On Thursday Governor Jay Nixon (D) visited the School of Nursing at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for the launch of Caring for Missourians, a new program that “will train more than nine hundred additional Missouri students to enter high-demand, critical-need health care fields.”

Our previous coverage: Governor Jay Nixon (D): “Caring for Missourians” at the School of Nursing, UMKC

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (D) at the School of Nursing at the University of Missouri – Kansas City.

After Governor Nixon’s announcement statement there was an opportunity for the media to ask the Governor questions:

…Governor Jay Nixon: …That being said, I’ll take your questions, the press [garbled].

Michael Mahoney, KMBC: Governor, one of the big problems you’re not addressing with this is the fact that in many small Missouri towns, as you well know, hospitals are probably the main employer and they don’t have the resources to hire anybody else. Nurses, doctors, or anything. How do you address that?

Governor Nixon: The demand for these jobs is out there.  Clearly [crosstalk]…

Michael Mahoney:  Is it? [crosstalk]

Governor Nixon: …and obviously [crosstalk]…

Michael Mahoney: But they don’t have the money for it. [crosstalk]

Governor Nixon: …obviously this year I would have wished that the, that the legislature would have gone ahead with our expansion of health care that we laid out at no cost to Missouri taxpayers that would have put a hundred fifty million in additional dollars in.

We think the jobs are there. We know, I know that jobs are going unfilled now. And that, that, that has been told to me direct straight up by administrator after administrator in hospitals and clinics across the state…

…Sure we need to do more for health care. But if we don’t have the basic backbone of professional services, trained workers, we will never be able to, to move forward in health care. And making sure we have this base done now is vitally important. I also think, not only at the state level, our efforts in health care are far from complete, but also at the national level. We sit here today on the precipice of a national debate about where we’re goin’ on health care. That is clearly gonna move this state and this country forward. Wherever that process ends in the coming months in Washington it will clearly expand access to health care, provide additional resources. We want to be the best positioned state in the country to have trained workers to provide those services. This provision will help us do that.

Michael Mahoney: Does this legislation have, have any requirement that the nurses, the dentists, the dental hygienists, all these people that are gonna benefit from the, this program will have to stay in Missouri and begin their, at least begin their careers here?

Governor Nixon:  No, it doesn’t. We, we want Missouri, we would like for ’em to, and every student I’ve seen here, as I’ve shook their hand, most of them who’ve been traveling with me here today, I’ve asked them to, to make sure and stay in Missouri if they can. But, ultimately, I think what we want is a, is a, is a magnet for education here. I mean, we’re talkin’ about building excellence. I mean, I don’t think we should be afraid to have students coming in from other parts of the country. To come and get the best education they can get in America right here in Kansas City.  So, this is not merely a, a program to just solve Missouri’s needs this is a, this is a definition of excellence that, that we want to have so that those, the higher education, especially in the health care area here at UMKC begins to get in broader recognition across the country as to the quality of that. That will help the Chancellor, Deans, and others attract other private funding, attract other ways that we can, we can move this forward. And so consequently, no, there is not a requirement that, that this be one for one right into our communities. We obviously, there’s a much better chance folks that come to school here working in Missouri than there are if they’re in school in Colorado or in California or somewhere else. Clearly. But as far as requiring it, requiring to do it, no, we didn’t. I think our goal here is to raise the bar, to, to shine this, this apple, not, not merely to, to service just the State of Missouri.

Question: Are there any incentives to going to work in these rural places? That’s part of the problem, too, is, is you graduate and you want to go to Chicago, you want to go to St. Louis. People don’t want to go to these places.

Governor Nixon:  Well one of the things that the institutions are helping us on is outreach into these communities for students. And I thought it was interesting to hear, hear the Dean talk about this. I mean, these students that they’re turning away come from Missouri towns. I mean, when you, when you, you’re much more likely to go back to your area. All the studies clearly show if someone is, is from Sedalia or Warrensburg or Joplin they’re much more likely to go back to those communities to practice or to work. And so recruiting, and that’s one of the things they’ve committed in this program, the university system, as well as our two year and four year institutions, is to beef up their recruitment of their students where the need is the greatest. That will increase the likelihood, plus we’re gonna work on the back side with those communities, to put programs together for loan forgiveness, for assisting them in, in transitioning to a professional career. Those projects are not done yet, but when we beef up the education part of this and we recruit heavily students from those areas we are convinced that that will help us on the back side getting much higher percentage of those students returning to those communities where they’re needed.

Question: The money that’s appropriated, to these different schools, is that gonna go strictly for facilities and classrooms, or is there gonna be any money available for scholarships or anything like that for students?

Governor Nixon:  This is the education side of it. And this, this money goes to the institutions, not, not for the, the scholarship part, although I, I would say that I think that higher education institutions this year with the historic agreement we were able to reach that said this year which we would not raise tuition, we would not raise academic fees, you know there’s, you know, I, I just looking at the Kansas City Star last weekend we saw on the front page there that Kansas is in the middle of trying to negotiate raising tuition for all their students six point five per cent. I, as a Missouri Tiger it was good to see a Jayhawk and “raising tuition” on the front page of the paper compared to a Tiger and tuition staying the same.  The point I make is, that the higher education institutions, I have found, one of our shared principles is to, is to keep the cost down for students as best we can. The only way to really do that is to provide the support for higher education so that they don’t have to shift across. And that’s what this, this is beginning to do right, right here. No, this doesn’t contain scholarships. No, this doesn’t. But, here in Missouri, for this year, we have frozen tuition, with frozen academic fee increases.  Colleges and, and institutions have joined with me in that. And, and because of that, one reason, we’re able now to find the resources to expand some of these programs. And this is just, I, I point out, and I know it’s a long answer to a short question, sorry about that, but I. This is just the beginning. I mean, we’re, we’re in a transitionary time in which we make th
e connector in our economy, between education, especially higher education, and our economy. I mean, we look back on this in a few years and we see that we’re attracting students from all over the place, when every student who graduates from this nursing school goes directly to a job, when every pharmacist goes directly to a job, we will have made the, the inter-coupling connection between education and economy as tight as you can do it. And I think this is a great place for Missouri to launch this program and, and I look forward to working with the Chancellor, the nursing school, the pharmacy school, the med school, the dental school and all those to continue to expand this opportunity. While at the same time not forgetting the question you asked, how do we help students not graduate with just a huge load of debt? How, how do we help them from, from getting out of here and having, you know, a hundred thousand dollars they owe, so that the first thing they do with the dollar they make? You know, we made a hard push this year and we got to it, one point to both the House and Senate, my, my Missouri Promise, which would have been a pathway to a four year undergraduate degree debt free. Disappointed it was left out of the education bill. But, best I can tell, the Constitution requires the legislature come back again next year. And I will be there, too.

One more quick question.

Question: With a lot of this money being [garbled] one time use and with universities and places [garbled] some of the other issues, what’s the reaction as you’ve visited other places with how this program is gonna be realistically.

Governor Nixon:  Well, first of all, all funding from the state is one time. The legislature meets every year. They do the budget every year. So, I mean, those that’ve said it’s one time, I mean, everything is one time. The legislature could, could, and, you know, could vote not to do a lot of things that they’ve done in the past. I mean, I could, I could, I have a constitutional power to, to limit budgets in, in a way that I think is appropriate.

So, what we see this as a building block. We see this as a test, it, and, and if we perform in, in a way that I know this institution and its affiliated health organizations do, I think we will have a very strong case to continue to move, move forward with this, this next year.

