Following a line of questioning from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Walker said that the provision requiring unions to hold annual votes in order to keep union representation saves no money for Wisconsin. Walker went on to say that the voting provision and the one preventing unions from imposing mandatory membership fees were worker protection efforts and meant to provide workers with “the right to choose,” rather than an attempt to fix Wisconsin’s budget, despite being elements of what Walker termed his “budget repair bill.”

ThinkProgress has a partial transcript of the exchange (emphasis theirs):

KUCINICH: Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposals to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?

WALKER: That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you’re going to ask, if you’re going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure we protected the workers of our state, so they got value out of that. [...]

KUCINICH: Would you answer the question? How much money does it save, Governor?

WALKER: It doesn’t save any.

After this heated back-and-forth, Kucinich requested that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the committee chairman, allow a Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau report (PDF) to be included in the official congressional record. The Fiscal Bureau is a nonpartisan financial oversight agency comparable to the federal Congressional Budget Office; its report states that nothing in Walker’s collective bargaining provisions has any fiscal impact on the state of Wisconsin. This is contrary to Walker’s earlier claims that the bill is a budgetary matter and would, for example, lessen the burden on taxpayers to fund public pension plans.

Issa denied Kucinich the right to insert the document in the record without further committee review, arguing that it’s standard protocol to do so when committee members haven’t yet seen a given document. Kucinich was outraged, but the document ultimately made it into the record.

In Crowley’s resignation statement, he does not apologize for his comments, instead taking “full responsibility” for them and exhorting the government to exercise power in a way that is “prudent and consistent with our laws and values.”

Crowley wasn’t the only public official last week to decry the ongoing treatment of Manning at the Marine Corps Brig in Quantico, Virginia. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) announced back in February that he had requested an audience with Manning in Quantico. On Friday, he said in a radio interview that his request has not been officially denied, but that he has been bounced around the Department of Defense and two branches of the military for the last month without getting an answer. “The fact that he’s awaiting trial and they’re doing this to him raises serious questions about our criminal justice process.”

The news that Kucinich is being stonewalled in his attempts to visit Manning comes just days after a report that Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a freshman congressman affiliated with the Tea Party, will this week visit Guantánamo Bay with five other congressmen whose names have not been disclosed. The purpose of the visit is said to be an investigation of detainee treatment and a review of military trials at Guantánamo. West, a retired career Army officer, faced disciplinary action following a 2003 incident in which he used gunplay as an intimidation tactic during an interrogation in Iraq. He was ultimately ordered to pay a $5,000 fine but avoided court-martial.

The Ohio Democrat began circulating a letter to colleagues on Wednesday condemning the attack in no uncertain terms, saying the raid “constitutes an act of belligerence against Turkey” and “undermines United States’ troops efforts in Iraq.”

No one questions the right of Israel to defend its border, but that defense does not extend to shooting innocent civilians anywhere in the world, anytime it pleases.

Kucinich is calling for the United States “to redefine its relationship [with Israel] and to establish such boundaries and conditions which are sufficient for mutual respect and cooperation.”

The full letter follows:

June 2, 2010

The Honorable Barack Obama

President of the United States

The White House

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

Israeli commandos, acting at the direction of the State of Israel, attacked and seized a Turkish ship in international waters, in the Mediterranean Sea.

At least nine were killed in the incident aboard the Mavi Marmara.  Hundreds of civilians were taken into custody and goods were confiscated. Since the United States considers Israel our most important ally in the region, whose survival is a of primary concern, it is incumbent upon the Commander in Chief to call Israel to an accounting for its conduct in planning and executing the deadly military attack in international waters upon a peaceful flotilla carrying citizens from over 50 countries.

The State of Israel’s conduct, attacking a Turkish ship in international waters, constitutes an act of belligerence against Turkey, which at one time Israel considered an important ally. It also undermines United States’ troops efforts in Iraq, since your administration’s efforts to achieve stability in the region and to withdraw troops from Iraq has depended upon Turkey’s cooperation through use of its air bases.

In its violent commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, the government of Israel showed no concern as to how its conduct may affect the lives of defenseless, innocent people, its friends and allies, and in particular the United States. The United States must remind Israel as well as all of our other friends and allies:

It is not acceptable to repeatedly violate international law.

It is not acceptable to shoot and kill innocent civilians.

It is not acceptable to commit an act of aggression against another U.S. ally.

It is not acceptable to continue a blockade which denies humanitarian relief.

It is not acceptable to heighten tensions in a region while the United States continues to put so much blood and treasure on the line.

The State of Israel’s action necessitates that the United States, which is Israel’s partner in the region, begin to redefine its relationship and to establish such boundaries and conditions which are sufficient for mutual respect and cooperation.

