Our previous coverage:

Senator Al Franken (D) at the 2009 Harkin Steak Fry – part 1

Senators Harkin (D) and Franken (D) in Indianola, Iowa – there will be a strong public option

The 2009 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa – photos

Before anyone gets a shovel and digs a grave for the Public Option, read this

The second and final part of Al Franken’s remarks:

….The truth is, if we don’t fix the system most of us are gonna lose the health care because we’re simply not gonna be able to afford the health care. [applause] And at the Minnesota state fair that’s the question everybody was asking, Democrats and Republicans. But right now in Congress Democrats seem to be the only ones asking it. Republicans are busy asking Washington questions. They’re asking, “How do we break President Obama?  How do we make sure he fails?” That’s what they’re asking.

Tom referred to Jim DeMint of South Carolina, our esteemed colleague who is, is close friends with, well, both of us. [laughter] Good, good friend. [laughter] And Senator DeMint said this, I’m gonna quote what he said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo.” Well I don’t think this debate should be about President Obama. [applause] [cheers] It should be, it should be about the people who are going bankrupt because of the cost of health care, [applause] even when they have insurance. [applause] The number one cause, the number one cause of bankruptcy, of personal bankruptcy in this country are health care crises. More than half of the personal bankruptcies in this country are caused by health care crisis. And more than two thirds of those people who go bankrupt because of a health care crisis have health insurance….

….This debate should be about that woman in Fergus Falls, the one I mentioned, the one with diabetes. See, her adult son has diabetes, too, but he can’t afford health insurance so she shares her insulin with her son. In America. [pause]

This debate should be about the older woman who came up to me at the booth. She said to me, “You know when you’re my age, everything is pre-existing.” [laughter] This debate is about the American people. And if this debate is about what’s gonna help the American people well then there’s really no debate. We’ve gotta change the system. And that’s what we’re going to do. [applause]

So the question is, the question is, if you get sick, how do you get health care? And how do we keep people healthy in the first place? And the answer to the question also happens to be the answer to keeping costs down. Tom knows that. In Minnesota we know that. In Minnesota we do pretty well. Ninety-one cents of every health insurance dollar goes to actual health care in Minnesota as compared to seventy to eighty cents in the rest of the country. In one health care roundtable a, a health care economist said to me, “You know, in Minnesota we get an ‘A’.” But then, then he continued saying, “But that’s only because we grade on a curve.” [laughter] Now here in Iowa you’re also in the top quintile in, in health care. But the way our system works we don’t really pay our doctors to keep people healthy. A doctor won’t get paid for helping a diabetic control his diabetes. But we do pay doctors a lot for removing a diabetic’s foot.

Now let’s take for example McAllen, Texas – the most expensive medical market in the country. In McAllen they spend three times as much on health care for Medicare patients as they do in Mayo Clinic. Even though at Mayo the get better outcomes. Well that’s because in McAllen doctors own the hospitals and they own the imaging clinics. So they perform more tests and procedures and Medicare pays for the tests and the procedures, but they don’t pay for the outcome. At Mayo it’s patient centered. The doctors who flock to Mayo are paid salaries. They don’t get paid more money for [inaudible] procedure, they get paid to keep people healthy. [applause]

See, right now we’re paying for sick care we’re not paying health care. [applause] And when doctors, and when doctors look at a patient as a dollar sign we get a far different outcome. Then when doctors look at a patient as someone you want to keep, get healthy and then keep ’em healthy. So we’re gonna change the system so that we emphasize preventive care on front end and reward doctors for good outcomes on the back end. [applause] And we’re gonna make it so insurance companies can’t deny you, your claim because of pre-existing condition. [applause] We’re gonna make sure that insurance companies face real competition with [emphasis] a public option. [applause] [cheers] we’re going to improve electronic health records [applause] so that doctors don’t do duplicative tests that are unnecessary. These changes are gonna keep us healthier, save families money, and bring down the cost of health care. And call me crazy but it just seems like a pretty damn good idea. [applause]

Now even though these are good ideas some people are gonna fight ’em with everything they got. And it’s pure, it’s pure politics. These people rail against government health care but they’re sure happy that their parents have Medicare. President Obama could propose just about anything and some of our Republican friends would still oppose it. They don’t even think the President should be allowed to tell kids to stay in school and work hard. [applause] [cheers] That’s how ridiculous this is. Their goal isn’t to see how much we can do, it’s to see much we can undo, or they can undo.

