Category: Jillian Jorgensen
To Those Who Know Him, Gregg Still Being Gregg
GREGG
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
April 23, 2009
WASHINGTON—There are few senators with a high enough profile to be household names throughout the country. Sen. Judd Gregg has never been, and still is not, one of them.
But since last fall, the New Hampshire Republican has been getting more attention from his party and the media. That attention reached a crescendo with his 10-day stint as Obama’s second nominee for secretary of the Commerce Department, which ended with Gregg’s withdrawal of his name from consideration.
But the focus on Gregg has not faded away: he has emerged as a leading Republican voice on matters of fiscal policy – and as a leading critic of the administration he almost joined. Still, some who know the senator say he is behaving just as he always has, and that a series of events – from the economic meltdown to the election of a Democrat to the White House – has helped him find his way into the spotlight.
“Judd is a very important voice for this country, at this time, on the danger of debt and things we need to do to avoid it from continuing to explode on us,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, where Gregg is the top Republican.
Before Gregg’s nomination to the Commerce post, insider media outlets like Politico were buzzing with speculation about whether Gregg would accept, and about a deal reached with Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, to appoint a Republican to Gregg’s Senate seat. But in fewer than two weeks, Gregg withdrew. He chalked up the decision to what ends many a brief affair: irreconcilable differences. Gregg decided he just could not support the president’s agenda.
The flirtation with, and then abandonment of, the Cabinet spot could have spelled political problems for Gregg. At the press conference that followed his withdrawal, Gregg said he would “probably not” seek reelection in 2010.
“That was kind of a tough time, a difficult situation for him to go through. And I think, ultimately, you know, that probably wasn’t a good fit,” Conrad said, pausing to laugh briefly, during a telephone interview. “On certain key things, he has a very different view [than the president], and so I think it just would’ve been uncomfortable. Ultimately, I think that’s the conclusion he reached.”
But the withdrawal also raised his profile, and just weeks later, he was the lead critic of Obama’s budget, railing against the spending in press conferences, newspaper columns, television appearances and radio addresses.
Gregg, it seemed, had recovered quickly from his misstep.
“He waded right back into the thick of things,” Conrad said.
Back home, in New Hampshire, the withdrawal of his name did not hurt his popularity, said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
“He’s always been one of the more popular politicians in the state, and [his approval ratings] haven’t gone down,” Smith said.
There was a crush of stories in the national media chronicling Gregg’s road from the Grand Foyer of the White House, where he stood beside Obama to accept the Commerce nomination, to the broadcast gallery in the Capitol, where he struggled to explain just what had happened – why he had accepted the nomination in the first place, and why it took so long to realize it would not work.
“I don’t want to use the word betrayal, but it’s this broken flirtation that was kind of interesting in the first place. And then, when it fell apart, that’s just kind of one these great Washington alliance stories,” said Albert May, associate professor of media and public affairs at The George Washington University.
In the past couple of months Gregg has given interviews to The Washington Post and The Boston Globe for stories about his transition from nominee to top budget critic, he’s been lampooned on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and appeared on cable networks like MSNBC numerous times to talk about fiscal policy.
Gregg’s office did not grant the Union Leader an interview in Washington with the senator for this story.
Gregg represented New Hampshire in the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected governor in 1988. The son of another Republican governor, he has served in the Senate since 1993 and is now the state’s senior senator, serving as the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. He also serves on the Appropriations Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Those who know Gregg said he is not doing anything new. He has always cared deeply about the budget, about fiscal responsibility, about entitlement reform, colleagues and analysts say. It’s not that he has changed, they said, but that, for a host of reasons not limited to the Commerce nomination, everybody else just started paying attention.
“I think you can go back, even into the fall, and it’s clear that Judd’s being looked to more than ever as a leader on some of the really serious challenges facing the country,” said former Sen. John E. Sununu, the Republican who served in the Senate with Gregg for 6 years before being unseated by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen last fall.
Gregg led his party’s negotiation on the congressional bail-out of troubled banks last fall.
“Budget and economic issues have very high visibility right now. Judd’s always been a leader on those issues in the Senate. There’s no Republican in the White House to comment on those issues,” Sununu added.
Conrad agreed, saying it was a “confluence of events” that put Gregg front and center, adding that he shared many of Gregg’s views.
“I think it’s evident that we’re on an unsustainable course, and it’s critically important to the country that we get on a different path. And Judd Gregg is really one of the most important and persuasive voices on this point,” Conrad said.
The two senators have proposed a bi-partisan task force that would fast-track legislation dealing with entitlement reform to an up-or-down vote in Congress. Gregg has called the looming retirement of the Baby Boom generation and the strain it would put on the economy an approaching “fiscal tsunami.”
“Judd has always been a strong voice, and passionate on these issues, but these issues have tended to not get much attention in the national media. It’s been like the country’s been asleep at the switch on this,” Conrad said. “But when it became clear how important all this is, that became a moment that people became more ready to listen to a message Judd has been delivering for a long period of time.”
Smith, at UNH, said Gregg’s decision not to run next year could be another reason why he has taken such a strong stance, front and center, attacking the president’s fiscal policy.