It is incumbent upon Israeli officials to bring forth the truth about the planning for and the attack upon the Mavi Marmara.

No one questions the right of Israel to defend its border, but that defense does not extend to shooting innocent civilians anywhere in the world, anytime it pleases.

Israel must account for our support, for the lives of our soldiers, for the investment of billions from our taxpayers.  Israel owes the United States more than reckless, pre-meditated violence waged against innocent people.

The attack on the Mavi Marmara requires consequences for the Netanyahu Administration and for the State of Israel. Those consequences must be dealt by the United States. They must be diplomatic and they must be financial. The U.S. can begin by calling for an independent international inquiry of the Mavi Marmara incident. The integrity of such inquiry necessitates that it not be led by the nation whose conduct is under scrutiny. If our nation fails to act in any substantive way, the United States licenses the violence and we are complicit in it and our own citizens will be forced to pay the consequences.

We the undersigned deeply regret the loss of life. We are also fully aware of the dangers to world security which exist in the region, which is why the United States has been unstinting it its defense of Israel. We have a right to expect that Israel not add to those dangers with military conduct which all people of good will know is neither defensible nor moral. There must be consequences for such conduct. We await your response.

Sincerely,

BACHMANN: [T]o think what they’re flipping for. You know, Dennis Kucinich, a ride on Air Force One.

BENNETT: Yeah.

BACHMANN: And apparently the President also gave him, Dennis Kucinich’s wife and to be able to work with Michelle Obama on the next effort, which is if you eat vegan that you’ll lose weight. I think that’s the next, the next platform that Michelle Obama’s going to have. And what I understood yesterday is that Mrs. Kucinich will work together with Mrs. Obama on that effort.

BENNETT: It’s time to get the Cattleman’s Association back there.

BACHMANN: Oh my gosh, if this is what they’re selling out votes for on their side, they’re a bunch of weak sisters over there.

Can Bachmann really believe this, though? Wouldn’t the more explicable reason be that Kucinich realizes a sneaky plot to nationalize health care when he sees one? I think this is part of the pattern I’ve seen with Bachmann this week, focusing on “backroom deals” and “arm-twisting,” even when, as in this case, the allegation is awfully hard to take seriously.

UPDATE: Here’s the audio.

Kucinich Switches Vote on Health Care (The New York Times, 3/17/10)

Coincidence?

Michelle Obama Gets Backup From Scarlett Johansson On Healthful Eating

Now that Michelle Obama has made curbing childhood obesity the rage, another effort with a similar wow factor is pressing the case for schools to provide healthful foods to replace the sugary and fatty products the first lady wants to send to the principal’s office.

To publicize a bill being dropped Thursday to push school cafeteria veggies, promoters are rolling out dishy actress Scarlett Johansson and redheaded activist Elizabeth Kucinich to talk up the bennies of “plant-based meals.” (Washington Whispers, Paul Bedard, March 16, 2010)

Here’s the email itself.

My criticisms of the legislation have been well reported.  I do not retract them. I incorporate them in this statement. They still stand as legitimate and cautionary.  I still have doubts about the bill. I do not think it is a first step toward anything I have supported in the past. This is not the bill I wanted to support, even as I continue efforts until the last minute to modify the bill.

The entire statement after the jump.

Each generation has had to take up the question of how to provide for the health of the people of our nation.  And each generation has grappled with difficult questions of how to meet the needs of our people.  I believe health care is a civil right.  Each time as a nation we have reached to expand our basic rights, we have witnessed a slow and painful unfolding of a democratic pageant of striving, of resistance, of breakthroughs, of opposition, of unrelenting efforts and of eventual triumph.

I have spent my life struggling for the rights of working class people and for health care.  I grew up understanding first hand what it meant for families who did not get access to needed care.  I lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including in a couple of cars.  I understand the connection between poverty and poor health care, the deeper meaning of what Native Americans have called “hole in the body, hole in the spirit”. I struggled with Crohn’s disease much of my adult life, to discover sixteen years ago a near-cure in alternative medicine and following a plant-based diet.  I have learned with difficulty the benefits of taking charge personally of my own health care.  On those few occasions when I have needed it, I have had access to the best allopathic practitioners.    As a result I have received the blessings of vitality and high energy.  Health and health care is personal for each one of us.  As a former surgical technician I know that there are many people who dedicate their lives to helping others improve theirs.  I also know their struggles with an insufficient health care system.

There are some who believe that health care is a privilege based on ability to pay.  This is the model President Obama is dealing with, attempting to open up health care to another 30 million people, within the context of the for-profit insurance system.  There are others who believe that health care is a basic right and ought to be provided through a not-for-profit plan.  This is what I have tirelessly advocated.

