Category: Spring 2009 Newswire
Trucking Industry Opposes McGovern Bill That Would Limit Truck Size
TRUCKS
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Sarah Gantz
Boston University Washington News Service
04/02/09
WASHINGTON – As the trucking industry seeks to loosen weight regulations for trucks traveling on the nation’s highways, U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern (D-Worcester) and U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) will introduce legislation that would cap truck weight and size. They say limits are necessary to minimize road damage and decrease truck-involved traffic fatalities.
Truckers are pushing to increase the weight limit from 80,000 pounds to 97,000 pounds. The move could reduce truck carbon emissions by as much as 17 percent, according to Clayton W. Boyce, a spokesman for American Trucking Associations, by carrying heavier loads in fewer vehicles.
But lawmakers argue that heavier trucks will only exacerbate the problem of crumbling infrastructure and pose a greater risk to drivers. They argue that limiting truck weight will result in fewer accidents because, they say, heavier trucks take longer to stop.
“We’re not going to be able to go backwards on this, but what we can do is stop where we are so it doesn’t get worse,” Mr. McGovern said.
More than 200 of the 1,446 truck crashes (fatal and nonfatal) in Massachusetts occurred in Worcester County, more than every other county except Middlesex, in 2007, the most recent year for which records are available, according to data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The safety administration recorded 26 fatal accidents in Massachusetts involving large trucks in 2007, four of which occurred in Worcester County.
“Generally, tractor-trailer accidents involve fatalities,” said Sgt. James Machado of the Fall River police department, who is the executive director of the Massachusetts Police Association. “Even when they’re involved with nothing but guardrails.”
In two-vehicle crashes involving a passenger car and a large truck, 97 percent of the fatalities were occupants of the passenger vehicle, according to a 2007 study conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
On March 20, an 88-year-old Marlboro woman was killed and her husband injured when their car collided with a tractor-trailer on Route 20 in Northboro.
“It’s not only a matter of public safety,” Mr. Machado said. “It’s also a matter of making sure we’re not doing anything counterproductive to the amount of money we’re putting into fixing infrastructure.”
In Massachusetts, the problem is twofold, Mr. McGovern said. Massachusetts roads are infamously in need of repair—“We have bridges that are older than most states in this country,” the congressman pointed out—which is why, he said, it is imperative to preserve them as much as possible by limiting the damage done by heavy trucks.
Gov. Deval Patrick has committed $600 million to repair roads and bridges this year. An additional $3 billion has been put aside for a program that would repair or replace as many as 300 of the commonwealth’s 532 structurally deficient bridges over the next eight years.
Massachusetts received an additional $437.9 million from the new federal stimulus law to spend on federal highway projects.
A number of factors contribute to road deterioration, including weather, chemicals, traffic—and weight of the vehicles, according to Adam Hurtubise, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Transportation in Massachusetts.
“The higher the traffic volume and the heavier the vehicle, the more quickly the roadway tends to deteriorate,” Mr. Hurtubise said.
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House Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Illegal Immigration
Immigration
The New Bedford Standard-Times
Cristian Hernandez
Boston University Washington News Service
04/02/09
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers and immigration enforcement agencies agreed Thursday that deportation of criminal illegal aliens should be a priority. But they disagreed about some of the administration’s policy choices.
The agreement was expressed during a hearing by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.
“Last year we directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] to use $1 billion of its resources to identify and remove aliens convicted of crimes, whether in custody or at large,” said subcommittee chairman David Price, D-N.C. “I believe in the wisdom of this course and want to know how the ICE plans to make more progress.”
Price said that even though immigration enforcement agencies had achieved relative success, more had to be done to deport aliens who have committed criminal offenses. He said ICE, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, has increased non-criminal deportations by 400 percent since 2002 but criminal deportations by only 60 percent.
