KC Buzz Blog

State of the Union - the day after

   Sen. Claire McCaskill sat down with the Missouri media contingent encamped along the Potomac to hash over the president's State of the Union speech. She gave him credit for raising the issue of how to help the more than 40 million Americans without health insurance. But she didn't like his solution.

    President Bush basically wants to tax the middle class by allowing families to deduct $15,000 a year to cover the costs of their health insurance. That tax break would be paid for by taxing the difference between the $15,000 and the actual costs of the insurance.

    "It's another example of where the president continues to beat the drum to make tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans permanent, while he's proposing another hit on the same folks who are struggling with higher college tuition and struggling with higher energy costs, struggling with other financial realities," McCaskill said.

    She said a better idea would be tax incentives for businesses to encourage them to pool their risks and offer coverage to broader number of employees. People with catastrophic health problems are "really going to get hurt here because they're not going to have access to large risk pools," she said.

    Bush's plan would also "chase people to the private markets where the companies are going to be able to cream off the low- risk," she said, leaving high-risk people in trouble.

   On Iraq, McCaskill said that expectations for Gen. David Petraeus, slated to become the war's top commander, were too high and "unfair."

    "Because he's got a great reputation, everyone is very hopeful that somehow he's going to go over there and single-handedly turn things around," she said. "If the Iraqi government is somehow unwilling to unable stand up and help, this will not work."

    McCaskill opposes the escalation and said she won't back a resolution against it if it calls for defense cuts because that could hurt troops already in the field.

    "How do I talk about the lack of body armour...and then turn around and cut money?" she said. "We need to make sure (the troops) have everything they need...But it's going to be a remarkable accomplishment if we pass a resolution rejecting President Bush and what's he's doing in Iraq that gets a lot more votes than just Democrats. And I think that's going to happen...There are questions being asked now."

Posted by David Goldstein

Remember the first day of kindergarten?

   Apparently that's kind of like the seating chart for a president's State of the Union speech. A wild scramble ensued last night and seniority does have its perks.(Apparently the "good" aisle seats to be able to glad-hand on national teeevee the president as he walks in and out of the House Chambers require staking 'em out 12 hours or so beforehand.)

   One of those on the aisle was Sen. Kit Bond, who was next to Penn. Sen. Arlen Specter on the Republican side. His bipartisan display was a blue paisley tie.

  On the Democratic aisle side no, that wasn't Congresman Emanuel Cleaver mauling President Bush last night and saying he was going to pray for him. That was his near twin, Rep. Sanford Bishop.

   A spokesman for Cleaver said Cleaver sat dead center in the Democratic side of the House chambers. Cleaver grabbed a salad beforehand and got to the chambers early. He said he couldn't imagine the pressure the president faced last night.

   Afterward, as Cleaver was on the telephone doing an interview with KCUR-FM, he waved at Sen. Claire McCaskill as she prepared to do an interview with KMBC.

   During the speech, McCaskill was several rows back from Sen. Hillary Clinton, which got her on television a bit. But apparently even closer to her and thus getting more camera time was Congressman Dennis Moore, who is today on The New York Times Web site thanks to this picture.

  He may be in the minority now, but Rep. Roy Blunt was one of the first to make his way to Bush after the speech. Cameras caught him broadly smiling his accolades to Bush. Right behind Blunt, but not seeking Bush out for any back slapping would be Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, who blamed Bush in part for him losing the title of majority leader. Lott was smiling jovially to everyone else on his way out.

   Getting the biggest post-speech interview from our neck of the woods was McCaskill who charmed MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. (Check it out here). She was rewarded with almost 10 minutes of airtime, a lifetime by teevee standards. The best part of the interview was when she joked about the difficulties in knowing when to stand and clap and when to sit stoically.

   "It's a mess!" she joked, adding it was "silly" the whole "game" about when to stand up.

Posted by DeAnn Smith

Stop the presses: McCaskill to talk

   The headline from a news release today from U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill:

"McCaskill Delivers Remarks Before and After the State of the Union Addrerss."

   Knowing the senator, she'll be commenting during the address as well.

Posted by Steve Kraske

McCaskill, other women senators on ABC

   U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri recently joined the other 15 female senators for an official portrait of the record 16 women senators.

   Take a look at it here.

   McCaskill and the group will appear tomorrow and Thursday on ABC's Good Morning America to discuss the historic number of women senators and what they aim to accomplish.

•    On Wednesday, the group is to appear, briefly, between 7-7:30 a.m.
•    On Thursday, the group will appear in a longer piece between 8-8:30 a.m.

