Recent House VotesCongressional Budget for Fiscal Year 2010 - Vote Passed (233-193, 7 Not Voting) The House passed the conference report for the 2010 fiscal year budget resolution. Rep. Peter Roskam voted NO......send e-mail or see bio
Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act - Vote Passed (249-175, 10 Not Voting) The House approved this bill that would provide local jurisdictions with funds to prosecute hate crimes. Rep. Peter Roskam voted NO......send e-mail or see bio
Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009 - Vote Passed (357-70, 7 Not Voting) The House passed this bill that intends to place new restrictions on credit card companies. Rep. Peter Roskam voted NO......send e-mail or see bio
So he was there at 1:27pm but had disappeared by 1:44pm. It's a shame too because at 1:44pm he could have voted with 424 fellow members of the House to suspend the rules and agree on Honoring and praising the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on the occasion of its 100th anniversary.
Roskam has launched a website "Obama Voters for Roskam." The whiff of fear is in the air. Imagine that Roskam is trying to ride the coattails of Obama. What's wrong with this picture?
It takes a lot of courage, or gall, to through the leader of your own party, John McCain, under the bus.
So now, not only is Roskam a coward who will not debate, but he is now extremely fearful that the crowds at the polls are voting BLUE all the way on the ticket!
My good friend Colonel Jill Morgenthaler is the Democratic candidate for Congress from the Sixth District of Illinois. She’s running a strong campaign to unseat Congressman Peter Roskam. Those of us from Illinois know how extreme and how wrong Roskam is on almost every issue that matters to our nation – his support of Bush’s failed policies in Iraq, Bush’s giveaways to oil companies, and of course the deregulation that led to chaos on Wall Street.
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, South Carolina
Rep. Patrick Murphy, Pennsylvania
Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth
VP Pick
Just asking. This is the list of Convention speakers for what's billed as the Democratic Party convention Wednesday national security evening. Is someone being assisted to higher office? Just asking, because 7 of 43 voters here would be ok with her as Senator from Illinois. Now maybe it's simply that the convention organizers were desperate to include a women in a poltential all male situation. So then why not Jill Morgenthaler? That's what they did for Obama four years ago, that is helped him win his Senate bid. So why Tammy who's not running instead of Jill who is? Just asking.
Second quarter filing deadline is up, and below is a handy chart of fundraising courtesy of James at SSP:
Roskam is crushing Morgenthaler. Bean is sitting on a pile of cash. Kirk is outraising Seals and also sitting on a pile of cash. Ozinga had a really good quarter but Halvorson is still ahead in cash on hand. Harper and Biggert had similar quarters, but Biggert is winning the CoH race. Foster is kicking Oberweis to the curb. Abboud not so much. And Schock is pulling away.
You know those commercials where the camera takes the dog's perspective and runs around following the illusive scent of bacon produced by some fake bacon flavored dog treat? I know you've seen them: Bacon, bacon, bacon! Where's that bacon? What's that in the bag? I CAN'T READ!
Well, of late, this commercial is really reminding me of Republican energy policy, right down to the fake bacon part. It seems to me that everything the GOP presents regarding energy policy revolves around drilling for more oil, rather than really developing new energy sources. Its all: oil, oil, OIL! Where's the oil? And just like the dog character in the commercial, the GOP and Bush BFF Peter Roskam can't tell the American public what's in the bag of tricks they are proposing to solve our energy problems.
What's worse, given Roskam's proposed Energy Vision Act, it appears he can't read any better than that dog either.
Well, Morgenthaler finally has a website that works, and from it we learn she's building a small donor base:
Today, Col. Jill Morgenthaler's campaign for Congress announced contributions totaling $200,630 in the first quarter of 2008, the first full quarter of fundraising for the political newcomer. Morgenthaler is the Democratic candidate for the 6th Congressional District of Illinois.
[...]
Details of Col. Morgenthaler First-Quarter Fundraising:
Total Receipts: $200,630
Total Individual Donors: 567
Total Contributions $200 or Less: 359
Percentage of Individual Contributions $200 or less: 63 percent
I'd call that respectable. Roskam still raised 291K though. And he's got $967K on hand. So Jill's still got one hell of an uphill battle. But this is a respectable start.
Bitterness doesn't fade away, it becomes your strength (+)
by: bored now
Tue Mar 28, 2006 at 14:55:55 PM CST
i've won campaigns. and not just a few. but while i cannot remember all the campaigns i've won, i remember every single loss. every one of them, they burn in my gut like a bad case of food poisoning.
around this point in the campaign cycle (after the primary), you always hear the winners conjoling the losers to let it go, suck it up, for the good of the team.
and, every time, i always think that anyone who says this has never really been involved in a campaign. they're completely full of it.