“Secretary [Janet] Napolitano has made the identification and removal of criminal aliens a top priority for ICE,” said David Venturella, executive director of Secure Communities, an ICE program intended to enhance federal-local cooperation in detaining and deporting immigrants with criminal records. “We are focusing on improving information sharing to more quickly identify criminal aliens.”
Venturella said it was difficult to identify all criminal aliens because of the excessive speed at which criminals are processed in local and state prisons. Price agreed, saying that only 14 percent of criminals in local prisons are screened, compared with 100 percent of inmates screened at state prisons.
Workforce enforcement efforts have been aided by the department’s E-Verify, an electronic screening system that immigration officials said identifies workers who are not legally allowed to work in the country. The officials said they want to continue to work on the accuracy and fairness of the system. There are currently 63,592 companies enrolled in E-Verify.
Rep. Harold Rogers., R-Ky., praised the E-Verify efforts but warned that making the deportation of criminal aliens a priority should not interfere with the task of deporting non-criminal aliens. He called the emphasis on deporting criminal aliens a “poorly veiled proxy for immigration reform.”
He pointed to reports that ICE has released 28 confirmed illegal immigrants who were arrested during a raid in northwest Washington and has given 24 of them work permits.
“Recent calls from the administration and others to re-prioritize, apply greater scrutiny and redirect valuable ICE resources toward criminal alien investigations come at the detriment of other critical functions,” Rogers said.
But Venturella said the attempt to establish new priorities has not hindered other efforts to combat illegal immigration. “We have added agents—border patrol agents; it has not diminished our efforts on catching and releasing [returning to their home countries] illegal immigrants.”
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Small Businesses are Key to Economic Growth, Maine’s Members of Congress Say
BUSINESS0401
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
April 1, 2009
WASHINGTON – Maine’s members of Congress say the key to reviving Maine's faltering economy lies in restoring national confidence in small businesses by encouraging firms to start spending and investing now.
“In Maine, it’s small businesses that are creating virtually all the new jobs,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said last week in an interview. “Virtually all the large businesses that we have in Maine are scaling back their operations.”
Sen. Olympia Snowe, the senior Republican on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, said the nation will be “almost wholly dependent” on small firms in bringing the economy out of the recession, which is why Congress and the administration are lowering credit barriers for small businesses.
Snowe said the 2010 budget proposed by the president and modified by Democrats last week guaranteed less funding for the federal Small Business Administration than she would have liked, but its $700 million baseline funding represents an improvement over past years.
“I think there is a depreciation of the value of small businesses in our nation’s economy,” Snowe said. “We simply don’t do enough. Small business was a natural constituency for Republicans, yet we diminished and undermined [the SBA] for eight years.”
Karen Gordon Mills’ confirmation Wednesday evening as head of the SBA could signal a shift in the role of the agency, which Snowe said did not receive enough funding under the Bush administration.
Snowe also co-sponsored a bill Wednesday aimed at retraining workers for emerging sectors of the economy like nursing and information technology that demand at least a two-year college degree. The legislation, which was proposed last year but never passed, would organize firms, unions and educational institutions into partnerships, which could then apply for a grant.
The growing need for relief was highlighted last week by new unemployment figures. After months of continuing job losses, Maine’s unemployment rate rose to 8 percent in February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among other temporary assistance efforts, the Labor Department offered a $254,516 emergency grant to assist workers laid off from Wausau Paper after Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, requested the aid in December.
Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, a small business owner herself, held an open house at her Portland office last month for business owners to learn how to benefit from stimulus dollars.
Looking ahead, Collins said she finds the idea of tax breaks for small business dividends an “intriguing” way to free up capital market.
A second proposal being discussed aims to persuade businesses to speed up their own investments through a tax credit that shrinks progressively over the next year and a half. The credit could serve as an incentive for firms to spend early, helping break the cycle of uncertainty that has brought new investments to a crawl, Collins said.
“A lot of business owners have told me that they’ve put investment decisions on hold because the economy is so uncertain,” Collins said. “If you can unfreeze those investments by giving a tax credit that’s only going to be available for 18 months and that is more generous the earlier you use it, it would unlock some of those investments.”
