fit. The Senate on Wednesday approved an amendment that Sen. Olympia Snowe offered to wipe out this proposed cut, but the spending reduction could still go through before the final budget is passed.
When the grants were started in 1974, Bangor received $1.2 million. Despite rising inflation, that number remained static for more than 30 years. The 1974 dollars translate into about $4.8 million 2006 dollars. In fiscal year 2007, the President's budget proposal would send less than $1 million in grant money to Bangor.
With the number of city projects that would be hampered by the federal cut, Allen said with a chuckle, "It's gonna kill us."
McKay said that Bangor has used Community Development Block Grants to improve older residential neighborhoods by giving grants to lower-income house owners for home improvements. The city also bought up unused military housing in the Capeheart area and turned it into transitional housing for the city's homeless. Some of the money also went to job training programs for those residents.
The city also uses the money to help low-income families buy a house, and it gives money to landlords who rent to low-income people, McKay said. The federal money has been used to improve 12 buildings in the downtown area and to bring buildings up to code and make sure they are handicapped-accessible.
When L.L. Bean wanted to open a new call center near the airport, grant money was used to expand the parking lot at 690 Maine Ave., a prerequisite for the giant retailer's moving there, McKay said. The call center created hundreds of jobs for Bangor and the surrounding areas.
McKay and Allen were also pushing for a 100,000-pound vehicle weight limit on I-95 north of Augusta's new bridge. Currently the limit is 80,000 pounds, and trucks that weigh more have to get off the highway at that point and use state and city roads. Not only do they wear out the roads faster, but they also cause many accidents that could be avoided if they stayed on the highway, according to the congressional delegation
The limit used to be 80,000 pounds at the point where the Maine Turnpike ended, forcing northbound trucks to drive down Western Ave. and through the perilous traffic circles in Augusta. After the 100,000-pound weight limit was moved up to the third bridge on Oct, 15, 2004, accidents on Memorial Circle involving heavy trucks dropped from seven in 2004 to two in 2005, and on Bangor Street from four to two. All traffic accidents also declined from 2004 to 2005.
The Maine congressional delegation is trying to get the weight limit extended further north. A bill by Snowe, co-sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins, is in committee, and a House version sponsored by Maine's congressmen is at the same stage.
McKay and Allen also were concerned with recent efforts by telecommunications companies to end city control over when city streets can be dug up for installation of cables. Currently the companies need city approval and have to pay a nominal fee. The telecommunications industry wants such controls shifted to the federal government.
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Baldacci’s Assistant Testifies Before Committee
WASHINGTON, March 2 - Gov. John Baldacci's representative pleaded Maine's pecuniary plight caused by the new Medicare prescription drug benefit program before the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday.
Jude Walsh, the governor's special assistant in his Office of Health Policy and Finance, told the subcommittee that Maine has had to pay some $6 million to cover the drug costs of those Mainers who did not receive the coverage that they should have under Medicare Part D. That's the new prescription benefit that went into effect Jan. 1 and has been plagued by what Republican members of the subcommittee called "glitches."
"The federal drug benefit was not ready Jan. 1 and is still not ready for everyone today," Walsh testified before the subcommittee, of which Rep. Thomas Allen (D-1 st District) is a member. Walsh said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services "never would have allowed a state Medicaid program to implement a benefit as flawed as this one remains."
While the new benefit is intended to give many seniors and poor people access to medications that they did not have last year, much of the problem in the program's first weeks had to do with the plight of former Medicaid recipients who were automatically assigned to the new Medicare program and found themselves at least temporarily deprived of government drug benefits.
Critics see the new program as corporate welfare for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
"Speaking for my constituents in Maine, I have to say the process has been chaotic," Allen said. "The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 gave the pharmaceutical and insurance industry most of what they wanted. But it denied senior citizens and people with disabilities the simple option of adding a Medicare-administered drug plan to their existing benefits."
Dr. Mark McClellan, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, agreed that Medicare Part D gives less coverage than some employer plans, but he said that seniors now had a wide range of choices, up to 50 depending on the area, and that help is available in choosing the plan that best fits their needs.
One of the biggest criticisms Democrats at the hearing had was that the original legislation was drafted by industry lobbyists and congressional Republicans.
"It was conceived in sin, born in the darkness of night with no participation by Democratic members at all and was attended only by a fair gaggle of lobbyists of the health care industry, the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry," Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said.