If the AMT patch can not be fixed, approximately 71,371 tax returns in Illinois' 6th Congressional District would potentially be subjected to the higher rates of the AMT, up from 9,000 in 2006.
"I am working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to find a solution to the Alternative Minimum Tax," continued Roskam. "This measure was never meant to affect middle-income families. While Congress continues to debate how to fix this problem, I want to assure my constituents that they won't be unexpectedly slapped with higher tax rates. Amidst the ongoing turmoil in the housing market, the last thing Americans deserve is to be piled on with higher taxes."
That's why I was surprised to see my ever so concerned Congressman Peter Roskam and his Republican friends vote against the Temporary Tax Relief Act of 2007 that passed this week. You see, it provided changes in tax law that will extend the most widely used tax exemptions for those affected by the AMT. A tax that if not addressed through legislation like this would have potentially affected his constituents!
And just as he's done with his previous votes (like this and this) Roskam has followed a pattern of obstructing getting things done in Washington. Details after the jump...
A few days ago I wrote about the news from OTDB that PC recruitment in DuPage was up over 100% from 2006. Mark followed up with GOP numbers noting that although Democratic numbers increased and GOP numbers flat lined, Democratic PCs were still being outnumbered by nearly 2:1.
Now there are many rhetorically good explanations for this. Most notably the strong Republican organization that has been in place for decades in DuPage is a major factor. But the flip side of this picture is also important. The past leadership of the DuPage Democrats and their public disdain (like this or this) for local activists while filling only 16% of PCs is just as strong a reason for this disparity in the trenches.
Hence it was good for me as a Democrat living in the Sixth to see more of an emphasis this cycle placed on recruiting those on the front lines - Precinct Committeemen. Whether activists forced the DuPage Democratic Party into action out of fear of being voted out of leadership or whether they acted out of necessity to challenge Republicans at all levels is wide open to debate, and both the "insiders" and "outsiders" have strong opinions on the reality of this.
Regardless of who's right, one thing is clear: working with your local activists matters. Duckworth didn't attempt to do this until it was too late. Whether Morgenthaler will is still questionable. But as displayed by Gary at OTDB, when crunching PC recruitment numbers, it was pretty clear that when Township organizations worked actively with OTDB, recruitment was up significantly over Townships in which there was no such cooperation.
Families here know what it's like to balance our checkbooks and pay our bills. Congressman Roskam doesn't seem to think Washington should do the same. On his watch, federal spending has spiraled out of control. But it's our money and it's my goal to get a handle on government spending, balance the budget and reduce the tax burden on Illinois families and businesses.
This Congress and this congressman have done nothing for Illinois families who are buried in bills that keep going up-taxes, groceries, a tank of gas, college tuition, paying the mortgage. They've done nothing to help small business owners who are struggling with high health care premiums and higher taxes.
And sometimes it's the things Congressman Roskam does do that frustrate folks back home. Like when Congressman Roskam voted to support President Bush rather than 300,000 Illinois kids when he vetoed their health care. This isn't about the money -- we can cover those 300,000 Illinois kids for a year for what we spend in Iraq in a week. For Roskam it was all about the politics. For me, telling Illinois kids they can't go to a doctor just to score a political point is about values. Send me to Washington and we'll have a congressperson who will lead the fight to make sure Illinois children get the care they need.
Congressman Roskam has been lock-step with President Bush and out of step with the folks back home. He's voted with the President over 90 percent of the time. When I'm elected to Congress, I will not forget the people I was elected to serve -- and trust me, they won't let me, because they're the people I've lived with most of my adult life. They're the friends I see in church on Sunday, the neighbors at the corner store. Other parents at my kids' school. The local business people.
Really dislike those diagonal stripes in the background, but at least she's coming out swinging.
Can we really blame politicians for not paying attention to the netroots? Can we just assume that any politician that does not interact with the netroots is not likely progressive or progressive enough. The issue has come up recently in a stark way with the approach to campaigning that Jill Morgenthaller is taking. Now Ms Morgenthaller is not actually a good example of a politician not approaching the netroots in functional way. Mostly because she is not a politican. Granted, that as member of the media class we would not have been surprised had she demonstrated a savviness to engage us.
No I'm talking about politicians who have been around the block a couple of times. Politicians who have actually conducted campaigns that required media exposure.
So while we, the local netroots, may not now be important enough that we can blame campaigns that do not engage us, I personally expect that the day is coming rapidly upon us when we can blame them for being inept.
Mark Pera in IL-03 has an opponent besides Lipinski: Palos Hills Mayor Jerry Bennett. Initially it was simply assumed, by us the netroots, that Bennett was a Lipinski plant. And as long as Bennett does not engage the netroots that will likely remain our primary assumption of him, in spite of his claims that he like Pera is for leaving Iraq, pro-choice and anti-nepotism.