The last time the Republicans were in power they undid a lot. [laughter] Under Republicans we couldn’t get vaccines to kids during flu season. Under Republicans we couldn’t get clean water to New Orleans when the levees broke. Under Republicans we couldn’t tell the difference Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin. [applause] [cheers] And the last Republican President, I, I forget his name [laughter], left us, left us on the brink of a great depression. It’s that old Republican tactic. They run for office saying that government doesn’t work, then they get elected and they prove it. [laughter] [applause]

But what our friends across the aisle don’t get is this, this is a Democracy. It’s not the government versus the people. The government is the people. We’re on the same team [applause], we work together. And when government reflects the will of the people and responds to the people we make a lot of progress as individuals and as a country. I think President Obama said it best last Wednesday night in that great speech. He said this, “Our predecessors understood that government could not and should not solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains and security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little. That without the leavening hand of wise policy markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited.”

This is something we know in, in my family. When my wife Frannie was about seventeen years old her father, a World War II decorated vet, died in a car accident on the way home from doing two straight shifts at the paper mill in Portland Maine, leaving Frannie’s mom widowed at age twenty-nine with five kids. Now, Frannie’s mo
m had a high school education, that’s it, and they had a tough time, but they made it. And they made it because of Social Security survivor benefits. [applause] Sometimes there wasn’t enough food on the table, sometimes they turned the heat off, and this is Portland, Maine, it was kind of cold. But they made it. My brother-in-law, middle kid, went into the Coast Guard. Became an electrical engineer, he still works with the Coast Guard. My three sisters-in-law and Frannie all went to college on combinations of Pell Grants and scholarships. [applause] And Frannie’s younger sister, there’s one younger than Frannie, Bootsie. And Bootsie went to high school, my mother-in-law got a four hundred dollar GI loan to fix a hole in the roof, instead of using it to fix a hole in the roof, she used it to go to college at the University of Maine at Gorham. And she got three more loans and graduated. And got another loan, then got a masters in teach, in, in teaching kids to read and she became a teacher. And she had a career teaching Title I kids to read and because she taught Title I kids all her loans were forgiven. [applause] Every member of my wife’s family, every member of my wife’s family became a productive member of society. And they did it because of Social Security. [applause] They did it because of Pell Grants. [applause] They did it because of the GI Bill. [applause] They did it because of Title I. [applause]  Now, they tell you in this country pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And that’s something that everyone of us here believes. But first you gotta have the boots. [voice: “Yeah.”] [applause] The government Frannie’s family the boots. And that’s what we’re about, that’s what we’re about. [applause] [cheers] I ran for the senate because I know that Frannie’s story isn’t unique. It’s Tom Harkin’s story. It’s the politics that he practices. It’s America’s story.

The health care bill we’re fighting for right now, it isn’t just about health care. It isn’t just about bringing down the costs, bringing down the debt. It’s about opportunity. It’s about giving people the boots. If you go in to debt because a family member gets sick or hurt you’re gonna spend years just keeping your head above water. If your child has a pre-existing condition you can’t change your job to start a small business which creates seventy percent of the new jobs in this country. You can’t do it because you won’t get health care. Think about what this means for families and then what it means for our economy.

You hear Democrats talk a lot about opportunity. That’s because we really do believe in opportunity. And everything we’ve done [applause] in the last nine months reflects that. We inherited an economy on the brink of a depression and we passed a major recovery act that pulled us from the brink. Cut taxes for families, a third of it was tax cuts for people under two hundred fifty thousand dollars. [applause] It kept states, it kept states from having to cut even more than they’ve had to cut, saving jobs and police and nurses and firefighters and social workers. People who are needed at a time of financial crisis. And we invested in today’s infrastructure and tomorrow’s infrastructure. We passed a law in the last nine months to keep the credit card companies from taking advantage of consumers. [applause] [cheers] A law, a law to protect equal pay for women. [voce: “Yeah!”] [applause] We covered seven million uninsured children through SCHIP. [applause] We gave the FDA the power to regulate tobacco, to regulate it like the health risk that it is. [applause]

In any other year that would be enough. But this year we have the chance to confront the single biggest threat to America’s future and the greatest unmet moral obligation in our history, all rolled into one. That’s what health care is. [applause] [voice: “Obama’s (inaudible), he’s our President!”] This is, this is our moment of opportunity. This need, needs to be the moment where the debate changes, when the heat of an angry summer breaks. So, we need you. We don’t want to look back and say we squandered this opportunity because we allowed ourselves to be shouted down. Or that we voted for change and got scared of actual change. [laughter] [applause] [cheers] We want to look back on this day from an America in which everyone has health care and say, it wasn’t the easiest thing, but it was the right thing. [applause] And together we got it done. [applause] Thank you. [applause] [cheers] Now, now. [applause] [cheers]

Minnesota Senator Al Franken (D) was a guest and speaker at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin’s (D) annual steak fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday afternoon.