Republicans countered by saying the market is working to provide seniors with choice and the lowest prices, and called the Democrats' plan for government price negotiations with the industry a relic of the "command economy."
"The horse that's actually being ridden on the other side is a unicorn," Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) said. "Because it's pure fantasy to believe that if you're going to have price control in America that we're going to be the land that creates these blockbuster drugs that will provide quality of life to people not only here but throughout the world."
Walsh said there also were problems in the implementation of the new program. Many pharmacists around the state reported that as many as 50 percent of their customers who had sought the benefit could not be confirmed as participating.
The state set up a hotline to air these grievances, and at the turn of the year as many as 15,000 people called every day, Walsh said. Many of the callers said they were having to pay $250 deductibles and $100 co-pays after they were moved automatically into the new program.
Baldacci responded by reauthorizing the state's pharmacy benefit, which so far has spent $6 million on 115,000 prescriptions for more than 50,000 Mainers. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has promised to pay this back, but that has not happened yet, Walsh said.
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National Congress of American Indians Holds Winter Meeting
WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 - Chief James Sappier of Maine Penobscot Tribe ate buffalo meat on toothpicks and gourmet nachos at a "gala reception" the National Congress of American Indians hosted at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian on Monday.
Hundreds of Native Americans from all over Indian Country milled around under the colossal dome that the museum's galleries wrap around, socializing with themselves and with congressional staffs and members of Congress from Capitol Hill, only a few blocks away.
Sappier said he came down to Washington to make sure that the interests of the Penobscot people and Indians in the Northeast in general were as well represented at the congress's winter executive session as those of the tribes in such western states as Oklahoma and Arizona.
Representatives of the Micmacs also were here, but they said they were not authorized to talk to the news media. No Passamaquoddy or Maliseet representatives came down to Washington. All four of the Wabanaki Tribes that are still live cultures in Maine--the Maliseet, Micmacs, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot--were here for a meeting of the United South and Eastern Tribes at the beginning of February. The tribes at that convention all met with the Maine congressional delegation to discuss Indian affairs.
The Washington-based National Congress of American Indians, started in 1944, is one of the oldest Indian advocacy groups in the country. Sappier said that when the Penobscots were looking for formal federal recognition, the congress passed resolutions and wrote letters in support of the tribe. The chief said the congress was the only organization where all the tribes come together; he called it an effective way of projecting a unified Indian voice to the federal government.
Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz. addressed the congress, along with several Cabinet secretaries, including Mike Johanns of Agriculture and R. James Nicholson of Veterans Affairs. Many House members also made appearances, including Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.), who represents the most Indians of anyone in the House, and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the Chickasaw Tribe and the only tribal member among the 533 current members of Congress.
While Sappier lingered in the Museum's gift store and debated over what gift to buy his staff for a future raffle, he described what he hoped to accomplish in Washington: "To influence the decisions of Indian tribes and look out for the Northeast tribes' welfare in federal legislation, in policy making, in regulatory decisions with regards to health services for the tribes and their relationship with the U.S. government."
In the working meetings of the Indian congress, Sappier said he and his colleagues from around the country discussed every major issue Indians face today, including tribal court systems, law enforcement, energy, natural resources and health care.
As a group of traditional performers sang to the party below, Sappier said the Penobscots needed more economic development and an improved infrastructure to succeed. Another theme many who attended the conference voiced was the need for more education to break the cycle of poverty that is plaguing the vast majority of Indian Country, and a need for more health care spending.
"The issue is the level of health care in Indian Country; on a per capita basis, federal prisoners receive twice the health care the Indians receive," Sappier said. "Tribes receive $1,900 per capita, federal prisoners receive $3,800 per capita, and the average nationwide is $5,600 per capita."
"Every year we come to these same meetings and ask for the same crumbs," said Jefferson Keel, the congress's first vice president. "We don't even get a slice, we get crumbs, and that is insulting."
Some Indian supporters expressed concern that the current Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which in part involves his representation of Indian tribes, might lead some to think that Indian tribes spent enormous amounts of money in Washington and received enormous dividends in return. But Rep. Cole told the convention that all 500 tribes across the nation contributed some 0.3 percent of all the money spent in the 2004 elections. Sen. Kerry, for his part, said the tribes were innocent in the scandal; he put the blame on corrupt Republicans.
