Lawmakers Aim to Prevent Waste in Stimulus Contracts

March 5th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

OVERSIGHT
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
March 5, 2009

WASHINGTON – Senators grilled federal auditors Thursday on ways to prevent waste and fraud as the government doles out the first portions of a $787 billion economic stimulus package.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which is charged with the task of overseeing the billions of stimulus dollars aimed at saving and creating jobs and boosting consumer spending, asked federal inspectors how they would monitor the money, at least $58 billion of which has already been allocated to specific programs, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

Lawmakers said it could be difficult balancing efficiency with the need to spend the stimulus funds quickly, which most economists say is necessary if the money is to effectively boost the economy. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the senior Republican on the committee, pressed auditors to hire more talent soon.

“The federal hiring process is so encumbered with regulation that it’s very difficult for you to hire people quickly, even if they’re supremely qualified,” Collins told Department of Agriculture Inspector General Phyllis Fong. Collins said she is working with Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., on a bill to make it easier to temporarily hire more auditors.

Collins pointed to the federal Web site Recovery.gov, which has already received more than 1 million hits, as a sign of the stimulus program’s transparency and told the auditors she would like the site to expand to include more details on individual programs down to the state and local level.

“It’s going to take a little bit of time to reform the Web site, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction,” Collins said later in a phone interview. “The more eyes that we have on these expenditures, the better it will protect us against mismanagement, waste and outright fraud.”

The House version of the stimulus bill also contained a provision that would shield federal workers who expose corruption in stimulus grants and contracts, but Collins said Senate negotiators agreed to remove the protections from the bill, citing concerns over national security.

Instead, Collins co-sponsored a separate whistle-blower protection bill on Tuesday, but it does not guarantee employees the right to a jury trial to defend themselves against agencies that seek to suppress information on waste.

The omission could make stimulus spending less transparent as a result, Marthena Cowart, spokeswoman for Project on Government Oversight, an independent nonprofit organization that investigates corruption in the federal government.

“It’s just not enough,” Cowart said in a phone interview. “We can all count on some of this money being misused, and we need to ensure that federal workers who are on the front lines of this… have access to a jury trial.”

Cowart added, however, that Collins has consistently advocated for federal whistleblower protection.

Collins defended the change, saying the existing forum for whistleblowers to defend themselves, the Merit Systems Protection Board, is a better system than allowing workers to take the cases to expensive jury trials.

Gene Dodaro, the acting comptroller general of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, told the committee his agency would monitor spending in 16 states that make up two-thirds of the nation’s population over the next few years but will largely rely on other states’ own auditors to root out waste in the program. Maine is among the states that will face less federal oversight.

The state government will hire one to two new employees in addition to auditors in the state controller’s office to ensure that stimulus projects in Maine meet federal requirements for efficiency and transparency, said David Farmer, deputy chief of staff for Gov. John Baldacci.

Baldacci also launched a Web site where Mainers can look up general information on where stimulus money is being spent in the state.

“We will be up to the task of doing this,” Farmer said.

In the 1st Congressional District, there will be a “recovery czar.” Rep. Chellie Pingree announced Thursday that Jackie Potter, former chief of staff to former Rep. Tom Allen, will help Maine businesses and individuals take advantage of stimulus funding.

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New Bill Would Allow Drug Imports From Canada

March 4th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

PRESCRIPTIONS
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
March 4, 2009

WASHINGTON – Americans could save as much as $50 billion in prescription drug costs under a revived Senate proposal that would allow pharmacies to import FDA-approved medicines from other countries, according to Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

It is “absolutely unconscionable” that high drug costs have forced patients to ration their prescriptions, Snowe said Wednesday at a press conference announcing the legislation. Snowe was an original cosponsor of the bill, a version of which was first introduced five years ago by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.

“Had that bill become law by now, many Americans would have access to lower drug prices that are already available in many industrialized nations,” Snowe said.

Snowe said allowing U.S. pharmacies to import cheaper drugs from countries like Canada would save consumers $50 billion and cut $10 billion in direct costs to Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years.

The latest legislation, which the senators have not yet officially introduced, would authorize the Food and Drug Administration to review and register foreign companies to export drugs to the United States.

Federal law currently prohibits pharmacies from importing prescription drugs, though individuals can travel to other countries and bring the drugs back themselves, said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., another co-sponsor of the bill.

Previous efforts to end that import ban failed in the face of Bush administration opposition, but Snowe predicted swift passage of the legislation. “There is no question that we can get it done this year,” she said.