So, we’ve had a very good response from folks across the state. This is one of those rare agreements in which every public four year institution in the State of Missouri and every two year institution, public institution, in the State of Missouri higher education is in the game. And, and we will look forward to developing the metrics that can prove, to these members of the legislature and to the public, that these are dollars well spent., that these are, that this is investment that’s paying off, and when we do I’m confident that we’ll be able to continue the funds.

Thank, I, I want to, my last thank you here is not, is not to the press or to the folks in the suits or the Deans or anybody else like that.  But my last thank you, real quickly here, is, is to the incredible students that are here in this institution. The one thing that we haven’t talked about here, because it’s a given, that we shouldn’t ever forget, is the quality of the students and the quality of the education here. This is ground zero for the beginning of us moving forward. But that’s not possible without high quality students being committed to a very competitive degree. This is not easy work. Nursing students, pharmacy students, medical students, dental students compete like crazy to get here and once they’re here, compete like crazy to get their degree. This is a very rigorous program. And as Governor of the State of Missouri, I thank you all for setting health care as your career and look forward to having you take care of the citizens of Missouri in the next few years.

Thank you very much. [applause]

On Wednesday morning in Sedalia, Senator Claire McCaskill (D) held a town hall meeting in the Parkhurst Commons, Stauffacher Building on the campus of State Fair Community College. Our previous coverage:

Senator Claire McCaskill in Sedalia – May 27, 2009 – part 1

Senator Claire McCaskill in Sedalia – May 27, 2009 – part 2

Senator Claire McCaskill in Sedalia – May 27, 2009 – part 3

…Question: Senator, I would just like to, before I start my question, thank you for keeping your promise you wouldn’t vote for a bill that had nine thousand pork projects. At least you did your part of it, and the President didn’t. But, you know, I, I stand here and bet you that if I looked at the label in everything I have on except my shoes they’re all made in a foreign country. [applause] If we ever go to war with China we’re, we’re gonna be in big trouble. Big trouble. ‘Cause we don’t make anything anymore. But they makin’ ’em. My concern is I, I keep hearing, here in Sedalia, in Sedalia School District 200 we have floated, finally floated an immense bond issue for our schools. We’re in the process of building the brand new high school to the tune of around twenty-five million. And we’ve added on the classrooms here and there. But, I keep hearing from Washington and Congress and President we’ve gotta build better buildings. And, and the President made a point of calling out the school districts in, in Chicago, inner city school districts in Chicago and Detroit. You know, Senator, buildings don’t teach. Teachers teach. And I, I venture to say that, that this state alone was extremely hurt, not by Congress, but by a federal judge who said you have to spend more money in Kansas City and St. Louis, well over a billion dollars put in those two school districts. And they built buildings and did this they did that. They bought computers which I have no idea where they are now. And them districts aren’t any, any better off then, then they were before they started. My high school in northeast Kansas, northeast Kansas City was built in nineteen twenty-three. And it’s still a very fine building. And it’s, they’re teaching well. So, why do we have to have the federal government involved with our school systems? And what [crosstalk], if you do get involved, what strings are you gonna put on us?

Senator McCaskill: Well, I think, first of all, there’s an argument here about whether or not the federal government should be doing local education. This is one of those examples where you gotta find some place in the middle. I don’t want the federal government telling the Sedalia school district what they can build and when and how. The people of this community need to be deciding that. And No Child Left Behind has been a disaster because, you know, [applause] a lot of children have been left behind.  We, we’ve taken the creativity out of the classroom, because it’s now about teaching to that test. We are making teachers hit a certain number rather than measuring progress. We’re thinking all students are created equal when they’re not. The problems in these urban school districts, if you went to Northeast you know that your school was, is, is a magnet now. It’s, it’s a magnet school and it was converted over, in fact I tried a criminal case there because it was law enforcement and, and public service magnet. And so I went over, we used to go try a case in front of those kids once a year. But it was, it became a magnet school with that money you’re talking about. That’s how it became that magnet school. And I agree, buildings aren’t the answer. A good environment where kids can learn is important. And in urban districts those kids have, I mean, the teachers in those districts, you talk about ones that should earn money. They should make a lot more money than I make. Because they are nutritionists, they’re parents, they are disciplinarians, they are, you know, trying to do so much because many of those kids do not have it at home…

…Now, I’m not, and that’s one thing the President talks about, you know, he gives speeches, he says, “Hey, turn off the TV. Sit down with your child a read a book. Do homework with them.”  And he is trying to instill in everybody this notion that we all have to take responsibility. But, I think we’re gonna, if we re-up No Child Left Behind it’ll be much different than what we did in the first place. But it is, public education is a huge issue in this country.

And one of the things that’s great about public education is that we have done a much better job with colleges like this. Community colleges that can do specific training or specific jobs that are needed in this community. That has been a huge improvement. And they’re affordable now. And these community colleges are affordable. The tuition at this institution, if a kid, between a Pell Grant, if they’re poor, between a Pell Grant and the tax credit we passed in the stimulus, it will pay for their tuition at this college. At State Fair Community College. [applause] [garbled] So, we, we know there’s work to be done on education. And it isn’t just building buildings, you’re right, it isn’t just building buildings. That doesn’t get it done. It’s the people that are teaching in those buildings. And I will say this, how many teachers are in the room? This is when, this is when the President is not popular. But he stood up, first Democrat I remember in a long time at the presidential level, and said we have to talk about merit pay for teachers. And I think he knows, how many people here can name the best teachers they had? Raise your hand. Okay, we all know who they were, right? So why is this so hard? And, and why is it that we don’t have a better system to reward the really good teachers with more money and incentivize those teachers that aren’t getting’ it done to find another place to work? We need to face that in our public education system. And I love teachers. But teachers have fought hard ’cause they’re so worried they’ll be unfair. I get that. I think some of the things they say about me in campaigns are unfair. I just tough it through. And we figure out a way. And it, I think that, that getting to some kind of performance recognition for teacher is an important part of the equation. And believe me, the teachers unions were not happy with Barack Obama when he made that announcement. Many of you probably weren’t…

Question: Thank you for being here today. I work for an agency that, we help people in poverty. In the past year we have seen individuals come in who have never ever asked for any type of help. It’s a real issue for their pride. And, what my question is, is what’s gonna be done to help people get through this time where it’s reasonable, it takes a little bit of time, not a lot, and make sure the funding is there to help them through this time? We’ve run out of money. You know, we don’t just, you know, give it away. We’ve run out of money. People are coming in for energy assistance who’ve never ever done that. And, how long, how long are they gonna be able to sustain helping people out?

Senator McCaskill: Well, let me say a couple of things about that. First, there was some things in the stimulus as it related to the, the safety net. Extension of unemployment benefits, because of the spiking unemployment in the recession. And also, help on, on food stamps for those people who have, have, find themselves unemployed. And, then the state had to decide whether or not they were gonna accept those funds, under what conditions. And Missouri legislature ultimately decided to take the money or
to extend unemployment benefits, although we’ve got a glitch in the law they’re trying to get fixed now. And, they didn’t decide to do, with the money in terms of extending some of the health care.

Also having said that I need to be honest with you, the stimulus was not to fix the problem of poverty in America. The stimulus was to create jobs. And the best way to help poverty in America is to create jobs. [applause] That’s the [garbled]. Because, what we need to do is to get people to work. And we don’t want to create any dependency on the government. So the job creation, and I had to, you know, I had people yelling at me, “Why didn’t you do more for the homeless?” or, “Why didn’t you do more?” And I said, “Hey, creating jobs, that’s what that’s for, it’s to make sure people don’t become homeless.”  But it wasn’t used and it wasn’t really a place for us to put a lot of funding in there for some of the poverty programs, because it was job creation, just job creation.