Our previous coverage:

Senators Harkin (D) and Franken (D) in Indianola, Iowa – there will be a strong public option

The 2009 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa – photos

Before anyone gets a shovel and digs a grave for the Public Option, read this

Al Franken’s remarks:

[applause][cheers] Thank you. Thank you. Sit down, sit down. Hold, hold it, hold it for the end. [laughter] [voice: “Give ’em hell, Al.”] [voice: “Yay, Al!”] [voice: “What about Rush?”] Tom, Ruth, thank you for inviting me. I, you know, this is great on a non-presidential year, it’s nice and intimate here. It’s just you and you’re closest two thousand friends, right? [laughter] Governor Culver, let me, let me say something about your dad, your dad. I think all of us saw a lot of the Kennedy memorials and testaments to him and the funeral and there were a lot of tears. But there was also a lot of laughs.  And your dad gave kind of a testimonial that was just hilarious and, and it went viral. I don’t know how many of you have seen it, it’s just. [applause] So here’s my advice to you, Governor. If you have even half the sense of humor that your, your dad has [laughter] do not let people see it until you retire. [laughter] Just don’t, it’ll just get you in trouble. [laughter] I should know. [laughter]….

….The people of Iowa have known Tom [Harkin] as a lot of things. As a fighter pilot, a congressman, a senator, the first Iowa senator to be elected to two consecutive terms [applause], the first Democratic Iowa [inaudible]. [applause] As Frank Harkin’s big brother. As the author of the Americans with Disabilities Act. [applause] [cheers] As a presidential candidate who got seventy-six percent of the vote here in Iowa and who got seventy-six votes in New Hampshire. [laughter] as chairman of the Agriculture Committee. And he is now the man who will fill the void left by the passing of Senator Kennedy, as the chairman of the Health, and Education, Labor and Pension Committee.

Now, it’s not really that big a deal. [laughter] I mean, it’s only health, education [laughter], labor [laughter], and pensions [laughter]. I mean, who really would care about those things? [laughter] [voice: “Democrats!”] You know, except for maybe people who are concerned about their, their health. [laughter] Or, or their, you know, their kids’ health. Or maybe want their kids to go to, oh, a good school. [laughter] Or, I don’t know, people who, who work. [laughter] [applause] Or who may even want to retire some day. [laughter] You know, with a pension. [laughter] I suppose those people might care about the work of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. [laughter]

And you know what? I can’t think of anyone better to lead the charge on health care reform, on reforming our education policies in this country, on fighting for working men and women, and protecting folks’ retirement security than Tom Harkin. [applause] Now, really, honest, save it for the end. [laughter] Now he’s still on the Ag Committee, so this is a win for Iowa and a win for America. [applause]

You know, Tom invited me to the one steak fry that was cancelled, in two thousand one, nine eleven eight years ago. And back then I would have been happy just to be here as a friend and supporter. Eight years later I’m humbled to be here as a colleague. [applause] And now [applause], and now as a member myself of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee I am honored to call Tom my chairman.  [applause] In his role on the health part of the health, on the, of the HELP Committee Tom helped write, led the writing of the prevention title on the health bill. Yeah, so it’s, he’s focused like I am on preventative care. Now of course, one way nutritionists tell us that we could prevent disease if we, is if we ate less charcoal grilled marbled…[laughter]…red meat. [laughter] So please let me be the first to invite you to the two thousand ten first annual Tom Harkin tofu steam. [laughter] [applause] Tofu steam. Tofu steam. [laughter]

Now I may have arrived late to the Senate, but I really hit the ground running. Like one of the first few days I was in the Senate I ran into Senator Jim Imhofe of Oklahoma.  [audience groaning] Now you might know him as the one who, who called the scientific evidence on, on climate change, he called it, quote, “The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” So, I want to make friends with everybody. So I got to talkin’ with Jim. So, Jim and me are talkin’ on the floor and I said to him, “You know, Jim, I’ve been doing some research, some really deep digging and, it, it seems to me that, uh, you’re not entirely convinced [laughter] on the science of global warming.” And he said, “Oh, you’ve done some deep digging then.” [laughter] And I go, “Yes, yes, that something you’re gonna have to learn about, you’re gonna learn about me. I do my homework. And from the research I’ve done it just, it just, it seems like you aren’t entirely on board [laughter] with the whole climate change thing.” So, so that is me. That’s me, I do my homework.