President Barack Obama co-sponsored a failed version of the bill when he was in the Senate and his administration backed the idea in its budget proposal last week.

A spokesman for Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the senator would have to read the legislation but noted she cosponsored similar legislation in 2007. Aides to Reps. Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said both supported the idea.

“I think there’s a tailwind here that wasn’t here previously,” Dorgan said.

Pharmaceutical industry representatives criticized the proposal, saying it cannot prevent counterfeited drugs entering the country.

“If the recent recall of foreign products has taught us anything, it is that Congress must better equip and fully fund the FDA so that it has the resources to do its job,” Ken Johnson, vice president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement. “Now is not the time to weaken the Agency by moving forward with prescription drug importation.”

Snowe said the current inspection system does not do enough to ensure drugs’ safety, but she said the proposed bill would fund and enforce FDA inspections of drug manufacturers in other countries from start to finish.

“There will be inspections of every facility and approval by the FDA for every facility… [from which] we import these medications,” she said. “We just don’t say, ‘We certify the safety.’ We set up a standard for that safety regime.”

Pete Wyckoff, a co-chair of the National Coalition of Consumer Organizations on Aging, said the bill’s safety measures would make most drugs Americans consume safer than they are now.

“This has been vetted,” Wyckoff said. “The reason the pharmaceutical industry is so worried is because this can really make a difference in international prices.”

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U.S. Lumber Benefits From Court Ruling

February 27th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

LUMBER
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 27, 2009

WASHINGTON – The U.S. lumber industry scored an economic victory Thursday after an international court ruled Canadian producers must pay millions of dollars in additional taxes for violating a bilateral trade agreement.

The London Court of International Arbitration said eastern Canadian producers violated the U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement in 2007 by exceeding their export quotas. The agreement was designed to help U.S. producers compete on equal footing with Canadian producers, who can be subsidized when the provincial governments charge smaller fees to harvest timber from government land.

“We [the United States] felt strongly that they knowingly refused to implement it from day one, and we challenged it,” said Zoltan van Heyningen, executive director of the U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports.

The ruling requires Canada within 30 days to impose a 10 percent tariff on softwood exports from Québec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan until it collects $68 million in Canadian money.

The added charges, equal to about $53.6 million in U.S. money, make up a small slice of the more than $7 billion U.S. buyers spend annually on Canadian softwood lumber.

It is hard to quantify the ruling’s impact on U.S. producers, but they will be helped if the agreement is enforced, van Heyningen said.

Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade spokeswoman Renee David said Ottawa was disappointed that the court ruled against it and that there was no option for appeal. The government is reviewing the decision and deciding how it will enforce it, she added.

The cross-border dispute has by no means ended, with U.S. lumber advocates charging Canadian producers of dodging the agreement with new subsidies that include lower government fees and poorer quality ratings for timber.

In a statement released Friday, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said the success of the “hard-won deal” depends on whether provincial Canadian governments enforce the agreement and clamp down on current and future subsidies. Low Canadian land use fees are testing the agreement’s effectiveness, she said.

John Allan, Canadian Lumber Trade Alliance secretary, disputed Snowe’s allegations, calling accusations of Canadian subsidies untrue and the products of “economic competition for a dwindling market.”

“Given the prices that we’ve seen for the last couple of years, this will have a huge negative impact on the eastern Canadian lumber industry,” he said.

Van Heyningen agreed that the weak economy has especially hurt the lumber industry, after a collapse in housing prices halted new construction and reduced demand for all building materials.

“The housing market is horrible, which is why it’s more important that it [the agreement] is adhered to,” he said. “Will it solve everything? No. But it will certainly help.”

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Spending Bill Steers $15 Million Toward Maine Projects

February 26th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

OMNIBUS
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 26, 2009

WASHINGTON – Maine stands to get more than $15 million for programs ranging from emergency response to blueberry research under a long-delayed $410 billion bill to fund government operations that passed the House Wednesday night.

The proposal combines nine separate spending bills that never came to a final vote during the last congressional session. The last Congress passed a continuing resolution that provides for funding until March 6. This bill would fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The House passed the bill 245-178 with 16 Republicans voting for it. Reps. Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, both voted for it.

“It’s probably not a perfect piece of legislation, but it was needed to get us going so we can start with the 2010 budget cycle,” Michaud said.

Though congressional leaders said they passed a stimulus bill with no earmarks, the late 2009 spending bill was full of funding for specific local projects. Michaud set aside several provisions for Maine, including funds for national parks, agricultural research and town utilities.