I bring this up because I received an email from someone who has done work for Bennett in the past and is doing some work for the campaign now, an email suggesting that Bennett would be a better candidate for us to support. The email was sent to me second hand, but I did get it. In its own way it counts as an attempt to engage the netroots by the Bennett campaign even if the Bennett campaign is not aware of it. Remember, a lot of people engaged the netroots on Dean's behalf that Dean was unaware of.
But for us in the progressive netroots it's too late. No matter how progressive Bennett may be he is now the spoiler candidate. In this situation we only get one shot. There's only room for one anti-machine, anti-nepotism progressive candidate. Sure if the other candidate was really no better than Lipinski but had gotten started earlier so was now the more viable anti-Lipinski we could support a slow-off-the-blocks progressive. We would be supporting an anti-Lipinski spoiler, but it wouldn't matter.
But we have a progressive in place. At this point any attempt to gain our support is an attempt to split us. We may look like spoilers to those who are still un-netroots savy but my guess is that the Bennett campaign is slow-off-the-blocks in the traditional campaign approach as well. In the end Bennett is simply too little, too late.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE *************************************
Col. Morgenthaler's campaign plays a weird game of "will she or won't she"after having already announced that she will to local Democratic activists and party leaders. This leaves those of us in the trenches scratching out heads, then shrugging our shoulders, then thinking "whatever, at least someone seemingly credible is running". Perhaps we're thrown for a bit of a loop due to how a last minute candidacy was handled the last time around. None of us knew until she was in, while this time we knew Jill was in before she was. I think that may have been the appearance the Morgenthaler campaign was going for, anyway.
"This legislation very simply allows homeowners keep more of their hard-earned money when unduly burdened under the AMT tax."
Under current law, taxpayers who itemize their federal tax returns and are not affected by the AMT are able to deduct their property taxes. However, taxpayers who have tax liability under the AMT cannot deduct property taxes from their federal tax liability.
The Homeowners' Property Tax Relief will allow taxpayers to deduct the cost of their property taxes from their federal income tax liability even if they are subject to the AMT.
Don't make enough to afford health care for your kids? Pete says too bad. The government can't afford to help your kids out. Make enough money to qualify for the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and own a home? Then Pete thinks you need a a tax cut and the government can afford to give it to you.
Now I know what you're thinking: The AMT does have flaws. It wasn't indexed for inflation and as such is starting to affect more upper-middle income taxpayers, especially in places where incomes are higher to match the high cost of living of locations like DuPage county. But let's take a look...
Of course, Republican Peter Roskam was not one of them. Roskam voted nay on helping children get the health care the reauthorization of S-CHIP would provide. This isn't the first time either. Why does Peter Roskam stand with President Bush and against 80% of Americans who support the S-CHIP program that would help nearly 10 million children access to health care they need?
Oh ya. He's got those concernsfalsehoods about this bill that just won't allow him to vote for it. I guess that's why this new bill required him to do everything he could to try to kill it. Complete blow by blow with scorecard after the jump...
Last night I attended a petition turn-in and social event held by the York Township Democratic Organization. Ms. Morganthaler was one of several candidates who attended. These are notes from the event, and from the morning after.
It's no secret if you live in IL-06 that there are rail lines everywhere in the district. If you live anywhere around here you are familiar with mile long UP trains tying up traffic or if you work downtown you probably take the train. That's why it's good to see that Peter Roskam likes the idea of rail safety, having voted for H.R. 2095, the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007 this past week:
"Railroads are important to our local businesses and jobs, and this legislation will only enhance the safety of our lives around the railroads. I will continue to be a tireless advocate for improved rail safety."
Gee, I'm glad Pete is a tireless advocate. Kinda makes me wonder why Roskam voted "Aye" along with 185 other Republicans on the motion to recommit with instructions on this same bill only minutes earlier then.
So I'm wondering, why would my representative, Republican Peter Roskam, vote against helping 10 million children gain access to health care. So I thought I'd go look at his website and see if he had a reason to be against a bill that passed with bipartisan support and was overwhelmingly favored by 80% of Americans. Why would he vote against the S-CHIP bill not once, but twice? Here's what I found just to start:
The exorbitant expansion of SCHIP puts America on a path towards greater entitlement spending, undermines private health coverage while reducing benefits of Medicare, all at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Wow. I didn't know S-CHIP was an "exorbitant expansion" and all that other bad stuff.
Problem is, when I did a little more digging, it would seem that Senator Pat Roberts - from the very conservative state of Kansas no less - seems to think that the Republican spin is more than a little out of control:
If you have been watching the debate surrounding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, you have probably noticed that the Washington spin factor is out of control. Given all the commentary, it's a wonder that anyone understands what the bill actually does.
How would Roberts know? Well, as a member of the Senate Finance Committee that actually wrote this bill, I'd defer to his understanding of legislation he had a hand in writing.