“His not running for re-election frees him up to be in that position where he can say whatever he wants, and whatever he feels, and not have it impact his re-election,” Smith said. Other Republicans up for re-election in 2010 might be wary of attacking a popular president, Smith said.
Smith, who said he was surprised Gregg was even interested in the Commerce spot, describing the secretary as “the guy that gets coffee at the Cabinet meetings,” said Gregg would have faced a tough election in 2010 with or without his Commerce flip-flop.
“Republicans across New England are a dying breed, and I think he doesn’t want to be the last of the dinosaurs,” Smith said.
But still, Smith said he “would not be shocked” if the national attention and the partisan fervor help the senator decide he does want to run again in 2010 after all.
“He’s not somebody who seeks media attention,” Smith said. “He’s not the kind of guy who’s ever really been running for the cameras. But maybe, because he’s been asked to be in a more partisan political position here, publicly, he may get the taste for combat again, and say they need somebody with his experience to run.”
While Gregg may not have sought out media attention, Sununu said Gregg has never shied away from it.
“I think Judd has an easy-going demeanor, but it’s certainly not fair to suggest that he’s ever been shy or quiet about talking about the importance of budget reform,” Sununu said. “I don’t think his temperament has changed, and his approach to these issues hasn’t changed. But I think people from outside Washington and inside Washington really can recognize and appreciate the expertise and thoughtfulness he brings to the issues.”
Conrad said the media and members of Congress have turned to Gregg for his opinions because of his strong views, his long history of involvement in fiscal issues, and how much he knows about and cares about those issues.
“This is really at the core of Judd Gregg: he is deeply concerned about the explosion of debt and where that leads the country,” Conrad said.
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Hodes Calls for Earmarks Reform
HODES
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
April 22, 2009
WASHINGTON—In an effort to remove “even the appearance of a conflict of interest” between congressional appropriations and campaign contributions, U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., introduced legislation Wednesday that he said would break the link between earmarks and campaign money.
“To me, this is a matter of right and wrong,” Hodes said Wednesday at a Washington press conference. “It is simply not right that legislators take campaign contributions from those they request earmarks for. It isn’t against the law now. I think it should be.”
Hodes said his office has a longstanding policy not to take campaign contributions from groups for whom he has requested federal funds for specific projects in New Hampshire – money often referred to as “earmarks.”
The congressman requested $227,764,731 in earmarks for New Hampshire for fiscal 2010, according to his office, including requests for projects involving BAE Systems, Inc., Keene State College and the iRobot Corporation.
Hodes introduced the Clean Law for Earmark Accountability Reform (CLEAR) Act with U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
The legislation would prohibit lawmakers from taking contributions from senior executives, lobbyists or company-specific Political Action Committees of groups or entities for whom the lawmaker had requested an earmark.
“I was a practicing attorney for many years, and one of the ethical maxims that we lived by was to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. This law will help lawmakers avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest,” he said.
The move comes days after U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D.-Pa., faced scrutiny in the press for the large amount of earmarks he has requested for groups and companies that have donated generously to his campaign.
“I really, for my part, did not have any particular member in mind,” Hodes said.
Hodes, who said he supports an ethics investigation into the connection between earmarks and campaign contributions, said the law would build upon ethics reforms to the earmark process that have been enacted over the last several years.
“We have … worked steadily for a number of years on more accountability, more transparency, more openness, in dealing with earmarks. We took steps in the last Congress, we took significant steps in this Congress. And I think the time is right that we take this next step. And I think this is a very important step,” he said.
Hodes said he expected the bill to have support from many Republicans.
“This piece of legislation really is not a partisan effort and not a partisan piece of legislation,” he said.
Hodes said he thought voters in the state would support the legislation.
“New Hampshire is a very independent place. We have a reputation for independence. I think we also have a reputation for integrity,” Hodes said after the press conference. “I am very privileged to represent people who care about openness, transparency, accountability, integrity. And they have high expectations of their representatives in that regard. I think it is the right thing to do. And people in New Hampshire have a pretty good sense of what the right thing to do is.”
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Hodes, Shea-Porter Request $350 Million in Earmarks for New Hampshire
EARMARKS
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
April 16, 2009
WASHINGTON—New Hampshire’s congressional representatives are hoping to steer hundreds millions of federal dollars through the appropriations process and into the state to pay for projects ranging from environmental clean-up to development of military technology.
Members of the House of Representatives posted their fiscal year 2010 appropriations requests for their home states this month, and U.S. Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes have requested more than $350 million between them for New Hampshire.
The members of the House were required to post their requests for appropriations earmarks on their Web sites. Shea-Porter’s requests were displayed under their own tab in the About the District section, right under the fiscal year 2009 earmarks she had requested and were approved. Hodes’ requests were tucked away in the press release section of his site.
Appropriation bills have not been passed yet, so the numbers on their sites are not final but only the amounts Hodes and Shea-Porter have requested. In the final bill, the totals may be cut and entire projects could be eliminated.