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Think Tank Examines Budget Proposal’s Impact on Maine
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - Maine will have to raise its taxes or accept cuts in social programs if President Bush's budget recommendation for fiscal year 2007 is fully implemented, the independent Center on Budget Policy and Priorities warned Thursday. Bush's proposal would cut $7.5 billion nationwide from state and local grants.
The center released a report on program cuts that outlined what effect the budget would have on various social safety net programs in each of the 50 states.
The $7.5 billion in reduced federal grants to states and localities would represent almost half the total proposed cuts in domestic discretionary spending, the center said.
The report was compiled from materials from the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including computer predictions on the budget's impact over the next five years that was apparently erroneously released. For the last 25 years, the center, which calls itself nonpartisan, has done research on how national and state fiscal policies affect low-income people.
"When President Bush gave me guidance on what the 2007 budget should look like, he directed me to focus on national priorities and tighten our belts elsewhere," OMB Director Joshua B. Bolten said in a statement earlier this month. "Congress substantially delivered on the President's spending restraint goals last year, and after speaking with members at this week's congressional hearings, I'm optimistic we can again provide a significant level of savings for American taxpayers."
OMB also had some things to say about the center, which is not popular in Republican circles.
"This is a liberal think tank that opposes every effort to control domestic spending," OMB spokesman Scott Millburn said in a statement. "It has made these same false predictions in the past that it knows have been proven wrong. For example, two years ago, it stated that the President's budget would require deep reductions in programs for veterans, low-income mothers and children and special education. Instead, the President's subsequent budgets have increased funding for all of these programs."
The President's proposed budget would cut $183 billion in domestic discretionary spending nationwide over the next five years, according to the center. Discretionary spending is for programs that are not mandated by law. These include many social programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, educational subsidies, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and job training under the Department of Labor.
Under the Bush proposals, the center said, Maine would sustain cuts, for example, of almost $42 million in elementary and secondary school aid and $25 million in heating assistance for low-income families over the five years, among other scaled-back social programs.
"To me this budget is incomprehensible because when I was growing up in the '60s and frankly all through the rest of the 20 th century, I think people in both parties wanted to reduce poverty," Rep. Tom Allen (D-1 st ) said. "This is a budget that will increase poverty, and it will diminish opportunity."
Allen sits on the House Budget Committee. He said the President's cuts in education, jobs, health care and other social programs would hurt the poor and not help reduce the federal deficit.
"There is no consistent policy in this budget other than taking money and opportunity away from low and middle-income Americans to protect his tax cuts for the wealthy,"
Allen said. "He's made promises that can't be kept. He can't reduce the deficit without raising taxes. He's nibbling away at these domestic programs. The trouble is they are large enough to do great damage to children and families but too small to help in any material way with the total budget deficit because Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense and interest on the national debt are the more important factors in the budget."
According to the report, Maine would lose $41.7 million from 2007 through 2011 for K-12 educational funding, including $25.9 million from special education. The state would lose $6.5 million in grants for vocational and adult education programs next year, and nearly $35 million over the five years. Cuts in education could also keep some 400 to 500 children from participating in Head Start programs in the state in 2011, the report said.
Mainers would lose $5.9 million in grants for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children over the next five years, which could lead to 1,400 people not getting assistance from the program, assuming that the cuts are implemented in part by cutting back on enrollment, according to the center's report.
While the President's budget would increase home energy grants for low-income people, which aids many families in Maine, by $601 million at the national level this year, the center's report says that over the next five years the program's total spending would drop by $1.9 billion, including a cut of $25 million for Maine.
Robert Greenstein, the center's executive director, noted that legislation supported by Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe would move $1 billion of next year's spending for the program to this year. The center supports this move, he said, but added that this would deepen next year's proposed spending reduction.
Rep. Allen said he favors leaving social programs intact and instead ending the recent tax cuts for the wealthy.
"The upper-income tax cuts for people earning over $380,000 a year simply cannot responsibly be continued," he said, "because we have to invest in education, environmental protection and energy conservation if we're going to compete in the global economy and give people a fighting chance to make themselves a better life."
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The Maine Delegation Gets Environmental Report Card
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21-Maine's congressional delegation ranked third in the nation on the League of Conservation Voters' annual National Environmental Scorecard. The four legislators averaged scores of 84 percent on key votes in 2005.
"As a whole, Maine residents can be proud that they have sent a delegation to Washington, D.C., that represents their interests - not those of big oil and other polluting industries," Tiernan Sittenfeld, the league's legislative director, said in a statement.