For example, when I was first appointed to the Judiciary Committee I thought, “This is weird, I’m not a lawyer.” How am I gonna know what, you know, how to ask the right questions? But then I did some more of that deep, deep digging. And I discovered that most Americans aren’t lawyers. [laughter] [applause] That’s true. That’s, that’s a, that’s factual. [laughter] It’s factual. And I discovered that this is one of the real challenges of being a U.S. Senator, Washington expects you to think one way, but the American people don’t necessarily think that way. So, the challenge is not to get caught up in the questions that get asked in Washington. It’s to do what Tom Harkin has always done, ask the questions that the American people want answered. [applause] And right now, right now, those are health care questions. You know, when I campaigned around the state of Minnesota in two thousand eight, this was during my campaign, it seems so long ago [laughter], the people that talked to me about health care they, they really talked to me about three things. They said it cost too much. They said what am I gonna do if I lose my job and either I or my spouse or my, one of my kids has a pre-existing condition? And how am I ever, ever gonna get health care? Or, if something bad happens to me or one of my kids, and they get really sick, am I gonna lose everything? Am I gonna go bankrupt? And that’s what the American people want to know.

And by the way, when I say the American people I don’t just mean Democrats. A few weeks ago I was at my booth at the Minnesota state fair. And a group of tea party folks came in. Somebody actually videotaped this, put it on the web, maybe some of you have seen it. [applause] Well, they were angry. They were angry and they had t-shirts on that said TEE, uh, TEA, taxed enough already and a picture of a red, white and blue tea pot. And they also were, had with them some right wing talking points. And they were there to confront me on health care and they were, they came loaded for bear. So now, if you listen to the talking heads you would’ve, you’d think, oh t
his probably turned out very, very badly. But, a couple things happened. First of all, they realized I was a real person. That I wasn’t the caricature of a left wing demon that they had heard about, that they didn’t really have reason to be afraid of me or angry with me. And there’s a lesson in that for all of our political debates. When you look your opponent in the eye it’s harder to vilify them. And it’s a lot easier to reason with them. Now, in fact, somebody commented on a blog site, who saw this video on the web. They called me the, the “wingnut whisperer,” but [laughter] actually, actually, these people weren’t nuts at all. Not at all. Because, the next thing that happened was that we really had a great conversation. And I told them that the issue of health care was just way too complex for people to be injecting misinformation that engenders fear. [applause] And I said that I thought that the most egregious thing was the death panel. And then I kind of braced myself for their reaction. Well you know what happened, there were six tea party people there? All of them, each of them went, “Yeah, that was bad. Yeah, that was, that shouldn’t have happened.” So they didn’t want to talk about that. What they wanted to know was how are we going to pay for this? And you know what? That’s a great question. It’s a great question. It’s not a Democratic question, it’s not a republican question, it’s an immensely important question. And it’s one that Tom Harkin and I are asking every day. Now maybe we have a different breed of tea partiers in, in Minnesota, but the tea party people and I ended up having a good discussion. Now, at the end of this conversation did we agree on every solution? No. But we did agree that doing nothing is just not an option. [applause]

And that’s why even though I may have arrived late to the senate, I didn’t arrive too late. [applause] [cheers] Because this fall we’re finally going to reform our health care system. [applause] [cheers] How are we gonna do it? How are we gonna do it? Well first we’re gonna start by breaking that phrase “health care system” apart just a little bit. We’re really talking about two different things. The truth is we have really great health care in this system, in this country. We have great health care in this country. We just have a really terrible system. [applause] Now, let’s start with the health care part. We’ve got dedicated, brilliant, creative, smart doctors. [voice: “Thank you.”] [laughter] Not necessarily you, but… [laughter] other doctors. [laughter] I don’t know you. You may be great. [laughter] Nurses, medical device designers, and researchers, technicians, and brilliant, brilliant people working on our health care and doing amazing things.

So, if you’re a member of the Saudi royal family you get on your private jet and you come to America for your health care. [voice: “Yep.”] The Saudi royal family is willing to travel seventy-five hundred miles to Rochester, Minnesota to get great care at the Mayo Clinic. [applause] Now, for a woman in Fergus Falls, Minnesota with diabetes that same care is less than three hundred miles away. But it often feels like it’s a world away. That’s because if you’re an American you get great health care, too, but only, only if you make it through the terrible system. [applause] And by the way, when you have to navigate this system? It’s always when you’re at your most vulnerable, when you’re sick. Now first of all, if you’re lucky and you have insurance you’ve got to be able to pay the premium. And premiums have been doubling every ten years. If you can do that and you picked the right plan, because the truth is that people never really know what their plan covers until you get sick. Then you’ve gotta hope you, you filled out the forms right. ‘Cause if you didn’t your insurance can deny your claim. And you also have to hope that your, your insurance company can’t find a pre-existing condition. In other words, a condition that may or may not have actually pre-existed when you signed the policy. But, if they can find it, they’ll drop you from the plan. And even if they do pay your claim they have, they can have a cap. An annual cap or lifetime cap. And you can end up with medical bills that are tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

But if that all works out you get some really great health care….