Question: And I, I totally agree with that. And I think everybody here, thirty years ago Sedalia was known for its manufacturing plants.

Senator McCaskill: Right.

Question: And, they’re dwindling. And they were good paying jobs. You know, they’re dwindling fast.

Senator McCaskill: That’s why that, the young man talked about the new sector of jobs in terms of green, the green economy. I think there really is gonna be job growth in that area. It’s gonna be a brand new area where we’re gonna be building wind turbines instead of some of the other things we used to build. We’re gonna build solar panels. Right now most of the solar panels we use in this country we buy from other countries. Well there’s no reason why we can’t make solar panels here. The batteries that are in the hybrid that they build in Ford, in, in Kansas City? I, I drive a Ford Escape hybrid and it has the battery that’s in there. It wasn’t made in America. There isn’t, they didn’t have the right battery in America when it was made. Now we’ve got a plant in Lee’s Summit that’s beginning to turn out some of those batteries that can be used for this alternative fuel technology that we’re gonna be embracing. So I think there’s a glimmer of hope, but I continue to worry about that, too.

Question: Thank you.

Senator McCaskill: Thank you…

Question: Thank you for coming today. And  many people whine about taxes., but my family, we’re paying like over seven thousand dollars a year in health premiums. And I’d much rather trade that in for a national health care system. And I appreciate what my taxes buy. [applause]

Senator McCaskill: Well, thank, thank you for that. Does anybody mind if I read another. [laughter] You know, I, I do not think we’ll do a, the President doesn’t support, and I don’t support a single payer system. I think competition in the marketplace and choices is very, very important in health care. Now, if we enact these reforms and , but I have a feeling that this is gonna work, because I think we’re gonna have the kind of competition that will drive down costs. And, we gotta make sure that the government run health program is fair, because we don’t want it to be so overwhelming that it stamps out all the private insurance. ‘Cause we want that healthy friction in competition, between the two. We certainly have had competition as it’s related to the, the, some of my friends on the other side of the aisle want to do with health care what we did with Medicare D. Which is a government sponsored but completely private program. Well, you know, yeah, there’s competition there. Sometimes there’s so much competition it’s confusing, seniors don’t know whether they’re going or coming, whether drugs are covered or not, whether they’re getting a good deal or a bad deal. But the problem with that is, we built into that program six billion dollars worth of profit on taxpayers for the pharmaceutical industry. Well that doesn’t seem right to me. They actually put in the bill that we couldn’t buy bulk to get down prices. Well that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of. So I don’t think we want to emulate Medicare D because I don’t think we can afford it. I don’t think we can afford to plus up certain silos of profit in the health care industry.  I think we can figure out ways to provide competition and choices and to bring down costs. And that are the three goals. Competition, choices, and bring down costs. And I’m kind of excited. I think we’re actually gonna get a bill this year. I feel pretty good about it. [applause]…

…Has your question already been answered? Okay. I won’t make, I won’t go around the room and sweat you out, wherever you are. [laughter] Glad you were here…

…Yes…

Question: I’m a teacher. I also have a sister-in-law who’s very involved in the home schooling. And they had an emergency meeting, I think a week ago, with major changes that are occurring. And I was just wondering what’s the future for those kind of people.

Senator McCaskill: For home schoolers?

Question: Um hm.

Senator McCaskill: You know, that’s something that’s done at the state level. The regulation or lack thereof or, you know, I’m , you know it’s, that’s a state issue. And so this is one you would be, want to talk to Representative Aull about.  Because whatever requirements are on the home schoolers are one that are placed there at the state level. And that’s the way it should be.

Question: Okay, thank you.

Senator McCaskill: Um hm…

Question: My question was about Internet for rural areas. I currently live in Kansas City but I’ve built a house near… Probably got everything the government wants, geothermal, and [crosstalk]…

Senator McCaskill: Good for you.

Question: …thermopane glass, and things can I get tax credits. ‘Cause I’m trying to move my job from Kansas City to…I can’t get Internet connection.  I can’t apply to the government to get my tax credits. I can’t get a job because I can’t get Internet. Well, the local Internet company, you can fill the name out here…

Senator McCaskill: It’s okay, you can do it [crosstalk]

Question: …Communications, they told me a year ago, cable’s coming up the highway. I have to have Internet secure DSL cable, which is what they provide for my job to let me work from home. So, they said it’s coming. So we started building.  So now my house is done. All’s I have to do is put up a mailbox and I can move in. Well they went in the other direction. They stopped and went north of…so now they, I’ve got Internet to the south of me, Internet to the north of me, but they won’t come between us ’cause there’s not enough people there for them to make a big profit. So [crosstalk]…

Senator McCaskill: We can help.

Question:  Well I asked about the stimulus money from them.

Senator McCaskill: There’s a bunch.

Question:  And there’s a bunch, and they [garbled] that money. So, a mutual friend of yours…gave me the document for the Internet companies. This money for them is for technology, buy technology to access the lines so they can hang our wires and buy equipment. But it’s not providing jobs. …Communications needs another crew so they can put my Internet in, or they need somebody to say, “Hey, they need a little boot in the behind. Say hey, here’s somebody that can…” [crosstalk]

Senator McCaskill: Well I’ll loan my boot. [laughter]

Question:  I need [crosstalk] [garbled]…

Senator McCaskill: Seriously, you need to talk to my staff when this is over because I think we can help.

I’m on the Commerce committee and there’s two pots of money for rural Internet, both USDA and over in Commerce. And it’s ridiculous, you know why there’s two pots of money? This is embarrassing. There’s two pots of money because of the jurisdiction of commit
tees. [laughter] The Agriculture committee didn’t want to let go of it and so they wanted it under the Ag committee for USDA. So that’s where the RUS program started. But then the Commerce committee didn’t want to give it up, so they have another program over, under Commerce. You got two competing programs, and by the way, they are not the same, they’re different, and it’s a mess. And, and frankly, one of, one of those programs allowed people to use that money to put Internet in the suburbs of Dallas. As opposed to rural Internet. Okay? Because, of course, it was more, they’re gonna make more money in the suburbs of Dallas and the way they defined the area. So, we know a bunch about this and there is a bunch of money in the stimulus and it’s supposed to be for crews. And if they’re not using it for crews I want to know about it. So, let me get involved, we’ll find out about your particular situation. It might be a good case study for me to go, “Hey, what about this guy in…?” Okay? All right, we’ll do that. That’ll be fun. [applause]

Got time for one more.  This is from…

Question:  Thank you so much for coming. I, we have ninety-three sheltered workshops in the State of Missouri that provide employment for seventy-five hundred people with disabilities. And thirty of us, we have a sheltered workshop in…thirty of us do recycling. We started doing that five years ago because there just wasn’t any assembly work [garbled] for our workers. So we recycle, last year, one point eight million pounds of paper and cardboard. This year we’ll do two million. The bottom has dropped out of recycling. The paper, the cardboard, I, it’s less than a third what I could sell it for last year. We’re in trouble. I’ve called the kitty litter companies, I’ve called the insulation companies, I’ve called cities that use the pellets made out of paper. There’s just not a market there. Well, what can you do ’cause I keep hearing about green jobs?

Senator McCaskill: Yeah, that’s a good question.

Question:  And there’ve got to be green jobs.

Senator McCaskill: We need to look into that.

Question:  Okay.

Senator McCaskill: I’d be happy to look into that.

Question:  Thank you.

Senator McCaskill: Absolutely. Thank you.