Rep. Michael Michaud scored a perfect 100 percent, voting the way the league liked on 18 votes last year. Rep. Tom Allen scored 94 percent, voting against an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act that the league supported.
"I originally decided to seek public office out of concern for the environment, and what my own paper mill was doing to the Penobscot River near my house," Michaud said in a statement. "The river was badly polluted, and I wanted to do something about it. People deserve clean water and an environment that doesn't harm their health."
Mark Sullivan, a spokesman for Allen, said that "as a member of the House Budget and Energy and Commerce Committees, Tom fought hard on behalf of LCV priorities like protecting the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and securing funds for environmental protection and land conservation."
Maine's two senators fared a little lower than the representatives with each getting 70 percent. That score was enough, however, to put Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins among the highest Senate Republicans, with only Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island doing better, with 90 percent. The average of all Senate Republicans was 15 percent. The league has endorsed Snowe in her bid for reelection this year.
"I have always cared very deeply about our environment," Collins said in a statement. "Sound environmental stewardship is so important in Maine, and Maine's environment is just so beautiful, that I think it is difficult to grow up here without feeling a sense of environmental responsibility. A clean and healthy environment is critical not only for the health and well-being of the people of Maine, but also for our economy. Our natural resource-based industries, our tourist industry, and indeed the State's very image depend upon the quality of our environment."
Clean air and clean water are among the most important environmental issues Maine faces, according to Matt Prindiville, the federal policy advocate for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. With Maine "at the end of the nation's tailpipe," with pollutants from other states blowing into the state and polluting pristine lakes and the air, he said, it was important for current regulations to be maintained. Prindiville said he had nothing but praise for Maine's delegation.
The League of Conservation Voters has "cast an unbiased eye" on elected officials since 1970 with these reports, according to Tony Massaro, the group's vice president for political affairs and public education. The group works with policy experts to identify votes that will have an effect on the environment. The league hand-delivers letters just before a vote notifying members that the vote will be taken into account in the annual scorecard.
For 2005, the league looked at 20 votes in the Senate and 18 in the House, and compiled the percentages based on lawmakers' records on these votes. Because the league is for government regulation of the environment, it generally scores Democrats much higher than Republicans.
The league focused on such legislation as the energy conference report on energy policy, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, human pesticide testing, authorization of the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the Senate's approval of Janice Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Snowe voted for the energy conference report, which the league opposed. But her spokesman said that while it was not a perfect bill, it included $1.3 billion in conservation and energy-efficiency tax credits and $2.7 billion in alternative energy production tax credits.
"This legislation is not perfect," Snowe said in a statement when the vote was taken, "but I believe it is an improvement over the status quo. I would have written a more ambitious bill that would have more aggressively reduced our dependence on foreign oil."
After the league unveiled its scorecard Tuesday, Snowe said in a statement: "The League of Conservation Voters works tirelessly to preserve the environment and serve as an information resource for its members and the public. I appreciate their recognizing my support for conservation and sensible environmental policy. Mainers understand that protecting the environment is essential to maintaining our quality of life, our health and the large sector of Maine's economy that is driven by outdoor recreation and tourism. There is broad consensus in Maine on the need to address issues from mercury pollution to keeping our coastline healthy, and my votes in the Senate are a reflection of this awareness and my own personal beliefs."
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There Ain’t Much Down East Flavah on Maine Avenue
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21-You might think that the juicy crab cake sandwich you were taking a bite out of was made at the Cod End fish market in Tenants Harbor if it were not for the noisy rushing of cars on the overpass, the lack of salt smell in the air and the occasional buzzing of the President's Marine One helicopter flying overhead.
Instead of being on the Maine coast, you are at the Maine Avenue Fish Market in the nation's capital.
Captain White's Seafood City, where that crab cake sandwich was fried up for you, has been on Maine Avenue for a long time. Jesse White started the business with his father more than 30 years ago; he has worked there since he was a teenager. White's, one of a half-dozen vendors at the seafood market, gets a lot of its goods from the Chesapeake Bay, but it also gets lobsters and mussels from Maine. It takes less than a day for a lobster brought into port in Maine to be flown down to Washington and arrive at White's.
Maine, like every other state in the union, has a street named after it in Washington. There is Pennsylvania Avenue, with the Commander in Chief in residence at 1600, and Connecticut Avenue, which is one of the main thoroughfares in town, and Massachusetts Avenue, home to a lot of embassies. All this is according to city planner Pierre L'Enfant's original design.
