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Recently down in DC the NRCC stirred to help their "most vulnerable members," including our own Charlie Bass and Frank Guinta. In addition to demographic and electoral concerns, no doubt a big reason our two congressmen are on that list is their vote to turn Medicare into Vouchercare.
Interestingly, the head of the NRCC, Rep. Pete Sessions, is now going further. He wants to destroy Social Security by "reforming" it:
House Republicans on Friday introduced legislation that would allow workers to partially opt out of Social Security immediately, and fully opt out after 15 years.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, and several other Republicans introduced the Savings Account for Every American (SAFE) Act. Under the bill, workers would immediately have 6.2 percent of their wages sent to a "SAFE" account each year.
That would take the place of the 6.2 percent the workers now contributed to Social Security.
As many will remember, Medicare foe Paul Ryan tried something similar with John E. Sununu and George W. Bush back in 2005; popular opposition to the privatization scheme was widespread and contributed significantly to the Democrats' electoral advantage in 2006.
But I am curious how this plays out for Frank Guinta, who clearly needs the NRCC's help, and who - very clearly - has expressed his desire for the abolition of America's most trusted safety net for seniors:
Will Frank Guinta sign on as co-sponsor to the Sessions bill? After all, when he debated Carol Shea-Porter on the issue last fall, he flailed around in the absence of a plan. Session's bill to destroy the "Social" part to Social Security is a plan right up his alley.
Adding: an eagle-eyed reader alerts me to the dangers already lurking (.pdf) in the Ryan plan on Social Security. So one way or another, the push to dismantling the middle class is on.
Patrick Hynes, paid consultant for Tim Pawlenty's presidential run, tried to tie Carol Shea-Porter to Anthony Weiner today on the right-wing website New Hampshire Journal (emphasis mine):
Before she was voted out of the first Congressional district in 2010 elections Rep. Carol Shea-Porter formed the self-styled "Middle Class Working Group" with Weiner and the two reportedly were good friends in Washington.
Patrick Hynes has a history of unsourced online attacks in New Hampshire. Two of the top ten bogus hit pieces against Carol Shea-Porter, for example, are from him, while another two are connected to him. He's even earned enemies on the right: Skip from GraniteGrok called him the "master of dirty tricks."
Of course, this guilt by association nonsense is exactly that, nonsense. But given the lack of credibility of Hynes' past attacks on Shea-Porter, I thought I would reach out to her anyway for an on-the-record comment as to whether there was any truth to the allegations that she and Weiner were "good friends."
Carol responded simply "No, not true. Never socialized."
I think the takeaway from all this is that the right is (correctly) worried about Frank Guinta's re-election prospects now that he's voted to end Medicare, and so any distraction, however untrue, is going to be pounced on.
UPDATE: Hynes follows up with plenty of vapor, yet unable to prove claim that Shea-Porter and Weiner "were good friends."
Frank Guinta, who voted to end Medicare in 2011, in 2010:
What I see going on in Washington today disturbs me.... We have a new health care bill that takes billions from Medicare for our seniors
Charlie Bass, who voted to end Medicare in 2011, in 2010:
"Unlike Annie Kuster, I will fight for New Hampshire's seniors. We need to repeal 'Obamacare' and replace it with common-sense healthcare reforms that will lower healthcare costs, improve the quality of care, increase coverage and do so without forcing senior citizens to lose their coverage,"
Kelly Ayotte, who voted to end Medicare in 2011, in 2010:
Traveling up and down our state, New Hampshire citizens tell me every day that they don't want a federal takeover of health care... Seniors and those headed for retirement are worried about the bill's Medicare cuts.
Ever wonder why government often seems so slow to respond to the needs of We the People, despite who's in charge?
Here's one fundamental reason, perhaps THE reason:
In an election year where more congressional incumbents were ousted from power than any time since 1948, political action committees were quick to switch allegiances from one party to the other in the aftermath of the historic Democratic losses.
A total of 352 PACs in 53 U.S. House races and two U.S. Senate races gave money to incumbents prior to Election Day only to begin funding the winning challengers immediately after their preferred candidates went down to defeat, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.
That's double the number of PACs that flipped support following the 2008 election.
Ever wonder why Carol Shea-Porter seemed so different from (big) business as usual in Washington?
New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District, where Republican Frank Guinta defeated Democratic incumbent Carol Shea-Porter, ranks as the only House district where an incumbent was unseated where no PAC that supported Shea-Porter has since invested in Guinta, according to the Center's research.