Just looking at the bumper stickers in the parking lot tells you a lot about the activism of this crowd.

Senators Franken and Harkin at the press availability before the speeches.

Before the press availability and the speeches we walked over to one of the entrances. Our media credentials (ours and those issued by the event) were clearly visible. As we started taking pictures of the small group of teabaggers one of them asked, angrily, “Who are you with?” We told him. He said, “Do you have a release?” I replied, “You’re on a public street.” He replied, “If you publish a photo, we’ll sue.”

Uh, no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy on a public street.

Then I thought about posting photos. Why should I put up photos of teabaggers holding up astroturf (and not very creative) signs, further publicizing their inanity, when I could just recount the conversation and show their hostility?

That’s another way of saying the photos sucked. Oh, what the heck:

I dunno, that looks kind of “astroturfy” and “downloads-r-us” to me.

Comrade? Isn’t that some sort of term of endearment? And the hammer a sickle? Don’t workers use hammers and didn’t agriculture workers used to use sickles?

I don’t get it.

Oh, now I understand. They’re calling people who advocate for health care reform communists. That’s really productive dialogue, don’t you think? I guess there must be a lot of communists in most of the other advanced industrial nations in the world.  

The aggressive hostility was similar to that which we encountered at Senator Claire McCaskill’s health care town halls in Hillsboro and Jefferson City.

The food serving operation is very efficient. And the food is good.

Talking with a blogger.

On the “rope line” after the media availability signing autographs for folks attending the steak fry.

He clearly enjoys interacting with people.

There’s that worker thing again.

This individual stood with a picture of Senator Ted Kennedy as the exiting crowd walked past her.

Iowa has a significant number of progressives.

We checked out bumper stickers on parked vehicles as we waited the exit the parking lot after the event.

Senators Al Franken and Tom Harkin in Indianola, Iowa.

Both Senator Tom Harkin (D), Chair of the Senate HELP Committee, and Senator Al Franken (D) a member of the Senate HELP Committee stated to the press and in their speeches at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa today that health care reform legislation coming out of the committee would have a strong public option.

There were approximately 1500 to 2000 people in attendance at the Warren County fairgrounds. A tiny group of teabaggers picketed one of the main entrances to the event along Highway 92. They received some encouraging horn honking along with a few single finger salutes.

The crowd of Democratic Party and progressive activists and supporters heard speeches from Iowa politicians, Tom Harkin, and Al Franken. This was a very supportive audience – they liked what they were hearing.

Next Sunday we’ll be heading out to Indianola, Iowa to cover the 32nd Annual Harkin Steak Fry, one of the most fun large scale outdoor Democratic events in the Midwest.

September 2003 – rain and mud and orange t-shirts. photo: Bob Yates

32nd Annual Harkin Steak Fry

Senator Harkin’s Steak Fry is always one of the most highly anticipated, time-honored Iowa political traditions. Every year thousands of Iowans gather in Tom’s home county, and this year we are pleased to announce Senator Al Franken as the special guest!

Please join us at the Warren County Fairgrounds in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday, September 13, 2009.

The Steak Fry will be from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. Gates open at 12:30 p.m. (Warren County Fairgrounds are located 1 mile west of the intersection of Highways 65/69 and 92)

Some of our coverage from 2007:

Road Trip! – The Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa – What? No mud?

Road Trip! – The Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa – The speechifying

September 2007 – sun and a band and 12,000 other people.

This won’t be quite the same as 2003 or 2007 – presidential campaign years – but Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) is the featured speaker. That alone will be worth the four and a half hour drive.

They’ve finished counting the absentee ballots and Al Franken increased his lead:

Recount ends with Franken up by 226

BREAKING: AL-VALANCHE —- Franken WINS —- (NOW w/ Mega Eye Candy)

Franken Jumps Out to 225-Vote Lead on Strength of Absentee Ballots

MN-Sen: Franken By 225 After Rejected Absentee Ballot Count

Having gone through two recounts – once on a recount team and once as a “disinterested observer” – it was fascinating to watch the live counting process in Minnesota on-line. There were times I would say, “Hey, I’ve seen that before.”