“We are going to get many fewer rewards than we have actually requested,” Hodes cautioned in a telephone interview.
In all, Hodes requested $227,764,731 in appropriations for the state, according to his office. The money would go to everything from purchasing three islands to add to the Lake Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge in Errol ($4.5 million) to helping the iRobot Corp. in Bedford, Mass., develop a “Warrior UGV” robot for soldiers that once designed, would be manufactured exclusively in Hudson, N. H. ($4 million).
Shea-Porter requested $156,086,964 in federal funds for the district, to pay for projects ranging from renovating a vacant landmark building in downtown Manchester by the New Hampshire Institute of Art ($2 million) to continuing to fund the Dare Mighty Things program that aims at improving National Guard and Army Reserve family readiness for deployment ($2.5 million).
“This year we focused on job creation,” Hodes said about the projects for which he decided to request funds. “The notion of a valid public purpose that I would hope is unarguable is really what I’m after.”
Many of the appropriations requests for New Hampshire are directed at defense and environmental projects. Hodes said such projects, especially those that create new technologies for the military, are important for the state.
“They are employing an awful lot of people in New Hampshire and doing awfully good, cutting-edge work to protect our troops,” he said.
Hodes and Shea-Porter jointly requested funds for two projects at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard: more than $7 million for improved security at the site, and more than $36 million for consolidation of the facility’s structural shops. Hodes requested an additional $23.1 million for a state-of-the-art “LEAN” waterfront support facility for submarines.
Hodes called the shipyard a “vital facility in our nation’s defense infrastructure.”
“We fought hard to keep it open and we want to keep it the best in the nation,” he said.
With earmarks and what its critics call pork-barrel spending a popular target of political outrage, Hodes said he chooses projects that he would be proud to stand on the floor of Congress and talk about.
“The most important thing is that members of Congress know their district and know the particular needs of the district,” he said. “I think it’s appropriate, in the limited way we do it, to make a congressionally directed investment in our district.”
“I’m quite proud of what we’ve been able to bring back to New Hampshire,” he said.
The Senate has not voted on appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010 yet. But this week, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., a member of the Appropriations Committee, was criticized by the non-profit advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste for earmarks he included in last year’s appropriations bills. The group releases a “Pig Book” each year, complete with a summary of what it lists as the porkiest projects.
The group cried “pork” over $6.7 million Gregg appropriated in the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations bill, including money for law enforcement research and development, studies on the affect of climate change in New England’s Rare Alpine Zone, and prevention of the spread of exotic aquatic weeds. It also cited $285,000 Gregg appropriated for expansion of the Boys& Girls Club in Nashua.
“All of the appropriations requests I have submitted have been within the budget allocations for each bill and have not added to the deficit,” Gregg said in a statement. “As elected members of Congress, we should be able to prioritize how federal dollars are spent while adhering to the overall budget bottom line.”
Gregg’s office offered a thorough rebuttal to the pork charges, providing explanations of how each program the group highlighted benefits taxpayers and including statements from someone involved with each program highlighting the importance of Gregg’s support and the federal funds.
“I am proud to have supported federal funding that has protected thousands of acres of invaluable environmental lands, created much-needed jobs, helped law enforcement officials keep our state safe and dramatically improved educational opportunities for our children in New Hampshire colleges and universities,” Gregg’s statement continued.
“While I understand the frustration over wasteful spending, earmarks, when submitted through a fully transparent and uniform system, can guarantee that federal dollars are returned in a way which truly benefits the taxpayers,” the statement concluded.
The group’s broad definition of pork includes spending requested by only one chamber of Congress, not specifically authorized, competitively awarded or requested by the president, greatly exceeding the president’s budget request, not the subject of congressional hearings or serving only a special interest.
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Gregg Offers a History Lesson, Jokes, and a (Failed) Budget Amendment
1789
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
March 31, 2009
WASHINGTON – When it came time to introduce his latest amendment to the president’s proposed budget, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and his Senate colleagues couldn’t resist cracking a few jokes.
Gregg introduced an amendment on the Senate floor yesterday that would have required 60 votes, a “supermajority,” to pass any budget that would rack up as much or more debt in the next 10 years than has already accumulated between 1789 – the birth of the federal government – and January 20, 2009 – the birth of the Barack Obama presidency.
Gregg’s office said the publicly held federal debt amassed from 1789 up to January 20, 2009 was $6.3 trillion.
Gregg’s amendment did not pass, with 43 senators voting for it and 54 voting against it.
In Gregg’s very brief, very animated floor speech on the amendment, he threw his arms open wide as he listed all the presidents who, combined, had not spent as much as Gregg said the fiscal year 2010 budget would spend.
“George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Pierce,” Gregg said enthusiastically.
“Pierce?” a senator called out from behind Gregg.
“Just to remind a few of you folks—” Gregg responded, barely able to suppress a laugh, before a senator interrupted with “He was president?”
The president in question, Franklin Pierce, served from 1853 to 1857 and, like Gregg, was the son of a New Hampshire governor and served in the U.S. Senate.