    Facts you've got to know:

• The first woman senator was Rebecca Latimer Felton in 1922. She was appointed to fill a two-day vacancy.
• Prior to 1992, there were never more than two women senators at the same time.
• The current dean of the women senators is Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland. She was elected in 1986.
• McCaskill is this country's 34th woman senator.

Posted by Steve Kraske

McCaskill takes the gavel

   A senator for less than a week, and Claire McCaskill already is presiding over the place.

   The freshman will lead the chamber from 1:15 to 3 today, her office said this morning. You may be able to catch it on C-Span II.

   Look for a picture of her with gavel in hand in her next fund-raising appeal.

Posted by Steve Kraske

Enjoy the easy ones

    Every Senate vote should be this easy. Claire McCaskill cast her first vote as a United States senator today and there was no need to weigh the pros and cons. She and her new colleagues unanimously approved a resolution to honor the late former President Ford.

     "It was exciting just to walk in there and hang out and talk with the other senators," she said afterward.

Posted by David Goldstein

I hate to sound like a wimp on my first day

    Thus sayeth Senator Claire McCaskill this morning when dodging NBC's David Gregory's question about how New York Sen. Hillary Clinton versus Illinois Sen. Barak Obama would fare in the Missouri presidential primary next year. Gregory grilled McCaskill on MSNBC about Iraq (she said she needed to know more about the mission of the troop "surge" but sounded doubtful about supporting it) and ethics reform. She was wearing a primarily white jacket with dark trim and pearls.

    She also did an interview on CNN. Here's part of her interview from a transcript via Nexis.com regarding Iraq and President Bush.

   "It doesn't appear that he has ever really opened up the process of the decision-making in Iraq to beyond a circle of one or two people. And I think the problem we've got with the surge that he's calling for is that we don't have a mission. How do we put more precious lives in peril without having a clearly defined mission as to what they're actually supposed to be accomplishing there. And until we hear that kind of plan, until we understand what it is they're trying to do, I for one am going to reserve judgment as to whether this is a good idea, and frankly, I'm leaning toward thinking it's a very bad idea."

Posted by DeAnn Smith

McCaskill looking for way to repay mega loan

   Remember that $1.6 million loan that Claire McCaskill lent her campaign for governor in 2004?

   Turns out she's now trying to repay it by seeking an exemption from federal rules. That apparently would allow her to generate unlimited donations, thanks to a new Missouri law that removed campaign limits for state races, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reports.

   Missouri Republicans and a congressional watchdog group are having a field day with this, saying McCaskill should live by federal rules aimed at discouraging influence peddling.

   "Once Claire McCaskill becomes a U.S. senator, there's going to be a million people who want to curry favor with her," Gary Ruskin, executive director of the Congressional Accountability Project, told the P-D.

Posted by Steve Kraske 

McCaskill's big family adventure is also KC's political adventure

    Mayor Kay Barnes is there. Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders is there. Ditto for political mastermind Steve Glorioso and Democratic stalwart Dutch Newman. In fact, the question is who in KC/JaCo politics isn't in DC now for favorite daughter Claire McCaskill's senatorial swearing in? And who is left behind minding the store?

Posted by DeAnn Smith

The McCaskill family's big adventure

    "This could get ugly," Claire McCaskill said.

    But she was smiling. The day before her swearing-in, Missouri's new senator-elect was trying to herd her massive, blended family from her temporary digs inside D.C.s' Hart Senate Office Building - the end of the hall, past the ladies room, next to the stairwell - from the eighth floor to the basement. There they took the  underground train for the short trip to the Capitol for a tour.

   They numbered 32 in all, ranging in age from 8-month-old step-grandchild Issac, to 78-year-old mom Betty Anne. In between were waves of children, step-children, cousins, aunts, uncles and sisters, brother-in-laws and other relationships too complicated to sort out.

    "She's my wife's aunt's sister," said Peter Moroh, a Chicago lawyer there with his wife and twin 9-year-old boys.

    The entourage moved down the historic corridors in a big, cheery clump.

    "It reminds me of The Griswolds Go to Washington," said McCaskill's sister Anne Moroh, likening their family's Capitol tour to the mapcap misadventures in the National Lampoon "Vacation" films.

     The Capitol guards were patient. They'd seen this kind of controlled mayhem before. They even let all 32 of them onto the Senate floor, but barred the door to anyone with a press badge, if you can believe it.

    "The Senate's going to be easy after these two days," McCaskill said.

Posted by David Goldstein