Among the provisions:

- The proposal includes $190,000 to help restore rail service between Brewer and Hancock, which would serve vacation destinations in Eastern Maine.

- The University of Maine would receive $1.4 million for research on lobsters, blueberry cultivation science and pest tracking for potato growers. The bill also provides $2.2 million for the New England Plant, Soil and Water Research Laboratory.

- The Maine Tidal Power Initiative, a relatively new program, would receive $951,500 to study possible locations for renewable tidal power plants in on the coast. The project is a collaboration between the Maine Maritime Academy and the University of Maine.

- Maine health care facilities stand to gain, with $114,000 allocated for Bucksport Regional Health Center and $209,000 for Charles A. Dean Memorial Hospital in Greenville.

- The bill provides $200,000 for the Maine Warden Service to upgrade its search-and-rescue equipment. Michaud spokesman Ed Gilman said the service could use the money to buy night-vision goggles.

- At least $200,000 would go to the Maine Public Safety and Health Initiative, which assigns law enforcement to investigate drug trafficking and overdoses in the state.

Republican leaders blamed Democrats for passing what they called a bloated bill full of earmarks and called for a “spending freeze” in Washington.

“Congressional Democrats haven’t lost their appetite for spending in Washington,” National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman Ken Spain said in a statement.

The funding was proposed last year, so freshman Pingree did not make her mark on the legislation. The bill now goes to the Senate.

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Snowe Introduces Bill to Strengthen Title IX

February 25th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

TITLEIX
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 25, 2009

WASHINGTON – Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she aims to draw more girls to high school sports by making schools report the gender breakdown of their athletic programs and making that information available online.

In legislation proposed Tuesday, high schools would collect information on the gender and ethnicity of participants in school-sponsored athletic programs, including the number of practices, games and playoff appearances each team makes. Information on each school would be posted on the Department of Education’s Web site.

“While we’ve made tremendous progress in ensuring gender equity, students and parents can’t see whether the law is being followed because they don’t have key information about scholarships, opportunities or athletics budgets,” Snowe said in a statement Wednesday. “This bill would help us take those last couple steps and ensure that girls are getting the same chance to play sports as their male peers.”

The bill, also sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., would enact the same requirements for high schools that are already mandated for colleges and universities under Title IX, which requires that federal funds be distributed equally between male and female teams.

College athletic programs risk lawsuits from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights if they do not comply with Title IX, said Katie Herbine, associate athletic director for compliance at the University of Maine.

Stricter reporting requirements could force high schools to “open their eyes” to the fact that they are not complying with the law’s provision on gender parity, she said.

“Universities have been caught on this before,” Herbine said. “A lot of places do the best they can, but sometimes that’s not good enough.”

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Maine Members of Congress React to Obama’s Speech

February 24th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

MAINE REACT
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 24, 2009

WASHINGTON – During a speech in which Republican senators often remained seated while Democrats applauded, Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe stood up when President Barack Obama referred to the passage of a $787 billion stimulus package. They and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., were the only GOP senators to vote for the bill when it passed the Senate.

After the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, Snowe released a statement lauding Obama’s “aggressive and ambitious agenda,” saying bipartisan cooperation will prove even more important now given the challenges facing the nation.

Snowe singled out Obama’s plan to reform the American health care system, the details of which the president said he would outline as soon as next week, as a good idea to address a “mounting crisis” affecting more than 47 million uninsured Americans.

The senior Republican on the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, Snowe called health care the biggest burden faced by business owners. She added, however, that the president would need not only her support but the help of her Republican colleagues to pass broader legislation on health care.

“Every major legislative initiative, from Medicare to civil rights to clean air, has enjoyed strong support from both parties because representatives from both sides of the aisle were at the conference table,” she said.

Though she did not comment specifically on Obama’s explicit pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of families, Snowe took the opportunity Tuesday night to call for more aggressive tax reform.

“Clearly, our tax code is broken and must be changed,” said Snowe, who attended the president’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit Monday. “Now is the time for both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to commit to pay-as-you-go rules for both revenues and spending.”

Collins said she looked forward to reading the details of Obama’s budget proposal, which is slated to be officially released on Friday.

“I am pleased that the President tonight focused on renewable energy and energy efficiency as ways to reduce our dangerous dependence on Middle East oil,” Collins said in a statement. “As the President emphasized, the plan should promote conservation, spur development of alternative energy sources, and expand production of American energy.”