There is a simple reason behind that remarkable fact: Carol Shea-Porter did not accept business PAC money, and so the list of Telecoms, Banksters, and Military Industrial bigwigs that so shamelessly pump money into other officeholders didn't get a space at the front of the line instead of you. "For the rest of us" was no empty slogan.
Too bad one half of New Hampshire is now represented by Frank Guinta, who gladly takes business PAC money like the rest of the Washington establishment.
Done right, this information could be the basis for a remarkably effective 30-second TeeVee ad.
Candidate Frank Guinta said some version of this repeatedly throughout the 2010 campaign:
The federal govt needs to first underatnd it does not create jobs. It can only create a better environment for our job creators. Rather than pick winners and losers, we should focus on strengthening the economy as a whole.
Member of the federal government Frank Guinta recently chose to pick winners and losers. The winners were multi-national oil giants. The losers, any of us who pay taxes and care about the deficit. The right-wing Fosters editorial board explains:
Sometimes even the best among us get tunnel vision. So it is with Republican members of the New Hampshire congressional delegation when it comes to not eliminating billions of dollars in annual subsidies to Big Oil.
...Subsidies distort the market. They lead to artificial pricing levels often overriding the laws supply and demand.
...Artificial supports, whether for oil, ethanol, tobacco, milk, corn or other grains- either through direct payments or tax breaks - turn control of pricing over to the government. This in turn takes control out of the hands of consumers.
Why won't Frank Guinta let the free markets work on their own without interference from Big Government?
UPDATE: Think Progress has video of a town hall audience not buying Guinta's lame excuses for giving our tax money to oil companies.
In light of multiple bi-partisan complaints filed with the FEC, Frank Guinta was asked at his town hall last night to produce a simple copy of a bank statement to back up claims that $355,000 that went to his campaign was his (despite logic and common sense saying otherwise).
Guinta responded (partial transcription my own):
"The ethics committee cleared it up. They said they reviewed my FEC reports. They gave it a clean bill of health. This was back in December."
This is as dishonest as the day is long.
Yes, it was back in December when Guinta began parading around a form letter everyone gets from the FEC a House committee as phony "proof" that he is in the clear. Even DiStaso wouldn't carry that water:
The e-mail received by the Guinta camp this week is not specifically in response to the complaint the Democrats filed with the House, but is instead the result of a standard review the ethics committees does of all House members.
Frank Guinta's dishonesty here goes even deeper, as it was also in December that this happened:
The Federal Elections Commission has taken a preliminary step toward investigating U.S. Rep.-elect Frank Guinta's personal finances.
The commission this week told state Democratic Party director Mike Brunelle that it has assigned a case number to his complaint and that Guinta will have 15 days to respond once he is notified.
In no way has anyone "cleared it up" in regard to Frank Guinta's mystery money. Indeed, he has spent the past five months with the possibility of an FEC investigation - with subpoena power - hanging over his head.
(Not to mention the complaint filed with the Clerk of Congress and a request by the NHDP to a US Attorney General to investigate.)
Frank Guinta is so scared about his vote to destroy Medicare he went begging for mercy to the President of the United States. Not to be outdone, Charlie Bass suspends reality by claiming a voucher is not a voucher.
What are these men so frightened of? Mothers.
Carol Shea-Porter, (campaign email):
I spent Mother's Day with my 87 year-old mom. I told her how lucky I was to still have her, and asked her if she was surprised by how long she has lived. She laughed and replied that she never expected to live this long. My mother's generation clearly benefited from the best medical care in our history, thanks to Medicare. Medicare works!
Annie Kuster (op-ed):
My 87-year-old mother-in-law lives on her own in a small apartment on a widow's pension and her Social Security. A few weeks ago, she was hospitalized for a few days with pneumonia, and her hospital stay was covered by Medicare.
In 2008, more than 200,000 people in our state received benefits from Medicare, which is why I am so disturbed that our congressman and his colleagues voted to jeopardize the health and well being of future retirees.
Making matters worse for Guinta and Bass, Sununu's old Social Security privatization pal Paul Ryan is going to try, try again this week to convince Americans 54 and younger that getting rid of an extremely popular program that we have all paid into in some cases for three decades plus should be scrapped in favor of vouchers we are not allowed to call vouchers.
>140 on birch paper; on twitter <140
This is just sad: Frank Guinta is so thrown off his game by the negative public reaction to his vote to abolish Medicare that he and the other frosh GOPers signed a letter to Obama hoping for a truce of some kind, in which he confesses not being straight with voters on big topics. From the letter:
We have all been guilty, at one time or another, of playing politics with key issues facing our country.