I have carried the banner of national health care in two presidential campaigns, in party platform meetings, and as co-author of HR676, Medicare for All.   I have worked to expand the health care debate beyond the current for-profit system, to include a public option and an amendment to free the states to pursue single payer.  The first version of the health care bill, while badly flawed, contained provisions which I believed made the bill worth supporting in committee.  The provisions were taken out of the bill after it passed committee.

I joined with the Progressive Caucus saying that I would not support the bill unless it had a strong public option and unless it protected the right of people to pursue single payer at a state level.  It did not.  I kept my pledge and voted against the bill.   I have continued to oppose it while trying to get the provisions back into the bill. Some have speculated I may be in a position of casting the deciding vote.   The President’s visit to my district on Monday underscored the urgency of this moment.

I have taken this fight farther than many in Congress cared to carry it because I know what my constituents experience on a daily basis.  Come to my district in Cleveland and you will understand.

The people of Ohio’s 10^th district have been hard hit by an economy where wealth has accelerated upwards through plant closings, massive unemployment, small business failings, lack of access to credit, foreclosures and the high cost of health care and limited access to care.  I take my responsibilities to the people of my district personally.  The focus of my district office is constituent service, which more often then not involves social work to help people survive economic perils.  It also involves intervening with insurance companies.

In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final health care bill will be very close. I take this vote with the utmost seriousness.  I am quite aware of the historic fight that has lasted the better part of the last century to bring America in line with other modern democracies in providing single payer health care.    I have seen the political pressure and the financial pressure being asserted to prevent a minimal recognition of this right, even within the context of a system dominated by private insurance companies.

I know I have to make a decision, not on the bill as I would like to see it, but the bill as it is.   My criticisms of the legislation have been well reported.  I do not retract them. I incorporate them in this statement. They still stand as legitimate and cautionary.  I still have doubts about the bill. I do not think it is a first step toward anything I have supported in the past. This is not the bill I wanted to support, even as I continue efforts until the last minute to modify the bill.

However after careful discussions with the President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Elizabeth my wife and close friends, I have decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation.   If my vote is to be counted, let it now count for passage of the bill, hopefully in the direction of comprehensive health care reform.  We must include coverage for those excluded from this bill.  We must free the states.  We must have control over private insurance companies and the cost their very existence imposes on American families. We must strive to provide a significant place for alternative and complementary medicine, religious health science practice, and the personal responsibility aspects of health care which include diet, nutrition, and exercise.

The health care debate has been severely hampered by fear, myths, and by hyper-partisanship.  The President clearly does not advocate socialism or a government takeover of health care.  The fear that this legislation has engendered has deep roots, not in foreign ideology but in a lack of confidence, a timidity, mistrust and fear which post 911 America has been unable to shake.

This fear has so infected our politics, our economics and our international relations that as a nation we are losing sight of the expanded vision, the electrifying potential we caught a glimpse of with the election of Barack Obama.  The transformational potential of his presidency, and of ourselves, can still be courageously summoned in ways that will reconnect America to our hopes for expanded opportunities for jobs, housing, education, peace, and yes, health care.

I want to thank those who have supported me personally and politically as I have struggled with this decision.  I ask for your continued support in our ongoing efforts to bring about meaningful change.  As this bill passes I will renew my efforts to help those state organizations which are aimed at stirring a single payer movement which eliminates the predatory role of private insurers who make money not providing health care.   I have taken a detour through supporting this bill, but I know the destination I will continue to lead, for as long as it takes, whatever it takes to an America where health care will be firmly established as a civil right.

Looks like Obama’s visit to Ohio earlier this week paid dividends.

Strong Kucinich supporters will feel vindicated that their hero took a lonely stand and forced the House to a moment of choice. Critics will note that a dubious war has been legitimized, and that it will be more complicated for those who voted “aye” to reverse course in the months ahead.

So if you oppose the Afghanistan war, is it supposed to comfort you that Kucinich “took a lonely stand” that made your cause more difficult to achieve?

(Jeff Turner, Flickr)

One year after the Obama administration launched its $75 billion anti-foreclosure program, the housing market remains volatile, loan modifications have been scant, foreclosures are still sky-high — and more and more lawmakers are wondering why the White House hasn’t been more aggressive in tackling the crisis.

Administration efforts to stabilize the troubled housing market have prioritized lenders above struggling homeowners, a number of House Democrats charged Thursday, leading to thousands of foreclosures that might otherwise have been prevented — and threatening thousands more in the months to come.