After the moment of levity, Gregg went on to explain, “If there is a budget that brings forward more debt than that in one five-year period, as regrettably President Obama’s budget does, doubles the debt in five years and triples it in ten years, then there will be a point of order against that budget. So it will take 60 votes in this body to pass that budget rather than 51.”
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chair of the Budget Committee, where Gregg is the top Republican, called Gregg’s amendment the “most curious offered yet.”
“One has to wonder where the gentleman was when they were doubling the debt over the last eight years,” Conrad said, referring to the previous Republican Congress and Bush Administration.
“I would ask unanimous consent that if the senator wishes to make this retroactive, we will accept his amendment,” Gregg shot back moments later, getting big laughs from his colleagues.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., voted against Gregg’s amendment.
“We have inherited a record deficit and the worst economic crisis in generations, and in order to get our economy back on track we need invest in priorities that have been ignored for far too long,” Shaheen said in a statement, listing health care and a sustainable green economy among her top priorities.
“I am confident we will be able to pass a budget that invests in our future, strengthens the middle class, and restores fiscal discipline,” she said.
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What Exactly Are The Perks for Members of Congress?
PERKS
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
March 24, 2009
WASHINGTON—As Congress attempts to kick-start the struggling economy and scrutinizes the pay and bonuses of business executives, many New Hampshire residents may be wondering: How much money do their representatives in Washington make? And what kind of perks come along with their jobs?
Senators and members of the House of Representatives have fewer perks than in the past, but things like prime parking at the airport and on Capitol Hill and free artwork for their offices still sweeten their salaries. But some formerly famous perks, like free ice delivery to congressional offices, have been eliminated over the last 20 years. Rules about accepting gifts and trips from lobbyists and free rides on corporate jets also have been tightened significantly.
All four members of the New Hampshire delegation pull in the same yearly wage: $174,000. All members of Congress get that same wage except for the majority and minority leaders in the Senate and House, who earn $193,400, and the speaker of the House, who has the top pay at $223,500.
“Right now, most members of Congress, on the pay they receive, which is very generous, have to maintain two homes, at least two places to live, one in your district and one down here. And that gets pretty expensive, but you don’t get to deduct it,” Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said.
Congressional compensation does not stop at their salaries. Members of Congress have plum health insurance plans, safe pensions and big budgets. Senate offices can be sweeping suites, with high ceilings, multiple rooms and even working fire places.
But Gregg said that most of the perks that raised the ire of taxpayers have been eliminated.
“There’s been a significant change in the area that you might call perks in that most of them have been eliminated, to the extent that they existed, over the years,” Gregg, who started in the House in 1981, said. “There are issues that are still out there I presume; I
can’t think of any significant ones. You know, things like the traditional issues everyone used to hear about, meals, and all that sort of stuff, that was an issue, and those have all been eliminated.”
While many small businesses have trouble providing health insurance to their employees because of high costs, members of Congress have access to the health benefits available to all federal employees.
The plan allows federal employees to choose the level and type (fee-for-service or HMO) of health insurance they want for themselves and their families. The government pays up to 75 percent of a member of Congress’s premium, according to the Office of Personnel
Management.
Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., thinks that every American should be able to buy into the plan “to ensure they can have the same exact insurance as members of Congress,” said Mark Bergman, Hodes’ spokesman. U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., uses her husband’s health insurance, but pays for dental and vision supplements, her spokeswoman Jamie Radice said.
The plan is not all it’s cracked up to be, said former U.S. Rep. Charles Bass, who is now on the board of trustees of the Republican Main Street Partnership.
“To be honest with you, my health care plan right now at the Republican Main Street Partnership is cheaper than the federal plan, and the coverage is better,” Bass said.
While many pensions and 401(k)s have been decimated by plummeting stock prices or failing investment banks, members of Congress will receive generous pensions for their government service under the Federal Employees’ Retirement System, available to all federal employees. Gregg is the only member from New Hampshire who has served
in the federal government long enough to be vested in the pension plan.
Pensions are based on an average of a member’s three highest levels of pay in Congress, their length of congressional service up to 20 years, and any other government service.
Because Gregg, who has said he plans to retire from the Senate in January 2011, began his service in the House of Representatives in 1981 under the old Civil Service Retirement System, and served in the federal government non-continuously, it is difficult to calculate how much his pension will be worth. But Pete Sepp, vice president for policy and communications at the National Taxpayers Union, estimates that Gregg will receive around $55,000 a year.
When a member of the delegation needs to hop a flight back to New Hampshire for one of the weeks Congress is off, the government foots the bill – as long as it’s for business.
“That can become tricky,” Bass said. “I was allowed to fly to Boston or Manchester, but I was not allowed to fly to Providence to get to New Hampshire.”
Members can also use campaign money to travel to areas out of their district, as well as to pay for other expenses.
They also get to avoid one of the biggest airport hassles: finding and paying for a parking spot.
Gregg, Shaheen, Hodes and Shea-Porter, along with their congressional colleagues, Supreme Court justices and the diplomatic corps, can park for free at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport, according to Tara Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
They can park in special spots and lots reserved for them, or in any spot in the lots other customers pay to park in, including hourly lots, Hamilton said.