In the meantime, lawmakers also are working to help businesses cut costs on energy and health care. The stimulus package included a tax credit for wind, geothermal and to a lesser degree biomass, tidal and hydroelectric energy. As these industries, which could provide less expensive electricity, are developed, new jobs would be created.
“Maine is perfectly positioned based on its natural resource base, its entrepreneurial predisposition and its inclination for innovation to develop renewable energy sources,” Snowe said. “I think we’re going to see a real potential there for investments in those rural areas.”
Renewable energy production could prove an economic driver “in and of itself,” Maine State Chamber of Commerce President Dana Connors said in a telephone interview, but he cautioned that any legislation must not raise the overall cost of energy in the state.
“The bottom-line test for all of these initiatives is will it reduce our costs,” Connors said. “Don’t add costs, because we’re all living on razor’s edge.”
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Senate Committee Confirms Mainer to head Small Business Administration
MILLS
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
April 1, 2009
WASHINGTON – Brunswick resident Karen Gordon Mills was poised to become administrator of the nation’s Small Business Administration Wednesday after she pledged to free up credit for struggling firms and fund programs to stimulate innovation at this time of economic crisis.
Mills, who appeared before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, answered more than an hour of questions on what role the Small Business Administration should take in the Obama administration. The committee later confirmed her unanimously.
She could receive full Senate approval by week’s end.
Mills said she would focus on encouraging businesses owned by minorities, women and veterans while expanding the number of banks willing to dispense loans backed partially by the government. Statistics on business growth and job creation will be vital to judging the SBA’s success, she said.
“I’m a metrics-oriented person,” Mills said. “I’m looking for ways of using those kinds of metrics so that we know what kind of progress we’re making.”
Mills is a former private equity trader who moved to Maine in 2001 when her husband, Barry Mills, became president of Bowdoin College. She is a graduate of Harvard College and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.
“Ms. Mills' entrepreneurship is quite literally in her blood," Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said. "Her grandfather was a box supplier for Tootsie Roll, and during the Great Depression took over a controlling interest in the company, which he later passed on to his family, and by the way it’s still run by her parents.”
Mills’ father, Melvin Gordon, 89, is the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Tootsie Roll Industries and her mother, Ellen Gordon, 77, is the president and chief operating officer of the company, according to Forbes.com
Mills co-founded the New York-based investment firm Solera Capital in 1999. In 2007, Gov. John Baldacci named her chair of the Maine Council on Competitiveness and the Economy. She also served as president of the investment firm MMP Group in Brunswick.
During Wednesday's confirmation hearing, Snowe renewed her call for the administrator of the SBA to be re-elevated to a cabinet level position, as it was during the Clinton administration, but Mills avoided calling for her own promotion, saying only that she would increase the agency’s involvement in the economy.
Snowe also criticized federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, for not meeting their small disadvantaged businesses contracting requirements, which usually amount to less than 5 percent of an agency’s total spending. After bringing up the topic in several hearings, Snowe said she hopes a new SBA with a higher stature can steer those contracts back to the female- and minority-owned companies for which they were intended.
“This is money that is going to be spent by the federal government,” Snowe said after the hearing. “It’s not as if we have to spend more.”
Mills said, “Sometimes agencies don’t know how to buy from small businesses,” but said she would encourage them to contract with smaller firms. She also pledged to make the SBA more accessible “on the front-end” by making borrowing “more paperless and more seamless.”
Answering a question from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., on what constitutes a small business, Mills said she would remain conscious of the administration’s mission to help small businesses, but does not want to risk crowding out promising businesses.
“There are at least two kinds of businesses served by the Small Business Administration,” Mills said in her opening statement. “The first are the small businesses on Main Street…. The second are high-growth, high-impact businesses, which have the potential to grow into the next American giants.”