Obama gained loud applause from both parties when he promised to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his term, though some Republicans stopped clapping when he added that the deficit was “inherited.”

Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, said he supported the president’s plans to reform the nation’s health care and education systems but added that “they are lofty goals that will require tough budget choices.”

“Both our fiscal crisis and our economic crisis are interrelated,” he said. “We cannot move forward with one without addressing the other.”

Michaud also praised Obama’s decision to count costs relating to the war in Iraq and other domestic programs as part of the federal deficit. During the past administration, these expenses were not counted as part of the general budget, making the gap seem smaller than it really is.

“The true costs of programs were hidden through gimmicks,” Michaud said. “These unsustainable actions have helped to create the fiscal crisis we find ourselves in today.”

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, also praised Obama for pushing through the stimulus package, estimating it will eventually create about 15,000 jobs in Maine.

“President Obama is doing all the right things – he is reaching out across the aisle and he has shown a willingness to compromise. But most importantly he has put together a comprehensive plan that can get our economy back on track,” Pingree said.

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Pingree Returns Rom Visit to Iraq, Afghanistan

February 20th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

IRAQRECAP
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 20, 2009

WASHINGTON – Freshman Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said she is closer to understanding what U.S. forces need to do to achieve victory in Iraq after finishing a week-long tour of the Middle East Friday.

Pingree, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, spent the congressional recess with two Democratic and three Republican House colleagues visiting Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain and Afghanistan.

Pingree, who was not in Congress in 2003 but publicly opposed the war in Iraq, said in a Wednesday phone interview that the U.S. military and reconstruction campaign in Iraq has achieved some success. She said it is too soon to tell, however, whether democracy will stand on its own there after American forces withdraw.

“That was one of the key questions that we asked over and over again: What is going to slide back when we leave, and what can we achieve with our limited resources?” Pingree said. “I don’t think I came to a final answer on this, but I got a lot of information that is going to help make a final decision.”

The congressional delegation included a spectrum of perspectives, Pingree said, including members who voted to authorize President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and one, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., who as a Marine officer served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, Pingree visited Maine service members training Afghan police and met with U.S. Ambassador William Wood.

“You can see the problems we face in Afghanistan that have been made worse because we took our eye off the ball there and turned our attention to Iraq,” she said.

Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, traveled to Iraq last August with fellow members of the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health “to assess the progress of political, military and reconstruction efforts in Iraq,” focusing on health safety.

“Trips like this give me real-time data and perspectives that inform my activities and decisions back in Washington,” Michaud wrote in a statement after his return.

Michaud spokesman Ed Gilman said the 2nd District representative plans to visit Afghanistan this year.

Pingree Visits Iraq With Congressional Delgation

February 17th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

IRAQ
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 17, 2009

WASHINGTON—Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, after a visit to Iraq this week, said she remains uncertain about whether that country has become secure enough for U.S. forces to leave.

Pingree, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is one of six House members, three Democrats and three Republicans, who went to Iraq to better understand the effectiveness of U.S. military and reconstruction efforts almost six years after the United States invaded that Middle Eastern nation.

The six are spending most of the congressional recess this week in the Middle East.

On Sunday, they visited an open-air market outside of Baghdad and lunched with military service members, according to Pingree spokesman Willy Ritch. The representatives also met with Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of multinational forces in Iraq.

Pingree said in a telephone interview that the country is “clearly becoming more secure,” though the question remains, she added, whether it is safe enough for U.S. forces to withdraw.

She said members of Congress are always protected under the strictest security while visiting Iraq.

“For all the gains that we’ve made, we spend our entire time in armored cars and … are never more than five inches away from some one with a lot of weapons,” Pingree said. “It’s not a secure place to be.”

The group spent two days in Iraq before moving on to another country in the region. For safety reasons, military organizers are keeping the times and locations of the delegation’s forthcoming visits secret until all the members return to the United States, Ritch said.

The Armed Services Committee warned its members traveling to Iraq against talking about their trip before returning, including communication by means of twittering, a caveat added after Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., stoked a controversy by posting real-time updates of his trip to Afghanistan and Iraq earlier this month to the free Web site twitter.com. Hoekstra is the senior minority member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Pingree said members were given “very strict orders not to talk about a country until we’re out of that country.”

“It is interesting in an age of communication, our BlackBerrys work in the strangest places,” she said. “But it is what we do. We want to be in touch with our constituents all the time.”