Well, I want to thank, we’ve got a bunch here still. And we will go through all of these. And we will get you, hopefully you got your e-mail on there or you got your address. And we will get in touch with you.  I want to thank, first let me tell you how much it means to me that you took time to come. I know this is in the middle of the day, the middle of the week. And whatever you were doing, you decided to take time to come here today and have an opportunity to, for me to talk to you and listen to you and answer questions. It means a great deal to me. And it’s, makes our democracy so much healthier.

I especially want to thank all of you who came that didn’t vote for me and will never vote for me. [laughter] Seriously. Because, you know, if we don’t talk to each other, if we don’t listen to each other’s opinions, we got no shot. We got no shot. We can’t scream at each other from opposite sides of the Internet. We can’t do it on a keyboard. We have to look each other in the eye and we have to talk. And it’s really important. So, I know it’s weird, and here’s the neat thing about this, when I go out on campaigns and stuff, I don’t get to see you guys that don’t vote for me and that won’t vote for me.  It’s only in this capacity as your elected senator that I have an opportunity to hear from people who think I’m just flat wrong about stuff. And that’s good for me. It’s good for me and makes me have to think things through and think about somebody else’s opinion. And, I, I’m pretty much getting chewed on by the right and left constantly. [laughter] I figure I’m about right for Missouri, maybe. Because the left is unhappy with me, my daughter is so liberal it’s embarrassing, and she’s so mad at me she won’t speak to me. [laughter] She’s nineteen and she lives in New York and she said “I’m never coming home.” I said, “That’s just fine.” [laughter] No, I didn’t really say that. But at times I feel that way. She chews on me all the time because she thinks I’m too moderate. And then obviously the right, folks on the right think I am completely wet, all wet about some of my positions.

So, but I really do try and make decisions, I vote against my party’s leadership probably more often than almost any other senator. And it’s not because I’m trying, it’s because I try to look at every issue based on the policy and not the politics. And it’s harder than it looks ’cause there’s a lot of pressure to do the politics.  So, I try to do it on policy, that’s why I end up on the other side of the aisle sometimes, and, and it gets a little uncomfortable, but I think that’s what most Missourians want. They want somebody who’s independent, who’s gonna look at it on the policy and not necessarily on the party line. [applause]

So, bless you all for being here and thank you very, very much. [applause]

This is the final portion of the transcript for the hour long town hall.

“This is how bad it’s gotten. There are people that actually say, ‘I miss Rod Jetton.’ And if you remember how partisan the last four years were with Rod Jetton, to say … to have members who are very progressive members say ‘I miss Rod Jetton cause at least you knew where you were going and what you were getting ….'”

.Sean at Fired Up! Missouri has videotape of that observation by Rep. Mike Talboy and comments from other representatives–including the most maddening one of all, from Ron Richard himself. They’re talking about the budget craziness in the House this last session. It’s definitely worth a look.

On Wednesday morning in Sedalia, Senator Claire McCaskill (D) held a town hall meeting in the Parkhurst Commons, Stauffacher Building on the campus of State Fair Community College. Our previous coverage:

Senator Claire McCaskill in Sedalia – May 27, 2009 – part 1

Senator Claire McCaskill in Sedalia – May 27, 2009 – part 2

The continuing transcript:

…Senator McCaskill: Sure, sure…Yes sir.

Question:  I’m concerned about the gas prices. Since January the fuel, the gas costs in this area have gone up almost fifty per cent. We saw what it did last summer, go up to almost four dollars, a little over four dollars a gallon. Remarkably, just before the election it got back down. But now since [crosstalk]…

Senator McCaskill: Really, after the election is when it happened.

Question: Just shortly after, yeah.  But, it’s going back up again. And this isn’t a commodity like a television where you can go to K-mart, if you don’t like the price there you can go over to Wal-mart or you can buy a different brand. It, it’s not a competitive market like that. Exxon raises their price ten cents a gallon up to two twenty-nine a gallon, BP does it, Shell does it, all the [garbled] stations. It goes up fifteen cents a gallon here, you can go to every gas station on town, it goes up fifteen cents a gallon. It just smacks of price fixing. Also, earlier this year, on the evening news there was a statement made that Exxon had a full loaded tanker sitting out in the Gulf of Mexico. They weren’t bringing it in because they didn’t want to flood the market with gasoline. That sounds like price manipulation, like, you know, “We’ve got the fuel here, we’re just gonna manipulate it so we can get our money.”  We’ve seen that the oil companies have no shame when it comes to their greed. We, we regulate electricity, we regulate natural gas for our homes, I don’t like regulating business, I like the free market like you said, but it’s obvious that some companies who kinda have us in a stranglehold here. We have no control of this. I mean, we can’t go to another station, someplace else, to another brand and try to get a lower price. It doesn’t happen…

Senator Claire McCaskill (D).

…Senator McCaskill: Well one of the reasons that, and, and I agree that we’ve got to continue to stay focused on the problem of gas prices. That’s why when gas prices go down we have to make sure we don’t lose our political will to get off our dependence on foreign oil. And one of the reasons why gas prices are going back up now is when gas prices were so high, guess what happened? Demand dropped. People started driving less. People started using a smaller car if they had that option when the gas prices were so high. So people started buying less gasoline. And when they bought less gasoline, the price went down. Now, great, gas got a little cheaper and all of a sudden it was okay, let’s go ahead and gas up.  I, I just was at the lake over Memorial Day weekend and, and I can tell you that it’s still not back to where it was in terms of those big gas hogs on the lake, but they’re better than they were last fall when the gas prices were so high, in terms of how many people were out there in those big boats. So, I, I think supply and demand had something to do with it, but most importantly, we’ve got. It, our domestic, Exxon, the domestic supply they have? Is this much compared to OPEC with this much.  OPEC, we can’t tell OPEC  what to do with their oil. They, foreign countries that, frankly a lot of them are not our friends, control the vast majority of the oil supplies in the world. For our national security, and for the, the health of the consumer’s ability to buy gasoline, we need to make sure we continue on our march towards getting out from underneath the dependence of foreign oil. Which is one of the things that was in the stimulus, the funding for the power grid that will allow us to transfer the energy of wind and solar into use in peoples’ homes. Getting of that, the foreign oil.

The, the automobile manufacturer’s, for the first time, instead of fighting new fuel standards, agreed with the President about two weeks ago that we’re gonna continue to raise the fuel standards on our automobiles so they are more and more gas efficient. [applause] So, I, I don’t , and by the way, there are some laws that are weird in Missouri.  I don’t [garbled] putting pressure on Representative Aull here, but there is actually a law in the State of Missouri that gas stations are not allowed to undercut the actual price of gas they’re selling. In other words they can’t do a loss leader. A gas station, by law, could not say, “You know, I’m gonna knock down my price fifty cents a gallon to get all the customers in here. ‘Cause I’ll sell ’em a lot of chips and coffee and soda.” And all the stuff we shouldn’t be eatin’ if we’re gonna reduce diabetes. [laughter] They can’t do that in Missouri. They actually passed a law to make it illegal for them to undercut the market price in terms of selling gasoline. So, I’ve always thought that was a weird law. And we shouldn’t have ever put that on the books in Missouri. So, that’s one thing that Representative Aull can take a look at, maybe go to work on it. [laughter]…Yes.

Question: I’m from a small town in southwest Missouri, four hundred and seventeen people. And I’ve been on the council for about five or six years. And it’s really interesting to hear you talk about big cities and what needs to be done and stuff like that. But with a small community we have problems, too, but we can’t seem to get any of the money at all for like drinking water, things like that, which is very important to us even though we are very small communities. So I was wondering what we can do to get some of this money. I mean, I’m not talkin’ about millions of dollars. I’m just talkin’ about few thousands to help us out.