[Congress1]Although the Obama White House has offered billions of dollars to banks that successfully alter loans to make them more affordable, only 116,00 of those modifications have been made permanent, the Treasury Department reported last week. Meanwhile, nearly 3 million homes went into foreclosure in 2009 alone. The reason for the discrepancy, some Democrats contend, is clear: The decision to modify loans, under Obama’s programs, has been left in the hands of the same mortgage servicing companies that often stand to profit more from foreclosures. That conflict of interest, critics say, all but ensures that the administration’s voluntary modification program will fail.

“The industry that received a trillion dollar bailout,” Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), head of the Oversight Committee’s Domestic Policy subpanel, charged Thursday, “has been unwilling to absorb the losses, to write down bad debts, and their recalcitrance is holding up the resolution of the foreclosure crisis.”

He’s right about at least one thing: Despite the fact that the free-falling housing market was at the root of the global economic collapse, Washington policymakers have dedicated more attention — not to mention dollars — to the bankers of Wall Street than the homeowners of Main Street. The results are tangible. More than 2.8 million homes went into foreclosure last year — a jump of 21 percent from 2008 and 120 percent from 2007, according to RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure database. And it isn’t over. In January, another 315,000 homes went into foreclosure, RealtyTrac reported — up 15 percent from the year before.

Phyllis Caldwell, who heads the Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program, defended the administration’s efforts Thursday, telling lawmakers that, aside from the 116,000 permanent loan mods under HAMP, nearly 1 million more homeowners are in trial modifications. The administration, she argued, is making “significant progress” toward its goal of reaching out to 3-4 million struggling homeowners by 2012.

“There are clear signs that our efforts are having a substantial impact,” Caldwell said.

Others aren’t so sure. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) went after the HAMP for a lack of oversight he said has led to foreclosures even among those receiving trial modifications. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) accused the Treasury of taking on a task better suited for housing-specific agencies like HUD. And Kucinich blasted the administration for allowing the lenders to decide if homeowners should receive help.

“You’re going to have to do better,” he told Caldwell.

And that was just the Democrats. The Republicans had their own laundry list of complaints surrounding the HAMP, most of which boiled down to their feeling that the federal government has no business dabbling in the affairs of free-market lenders to begin with. “I just question the idea that the big federal government can do these things,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), senior Republican on the subpanel.

The disastrous effects of the housing collapse can’t easily be overstated. The banks, heavily invested in mortgage-backed securities, first required bailing out, and more recently have been reluctant to lend due to the continuing volatility of the housing market. Meanwhile, it’s estimated that consumers lost more than $7 trillion in equity when the housing bubble burst — equity that many had leveraged to buy things they really couldn’t afford. The combination has exacerbated the recovery of an economy utterly dependent on consumer spending and the easy flow of credit.

Indeed, William Dennis, senior fellow at the NFIB Research Foundation, a small-business advocacy group, said this week that the collapse of the real estate market is a central reason that companies aren’t hiring. “You’re not going to address the small business problem until you address real estate,” Dennis said.

Ron Blackwell, chief economist for the AFL-CIO, agreed. His group has endorsed a moratorium on all foreclosures — a move that would force the banks to renegotiate mortgage contracts. That proposal was seen as anathema to the banking industry, however, which has retained tremendous influence over lawmakers despite its role in the economic turmoil.

“The government has been very, very tender in its care of banks,” Blackwell said this week.

Congress has also offered new fixes for the foreclosure crisis in recent months. The sweeping financial reform bill passed by the House in December includes $3 billion to help unemployed homeowners meet their mortgage obligations. The idea is that, while unemployment benefits can put food on the table, those checks often aren’t enough to cover the mortgage as well.

The Senate is expected to unveil its version of financial reform shortly, although it could be months before members of the upper-chamber vote on the bill — if they do at all.

Meantime, many Democrats are hoping the Obama administration will step in on its own with mandatory programs to knock down principal balances to keep folks in their homes.

“The administration that inherited the crisis will be judged for how they respond,” Kucinich said. “That judgment can be as harsh as if they had created the crisis themselves.”

With that in mind, the House Oversight Committee’s Domestic Policy subpanel will hold a hearing next Tuesday on the administration’s anti-foreclosure efforts, Chairman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) announced today. An unnamed Treasury Department official will testify, Kucinich says — and will have some explaining to do. Despite the administrative moves to stem the housing crisis, foreclosures topped 315,000 last month — up 15 percent from the year before, according to RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure database.

The White House isn’t blind to the problem. Today, President Obama will announce a reported $1.5 billion in federal funds to help stabilize the housing markets in California, Michigan, Florida, Nevada and Arizona — five states that have been pummeled by the housing collapse. Still, that the administration wasn’t more aggressive tackling the housing crisis — which, after all, was the root of the entire downturn — might be its biggest failure of the last year.