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Snowe And Collins Speak Out About the Stimulus Bill

February 13th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

REPUBLICANS
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 13, 2009

THIS IS AN INSERT FOR PAPER TO USE WITH WIRE STORY ON PASSAGE OF STIMULUS PACKAGE BILL.

WASHINGTON – Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are speaking out about their roles in shaping the $787 billion stimulus package that was scheduled to be voted on in the Senate late Friday night.

The bill passed the House Friday 246-183 with no Republicans voting for it. Maine’s members of the House, Democrats Mike Michaud of the 2nd Congressional District and Chellie Pingree of the 1st Congressional District, voted for the bill.

Snowe dismissed opposition to the final stimulus package as shortsighted.

“I don’t think they read the bill,” Snowe said in a telephone interview. “People who have criticized this package haven’t really focused on the individual pieces that are going to be critical in jumpstarting the economy.”

Pointing to more than $276 billion in tax relief for individual Americans and small businesses the Senate added to the bill, Snowe said her GOP colleagues “should be extremely enthusiastic” about the agreement.

Collins said she would like to see her party “succeed and prosper in all regions of the country,” but she said the GOP would need to appeal more to centrists if it wants to win races in states like Maine.

“We can’t just say ‘no,’” she said. “We need to present alternatives.”

Collins said she avoids looking at issues through a “narrow partisan lens” when her constituents see issues in a nonpartisan light.

“My constituents sent me to play a pivotal role, not to sit on the sidelines,” she said.

Representing a state that has long held a diverse mix of ideologies on government’s role in society, Snowe said she learned from her first three years in the state legislature to work with “whoever’s in the room” to enact laws.

“In all of my major decisions in my personal and political life, I ask myself this question: ‘What is the risk of not taking a position?’” she said. “I’m reluctant at this point to say, ‘No, we’ll wait it out. We have to do something.”

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Mainers in D.C. Treated to Eggs and Issues

February 12th, 2009 in Andrew Fitgerald, Maine, Spring 2009 Newswire

BREAKFAST
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 12, 2009

WASHINGTON – Eggs, bacon and orange juice made up the menu for the Maine State Society’s annual congressional breakfast Thursday, but for the roughly 40 Mainers-in-exile attending, there was no escape from the economy, deficits and the duty of serving the nation’s veterans.

As Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, put it, “There’s a lot on our plate.”

Under the gilded ceiling of the Russell Senate Office Building banquet hall, the Maine crowd sat to hear three of their members of Congress exchange stories about their difficult work in Congress over the past month.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she was tired but pleased with the general outline of the stimulus bill that she and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine – who did not attend the breakfast for scheduling reasons – spent the last two weeks crafting.

“If you think my eyes look a little like slits, there’s a reason for it,” Collins said. “I’ve literally been negotiating night and day [on] this stimulus package.”

Calling the economic climate facing the country “grave indeed,” Collins pointed to the record job losses and pay cuts that swept the country last month, including the furloughs of 140 workers at a paper mill in East Millinocket.

“It is against that backdrop that I got involved with the economic concerns in our country,” she said.

Michaud, who said he once worked at the same paper mill that scaled back its production, offered fewer optimistic words for the stimulus bill. The fiscally conservative Democrat also called on Congress to do more to reduce spending, close the budget gap and lessen the trade deficit between U.S. exports and imports.

“The biggest deficit we have is [in] the leadership in this country,” Michaud said. “We have to start focusing on the long-term problems this country will be facing.”

On Tuesday, Michaud joined a handful of other fiscally conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats to voice their concerns about the widening federal budget deficit to President Obama. The president was receptive and told the members that he would rather get the budget “right” in one term than win a second term without fixing the fiscal problems facing the nation, according to Michaud.

Michaud also stressed that the government must address the increased number of soldier suicides reported over the past year with a better-funded health care system to help members of the military deal with mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Michaud, chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, joined other members of Congress Thursday to announce identical drafts of the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act designed to provide funds, in advance of this year’s budget, for health care of former service members.

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, a freshman elected in Maine’s 1st District last November, said she was still learning her way around the Capitol’s countless winding hallways. She took the morning to introduce herself to Washington-based Mainers and tout such initiatives as renewable energy and improved health care.

“In Maine, it would make a tremendous difference to have some sort of universal health care,” Pingree said, not only for state residents but also for small businesses coping with rising health care costs.

Even as a former speaker of the Maine House, Pingree said being recognized in many parts of the state took her by surprise.

“People stop me on the street and say, ‘You got elected with Barack Obama!’” she said.

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