Senator McCaskill: Well I think what, that is exactly, if you look on that map, you’ll [garbled] that. Because there’s money going to all kinds of sizes of communities, very small communities. And I would recommend that you talk to my staff when the meeting’s over, make sure we get your name, so you’re aware of what’s out there. ‘Cause there is help, through the state, through D and R on drinking water projects for those very smallest communities. There is also the regional planning folks, can also help you. They can be helpful with that. And I think there are some things that we can, we can look at, for, in the smallest communities.

Question: Yes, and I understand that. I’ve been on the board for about five years and D and R came in and said we needed two water towers, which we definitely agreed. And so you’re talkin’ about a half a million dollar project. And it took us four years to come up with the money. And thank goodness that they helped us through some of that. But, you know, we’re talkin’ about a community that don’t have people hired to work five days a week, forty hours.

Senator McCaskill: No, I understand and, and it’s communities like that where we want to try to be helpful, because you can’t hire a lobbyist.

Question: No.

Senator McCaskill: You know, you can’t hire somebody to come up to Washington and find you money and an earmark. And all that. It’s not, that’s not reasonable or realistic for you. And so that’s why we need to help you identify what’s there, and maybe we can be the one that can do that as opposed to you having to hire so
mebody to do it for you. And it’s for those small communities we particularly want to reach out to ’cause they don’t have that infrastructure, full-time help to help ’em. Okay? You bet. Glad you came.

Pull one from the bottom…

Question: [garbled] Miss McCaskill, I was curious why you feel compelled to print, spend, and borrow our children’s future away in relation to growing big government? And from the perspective of, that endured throughout the history of man, recessions of all different types of countries have never ever done well with spending in a recessionary period.

Senator McCaskill: That’s just not true. And, and, now, I will agree that Japan, it didn’t work. But you know what Japan did when they did stimulus spending? [crosstalk]

Question: [garbled][crosstalk]

Senator McCaskill: They raised taxes. [crosstalk] Yeah, but a lot of those countries, that, you know. Econ one-oh-one does say that when an economy is retracting stimulus spending can work as long as you’re not raising taxes. If you’re cutting taxes and doing a shot of stimulus spending, and by the way, it is working. It is working. We already see a, it is much better today than it was six month ago.

Question: What is, we spend up front, we’ve got to cap the tax again. There’s no way around it. [crosstalk]

Senator McCaskill: Well, well, let me just say this. I think there are ways that we can be more responsible with spending. I am not somebody who, my auditor background had a lasting impact on the way I view the spending of money. And that’s why I worked so hard to get this contracting subcommittee.

We grew government, big time, in the last eight years. It is a huge growth of government in the last eight years. Most of it is secret, because it was through contracting. They didn’t add employees. They added contractors [applause] on contractors and contractors. Almost fifty cents out of every dollar that was spent, discretionary domestic spending was spent, on contractors. In Iraq alone, I went over to Iraq to look at the contracting, I conservatively estimate, as an auditor, conservatively estimate through waste, fraud and abuse, we went up in smoke, over a hundred billion dollars of our money. Through contractors. I mean…[crosstalk]

Question: We’re talking about seven hundred eighty-seven billion dollars here.

Senator McCaskill: Yeah.

Question: That’s more than twice the cost of the Iraq war.

Senator McCaskill: Well, here’s the, but forty per cent of that was a tax cut.

Question: Well, tax credits. That’s different [crosstalk]…

Senator McCaskill: No, no, tax cut. No. tax cut. We’re happy to get you the information. You know, I understand the, the point of view you have. And I, I respect that you believe the stimulus was the wrong thing to do.  I will tell you, that we are, I am hyper focused on our deficit. You know, over the last eight years it was a spending spree. Earmarks, I mean, talk about taking ’em to an art form. I mean, literally. At the height of it, in two thousand and six, they did twenty-seven billion dollars just of earmarks.

Question: It’s not just the last eight years. It’s the last one hundred days.

Senator McCaskill: Well, I will tell you it is…[crosstalk]

Voices: No, no, no.

Senator McCaskill: …believe me, believe me, the habits that Washington is in were not habits that were learned in the last hundred days. The habits that got us in this trouble have been around for longer even than eight years. [applause] It has been goin’ on for a [garbled]. And we gotta work to change it…

Question: Good morning. And thank you for coming.

Senator McCaskill: You bet. My pleasure.

Question: First of all, I wanted to thank you for being part of the not spending the billion dollars for Guantanamo Bay. Because I do think there has to be a plan…

Senator McCaskill: It was eighty-one million…[crosstalk]

Question: Eighty-one million…

Senator McCaskill: …not a billion.

Question: …not billion.[crosstalk]

Senator McCaskill: You know, pretty soon those Bs start flyin’ around, it was eighty-one million. [laughter]

Question: I just automatically think billion when we’re talking. I’m just wondering if people in Congress grew up the way most of us did. With a balanced budget. And I’m just concerned, is that in the plan to try to balance the budget? I see constantly spending of, of stimulus and all these things that you brought up in your very first statement. That we’re spending so much more and how can we spend so much when it’s end up gonna come out of Mr. and Mrs. citizen. Because it, I understand that you’re talking about tax cuts, but you end up, still, it’s not government money, it’s our money.

Senator McCaskill: I agree.

Question: And so, how in the world do we spend trillions of dollars in a budget and it not come out of our pocket in the long run? So, what is the plan for balancing the budget?

Senator McCaskill: Well, as I talked about earlier, the most important thing we need to do is get a hold, where the growth is right now in our budget that is unsustainable, is in the entitlements. And the major two entitlement programs in this country are Social Security and Medicare. Now let me see a raise of hands of people who think we should do away with Medicare. All right. Let me see a raise of hands of people who think we should do away with Social Security. Okay. Okay, we got two or three that want to do away with Social Security. Brave. Brave people. Three people that want to do away with Social Security. So, I mean, now we all understand that everyone in this room except these three want to have Medicare and Social Security. That is the vast majority of the growth in our budget that we cannot afford, are those two programs. So how do we do this without stopping Social Security and basically abandoning Medicaid, Medicare? Well, we do it by controlling health care costs. And literally [applause] if we can control our health care costs, even in a modest way, you will see us back. We had surpluses. We had surpluses in this country. We still had debt, but we had surpluses in this country less than ten years ago. [crosstalk]

Question: Well, I, I’m blaming both [crosstalk]…

Senator McCaskill: We can get back to that. We can get back to that if we work on this health care costs. Because that will be the ticket that will allow us to reduce that entitlement spending that ultimately will put on a more firm, foundation as it relates to our finances…

Question: Yes, Congressman McCaskill, I’m…representative to, to the district for the Cherokee Nation. And I want to know what the stimulus package offers for us as the oldest and the smallest minority in the State of Missouri and what you’re gonna do about our better recognition, and what Jay Nixon has done, cutting us out of making a living off of our heritage, off of our arts and crafts.

Senator McCaskill: Well I’m not aware of what Jay has done, the Governor has done, in relation to that. But I’m happy, if you will stick around afterwards, make sure we get your, we’ve got your contact information. We’ll contact you directly. I’m not aware of any specific thing in the stimulus as it relates to the Native American community, but I’m happy to look into it.

Question: We’ve been fighting for federal recognition since nineteen seventy-eight. What can you do to push for better recognition?

Senator McCaskill: Well I’ll, I’ll have to look into it. I do not kno
w right now, I’m going to be honest with you, I do not know.

Question: Okay.

Senator McCaskill: Okay?