Maine Avenue is in the southwest quadrant of the city and runs along the Washington Channel and the Tidal Basin, which are separated from the Potomac River by an island park. Across the Potomac is Virginia.
According to Captain Eric Slaughter of Capital Yacht Charters at the Washington Marina, foreign heads of state were meant to arrive in the city on the avenue after coming up the Potomac on their royal yachts.
"The Southwest became Washington's official port soon after the Washington Channel was completed," Slaughter said. "But the city plans as they had been developed over the life of the city have all included various wharfs and plans and public access for the Southwest Washington Waterfront because that was Washington's Waterfront."
The seafood market is usually busy around the lunchtime hour. One local customer, 65-year-old George Imes, regularly visits the market. He gets "a little bit of everything," from shrimp to crab to Maine lobsters. When asked about Maine, Imes said his first thought was "lobsters, of course."
In addition to selling raw seafood, Captain White's offers many cooked-food options. You can get a steamed lobster or fried trout or a crab cake sandwich, which is full of fresh crab fried to cakey perfection. It comes on a cheap bun, which you could buy an eight-pack of for 99 cents at Hannaford's in Bangor, and do-it-yourself ketchup and tartar sauce. Eating it on a bench along the Potomac waterway might make you think you're sitting at a seafood shack in Stoneham.
But looming across the street is the cavernous Mandarin Oriental Hotel. A footbridge gives hotel guests access to the waterfront and the Tidal Basin, with its famous Japanese cherry trees. A spokeswoman for the hotel, which opened in March 2004, said it has 400 guest rooms, two restaurants, a bar and thousands of square feet of ballroom and meeting room space. Weekday room rates range from $395 to $8,000 a night. But there will be special deals during the Cherry Blossom Festival at the end of March, the spokeswoman said.
Workers trot across four-lane Maine Avenue, dodging BMWs and delivery trucks, from the Oriental to the Washington Marina. The marina, which Slaughter said was started in 1939 under an order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, rents out boats, including the Celebrity Yacht
After the seafood wharf, Maine Avenue leaves the water's side and is replaced with Water Street. Along Water Street are a few seafood restaurants and more marinas, including the Capital Yacht Club, the oldest marina in Washington, and the Gangplank Marina. Both serve super yachts that come up the Potomac to visit town.
About 100 people also call these marinas home. There are two-story house boats painted gray that moor alongside 50-foot sailing vessels and motorized pleasure ships.
Along with the boats, there is fishing in the waters along Maine Avenue, although there are no smelt fishing shacks because there is no ice. Signs warn not to eat any catfish, carp or eels from these waters. There is also even some wildlife: the ubiquitous gray squirrels are frequent visitors, and even cranes sometimes fly above these waters.
I f you wa lk further west on Maine Avenue you'll pass under the Route 1 overpass that occasionally provides shelter for homeless people. The Washington Monument, the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the Jefferson Memorial are past the overpass.
The avenue crosses 14th and 15th streets, where you might see an official limousine accompanied by the standard SUV full of guys with machine guns.
At the west end of Maine Avenue is the Tidal Basin ringed with the famous cherry trees. The snowstorm in mid February blanketed the city with half a foot of snow, which led to the erection of snowmen that looked back at Thomas Jefferson in his memorial across the basin.
A few days later, the snowmen were a fraction of their former glory. Their stick arms sat lifeless in the mud and dead leaves. These snowmen sat at one end of Maine Avenue, until they met their final melt
At the other end of Maine Avenue, just before it flows into M Street, lies the State of Maine's most visible imprint on its namesake avenue. The Lobsterman Statue looks out over the Potomac toward East Potomac Park.
According to Jane Radcliffe of the Maine State Museum (which has the original plaster cast in its collection), the statue is an exact match of one that kneels near Congress Square in Portland and one on Bailey Island in Casco Bay as well. The Washington copy was put up in 1983 thanks to the efforts of the Cundys Harbor Campfire Girls. The original lobsterman statue is modeled after Elroy Johnson of Bailey Island and was made by the artist Victor Kahill for the Maine State Pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair.
The statue is of a simple working man, crouching on a coil of rope. His thigh-high fisherman's boots are bent in half and don't come above his knees. He is wearing a thick collared shirt that is rolled up close to the elbows so he can work with the un-banded lobster that he is grasping with his right hand. His eyes glance down his prominent and shapely nose, with a look that either glories in the efforts of his labor or is worried about getting pinched by that left claw.
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