I also have a confession to make: while living in a bubble is the perennial downfall of many a pol, I still don't understand why it took this crew this long to figure out that they were signing onto an electoral albatross when they voted to end Medicare.
How can they not see that someone in Manchester who has been paying into a health insurance system for three decades plus would be really, really upset to learn that Frank Guinta voted to make those contributions meaningless? How did he not get that this looks and feels like theft?
James Pindell is reporting (paywalled) Joanne Dodell has filed paperwork for a run in NH-01 setting up a primary race with Carol Shea-Porter. No others Dems have filed though our first straw poll some support for Mark Connolly in that race as well.
The people of the first district will be well served by either of these fine people, and a well run primary will be accreditive to the process and increase our chances of winning the seat back from Frank Guinta.
(First polls coming Friday, Get your nominations in. - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
I am going to put three comments in this thread to allow folks to nominate names we should include in straw polling for Gov, NH-01, and NH-02.
Governor Lynch is polling strongly and could be considering a historic 5th term, but for the sake of this polling we'll assume he is not.
Ann Kuster has announced (much to the relief of folks like me who have not removed their bumper stickers!) that she will run again in NH-02, but are there any other folks we should poll there?
NH-01 could be very interesting with Guinta's weak numbers (-7 favorability) and an open Dem seat. Whom should we poll for that race?
Please let us know who we should include. Wannabees get your mail lists ready!
The following is a guest post, send to me by reader "Seacoast Witness":
Guinta by the Numbers: 3 months in Congress, 4 weeks in the District, only 2 town meetings
With reduced time in session compared to when Democrats were in the majority and 4 weeks in the District since January, our part-time congressman can't manage to find the time to travel the District and meet his constituents in public town meetings more than twice in 3 months. Instead he forces his constituents to come to him from all over. Who pays his salary? (That would be us, his constituents, the taxpayers.) He should be coming to us, his employers, not the other way around. For comparison's sake, Carol Shea-Porter had 11 public town meetings all over the District between Jan. and April 2010, and that was with far more time in session and fewer weeks in the District. (This Congress is scheduled to be in session NINE WEEKS fewer than the first session in 2007, the year that the majority shifted to the Democrats.)
As for the town meeting itself, what a farce! What a fiasco!
Frank Guinta, our stealth congressman, was almost a half hour late. The email invitation said the event would start at 6:30 and last 90 minutes. He arrived around 6:50 and the event started at almost 7pm. He took up 10 min talking about himself and saying almost nothing about the issues. He stopped taking public questions after about an hour well under 90 minutes. There were about 150 or so people there, mostly pro-Guinta and/or tea party. Though the audience was heavily tea party, not all of them were thrilled with Guinta. They wanted him even more extreme!
The reason I say fiasco: Guinta managed to rig the question process! He did this by using the sign-in sheet as a question sheet. People had to sign their names and note what question they wanted to ask. So if you didn't sign in, you couldn't ask a question. In other words, you couldn't ask a question unless you signed in. No one told us this new rule as we walked in and no one ever announced it at any time, nor was there a sign indicating it. Bradley never did it this way and neither did Carol so this change should have been made clear. Had I realized that a sign-in was necessary and signed up, I and my friend would have been on the first half of the first sheet (since we were early) and might have been able to ask our questions.
But then again, maybe not.
A staffer called out names and the associated questions from the sign-in sheet, and the mike was then given to the questioner. I don't know what order the names were read in - the process was not transparent. For all anyone knew, she could have been cherry-picking the questions (perhaps based on the friendliness/easiness of the question). That's how it turned out. A friend of mine who was one of the first ones there told me he signed in and wrote down his question. He was near the top of the first sign-in sheet. But his name was never called. As I said, things were rigged through and through. Guinta has made a mockery of what a town meeting is supposed to be.
Someone told me he saw 5 filled sheets. She only got to the first sheet, as far as could see, but I couldn't swear to that, since she did skip around.
As is usual, almost all people who signed in were supporters. The woman near me kept muttering under her breath "shut it [the government] down, just shut it down." And then there was another guy before the meeting started - a birther who had pretty much sanctified Glenn Beck and was viciously attacking the President.
Only a handful of people were able to ask questions from the progressive side of things. They asked about jobs, lack of Republican action on jobs, offshoring of jobs, and loss of manufacturing in NH. His answers were pathetic - they can be summed up as "cut and duck" - "cut the budget and duck the question." I was happy to see him snared by the Rural Water Assoc. people, who actually got to ask a question. They have EPA funding that is endangered (by him and his ilk) and apparently they've been harassing him about it. I hope they keep at it because rural NH absolutely needs that money.