Question: Thank…[crosstalk]

Senator McCaskill: Thank you. Thank you for being here…

…Hi. Hi. I love this. Every time we call on a couple they let the women talk. [laughter] What’s up? Uh, I love Sedalia. Yes.

Question: Thank you for coming.

Senator McCaskill: You bet.

Question: I come out of the manufacturing sector. And I’ve been seeing jobs leave this state for twenty years. We need some manufacturing.

Senator McCaskill: I agree. And we, I was just on the phone this morning with the people at Fiat, who will take over Chrysler, after bankruptcy and we’re working to try, we have a state of the art plant in St. Louis sitting idle right now. We need to get those jobs back. We need to make sure we keep our industrial base in this country because it’s important for our national security. Which is why I’m working so hard to make sure that those, what Boeing builds in this state, because first of all, it’s cost effective and on time, on budget, and they’re cheaper than what the military is proposing to use otherwise.  Working really hard to keep those manufacturing jobs, and then importantly, are all the small manufacturing facilities around our state. And making sure that we work to support them with some of the small business stuff we’ve done in terms of loss carry back and changing inventory rules at it relates to the tax burden on small businesses. But, I’m worried about it, too. I want us to still build stuff in America, I don’t just want to sell stuff…and you know, as, and, and before I call on…

Question: Close. You’re close. [laughter]

Senator McCaskill: you know, let me just say, one of the hardest things to figure out is when government should stick its big nose in and when government should take its nose out. It’s a hard, hard thing. And let me just give you a good example. I have a very dear friend of mine who is wildly conservative. And he called me on the phone about a month ago and he said, “You know, if you all would stick your big nose somewhere else. Let the free market thrive. Let capitalism reign supreme. Because that’s what built this country. It wasn’t government telling businesses what to do or how to do it, it was somebody with a good idea that worked hard.”  Now, I said, “You know…I completely understand what you’re saying.” And then about five sentences later he said to me, “Would you explain to me how you all let this happen?” [laughter] I said to him, “Did you just hear what you said?” You said you needed to stay out of it, but then you wanted to blame government ’cause government let this happen. We unhooked the investment banking world from regulation about twenty-five years ago. We decided commercial banks, they’re all fine in your community, the banks that you know, the banks where you do business, they don’t have a problem. They’ve had government oversight since the depression. Various layers of government oversight. They have state bank examiners, they have federal bank examiners, they have the FDIC. They have all kinds of oversight and they’re all fine.

It was the investment banks that almost caused a complete meltdown in the global world as it relates to finances. And it’s because we, you know, one of the reasons it happened, greed, inappropriate leveraging, all kinds of things, letting people sell loans and close loans when they didn’t have skin in the game. You shouldn’t be able to get somebody to get a loan unless you’re gonna suffer if they don’t pay it. That’s why a lot of people got loans, they didn’t deserve ’em because people who were closing those loans didn’t care if they paid ’em. And the people who were buyin’ those and securities didn’t care. So, you know, how do we go back in and provide basic regulation in the investment banking world without going too far? How do we help manufacturing without government having too big a role? And that’s the hard part. Is finding that balance. And there is a balance you have to find. I’m not big for, government doesn’t have the answers. The people of America, the American public have the answers. Not government. But, government needs to be there to provide some kind of regulation and some kind of, hopefully, support to encourage the kind of capitalism and free market entrepreneurship that, that has made our country so great. So, that’s, that’s part of the problem with, with helping manufacturing is not getting government so much in it that government becomes business. We don’t want that. Okay…

The transcript of the town hall will conclude in a subsequent post.

There’s lots of parquet to walk around on in the foyer of the governor’s mansion. Only this small seating area in front of the fireplace–and the docents–would keep a person from roller skating in here.

Opposite the seating area is this … hmm. I wonder if they actually store anything in that elegant cabinet.

Pictures of first ladies adorn the walls in the foyer and the main parlor. These two photos show the walls on either side of the door into the dining room.

On Wednesday morning in Sedalia, Senator Claire McCaskill (D) held a town hall meeting in the Parkhurst Commons, Stauffacher Building on the campus of State Fair Community College. Our previous coverage: Senator Claire McCaskill in Sedalia – May 27, 2009 – part 1

Senator Claire McCaskill (D).

The transcript of the town hall:

[applause] Senator Claire McCaskill:  Good morning everyone, it’s terrific to be here.  I am not here to give a speech, I’m here to listen and answer questions.  So, I’m not gonna do a long introductory set of remarks.  I will tell you that when they talk about us leaving Washington, I want to reassure everyone that when we get a week off from Washington, at least this senator and I think most of my colleagues  don’t  go home and watch Oprah. [laughter] We do things like this, which is a really important part of my job, is to come out  in a public forum, no screening, no, no preset questions, to listen.  And to understand what’s on your mind.  And so, the more we get a few weeks off in Washington, the better it is I think, because that gives us the time to move around the state and have the kinds of meetings and opportunities to talk to the people that we work for. Because you can get to thinking you’re a pretty big deal out there.  They’re very deferential and it’s kind of an insulated environment. And I can see how you can lose perspective about what’s important and, and how you should conduct, how you should set your priorities.

So, I want to talk about the Economic Recovery Act just for a minute because I found, as I’ve gone around the state, and we’ve done a number of these, more than a dozen, in the last thirty days,  that there are a lot of people that frankly just think we’re printin’ money and throwin’ it out the window.  It feels like things are out of control because there was the TARP, and there was the stimulus, and then there was TARP 2, then there was the omnibus, and then there was the budget resolution. And there really wasn’t a very good effort made to explain the differences between those things, what each one of them represented, what it meant, and so I completely understand that many people out here think we’re nuts. And I want to make sure that I can answer specific questions about all of those.  But I particularly wanted to make sure that everyone understood what the stimulus was really about.  First of all, people need to realize that it is one of the largest tax cuts in American history, focused on the middle class. And it’s one of the largest tax cuts, period. But this particular tax cut was focused on the middle class. Almost forty per cent of the money spent in the stimulus was direct tax cuts or tax credits. In fact, I guarantee you, there will be many students that will attend this institution [State Fair Community College] in the next year that will take advantage of one of the tax credits that we put in the bill that would allow them to come back to school, or to go to school, and get the kind of training, particularly when you look at the allied health program you have here. I just spent some time over at the hospital, and learning how the nurses they hire out of here. That’s what we’re looking for.  We’re looking for job creation. We’re looking for sustained job creation to get us out of this economic slump…

Writing questions.

…The rest of the money in the stimulus bill was designed to create jobs. It was not designed to fix every problem America has.  And I got in a little bit of trouble because I was part of the group that cut a hundred billion dollars worth of spending out of that bill. Because the spending we cut out was designed to run programs.  And, that’s not what this bill was about. It wasn’t about fixing every ill have, it was about creating jobs.  So, there were a group of Republicans and about ten to twenty, [garbled] is really more about twelve of us, Democrats, that worked and cut a bunch of spending out in order to try and really tailor this just for job creation.

So I wanted to try get that out there and I’m happy, I mean it does everything from electric grid to Internet broadband in rural areas, to roads, bridges, highways, some competitive money in there for a number of different projects such as high speed rail.  There are several high speed rail corridors that can compete for that money. And we’re in that competition, by the way.  I think we’ve got a really good shot of getting high speed rail from Chicago to St. Louis and then, from St. Louis to Kansas City. Which obviously would be great, especially if we make sure that high speed rail stops a couple places. I’m saying Sedalia and Jeff City would be the logical places for it to stop. [applause] But, that’s down the road but it’s in, that, that money’s in there and I think we’re in a position to compete for that.  And I do think that the Chicago to St. Louis leg of that is probably gonna happen. And that means we’re really much more competitive for the St. Louis-Kansas City link of it.