Snowe said the stimulus provisions designed to aid small businesses are not being implemented fast enough to save Main Street companies on the brink of bankruptcy, and called for certain loan incentives and government contracts with small business to go into effect within a month.
“Make sure that these provisions are implemented very quickly,” Snowe said. “It truly does concern me that we won’t do the things that these programs are designed to accomplish quickly and immediately.”
Small businesses make up 97 percent of Maine firms, according to Snowe.
Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La., at one point mistakenly referred to Snowe as “co-chair” of the proceedings before correcting herself. Snowe is the senior Republican on the committee.
Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, praised Mills as “an ideal candidate” to lead the agency charged with supporting small businesses.
“Now is the time to strengthen the SBA so that it can be a robust part of our economic recovery,” Michaud said in a statement. “I look forward to Karen’s leadership in reviving this agency’s mission to provide small businesses the capital, counseling, and advocacy that they need.”
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Himes’ Bill to Curb Bonus Payments Passes House
HIMES
Norwalk Hour
Tait Militana
Boston University Washington News Service
04/01/09
WASHINGTON—The House took major steps Wednesday to curb bonus payments to employees of companies such as American International Group, granting expanded powers to the Treasury Department to prohibit employee compensation it deems “unreasonable or excessive.”
The bill, which applies to recipients of federal money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, would allow Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to establish performance-based guidelines that any future bonus payments would have to adhere to.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, who drafted the bill with Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., said the legislation is necessary to protect taxpayer money.
TARP recipients, Himes said, “have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. Like it or not, American taxpayers are now shareholders.”
The bill, which is the first Himes has authored, comes after outrage over $165 million in bonuses doled out to some AIG employees. In response last week, House lawmakers tried to implement a 90 percent tax on those bonuses, but the movement fizzled as the White House distanced itself from the legislation, asking Americans not to demonize all businesses.
The Himes bill would differ from the tax bill because it would not reclaim bonuses already paid to AIG employees. Instead, it would establish standards that could block future bonuses.
According to AIG CEO Edward Liddy, who testified before Congress last month, several employees have voluntarily given back their bonuses.
Himes, who voted for the bonus tax, said reclaiming the AIG bonuses is a separate issue. He said his bill is better than the tax because it would establish a single set of limits on bonuses.
“Someone within the government, which is now a major shareholder in many financial institutions, has to opine,” Himes said. “I’d rather it be the Treasury with its knowledge and expertise in the industry than 435 congressmen.”
Nonetheless, the bill received cold responses from Republican lawmakers, who had voted narrowly against last month’s House-passed bill. Republicans warned that the Himes proposal would grant too much power to the Treasury.
The House approved Himes’ legislation, 247-171, with Republicans dividing, 163 to 10 against the bill.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said the bill was a veiled attempt to allow the government to control the salaries of employees at TARP recipient firms.
“The deception is that this is only for executives,” Foxx said. “It is not. It allows the Treasury to set salaries for all employees.”
Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said the bill would grant government influence in places it should not be.
“To try to tell these companies how to pay the people that work for them is not the right thing to do,” Blunt said.
Himes expressed disappointment that the bill was divided along party lines, but said protecting taxpayer dollars should be a goal of all lawmakers.
“The notion that compensation should be wired to performance should not be a partisan issue,” Himes said.
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Congress Considers Effects of Supreme Court Decision on Tribal Land Annexation
TRIBES
The Day
Katie Koch
Boston University Washington News Service
4/1/09
WASHINGTON—A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that could have major implications for Southeastern Connecticut’s Indian tribes has prompted Congress to launch an investigation into the annexation of tribal lands—and could result in a law overturning the decision.
In a Feb. 24 ruling, the court determined that the U.S. Department of Interior cannot annex land for Indian tribes that were federally recognized after 1934. While the original decision applied only to Rhode Island’s Narragansett Tribe, it also would prevent tribes such as the Mashantucket Pequots, recognized in 1983, and the Mohegans, recognized in 1994, from annexing more land in the future.
