Your vote:

No votes yet

Norm's newsletter: February

After spending the majority of January meeting with Minnesotans from all across the state, I returned to Washington this month reinvigorated, with a fresh outlook on the state’s needs and priorities. From easing the financial burden of travel on our servicemembers and veterans, to helping Minnesota counties continue to provide vital Medicaid services for the state’s most vulnerable, to passing legislation to provide a boost to our struggling economy, I continued to fight hard throughout the month of February to protect the interests of Minnesotans from all walks of life.

As Minnesota’s Mayor in Washington, my priority is to get things done for the people of Minnesota. I invite you to read my newsletter for the month of February to learn more about what I’ve been doing in both Minnesota and Washington. Please feel free to contact me or my staff concerning these or other issues. Also, you can find more information by visiting my website at www.coleman.senate.gov.

---

Responsible Reimbursement for our Servicemembers and Veterans
In Minnesota alone, we have nearly 5,000 Guard members who drive more than 50 miles for drill, with some driving as far as 450 miles without adequate travel compensation. Similarly, Minnesota veterans routinely travel great distances – in some cases hundreds of miles – for a visit to the nearest veteran’s hospital. Unfortunately, current policy does not reimburse Guard members for their travel at all and, despite a recent increase for travel for medical care, veterans remain woefully under-reimbursed for their mileage costs. In order to address both of these issues, I recently introduced the Citizen Soldier and Military Veteran Travel Reimbursement Act with Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). This bill will increase the reimbursement rate from 28.5 cents per mile to 48.5 cents per mile – the current rate for government employees – and eliminate the costly deductible veterans pay for their travel reimbursements. And, for the first time, Guard members will be eligible for the same travel reimbursement when traveling to drill. This builds upon the progress we made last year in the Defense Authorization bill to increase the mileage reimbursement rate from a mere 11 cents per mile to 28.5 cents per mile for veterans traveling to VA hospitals, which was the first increase since 1977 when the average price of gasoline was about 60 cents per gallon.

Helping Minnesotans Weather the Economic Storm
In the past few weeks, I held local economic listening sessions in all corners of Minnesota—from down in Rochester up to Moorhead and over to Duluth. From the housing crisis and the credit crunch to rising healthcare and energy costs, it is clear Minnesotans are feeling the impact of our nation’s slowing economy. Congress and the White House were able to come together this month to pass and sign into law a bipartisan stimulus package that will provide a much-needed confidence boost to our economy by putting money back into the pockets of hardworking middle class families in the form of tax rebates and offering critical pro-growth incentives for businesses. I’m particularly pleased the bill includes relief for 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans, while ensuring illegal aliens will not get tax rebates.

And while the stimulus should help folks in the short-term, going forward I fully recognize that helping ensure Minnesotans’ economic well-being is also about addressing healthcare and energy costs, as well as making sure we do not hit Minnesota families and small businesses with major tax hikes in three short years. For the sake of long-term economic growth and the financial well-being of Minnesotans, it is critical that we make tax relief permanent – without it, a family of four making $50,000 will see their taxes increase by an average of $2,155.

Shedding Light on Medicare Tax Cheats
Continuing my fight to expose the waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars, I initiated an investigation into Medicare practitioners who cheat our tax system. We found that more than 21,000 doctors who receive Medicare payments owed more than $1.3 billion in federal taxes during the first nine months of 2005 alone. The federal government, however, is unable to recoup these taxes because the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) does not take part in the Federal Payment Levy Program (FPLP) – the program that identifies tax delinquents and withholds a percentage of the federal payment until tax debt is repaid. Had CMS participated in FPLP in 2005, it is estimated that between $50 million and $140 million in unpaid federal taxes could have been collected.

To recover these taxes, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and I introduced legislation to fold CMS into the Federal Payment Levy Program. To date, the measure has received wide bipartisan support, with the House recently passing similar legislation. Additionally, the President has recognized the importance of protecting taxpayer dollars by incorporating our legislation into his budget proposal. It is imperative that we keep deadbeat tax evaders from fleecing the system, and I will continue working to ensure this proposal becomes law.

Cyber-Security: Preventing Identity Theft
After the 2006 Department of Veteran’s Affairs security breach that put millions of veteran’s personal information at risk, I requested the Government Accountability Office to conduct a government-wide review of current cyber-security policies and practices. That report was concluded this month, and it revealed that most government agencies have not employed key recommendations to prevent jeopardizing Americans’ most sensitive personal information, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers and biometric records. In response, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and I sent a letter to all 24 federal agencies requesting a timeline of when they will meet the recommendations put in place for increased cyber-security. The longer these agencies wait, the longer people’s private information remains at risk. The federal government must act now so that the proper protections are in place to stop the numerous data breaches we have seen over the past few years.

Improving Higher Education Costs and Opportunity
Since taking office, I have been working to ensure that all Minnesotans have access to a quality education, regardless of financial status. Along with working to increase Pell Grant funding, I have been fighting to address additional college costs that are often overlooked, yet still significant. One such cost is the rising price of college textbooks, and I’m pleased to report that the College Textbook Affordability Act, a bill I introduced last year with Senator ****** Durbin (D-IL), was recently included in the higher education funding bill that is near approval in Congress. This bill will require publishers to disclose the retail price and the history of revisions of the textbook to educators before a book is chosen, and ensures that students have complete information about course textbook requirements before the beginning of their term. It would also require materials that are currently sold in a bundle to also be sold separately, so students aren’t forced to purchase supplementary materials they may not need.

In addition to making textbooks cheaper, I have also been working to break down the barriers that hold many students back from studying abroad – an incomparable opportunity that enriches their educational experience and benefits our international relations, national security, and global economic competitiveness. This month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed my and Senator Durbin’s legislation to create the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation. This bipartisan bill seeks to encourage one million American undergraduate students per year to study abroad within the next ten years by authorizing $80 million for grants to individual students, colleges and universities, and nongovernmental institutions that expand study abroad opportunities. Study abroad programs change lives and perceptions of the world, and it will be important in an increasingly global economy to make study aboard opportunities more accessible.

Protecting Access to Vital Health Services
The Senate passed the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act this month, which contained an amendment I authored to protect vulnerable Minnesotans’ access to crucial Medicaid services. Cosponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), this provision protects the elderly, disabled and foster children’s access to needed medical, social and educational services by placing a one-year moratorium on a government rule that would redefine and place strict limits on these services for vulnerable populations. The rule change was originally slated to take effect at the beginning of March this year, but the one-year moratorium will provide more time to develop a new regulation that protects our most vulnerable Medicaid beneficiaries.

This is an issue I have heard much about from county officials across Minnesota. It’s important to note that our state has always managed its Medicaid dollars effectively, so it would be unfair to punish those Minnesotans who need help because of mismanagement in other states. With only a week left to get this legislation signed into law, I am concerned that time is running out. It is my hope that the overwhelming support of this amendment will signal that the Senate will not tolerate such drastic, harmful cuts to programs that aid the sickest of the sick and poorest of the poor. I will continue to look for every possible opportunity to delay or rescind this shortsighted rule.