Parking costs as much as $36 a day in the lots that are closest to the terminals at Reagan National, and $12 a day in the economy lot. At Dulles, the “valet” lot in front of the terminal will cost $30 for the first day and $19 for each additional day, while the economy lot costs $10 a day.
Dulles International Airport has 100 spaces reserved for the members of Congress, justices and diplomats out of 24,069 total parking spaces. Reagan National Airport has 80 designated spaces out of approximately 7,500 total parking spaces.
Bass said many members of Congress get dropped off at the airport by staffers, and said he usually took the Metro train to Reagan National Airport.
It is also free for members of Congress to park on Capitol Hill, where members can park in garages at the Senate and House office buildings. The buildings are all attached underground to the Capitol, and if a member is a in a rush he or she (and staff and members of the press) can take the Capitol’s free tram to and from their office buildings.
Some perks have more to do with convenience than money. Members of Congress and their staffers only have to go to the basement of their office buildings to find banks, barber shops, post offices and even shoe shines – and all at a reasonable price.
Members of the House also can pay a “nominal” monthly fee to work out at the Wellness Center reserved for members and former members only (except those who have become lobbyists, who are not allowed inside), said Dave Helfert, a spokesman for Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, head of the House gym committee.
Neither Hodes nor Shea-Porter uses the gym, according to their offices, but Gregg does pay for a membership at the Senate gym.
Visits to the Smithsonian Institution museums are free to everyone, but for Congress, they can serve as trips to pick out some new decor: some members can display decorative items from the collections in their offices.
The Smithsonian only lends to members with Capitol offices, usually reserved for the congressional leadership, because the Senate and House curators can protect the artwork there, said Tim Nolan, in the Smithsonian’s Office of Government Relations.
So if a member of the New Hampshire delegation is chosen to be a party whip or minority leader, can he or she display some of the Smithsonian’s dinosaur bones?
“It just depends on what they ask for and what our museums can comply with,” Nolan said.
But reform of the federal pay, retirement structure and ethics rules have stripped Congress of some of the cushier perks of the past, leaving them nearer to the level of other federal employees.
“Over the years, the compensation structure for members of Congress has been made to differentiate very, very little from that of the person working in the post office in Peterborough, N.H.,” Bass said.
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Small-Business Owners ask Congress for Help in Credit Crunch
SMALLBIZ
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
March 19, 2009
WASHINGTON—Mark Lane knows how to run a small business. He has run Coed Sportswear Inc., an imprinted apparel company in Newfields that supplies T-shirts to retailers, for 19 years, starting it just after graduating from business school. In 1995, President Bill Clinton presented him with the national Small Business Administration’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the White House Rose Garden.
But Thursday, Lane, who lives in Hampton Falls, returned to Washington to tell Congress he can no longer get credit to run his business.
“In 19 years of business, we never missed a bank payment, and yet we’re considered a bad loan,” Lane told the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship during a hearing on how the credit crunch has affected lending to small businesses.
“Mark, I think, exemplifies the true entrepreneurial spirit that we’re so proud of in New Hampshire,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., a member of the committee. “Unfortunately, he’s experiencing the challenges that too many small businesses are experiencing, which is the difficulty in getting access to credit.”
Shaheen said 94 percent of all businesses in New Hampshire are small business.
Coed Sportswear and its sister company, Printed Matter, Inc., have not turned a profit in the last two years, which Lane said is directly connected to the economic downturn.
“The last two years have been a struggle for both companies,” he told the committee. “We have seen retailers consolidating, retailers going out of business, and we’ve seen, just in general, retailers generally buying less products. Our sales over the last two years have fallen almost 40 percent.”
Despite laying off 35 of the company’s 80 employees in April and suspending the company’s 401(k) matching program over the summer, in August the company’s bank froze the $1 million line of credit for Coed and the $50,000 line of credit for Printed Matter and asked Lane to find a new bank.
Lane’s bank has extended him credit while he searches for a new lender, but finding a new source of credit has been virtually impossible, he said. Banks are “only willing to look backwards and not forwards,” Lane said, lending only to companies that have been profitable for at least six months.
Coed, while unprofitable for all of 2008, was actually profitable for the last half of the year, Lane said. But the business is seasonal, so there was not a profit in November or December, he said.
Instead of seeking the full $1 million line of credit for Coed, he has sought only to move the $50,000 line of credit for Printed Matter to a new bank.
“If I cannot secure a $50,000 loan, a line of credit, that is more than well-secured, how is it that any small business that is struggling to make money in this economy will ever receive funding to move forward?” he asked.
Senators and witnesses expressed frustration at the discrepancy between the testimony of banks, who say they are lending or are ready to lend, and small-business owners, who say they cannot access credit.
“What I’ve heard from community banks in New Hampshire is that they have money to lend and they’re ready to do that. And yet what I’ve heard from small-business owners like Mark is that they can’t get credit. So, there’s clearly a contradiction here, and something’s not functioning as it should,” Shaheen said in an interview after the hearing.