The House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing Wednesday to consider whether Congress should modify the existing law and effectively overturn the high court’s decision.
The effects of the court’s decision are still unclear, according to committee chairman. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
Despite the confusion still surrounding the decision, Rahall said, “there is one thing that we are certain of: This decision may result in many frivolous lawsuits being filed to challenge the status of virtually every tribe.”
At the oversight hearing on the ruling, a panel of experts warned the committee—and a packed house of tribal representatives from around the country—that a change in the status of tribal land could affect money for schools, hospitals and businesses on tribal lands.
Challenges to the status of a tribe’s land could also make it hard for tribes to secure their current or future loans, according to the testimony of Michael J. Anderson, former deputy assistant Interior secretary for Indian affairs and now a lawyer representing several tribes.
That predicament has already arisen for the Mohegans, who are in talks to build a gambling casino near La Center, Wash., with Washington’s Cowlitz Tribe, whose application to create a 152-acre land trust has not yet been approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
But many congressmen and speakers at the hearing emphasized that the annexation issue was about more than gaming.
Allowing the Supreme Court decision to stand would effectively create two classes of tribes, said Colette Routel, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School and former tribal-issues attorney. She told the committee that newly recognized and still-unrecognized tribes would be even further disadvantaged.
“Often these tribes are the hardest hit,” Routel said. “There’s no reason to further that injustice by now deciding that they’re going to be permanent second-class citizens.”
Since the decision was announced, tribes in Connecticut have stressed that although they will not be affected by the ruling, they were discouraged by the potential setbacks it could create for other tribes seeking federal recognition or annexation.
“We support congressional action to reverse this decision and recommend an amendment to the Indian Reorganization Act to clarify that the benefits of the [act] are available to all federally recognized tribes,” Lori Potter, a spokeswoman for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, said in an interview.
One potential complication of the decision, Anderson said, is that prisoners who had committed crimes on tribal land could appeal their convictions if the status of the land changed.
“Clever criminal attorneys around the country would look at this and mount challenges,” Anderson said.
Underscoring the confusing and sometimes arbitrary nature of tribal recognition, much of the debate Wednesday focused on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the meaning of a single word in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. The court decided that in the law’s language—“any recognized Indian tribe now under federal jurisdiction”—the word “now” indicated that only tribes recognized by 1934 would be eligible to have land placed in trust by the federal government.
“When Congress uses undefined terms in a statute, Congress intends to mean the common dictionary meaning,” said Donald Mitchell, a Native American legal affairs expert, who testified.
“One little word, a three-letter word—now—has upset the whole basis of 75 years of all that has been done. You’re saying that isn’t just a bunch of baloney?” asked Del. Eni Faleomavaega, D-American Samoa.
“I’m saying, as a lawyer, that words have consequences,” Mitchell responded.
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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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Hanover High School Student Awarded $2,500 in Essay Contest
ESSAY CONTEST
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
March 31, 2009
WASHINGTON – Libby Tolman, a Hanover High School sophomore, has been awarded $2,500 for winning second place in the “Being an American” essay contest.
Tolman was selected as one of three finalists from the New England region, winning an all-expenses trip with her U.S. history teacher, Pamela Miller, to Washington from March 29-31.
Carolyn Kelle, also a Hanover High School student, was awarded an honorable mention and $250 in the competition.
The winners, chosen from more than 31,000 student entries from across the country, were announced at a gala dinner in the Renaissance Washington Hotel on Tuesday night.
The goal of the essay contest was to explore the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship and civic values. Students were asked to write an essay on the question, “What civic value do you believe is most essential to being an American?”
The competition was open to students in grades 9 to 12. Tolman’s essay described the value of justice.
A special guest, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, addressed the winning students and teachers at the dinner.
Tolman said, “I chose justice because when people talk about America, they talk about rights and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The 15-year-old said, “I think that without justice there would be no way to protect those rights.”