So, why don’t we now open up for questions? I’ve got until ten thirty. And here’s how we’re gonna do this, because I’ve had some experience now. [laughter] ‘Cause this can get ugly. [laughter] I, I , I am, I welcome questions from people who disagree with me.  I’m here for that reason.  So, do not feel like you need to ask a question that agrees with what I’ve done or how I voted.  I welcome that. I would ask that you not shout things out, ’cause we’ve had a few of these that got a little out of control. People got excited.  So I’m just asking that you be considerate.  And what I’ll do is. I’ll do girl, boy, girl, boy. And I’ll work around the room, this way, and then I’ll work back the other way. And we’ll get to just as many of them as possibly can. And if we finish today and we haven’t gotten to your question, I would ask you write it down or contact. Oh, here.  Oh, they’ve already written them down? Oh see, what do I know? [laughter] I didn’t know that they were doing that.

Oh, I didn’t see him.  State Representative Aull’s here. Thank you for being here. He does a great job [garbled] in Jeff City.

We’ve written ’em down, so if we don’t get to all of these, I’ll start, I’ll, I’ll pull ’em out, I didn’t realize you guys had already written ’em down.  If, if we don’t get to them we will get you an answer. We may not get it overnight, but we’ll get it to you. So you know, just so you know how many people contact me in a week, we have between ten and fifteen thousand letters and e-mails from Missouri ans. Every week. And we work very hard at trying, how many of you have ever written me or e-mailed me? Now, this is the scary part of this question. How many of you have gotten a response? Okay, not bad. [laughter] Not bad, you work at that every day. It is a, it’s a bigger challenge than you realize. Because I don’t want to plus up staff unnecessarily ’cause that’s your money. And so we try to run a very efficient and effective way of getting back to everyone who contacts or writes us. So we’ll get back to you. It may not be overnight.

Okay, our first question is from…okay.  Why don’t I, I, I’m gonna ask people when I get their question to stand and ask their questions so that if they want to edit it or change it from what they wrote on the paper, they can. If you don’t want to, I’ll read your question. But I want to give you the opportunity to ask it rat
her than me read it.

Question: Sure. Well first I wanted to thank you [garbled] for all the housing authorities in the state for the AARA stimulus funds. And that we are going to be spending them responsibly. Second comment, I really didn’t have a question, the comment was that housing authorities, community development programs throughout the country have been underfunded for the last, I’d say, four or five years. And with the appropriations bill, the HUD appropriations bill for the year two thousand and ten, it’s going to be fully funded. And I would hope that it would continue to be fully funded.

Senator McCaskill:  Well, I don’t know about it being fully funded. I’m, we’ve got to be really careful about how much money we’re spending.  And, because we’re getting to a point that if we don’t begin to turn that arc of the deficit and debt we are really jeopardizing our status as the most powerful nation on the planet.  And so there will be domestic programs that will not be fully funded, I’m confident, in this year’s budget.  The budget that we passed in terms of, this is one of the things that’s confusing, we passed a budget resolution, it’s not binding. The appropriations bills are what count. And, but in the non-binding budget resolution we passed, the only discretionary domestic spending that was increased was for veterans and the onetime costs for the census. We did not increase the discretionary domestic spending in this year’s budget resolution. And I’m all for that. I think we’ve got to hold the line, we’ve gotta work on health care and I’m sure we’ll get to a health care question. I’ll talk about that when we get to it. But, thank you for the work you do. It’s really important. Okay…

Question: Hi…I want to ask about the Waxman/Markey bill that’s in the House right now. President Obama’s clean energy jobs plan. It’s gonna bring about four hundred fifty million dollars worth of investments in clean energy, smart grid to the State of Missouri. About four hundred and forty three thousand green jobs. You know, we, I got right here a copy of a petition that, twelve pages, signed by Missourians from all over the state, all the way up Kirksville down to Hollister and everywhere between. And I was just wondering if you might be supporting the bill?

Senator McCaskill:  Well, I don’t, I want to wait and see what the situation is when it gets out of the house. They’ve improved it. I will say this – Henry Waxman has, you know, trimmed his sails a little bit and has, I think, been more practical about how we go forward in terms of limiting the emissions of carbon dioxide. And let me tell you what my, what I’m looking for in this bill. First of all, we’re a coal dependent state. And I don’t want the people that I represent unfairly being left with the price tag for this bill because we’re a coal dependent state. I can’t call Ameren UE and say, “Hey, you know, I’d like that electricity that you send me. I’d like you to switch that to solar or wind or nuclear.” I have no choice. And so if we are going to penalize coal powered, coal powered utilities, which the bill does, we’ve got to figure out a way that doesn’t harm average consumers and small businesses with those costs. Now the allocations they’ve done over there is better than when they started. And by allocations, what you would do is, basically what you’re gonna do is let the free market reward or punish people based on how good a job they do on limiting carbon emissions. Which, by the way, I like the free market doing it ’cause it’s more efficient than government doing it. But, what we generate from that needs to make sure that it’s going to those states that are coal dependent, going to those small businesses in those states because it would really hurt us if the bill, you know, the way they originally had it last year, it, it, I couldn’t vote for it. Because it was gonna basically pay off everybody you could possibly imagine, including the State of California, and people in Missouri [garbled] left holding the bag. The other part of the legislation, and this is called the climate change/global warming/cap and trade, goes by all those names, that’s the bill he,  he’s talking about. The other thing I think we’ve got to be very careful of is in this economic climate we cannot hurt our competitive advantage globally. Think if you are a small manufacturing plant in Missouri. And you’re wanting to grow. And right now you could go to China, where they’re putting up a coal fired plant every ten minutes. Or you could go to India and know you wouldn’t have any of those costs. And by the way, all those emissions go to the same planet. They cause the same problem in the atmosphere that ours do. And what I want to make sure is that we don’t, in a global sense, put ourselves at such a competitive disadvantage that we lose even more manufacturing jobs to the international market. So that’s the other thing we have to be careful about, is making sure that we don’t do it in a way that really harms our competitiveness on a, on a, in a global sense. Having said that, I’m for the concept, it’s the details that I’m gonna pay attention to to make sure it doesn’t hurt job creation of the people in Missouri.

…There you are. Are you trying to decide who gets to talk? [laughter]

Question: It’s her question.

Senator McCaskill:  Okay, great. [laughter]

Question: We were wondering how local governing bodies might go about getting access to some of the grants [garbled] are available in the [garbled].

Senator McCaskill:  Well, first of all, I think we’ve done a pretty good job on our web site now with a resource guide. In fact I’m gonna brag on my staff and, I don’t, Sam’s not here is he? Sam’s not here. But…is here, we’ve got all kinds of folks here from. And Cindy’s here and we, they should come up here and you should see them all and they should introduce themselves before we finish. But, they’ve done a really good job on our web site. And if you haven’t been to mccaskill dot senate dot gov,  go there. And for all of you that are interested where this money is going, there’s a map, an interactive map. And you can click on it and see exactly where the money is going. In every, hundreds and hundreds of communities across the state.  And, and go in and get the detail of what program’s getting the money, how much, and how, and then it has a long resource guide with lots of links to get you where you need to go to find out about various funds.  And, and, now most of these programs, most of this money is going to existing programs. ‘Cause we didn’t want to create a new bureaucracy. The last thing we want to do is grow government with the stimulus money. So it’s all going through existing programs, CBDG, it’s going through a variety of different existing programs. And all of it is either formula or competitive. But, and we’re happy to get you specific information on areas. If that doesn’t help answer your questions or get you the answers you’re looking for you just need to call, call the office and Cindy and the staff there will help you.

