Category: Victoria Ekstrom
Snowe Crititcizes Budget Cuts for Medicaid
Medicaid
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
2/6/2008
WASHINGTON – Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, exchanged sharp words with Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt Wednesday over proposed changes to Medicaid rules that would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $1.28 billion over five years, severely hurting state Medicaid programs.
“With Maine and other states facing significant budget deficits, this is the wrong time to impose a regulation that will shift additional financial burdens on states that can’t afford it,” Snowe said at a hearing by the Finance Committee, of which she is a senior member.
The services specifically affected by the proposed changes are case management, which includes funding for special education; rehabilitation services; hospital outpatient services; and transportation for disabled school children. States are required by federal law to provide many of the services that would be affected, including services for young students with disabilities.
Leavitt’s proposed changes would take effect on March 3 unless Congress extends the deadline by a year under legislation Snowe co-sponsored.
Snowe and her colleagues are acting after the National Governors Association sent a letter to the Health and Human Services Department appealing for it to postpone the changes to give states time to respond.
The change “restricts state flexibility to design and manage their programs, and threatens the success of recent reform initiatives,” said Raymond Scheppach, executive director of the association, in the Feb. 4 letter.
States have been using the Medicaid program to fund services that aren’t Medicaid services and some states have admitted this, according to Dennis Smith, director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations in the Department of Health and Human Services. Smith said the states were warned.
“The moment is now here and states are scrambling, but it’s not really news to the states,” said Smith.
Gov. John Baldacci, who emphasizes the effects these changes will have on Maine, says they could cost the state $45 million through the next 16 months.
“They have a tremendous trickle-down effect in our ability to help our most vulnerable citizens,” said David Farmer, spokesman for the governor.
Maine officials are talking with medical providers and school systems, searching for ideas on how to restructure the programs to compensate for the shortfall in federal funds.
“Nearly half of all children in the foster care system have a disability or suffer from a chronic medical problem,” Snowe said at the hearing. “More than 75 percent have serious emotional problems. And right now, Maine is scrambling to figure out how to maintain case management services for them.”
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Maine State Society Offers Scholarships
Scholarships
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
2/4/2008
WASHINGTON – Students who have completed at least one year at a four-year Maine college or university and have a grade-point average of 3.0 or higher are eligible to apply for scholarships offered by the Maine State Society of Washington, D.C. Applications for the scholarships, which are awarded in amounts of at least $1,000, are due April 1.
Serving as a home away from home, the Maine State Society was created in 1894 to bring a touch of Maine to the nation’s capital. More than 100 years later, the society still provides Washington-area residents with a social connection to their home state.
The society, a nonprofit organization, has been providing financial assistance to young Mainers since 1991. More information and applications are available at the society’s Web site, www.mainestatesociety.org.
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Senate to Vote This Week on Economic Stimulus Plan
Stimulus
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
2/2/2008
WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats may scale back on the $157 billion economic stimulus package passed Wednesday by the Finance Committee as they struggle to gain the 60 votes needed to bring the bill to a full Senate vote.
The Senate plan expands on the version passed Tuesday by the House and would provide tax rebates to 21 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans and would send aid to small businesses.
“We have an obligation to utilize the fiscal tools that are at our disposal to take immediate and decisive action that will help us avoid a recession and blunt the effects of the current fiscal downturn,” Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said in a statement. She is a member of the Finance Committee and voted in favor of the plan when it passed the committee by a vote of 14 to 7.
With the U.S. Labor Department reporting 17,000 jobs lost in January after more than four years of growth, the Finance Committee plan includes an extension of unemployment insurance benefits for 13 weeks. In Maine, the construction, manufacturing and mining industries have the highest unemployment rate, with a combined loss of jobs of more than 9 percent in the last year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
“Reflecting national trends, seasonally-adjusted resident employment declined and unemployment rose in Maine between November and December,” Laura Fortman, Maine’s commissioner of labor, said in a press release.
Almost half the nation’s workforce is employed by small businesses, Snowe said, making their inclusion in the stimulus package important.
Snowe, who is the senior Republican on the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, supported the provision in the Finance Committee bill that allows companies losing money to apply losses from the past two years to tax returns from profitable years and gain refunds.
“From the onset, I have stressed the role that small businesses will play in our economic recovery,” Snowe said. “I aggressively fought to include them in the stimulus package.”
Veterans and seniors also would gain if the Senate is able to agree to the Finance Committee’s package. Snowe, along with Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., sponsored a provision accepted by the Finance Committee to ensure that service-injured veterans were included in the tax rebate process. In Maine, veterans make up 16 percent of the state’s population, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
By extending the House’s rebate system to include Social Security benefits as a form of qualifying income, seniors will receive rebates under the Senate’s plan as well. Seniors make up about 15 percent of Maine’s population.
Hopes are slim for home heating aid for low-income families to be added to the stimulus plan, something Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has supported. If home heating aid is not included in the stimulus package, Collins will continue to fight for the funding, according to her spokesperson. She and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have already introduced a separate bill to increase assistance by $800 million.
Voting in the Senate on the economic stimulus plan was set for Monday, but is expected to be postponed to Wednesday, as the Democrats shore up support and wait for senators to return from the campaign trail after the Super Tuesday primary.
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Senators Negotiate Electronic Surveillance Bill
FISA
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
2/1/2008
WASHINGTON – Senate leaders continue to negotiate the terms of an updated intelligence surveillance bill, deadlocked on whether to grant immunity to telecommunication companies facing lawsuits after assisting federal agencies in surveillance of potential terrorists.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, along with most of her colleagues on the Select Committee on Intelligence, supports immunity for the private companies.