Lane said his business also has struggled to provide health insurance to its employees. He said the company took pride in paying 100 percent of an employee’s premium, but over the past year, he has had to ask his employees to pay more.
In February, health-care insurance costs rose by 45 percent, forcing Lane to switch to a plan with even higher employee payment and fewer benefits.
“The plan went from what I considered a very good health care plan to what now I consider almost a disaster plan,” he said. “And that’s just hard for the employees to take.”
“That’s why we’ve got to do something about health care,” Shaheen said, “and part of the discussion is around addressing cost.”
Despite the setbacks of the last two years, Lane said he was still optimistic about the future of his business.
“Coming down here, my expectation was to tell my story, which I felt like I was able to do. To tell it to the people that can make a difference, which is what I felt like I did. And I’ve gotten a lot out of it,” he said.
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Shaheen, Gregg attend White House Health Care Summit
Photos by Caroline Bridges
HEALTH SUMMIT
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
March 5, 2009
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama invited a group of lawmakers—including Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H.—and insurance, labor and medical officials to the White House Thursday to discuss how to reform the country’s health care system.
In his opening remarks to the group of more than 100 attending the summit, Obama called the “exploding cost” of health care “one of the greatest threats not just to the well-being of our families and the prosperity of our businesses, but to the very foundation of our economy.”
“Our goal will be to enact comprehensive health care reform by the end of this year. That is our commitment. That is our goal,” Obama told the group.
The president called a seat at the summit “the hottest ticket in town.”
After the opening remarks the group split into “break-out sessions” before offering the president comments and questions.
Shaheen said in an interview after the summit that at the break-out session she attended, the participants – ranging from Democrats to Republicans, labor, small business and pharmacology representatives to advocates for AIDS patients and Native Americans – agreed on the need to move to a system focused on wellness rather than illness, to promote primary and preventative care, and to address the health care workforce, which is lacking doctors and nurses.
“We need to look at what works, look at the outcomes, look at evidence-based treatments and procedures. And when we do that, that will help drive down costs,” she said.
Gregg said the meeting was constructive, but that not much consensus was reached.
“It would be difficult to get much consensus in a first meeting like this,” he said in an interview after the meeting.
Gregg said he believed reform was possible in the next year or 18 months if taken in parts, but that to do one massive overhaul in that time would be more difficult.
“I think it’s a possibility, if you don’t try to do the whole thing at once. If you just take some chunks of it and try to address those issues I think you could make some strides,” he said.
For the summit’s closing remarks, Obama entered with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.,who has been away from Washington while fighting a malignant brain tumor.
“I'm looking forward to being a foot soldier in this undertaking,” Kennedy said. “And this time, we will not fail.”
Shaheen agreed with the sentiment.
“Failure is not an option. We’ve got address this, we’ve got to address the individuals and families who are struggling because they don’t have health care and the businesses who can’t be competitive because of the cost of health care,” she said.
Shaheen said the president pointed out in his closing remarks that Congress would be in control of the details of the plan.
“It’s going to be the Congress that really puts the details on health care reform and that really fleshes that out,” she said.
She said the proposals for reform in the Senate have so far been bi-partisan. She added that representatives from the business, hospital and pharmacology industries and labor officials were also prepared to get down to work.
“The feeling was that all of the players who need to be at the table understand the urgency of addressing this issue,” she said.
Gregg said making wealthier people pay a fair share of their Medicare premiums, allowing people to take advantages of facilities that are producing higher quality care at a lower cost, and increasing investment in health information technology were areas where there was a great deal of bi-partisan support.
But he was not without his concerns.
“I’m worried about a lot of things, but I’m most concerned about undermining the quality of health care and the research efforts in this country, by having the government overly nationalize the system,” he said.
He was also concerned about “creating an atmosphere where there’s no incentive for people to be thoughtful purchasers of health care, and we just pass all the cost on to the taxpayers and the debt.”
During the closing remarks, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., asked Obama if he thought the method proposed by Gregg and Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., for fast-tracking entitlement reform might help in the overhaul of Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
“Although he didn’t endorse it, he didn’t say that he was opposed either,” Gregg said. “It was in play as far as he was concerned.”
Gregg said he agreed with Obama that Social Security was an easier fix than health care, because it was less complex. Using the Conrad-Gregg approach, “we could do Social Security before the end of the summer. That would be a nice win. It would be a very bipartisan event,” he said.
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In Question to Bernanke, Gregg Focuses on the Long-Term
BERNANKE
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
March 3, 2009
WASHINGTON— At Tuesday’s Senate Budget Committee hearing Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, was grilled by most senators on the government bail-out of AIG. . But Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H, wanted to focus on entitlement reform and the long-term consequences of what he characterized as the massive government spending in President Barack Obama’s proposed budget.
“The budget, as it’s proposed, essentially nationalizes all income over $250,000, nationalizes health care, nationalizes student loans, we’re in the process of nationalizing our banking system, and in addition it creates a national sales tax on the production of energy,” Gregg, the top Republican on the committee, said in his opening statement.
“It’s a real movement of our government to the left and down the road of sort of France,” Gregg said in an interview after the hearing.