Yes. Oh, wait, I can’t do that I have to keep drawing. Sorry. [laughter] Sorry, sorry, sorry. [crosstalk]

Voice: You forgot to say your voting record is on, is there, too. Isn’t it?

Senator McCaskill:  Beg your pardon?

Voice:  Your voting record [crosstalk] is there.

Senator McCaskill:   Yes. [crosstalk] Yes, yes. You can find out way too, way more information about me than you want to know. [laughter]…Yes sir.

Question:  I’ve a, interested  listening to all the comments so far. They all are very relevant. People want the money that is being, by the way, it is our money. I’m very, very concerned about where that money goes, how it’s spent. But the bigger issue, I think, underlying that is we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta bring industr
y back in this country. We’ve gotta produce something. We’ve off shored so much stuff in the, in the, for the sake of saving on cost of employment, insurance, energy [crosstalk]…

Senator McCaskill: Health care.

Question: …regulation, health care. All of that. We’ve off shored that money. And, and now we’ve gotta bring it back. Well, how are we gonna do that? How do you propose to do that? I’ve, I’ve read a lot of different proposals, one of the, very interesting is the fair tax, that would bring incentive to bring industry back in this country. Because we’d be reducing the tax base. And if we brought industry back, if we brought competitiveness back, and we started producing again, then, then we would generate more money and we could do more things and have more jobs, have more health care. Have, have all these capabilities. But we would be generating the revenue internally. How, how do propose we do that if we don’t utilize something such as the fair tax initially?

Senator McCaskill: Well the very industries that, that build things are some of the ones that are hardest to get around when you try to change the tax code. There are all kinds of incentives embedded in our tax code that are helpful to business. That’s how they got there. In fact, it is, a lot of it is the sectors that have lobbyists have had way more power than the average person because they’re the ones who pushed. You know, I mean, let’s just think of a good example – the mortgage deduction. Where do you think the mortgage deduction came from? [laughter] It came from the home building industry. Clearly, people who sold homes wanted a way to incentivize certain behavior in the tax code that would assist in fact their businesses. And that’s where the mortgage deduction came from. So, as we try to simplify the tax code we’re gonna take on some fights. Now I’m ready to take ’em on.

Voice: Good. [crosstalk]

Question:  Have you, have you looked at the tax code?

Senator McCaskill: It’s unbelievable.

Question:  It’s over sixty seven thousand pages. [crosstalk]

Senator McCaskill: It’s unbelievably complicated. And frankly, people who have a great deal of money can use a lot of legal mechanisms [crosstalk]…

Question:  Absolutely.

Senator McCaskill: …to avoid paying taxes. And by the way, all those, a lot of those manufacturing businesses have the kind of help that helps them avoid a lot of the taxes. So, I, I don’t know that fair tax is the way, but there are lots of things we need to be doing. [crosstalk]

Question:  Have you evaluated it?

Senator McCaskill: I have looked at it. And I think it has some, there, there is, I don’t know how practical it is in terms of getting it done. But I do think there’s, the simplicity of it I love. I love the simplicity.

But some of the other competitive things we can deal with, one of them is health care. I mean, this health care reform debate is huge. Because it is about lowering, you know, we say can we do something about entitlement costs and immediately everyone gets nervous. We’re gonna go in everybody’s pockets for Social Security. It’s not that. It’s Medicare. If we reduce by one per cent. How many of you all learned the, the, the value of the lesson of the miracle of compound interest? All right. If we reduce our medical costs by one per cent a year for ten years the complete arc of the debt and deficit changes. Because of the miracle of compound interest. And because of the major growth that we’re struggling with, in terms of our financial underpinnings, is the growth in Medicare and medical costs.

Now, before you get nervous that somebody’s gonna take away your choices, I do not believe that we should take away choices. And the private sector needs to be on the marketplace and competing for those health care dollars. Competition is good. And the market is good.  But having said that, this is the example I love to give. I did it on Charlie Thompson’s radio show this morning.  Many of you heard it. And that is, how many of you have seen the ads for scooters? [laughter] The ads for scooters. You can get a free scooter. Now think about that. It’s not a free scooter. Guess who’s paying for it? We’re paying for it. Now why do we have a system that is marketing and foisting upon many people that may not want ’em, a scooter, ’cause it’s free? Well, it’s because we pay to get people scooters. Now, which is healthier? If you’re on that borderline that it’d be nice to have a scooter to go around the grocery store, but you could still walk, which is better in terms of health outcomes?

Voices: Walking.

Senator McCaskill: Walking. So what are we doing? We’re paying for the scooters. You know, it’s [laughter], we’ve got to get back to preventative care. We’ve got to get back to rewarding good outcomes, we’ve got to get back to, and we can do this. We can lower these costs. Diabetes alone [applause], diabetes alone is an incredible drain on our tax dollars. And think of what we could do just to decrease spending in diabetes by one per cent a year. This would not be, it’s not something we can’t do. Especially if we incentivize it. So I think that health care, and that is one of the biggest competitive disadvantages for businesses right now as it relates to health care costs and taking that off their shoulders, especially small businesses. But, you know, one of the things we gotta keep working on, and we did. We did do some specifically geared, help for small businesses ’cause those are really the engine.

But, I, I’ll tell you one thing, I was a little nervous about making the investment in the American car companies, but then this voice in my head kept saying, “We gotta build something.” We can’t give up buildin’ stuff. So I think we are gonna save three American car companies. And I think they’re gonna survive into the next generation and continue to build really good cars in America.

Question:  I think that’s all, that’s great. How are we going to pay for it?

Senator McCaskill: Well, we pay for it the way we’ve always paid for it, and that is by, we incentivize people by knowing they have a free market system, that if they play by the rules and work hard, they can succeed in America.

Question:  Tax and spend [garbled].

Senator McCaskill: Hopefully not the spend part. I’m, I’m workin’ hard on that. And hopefully not raising taxes. Certainly we’ve not gone anywhere near a tax increase since I’ve been in Washington. Haven’t even been close to it. In fact we cut taxes. A couple of times…

A bulletin board in the Parkhurst Commons at State Fair Community College.

The transcript of the town hall will be continued in subsequent posts.

From Roll Call:

The District of Columbia Office of Tax and Revenue will charge Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and his spouse $5,600 in back property taxes for their Georgetown home, following a nearly two-month review of the property’s tax status.

The Missouri lawmaker and his wife, Abigail Perlman Blunt, own a three-bedroom Georgetown home, valued at $1.62 million in tax assessment records.

According to public tax records, the Blunts’ home had received the homestead tax deduction as recently as April, a benefit intended for full-time city residents that can shave hundreds of dollars off annual tax bills – and significantly more in the long term by limiting assessment increases.

One thing I don’t get is this:

“After five years of repeated requests, the D.C. government finally updated their records to accurately reflect the Blunts’ tax status,” Blunt spokesman Nick Simpson said Thursday.

The D.C. tax office began its review of Blunt’s status in April, after the Kansas City Star reported the House lawmaker’s D.C. home was receiving a tax break.

If Blunt had been trying to get his DC area home properly registered under the correct tax status for five years, you would think the review would have started sometime before April, which is coincidentally when the KC Star broke the story.

Call me a cynic, but my guess is that Blunt didn’t try very hard to make sure he didn’t receive the homestead exemption.

I’m also skeptical that any leading Republicans will appear on the talking head cable shows this weekend to point out Blunt’s tax problems.