Kelle selected perseverance as her civic value. She wrote, “Nothing can be accomplished if we do not try. There is no giving up, no backing down, if one truly perseveres.”
While in Washington, the students visited the National Archives and the Supreme Court and met with pro football Hall of Fame cornerback Darrell Green.
The essay competition was sponsored by the Bill of Rights Institute, a nonprofit educational organization that encourages students to learn about America’s founding documents and how they continue to shape society.
In her essay, Tolman wrote, “One of the unfortunate things about justice is that it does not occur by itself; the fundamental American idea that citizens are protected from the seizure of liberty by their government no matter who they are must be advanced and developed by citizens themselves.”
Miller, Tolman’s teacher, said, “What struck me about Libby’s essay was her emphasis on justice as both a right as well as a responsibility for society to maintain, and I thought she brought that out very strongly in her essay.”
Miller described her winning student as advanced in her critical writing skills. “Libby has the ability to think at a higher level about ideas, and that is what we are seeing in her writing,” she said.
She said “Libby is a sophomore, while most of the winners are juniors or seniors.”
Tolman, she added, “is able to bring in basic substantive documents to think about—the Bill of Rights, the amendments or individuals in history—and she can marry those ideas together, leading to a higher level of writing.”
Miller said the ideas that came through in her student’s essay were “quiet powerful.”
Tolman, at a congressional reception held for the students in the Capitol Visitor Center Tuesday, said, “It’s really amazing in D.C., with all the cherry blossoms and everything—and we really got to see a lot of things—we saw the Constitution and the Bill of Rights at the National Archives.”
Miller said she presented the competition to her classes as “an opportunity for all of my students, but I did not require it.”
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Service Sector Jobs Bring Less Pay for Laid-off Mill Workers
FOODANDMEDICINE
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
March 27, 2009
WASHINGTON – Laid-off mill workers in Eastern Maine who have taken jobs in the service sector have found their pay and benefits sharply reduced, primarily because much of the industry is not unionized, according to a report released in Maine Friday by the workers’ rights group Food AND Medicine.
The report surveyed 107 Eastern Maine workers who were dismissed during the past eight years, asking in person or by telephone how their health care, retirement security, new wages and other factors affecting their quality of life have changed.
“These are the people behind the statistics,” said Steve Husson, the project’s coordinator. “Through no fault of their own, they’ve been hurt, and we’ve got to change the policies now, or more people are going to be hurt.”
Food AND Medicine is a Brewer-based advocacy group that seeks higher wages and affordable health care for working-class Mainers.
The organization used the interviews to build the case for legislation aimed at increasing protections for U.S. workers, including the TRADE Act, which would renegotiate U.S. trade agreements, and the controversial Employee Free Choice Act, which would let workers unionize by having a majority of the workforce sign authorization cards rather than using a secret-ballot election.
“It’s virtually impossible to organize in the service sector,” Jack McKay, director of Food AND Medicine, said. “There are simply very few unions that have been formed in the last 30, 40 years… the cards are stacked so much against workers.”
Peter Gore, vice president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, disputed the group’s claim that current law does not adequately protect workers who want to unionize from employer intimidation, saying the National Labor Relations Board gives both sides a fair shot. Nothing will hurt Mainers’ standards of living more than further job losses, he said.
“The way you grow the economy in this country is to create new jobs,” Gore said. “You’ve got to have jobs in this county before you can unionize them.”
About 90 percent of the former mill workers surveyed last fall found some other form of employment by the end of 2008, but those workers rehired by service-sector companies like Wal-Mart and The Home Depot complained they earn far less as non-union workers. Only 23 percent of those surveyed by Food AND Medicine still worked at union jobs by 2008, down from 93 percent in 2000.
Of the surveyed mill workers, all of whom had health insurance before they were laid off, 25 percent said they relied on their spouses’ insurance plans, and 21 percent reported ending up with no insurance at all. Thirty-five percent said they were working without any pension plan.