Gregg said he did not ask Bernanke about the latest bailout for insurance giant American International Group because of time constraints and what he said were more pressing issues.
“I had five minutes, and I think everybody else was covering it ad nauseam because it was a way to get a press release and get coverage,” he said.
AIG the struggling insurance conglomerate, received another $30 billion from the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank Monday – marking the fourth time the company has taken taxpayer money. AIG has reported $100 billion in losses for 2008, the largest losses of any U.S. company in history.
“The amount we’re spending on AIG isn’t like what we’re spending on the stimulus package, which we’ll never get back,” Gregg said, because the government has purchased AIG assets that have value. When the economy rebounds, the government should be able to recover its investment, he said.
“It’s still an obscene amount of money being spent to try to stabilize a situation that never should have occurred,” he added.
During the hearing, Gregg asked Bernanke if a government of the size proposed in the Obama Administration’s budget could be sustained and how it would affect the value of U.S. currency and the ability of the country to sell its debt.
In response, Bernanke said: “The president has proposed a number of ambitious programs… I think it’s going to be up to Congress to figure out in terms of the substance of those programs, whether they are achieving social and other objectives that Congress wants to achieve. That’s really not my place.”
“But your place is to protect the value of the dollar,” Gregg interrupted.
“My concern here, as I expressed, was that there needs to be fiscal sustainability,” Bernanke replied.
Gregg also pressed Bernanke on the issue of entitlements, such as Social Security and Medicare, asking whether the government would be able to tell the international community the dollar was strong unless it took action in the face of the coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation.
“It’s clear that to in order get control of the overall budget situation, we’re going to need to look at entitlements,” Bernanke said. “If we don’t get a sustainable fiscal situation, and deficits continue in large amounts for a long period, then it will become more difficult to sell our debt and interest rates will rise, and it will be counter-productive.”
After the hearing, Gregg said he thought Bernanke understood that “unless we get the fiscal house of this country in order, over the long run, we’re going to have very serious problems.”
“He’s clearly said that after we get by this period, when we’ve had to use massive amounts of federal liquidity, tax dollars” to try to turn around the economy, “we’ve got to figure out how to get that debt under control, and the deficits down. And the problem is the Obama proposals do just the opposite,” Gregg said.
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New Hampshire Delegation Reacts to Obama’s Budget
Photos by Caroline Bridges
BudgetNH
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors and Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 26, 2009
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire lawmakers divided sharply Thursday over President Barack Obama’s budget proposals for next year and for the long term.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, led the Republican assault on the budget at a press conference with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee.
“I have some severe reservations about where this budget is taking us, and the issue really comes down to this: where’s the restraint in spending?” Gregg asked.
“This budget doubles the debt of the federal government in five years, triples the debt of the federal government in 10 years, builds up obviously massive deficits over this period, and never really gets us back to a point where we’re on a glide path toward getting control over the costs that we’re passing on to the next generation,” he said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., on the other hand, praised Obama’s announced goal of cutting in half the $1.75 trillion deficit by 2013. “I think we’ve got to work very hard to address the debt and the deficit,” she said, because “it’s not in the country’s interest to continue to carry the kind of debt and deficits that we’ve inherited from the last administration.”
“I think it’s positive that the president has made a commitment to try and reduce the deficit in half by 2013,” Shaheen said.
But Gregg slammed Obama’s promise to cut the deficit in half, saying a $500 billion deficit would still be left. If the budget kept to the current spending baseline, he said, the deficit would drop to about $150 billion in the same time.
“It’s like you take four steps back and then only take two steps forward,” he said. “We’re taking four steps back in the deficit fight and then we’re only taking two steps forward in the deficit fight, when if you were just to stay on the basic course you’re on, you could take three steps forward.”
Gregg expressed concern that tax increases would put a heavy burden on small-business owners.
But Shaheen, who visited 30 New Hampshire small businesses last week, said: “I’m not sure what context Sen. Gregg was talking about taxing small businesses. I certainly am going to work to address their tax rates and do everything I can to make sure small businesses get the support they need.”
While Republicans slammed Obama for proposing to raise taxes in a recession, U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., said middle-class families would not see a tax hike.
“He’s keeping a commitment and a promise for the middle class; there is no tax increase for them,” she said. “This country needs revenue. I think it’s perfectly fair to expect those who earn the most to pay their fair share. There is no tax increase for about 95 percent of this country.”
She added,. “No matter what people in Washington say-- Republican leaders in Washington-- President Obama went around this country, spoke to millions of Americans, spoke about his plans that are reflected in this budget, and Americans said ‘yes’ and voted for him.”
Gregg said the budget was a missed opportunity to make Social Security fiscally solvent for the next 50 years and achieve Medicare reform.
“If we did those two things jointly in a bipartisan way, we would create a massive amount of confidence in the American people,” he said.
“I would have liked to see a pathway to get Social Security reform along the lines of Conrad-Gregg,” a plan he and Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., have developed calling for a commission to study entitlement spending, Gregg said after the news conference.
