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Tag: Alison Lundergan Grimes
Chuck Todd In Mitch McConnell Commercial
The fact that some of journalist Chuck Todd’s statements seemed biased enough to appear in a Mitch McConnell campaign ad might cause some to question his objectivity. It also causes one to wonder about copyright laws and whether Todd allowed the advertisement.
June Donor’s Meeting Between Mitch McConnell, Koch Brothers
The Nation and other sources have obtained an audio recording of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell’s remarks at a Koch Brothers’ sponsored meeting between politicians and donors at the St. Regis Monarch Bay Resort in Dana Point, CA.
The Nation claims that the resort was rented by the Koch brothers for $870,000 for the meeting on June 15th.
In the question-and-answer period following his session titled “Free Speech: Defending First Amendment Rights,” McConnell says:
“So in the House and Senate, we own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill. And I assure you that in the spending bill, we will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what’s called placing riders in the bill. No money can be spent to do this or to do that. We’re going to go after them on healthcare, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board [inaudible]. All across the federal government, we’re going to go after it.”
(recording below)
McConnell’s pledge to “go after” Democrats on financial services was apparently a reference to changing or getting rid of Dodd-Frank regulation. Dodd-Frank, of course, was legislation passed in 2010 in response to the under-regulation of the financial industry that led to the Great Recession.
McConnell has also been a vocal opponent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in particular, and presumably under his Senate leadership funding for the CFPB would be high on the list for appropriations cuts.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wall Street was the number-one contributor to McConnell’s campaign committee from 2009 to 2014.
McConnell is running against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in a close contest that could determine which party controls the Senate. Total spending in the race is expected to exceed $100 million, which would make it the most expensive Senate election in history.
As of July 21, PACs and individuals affiliated with Koch Industries have given at least $41,800 to McConnell’s campaign committee in this election cycle—a figure that does not include any funding to outside groups that could spend heavily in the race’s closing weeks.
Recently, Grimes has been airing ads that criticize McConnell for “voting seventeen times against raising the minimum wage” and “twelve times against extending unemployment benefits for laid-off workers.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, McConnell himself seems quite proud of this legislative record, at least in front of an audience of wealthy donors. After he lays out his agenda to shrink the federal government “across the board.”
“And we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals,” said Mitch. “That’s all we do in the Senate is vote on things like raising the minimum wage [inaudible]—cost the country 500,000 new jobs; extending unemployment—that’s a great message for retirees; uh, the student loan package the other day, that’s just going to make things worse, uh. These people believe in all the wrong things.”
In late April, Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, successfully filibustered a bill to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
Earlier in the year, McConnell also led a filibuster of a three-month extension of unemployment insurance to some 1.7 million Americans. At one point in the negotiations, he offered a deal to extend unemployment only if Democrats agreed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even though the ACA does not add to the federal deficit.
Just days before he addressed the Koch brothers’ billionaire donor summit, McConnell was instrumental in blocking Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to help Americans refinance their growing student loan debt.
Warren’s plan would have been funded by a new minimum tax on America’s wealthiest. In response, McConnell has said that “not everybody needs to go to Yale” and that cash-strapped students should look into for-profit colleges. That seemed to be an odd response, considering that for-profit colleges are more expensive than state colleges.
The main thrust of McConnell’s remarks to the Koch conference were about his favorite issue, campaign finance, which he regards as a matter of free speech.
Mitch McConnell: Do you think he cares about you?
Mitch McConnell’s Strange Stance On Obamacare
In a debate last week, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell was asked about his stance on The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). His answer was fairly vague. He says it’s fine to “have a website.”
It is unclear what he meant. The website is part of The Affordable Care Act, as well as the subsidies, Medicaid expansion, and the mandates for insurance companies to be on the exchange.
Many patient-protection laws are part of the act, such as the law that allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until age 26. Laws outlawing pre-existing conditions are also part of The Affordable Care Act.
Was it an attempt to dodge the question?
Sam Seder of Majority Report discusses it.
Hillary Stumps For Alison Lundergan Grimes: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over?
It seemed as though some Democrats nationally were starting to back away from Alison Lundergan Grimes due to her movement to the right and her refusal to answer the question of who she voted for in 2012.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also cut its TV advertising for Lundergan Grimes on Tuesday, saying they had to focus on incumbent Democrats.
That decision effectively leaves Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes on her own and is read by some as a sign that national Democrats believe her race is effectively over.
But Hillary was there on Wednesday, campaigning in Louisville, Kentucky.
She defended the president’s health care law as she campaigned on Wednesday for Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes in her fight against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“Kynect is about more than a website,” Clinton said of the Kentucky exchange, the state health care marketplace created as part of the Affordable Care Act. “It has helped more than half a million Kentuckians get good, quality affordable health care.”
In a Monday debate between McConnell and Lundergan Grimes, McConnell told voters that he wants to repeal the health care law “root and branch,” but said that the state’s health care website is “fine.”
“You cannot have it both ways. It’s simple math,” Clinton said. “If you repeal the federal law, there is no more federal money for subsidies for Kentucky families. There is no more money for Medicaid expansion, and think about … the forty eight thousand young people in Kentucky who will be thrown off their parents’ insurance plans.”
Grimes has largely avoided defending the health care law on the campaign trail, focusing instead on bread-and-butter issues like the minimum wage and equal pay.
How Lundergan Grimes Should Handle The Question Of Who She Voted For In 2012
His explanation begins at the 2:50 mark. Kyle Kulinski / Secular Talk.
Mitch McConnell Gets More Out-Of-State Money Than Lundergan Grimes
Money is pouring into the Kentucky Senate race from across the country in what some experts predict will be the most expensive election in U.S. history for a U.S. Senate seat.
The Courier-Journal of Louisville, KY, states that $37 million, or 85% of identified contributions has come from out of state.
McConnell, who started raising money shortly after his last re-election six years ago, is getting big money from the Washington network of PACs and lobbyists, Texas and New York.
A new McConnell ad tells the story of a Kentucky woman whose daughter was abducted in 2011 by her ex-husband and taken to Mali.
Grimes, who entered the campaign in July of last year, gets support from the California film industry, but also New York and Washington.
But the Courier-Journal analysis also showed some basic differences in the makeup of contributions supporting the two candidates:
• Grimes gets a higher percentage of her contributions — 24.5 percent — from inside Kentucky. Only about 12.2 percent of contributions for McConnell have come from people and PACs listing Kentucky addresses.
• Grimes gets much more in small contributions than McConnell. Her campaign has reported raising $3.6 million — more than 31 percent of her total — in contributions of $200 or less. McConnell has reported raising about $940,000 — or just 3 percent of his total — in contributions of $200 or less.
• McConnell gets much more from political action committees. Pro-McConnell political committees have reported $9 million in contributions this election cycle — nearly 30 percent of his total — from PACs. Pro-Grimes committees have gotten $1 million, or about 9 percent of their contributions from PACs.
Jonathan Hurst, manager of the Grimes campaign, said, “The contrast between the two campaigns couldn’t be clearer. Alison is running a strong grassroots campaign. Based on the numbers, you can see Sen. McConnell relies on millionaires and billionaires to fund his campaign.”
However, three major election models give McConnell a major edge – with his probability of winning ranging between 85 to 99 percent.
Warren To Campaign For Lundergan Grimes In KY
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will travel to Kentucky this month to campaign for Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democrat trying to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R).
“You get Alison Lundergan Grimes in there and I feel like she could almost single-handedly get rid of some of the gridlock here in Washington,” Warren claimed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/11/elizabeth-warren-alison-lundergan-grimes_n_5486667.html
OK, Fine. 