His answers on the deficit were slick, but misleading and incomplete. As everyone knows, there are two sides to a budget, revenue and spending. Talking about only half of the task - cutting spending - will not get the job done. It will only harm the vulnerable. The other half is to beef up revenue. Those unsustainable Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should NOT have been extended, and tax loopholes should be closed. Corporations should be paying taxes (around 2/3 pay nothing at all - including companies like GE, which is very profitable. The government is short of money and running up deficits because less revenue is being collected. A LOT less. Here's a piece by David Cay Johnston on how much less:
Breaking News: Tax Revenues Plummeted
Federal tax revenues in 2010 were much smaller than in 2000. Total individual income tax receipts fell 30 percent in real terms. Because the population kept growing, income taxes per capita plummeted.
Individual income taxes came to just $2,900 per capita in 2010, down 36 percent from more than $4,500 in 2000. Total income taxes and income taxes per capita declined even though the economy grew 16 percent overall and 6 percent per capita from 2000 through 2010.
Corporate income tax receipts fell 27 percent and declined 34 percent per capita, even though profits boomed, rising 60 percent.
...You read it here first. Lowered tax rates did not result in increased tax revenues as promised by politician after pundit after professional economist. And even though this harsh truth has been obvious from the official data for some time, the same politicians and pundits keep prevaricating. Some of them even say it is irrelevant that as a share of GDP, income tax revenues are at their lowest level since 1951, when Harry S. Truman was president. ...
The revenue table, compiled from Medicare tax database and Census.gov is here.
Back to the Guinta town hall. Toward the end, people finally caught on that there would be no questions from the floor, only from the sign-in sheets, and of course not everyone had signed in. On a guess, half or less had signed in. People started calling out, "When will you take questions from the floor?" And the staffer who was handling the mike and the sheet (the one cherry-picking the questions), said, "We'll try to take some from the floor at the end." But I saw the sheet and it was full, and I know that you never get beyond 15 questions in a town meeting, so the sheet questions had it locked up.
Eventually some of the other frustrated people called out - why aren't you having more town meetings, and that unleashed a brief storm. I and others pointed out that he had had 4 weeks in the District so far but only 2 town meetings and that both his predecessors had many more meetings. He just blew it off with smooth statements on how accessible he is (???). I think the people who were blown off knew garbage when they heard it. I certainly did. This is the Fox "News" way to rebut a point - just lie with confidence and rely on people being too bamboozled by the smooth talk to put two and two together.
But the facts are these, and they don't lie - a light voting schedule, 4 weeks in the District over 3 months, and only 2 public town meetings. That is paltry and insufficient. That is the very definition of inaccessible. So we get a part-time congressman who gets full-time pay - from us, and doesn't even use that extra time for town meetings.
Some press was there - the Boston Globe, NPR, James Pindell (briefly - he disappeared after a half hour - but then Guinta was late). There may have been others that I didn't notice.
Someone who spoke to Guinta afterwards told me she complained about the rigged process and he denied knowing anything about it. Give me a break! Someone instructed the clipboard person to do it that way. Either Guinta isn't really running his office and is letting staff make important constituent contact decisions, or he is running his office and he thought up or approved the new sign-up-to-ask-a-question-and-duck-the hard-ones requirement. So which is it? Incompetent or devious? Whatever it is, he is responsible for the new intrusive, rigged process and for everything his office does.
Seacoast Witness
Alex P. Keaton, the self-centered, clean-cut, overachieving young sharpie played by Michael J. Fox on Family Ties is - figuratively speaking - going to Washington.
If Keaton were real, he would be 45, which makes him a classic member of Generation X, that cohort born between 1964 and 1980. Alternately known as "slackers," this crowd - my crowd, for I was born in 1967 and fully identify with the Gen-X label - has been slow to make its mark in politics.
...No, most of these newcomers are Alex P. Keaton types - longtime, dedicated Republican activists, attaining the next stage of their political careers. Frank Guinta of New Hampshire, for instance...
I remember this article vividly, because it drove me nuts to think that my generation could be described thus, instead of what I most vividly recall - a Gen-X that intuitively undertook to counterculture thanks to being raised under the shadow of Ronald Reagan, who to this day stands out to me as the phoniest of all the presidents in my time.
Apparently Frank Guinta remembered the article too. Today's LA Times:
"People joked that I was an Alex P. Keaton when I was a kid," said New Hampshire Rep. Frank Guinta, 40, referencing Michael J. Fox's briefcase-toting young Republican character in the 1980s sitcom "Family Ties." "I was reading the Wall Street Journal at a young age. I was engaged in the markets."