Gregg said he saw promise in the budget’s plan to apply income standards for premium payments to the Medicare drug subsidy program and its proposal to cut subsidies for some large farms.
The president’s proposed “down payment” on health care reform is described in the budget as costing $634 billion, but Gregg estimated that it would truly cost more than $1 trillion.
But Shaheen insisted that “we’ve got to address our health care system if we’re going to get this economy going right again in the long term.”
While Americans pay more for health care than do citizens of most industrialized nations, Shaheen said, “we’re getting poorer outcomes on many things,” a sentiment Gregg also expressed.
Gregg said it was possible to reform health care without additional costs.
“When you’re spending 17.5 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] on health care … you’ve got a lot of money in the system, and that money should just be allocated in a more efficient way,” he said.
Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H, said in a statement that he looked forward to working with the president and other members of Congress to make “critical decisions to create more jobs; reinvest in health care, alternative energy and education; and work to cut the deficit.”
The budget requires scrutiny, Hodes said, “to make sure we are not spending billions on wasteful government programs that won’t create jobs, rebuild our economy and improve America’s stature throughout the globe.”
As for where the budget that Republicans plan to introduce would get its money, Gregg cited entitlement cuts.
“Let me quote a sage, [bank robber] Willie Sutton: you go where the money is,” Gregg said. “The money is in entitlements. Almost all the cost of the growth of the federal government is driven by entitlement spending.”
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Delay Sought in Closure of Dover Passport Center; 300 Jobs at Stake
PASSPORT
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 25
WASHINGTON—Three members of Congress from New Hampshire petitioned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday to delay closing the National Passport Information Center in Dover because of a complaint of misconduct in awarding a contract that would move 300 jobs out of the state.
“I think it’s important, given the dispute and the importance of the work that the center does, for there to be a delay in the closing of the center,” said U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H.
In a letter to Clinton, Hodes joined Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., in asking the State Department to hold off on termination of 300 employees at the center that handles questions about U.S. passports, which are administered by the department.
“I think it’s great. I mean, anything that can help the workers there,” said Kevin James, an attorney with the Communications Workers of America, which represents the workers. “They’ve been through so much. This has got to be terrifying for them, to be without a job in this environment.”
The passport center had been under contract with AT&T, but that contract expired last year. A new contract was awarded to Peckham Industries, which plans to shut down the center on Friday and move operations to Arizona, where it says it will employ disabled workers. James drafted the union’s complaint to the State Department, asking that the contract be investigated for conflicts of interest, violations of the Service Contract Act and bad faith toward the union during negotiations.
“I want to make sure that the merits of this are fairly heard, and if the merits of this complaint are found to be true … we have a chance to save these jobs,” Hodes said.
The union and AT&T were involved in “hard bargaining” last year for a contract when, James said, AT&T told workers, “If you make this hard for us, we’re going to give the contract to a company that employs disabled workers.”
In a statement, Walt Sharp, an AT&T spokesman, said: "There have been many confusing claims made regarding the Dover contract. This is in the hands of the State Department and we will look to them to resolve it.”
The department’s press office did not respond to requests for comment.
A contract between the workers and AT&T was negotiated near the end of 2008, James said, but on Dec. 1, the State Department awarded a new contract to Peckham Industries.
The workers’ contract is “just a piece of paper now,” he said. “The whole pretext of doing it under the guise of giving the job to disabled workers, it’s just horrendous.”
A clause in the Service Contract Act calls for a successor contractor to honor the bargaining agreement of a previous contract, but only if operations stay in the same plant.
“There’s an incentive to take the jobs out of New Hampshire and go down to Arizona,” James said.
James is also concerned about the relationships between AT&T, Peckham Industries and the State Department. In an annual report from 2006, Peckham Industries states it filled 240 jobs for AT&T and the State Department, James said.
“There was some kind of relationship with Peckham Industries when this threat was made,” he said.
According to the union’s complaint, the Service Contract Act required AT&T to file a conformance request to determine the wages of their employees within a month of its getting the State Department contract in 2006. AT&T, the union said, filed the request last July, but the State Department did not send it to the Department of Labor until late December, more than two years late.
“It’s just a cozy relationship with the Department of State,” James said.
Shea-Porter said the State Department wanted to work with a company that would place workers in programs that employ blind or severely disabled workers. Peckham Industries will do that, she said, but it will subcontract 40 percent of the jobs to Vangent, a recruitment and job assessment company.
Shea-Porter, who met in her office with State Department officials this month, asked if Peckham Industries would monitor Vangent for compliance and was told it would not.
“There is no disability requirement [for] the subcontractor,” she said. “I fully support the concept and I understand the good intentions, but if you’re not sure if you’re complying-- and certainly we have people in our state who are disabled and would make terrific workers and we have terrific workers right now--it just doesn’t make any sense to do this.”
“We’ve got to fight for every job now,” she said.
Hodes said he met with the passport office employees several months ago.
“It’s very important that we keep every job we can in New Hampshire,” Hodes said. “I was very concerned and remain very concerned about the loss of jobs and the impact on families that closing the center has.”
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