In the introduction to the report, 2nd District Rep. Mike Michaud said Maine will need temporary unemployment assistance as well as long-term trade and health care reforms to give workers “a fair shake.”
“Workers who make a company profitable should also share in its success,” he said.
Michaud said the card-check unionization bill also would be “a step in the right direction.” First District Rep. Chellie Pingree also supports the legislation, but its chances of passing the Senate remain uncertain, even more so after Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he would not vote for it. Maine Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe also oppose the bill.
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Small Businesses Called Key to Rebuilding Economy
BUSINESS
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
March 27, 2009
WASHINGTON – The key to reviving Maine's faltering economy is restoring national confidence in small businesses, say Maine's members of Congress, who are encouraging firms to start spending and investing now.
“In Maine, it’s small businesses that are creating virtually all the new jobs,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in an interview Thursday. “Virtually all the large businesses that we have in Maine are scaling back their operations.”
Sen. Olympia Snowe, the senior Republican on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, said the nation will be “almost wholly dependent” on small firms in bringing the economy out of the recession, which is why Congress and the administration are lowering credit barriers for small businesses.
Snowe said the 2010 budget proposed by the president and modified by Democrats this week guaranteed less funding for the federal Small Business Administration than she would have liked, but its $700 million baseline funding represents an improvement over past years.
“I think there is a depreciation of the value of small businesses in our nation’s economy,” Snowe said, also in an interview Thursday. “We simply don’t do enough. Small business was a natural constituency for Republicans, yet we diminished and undermined [the Small Business Administration] for eight years.”
Among other provisions, the stimulus law signed last month raises the maximum guarantee to 90 percent on certain SBA loans, increases the New Market Tax Credit Allocation to $5 billion through 2009 and offers a series of tax breaks.
The growing need for relief was highlighted this week by new unemployment figures. After months of continuing job losses, Maine’s unemployment rate rose to 8 percent in February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among other temporary assistance efforts, the Labor Department offered a $254,516 emergency grant to assist workers laid off from Wausau Paper after Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, requested the aid in December.
Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, a small business owner herself, held an open house at her Portland office last month for business owners to learn how to benefit from stimulus dollars.
Looking ahead, Collins said she finds the idea of tax breaks for small business dividends as an “intriguing” way to free up capital market.
A second proposal being discussed aims to persuade businesses to speed up their own investments through a tax credit that shrinks progressively over the next year and a half. The credit could serve as an incentive for firms to spend early, helping break the cycle of uncertainty that has brought new investments to a crawl, Collins said.
“A lot of business owners have told me that they’ve put investment decisions on hold because the economy is so uncertain,” Collins said. “If you can unfreeze those investments by giving a tax credit that’s only going to be available for 18 months and that is more generous the earlier you use it, it would unlock some of those investments.”
In the meantime, lawmakers also are working to help businesses cut costs on energy and health care. The stimulus package included a tax credit for wind, geothermal and to a lesser degree biomass, tidal and hydroelectric energy. As these industries, which could provide less expensive electricity, are developed, new jobs would be created.
“Maine is perfectly positioned based on its natural resource base, its entrepreneurial predisposition and its inclination for innovation to develop renewable energy sources,” Snowe said. “I think we’re going to see a real potential there for investments in those rural areas.”
Renewable energy production could prove an economic driver “in and of itself,” Maine State Chamber of Commerce President Dana Connors said in a telephone interview, but he cautioned that any legislation must not raise the overall cost of energy in the state.
“The bottom-line test for all of these initiatives is will it reduce our costs,” Connors said. “Don’t add costs, because we’re all living on razor’s edge.”
Health care is a heavier burden but also a more complicated long-term problem to solve for businesses, Connors said. The chamber is open to new ideas, especially on ways to entice private insurers to the state.
“We always struggle with health care,” he said. “The problem with the private market is that it’s never free of the influence of government… We kind of have to let that play itself out.”
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