Oh, well that can be explained away, right? Guinta must have fed Bernstein that reference for the November story? Wrong. Here's Bernstein, today:
As it happens, I tried to interview Guinta for that article; his staff was terrifically helpful, but ultimately couldn't make it happen during that busy post-election flurry. But I know they saw the article, and they told me he enjoyed it.
And we're supposed to believe Guinta about the mystery money? Please.
In 1953, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "If the lady from Toledo can be required to disclose what she read yesterday and what she will read tomorrow, fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, bookstores, and homes of the land."
Yet that's just what a controversial provision from the Bush-era Patriot Act allows the federal government to do.
"Being a member of congress today shouldn't be about bringing money back to your community or your state or your district. It needs to be about how do we get our economy back on track, how do we put ourselves in financial and fiscal control again. That means all of this spending has to stop."
The reality:
Tea Party freshmen in Congress are siding with President Obama and gunning to eliminate $225 million from a House budget for General Electric’s backup engine for the Joint Strike Fighter program, a key test of Republican pledges to purge waste and earmarks.
A few GOP freshmen support the GE engine. Frank Guinta, a New Hampshire Republican elected with help from Tea Party activists, said he was a “strong supporter’’ of GE’s engine because of the jobs in his district.
Nearly a dozen freshmen lawmakers in the House begin the 2012 election cycle with more than $200,000 in debt left over from their 2010 campaigns.
For members likely to face tough reelection races next year, getting out from under that debt quickly will be a key early test of their viability.
...
A slew of other freshmen lawmakers also reported sizable debt entirely in the form of personal loans. Reps. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.), David McKinley (R-W.Va.), Scott Rigell (R-Va.), Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) and Diane Black (R-Tenn.) all owe themselves more than $375,000.
Owe "themselves"? Twenty grand is "sizable debt" in a federal campaign?
In other news, Rep. Guinta recently admitted that there is an FEC investigation about $355,000 of mystery money that logic and common sense indicate can't have come from him.
Tea Party astroturfer-in-chief and "polluter billionaire" David Koch demands fealty from Frank Guinta on the first day he is charged with representing the people of New Hampshire:
After the ceremony, David Koch walked up to Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) - a freshman Republican Koch helped to elect using his front group, Americans for Prosperity - and asked him to confirm that he will be attending a party that Koch is hosting for Republicans. Guinta said he would be at the party, which began at 5:00pm today.
There is something deeply symbolic about this anecdote, occurring today of all days, between the plutocrat and his patron.
Roll Call has the DCCC's target list for 2010. Out of all those hundreds of GOPers in the incoming House, they are starting out with a mere 32 of the most vulnerable, based on their winning percentage to Obama's 2008 percentage in their district. Guess who made the list?
Member or Representative-elect/2010 winning percentage/Obama 2008 percentage:
Charlie Bass (N.H.)/48/56
Frank Guinta (N.H.)/54/53
Annie Kuster lost by a few thousand votes in an awful year.
Running for federal office is a huge undertaking, especially when you show the kind of hustle that Kuster did. That said, I hope she will think about it for 2012. The voting demographics and the incoming presidential cycle are hugely in Annie's favor. Not to mention that the kind of campaign she ran is right in line with the people of her district.
In the first CD, the numbers indicate a classic swing district (big surprise). Considering Frank Guinta's unresolved mystery money issues, and the presidential cycle, it's no wonder the forces of misinformation are already trying to kneecap a rematch with Carol Shea-Porter.
Susan already covered this, but a follow-up article from Roll Call really underscores the point.
While VPOTUS Wannabe T-Paw basically tried to purchase the entire state house, the only person POTUS Wannabe Sarah Palin really cared about in New Hampshire after her endorsement of Kelly Ayotte was Frank Guinta.
While media attention to Frank Guinta's mystery bank account scandal began in August, it wasn't until NHPR's investigation on October 12th that it really reached its height during the campaign season, especially as it was followed up by a segment on WMUR on the 13th. I remember this distinctly as it was the first time my non-politically obsessed friends asked me about it, which in turn told me it had finally broken through
Sarah Palin chose to help out Frank Guinta, and no other Granite State Republicans, on October 14th or after.
Besides being the recipient of Sarah Palin's largesse, Frank Guinta has since the election also distinguished himself in the national press as one of four congressional Republicans entering DC with pre-existing campaign ethics scandals.
Shea-Porter told Roll Call last week that she is considering another bid. And the New Hampshire Democratic Party said Kuster has already decided to run again.