“If a telecom company was approached by government officials asking for help in warding off another terrorist attack, and those government officials produced a document stating that the President had authorized the activity and that that activity was legal,” Snowe said on Jan. 28 at a committee hearing, “could we really say that the company acted unreasonably in complying with this request?”
In a bipartisan vote in October, the intelligence committee, chaired by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., passed an updated version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a 1978 measure that allows government surveillance of suspected terrorists through wire-tapping and other techniques. The committee’s updated bill included retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies.
Proponents of the bill say that by subjecting these private companies to lawsuits the U.S. may lose the private sector’s cooperation in future law enforcement and national security projects because of their fear of being sued. These companies are an essential resource for the U.S., according to Snowe.
“At a time when Al Qaeda lurks in the shadows, making no distinction between combatants and non-combatants, between our battlefields and our backyards,” Snowe said, “we as lawmakers must act with firm resolve to ensure that the intelligence community possesses the tools and legal authority needed to prevent future terrorist attacks on our soil.”
Opponents of granting immunity include Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
“We cannot expect to learn from mistakes if we refuse to allow them to be examined,” said Leahy, who said he believes the administration is trying to protect itself from being held accountable for illegal activity and that the lawsuits are possibly the only way for outside review of the administration’s actions.
“The administration knows that these lawsuits may be the only way that it will ever be called to account for its flagrant disrespect for the rule of law,” Leahy said.
Snowe favors examination of the cases but because of the sensitive information involved they should be examined by the House and Senate intelligence committees or the court established by FISA, a spokesperson for the senator said.
Additionally, while advocates for immunity argue that immunity is necessary to maintain the cooperation of telecommunications companies in the future, opponents say the bill already protects companies that provide future lawful assistance and that their opposition applies only to surveillance that was done in the past and is now being called into question.
Congress approved a White House update to FISA last summer, the Protect America Act, which cleared private companies from any future lawsuits provided that they had documentation from the government proving that what they were doing was lawful. The act was approved for only six months to allow Congress time to either pass the bill or create its own bill. Facing a Feb. 1 expiration, the House and Senate voted to extend the study period to Feb.16 and President Bush signed the extension on Thursday.
The House passed its own version of an updated FISA bill last fall and did not include the immunity provision. On Monday, the Senate narrowly voted to open the intelligence committee’s bill up for debate rather than accept the House version. The Senate is considering three amendments specifically directed at the immunity portion of the bill.
One amendment would strike immunity. Another amendment, proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would leave it up to the FISA court to decide if the companies acted in good faith. If they did, the FISA court would grant immunity.
A last amendment up for debate was proposed by Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., also a member of the committee. Their amendment would hold the government, not the private companies, directly responsible.
All of these amendments are expected to be voted on by the Senate next week, according to Sen. Leahy’s office.
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Collins and Snowe Support Additional Funds for Home Heating
Rally
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
1/30/2008
WASHINGTON—Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is leading the fight in the Senate to amend the economic stimulus package, passed by the House Tuesday, to include up to $1.5 billion to help low-income people pay their home heating bills.
The money would be additional funds for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides grants to low-income families.
“It is so important that we act now, and the nexus between home heating assistance and the stimulus bill is a very clear one,” Collins said during a press conference at the Capitol Wednesday morning. “High energy costs are one of the reasons for the economic downturn. If we increase LIHEAP we will not only help so many struggling low-income families and seniors, we will also help our economy.”
Maine has received more than $35 million this year in home energy funds, which is about the same as last year, according to the Maine State Housing Authority, while energy costs continue to skyrocket. This means that the more than 47,000 families receiving assistance are getting about the same aid to pay heating bills that cost $600 a year more than last year. Additionally, more than 5,000 families have applied for aid and are not yet receiving it, according to the authority.
More than 35 senators are supporting the Collins amendment, but there is opposition to amending the House bill because it would delay approval of the stimulus package. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has proposed a number of amendments to the House bill, and a decision is expected this week on whether the amendments will be considered.
“I hope we can garner enough support, but it’s going to be hard,” Collins said in an interview, “but we surely have to try. It really matters.”
When temperatures go to 26 below, as they did last week in Caribou, and home heating prices continue to skyrocket, heating bills increase and families struggle to pay their heating bills.
Mike Hatt of Cherryfield receives $700 a year from the home energy aid program, but it is not enough to cover his $600 a month heating bill.
Hatt was laid off from his job at a local cutting and land clearing company last fall. His family was soon forced to move after his wife developed seizures from mold in their home and the home was condemned, Hatt said in a telephone interview.
Caring for two sons and sick grandparents, Hatt struggled to pay his home heating bills. His parents and a third son helped the family get through the holiday season, Hatt said, but now he relies on home energy grants to help keep his family warm this winter.
“Everywhere I go in Maine, I hear the very real stories of those who are struggling with record-high energy prices,” Collins said. “No one should be forced to sacrifice the necessities of life such as food, rent, and prescription drugs to pay heating costs. And no one should be forced to suffer through a severe winter without heat.”
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, also supports the amendment to give additional money to the assistance program.
“By including additional LIHEAP support in the economic stimulus package, we can ensure that our families and seniors won’t have to decide between heating their homes and feeding their children,” Snowe said.
Earlier this month the Office of Management and Budget released $450 million from its LIHEAP fund, upon Collins’s urging. Of that, Maine will receive $8.8 million to assist families struggling to pay their record-high home heating bills. These funds are in addition to the more than $2.5 billion released by the federal budget office as part of an appropriations bill Congress passed in December.
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