A Day On The Hill With Partisan Kline

Republican Congressman John Kline from Minnesota had a busy day on Friday, June 16, 2007….a busy partisan day that included supporting amendments from the following five Republicans and voting against the lone democratic amendment...

• Rogers of Kentucky

No congressman has single-handedly put America at greater risk than Rogers. As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security, he has placed the interests of his own district ahead of defending the nation from Al Qaeda, prompting even the archconservative National Review to call him a "congressional disgrace."

• Musgrave of Colorado

Musgrave has made regulating the bedroom behavior of her fellow Americans the focus of her entire career. An evangelical Christian who married her Bible-camp sweetheart, Musgrave does not believe in the separation of church and state. Her three years running KKK endorsement says it all.

• Garrett of New Jersey

Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-5) claims to be a mainstream Republican. But on the record, he is one of the most radical of the right-wing zealots in the U.S. House of Representatives. Scott Garrett is the Christian Coalition’s poster-boy in New Jersey. Garrett has voted against the entire New Jersey Congressional delegation - Republicans and Democrats - an astounding 43 times! His positions are so extreme that he doesn't publish his votes on his own website

• Moran of Kansas

From GOP auction house: Rep. Moran voted against cracking down on the oil and gas industries price gouging. Rep. Moran voted for the GOP energy bill that gave billions to oil, gas and nuclear industries. Big oil and gas industries have given Rep. Moran $167,495. Any surprise?

• Price of Georgia

Used Veterans as a cover story to duck out of a debate

• Hayes of North Carolina

While in office there have been 30,000 jobs lost in his state.

Kline voted against Blumenauer of Oregon...a Democrat...

Next time Kline tells you he's bi-partisan centralist, ask him for the facts:

• Kline voted with President Bush 94% of the time.
• Kline voted the GOP party line 98% of the time.

Kline Tells Us: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

While U.S. Rep. John Kline (R-MN) is busy trying to pass a law that limits what injured patients can collect to under $250,000, he has taken more $250,000 from Pharmaceuticals, Health Products and Insurance companies while in office!

Once more U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., is doing the bidding of big corporations. Much like the ‘Blue Skies Initiative’ , the 'Help, Efficient, Accessible, Low-cost, Timely Healthcare Act', (HEALTH) is also a misnomer. Contrary to what Kline claims, the Act doesn't help, make healthcare lower-cost, more accessible, efficient or stop booming insurance profits or it’s price gouging of doctors.


Medical malpractice laws differ from state to state, they all fall into the category of tort law. A tort is “a wrongful act…that results in injury to another per­son, property, reputation, or the like, and for which the injured party is entitled to compensation. What Kline is proposing with the HEALTH Act is to eliminate your right of making the medical community accountable for it actions.

Several states have caps on medical awards (including Texas), States with jury award caps haven’t seen lower premiums and instead like most other states their rates have risen. There's simply no correlation between lawsuits and insurance rates. Rather, insurance rates are tied to the climate of the stock and bond market, where insurance companies invest much of their money.

Medical mistakes not medical lawsuits are the key problem. Limiting awards does not make healthcare ‘more efficient, accessible, low-cost, or timely’ as Kline would have you believe. The problem with medical malpractice is that it occurs far too often. It is the eighth leading cause of death in America, killing more people than AIDS, breast cancer, or automobile crashes. Instead of address this issue, Kline would have you punish the victims by capping awards.

Medical malpractice insurance accounts for less than 2 percent of health care spending. And this percentage has been flat since the late 1990’s and may be falling since medical malpractice costs are increasing at half the rate of overall health care costs, 52 percent versus 113 percent since 1987. Based on the small share of the total healthcare budget, even if all medical malpractice cases were eliminated, the cost “savings” would only be about one-half of one percent of every dollar spent on health care

Most malpractice is caused by a small number of doctors who are never sanctioned. Nothing is being done to crack down on the 5 percent of doctors (1 out of 20) responsible for 54 percent of malpractice payouts. Very few doctors are disciplined with only 13 percent of doctors with five or more medical malpractice payouts having been disciplined. Add to this that only 1 of 8 patients who suffered injury due to medical negligence ever file claims indicates a system where the payout isn’t the problem.

The average indemnity paid for the least severe category of injury was $49,947. That increased to $454,454 for grave injuries that include quadriplegia, severe brain damage, lifelong care or fatal prognosis In other words Jury awards are reasonable and proportional to the severity of the injury.

Why doesn't Kline voluntarily limited the amount of money he's accepted from this industry instead of trying to put limits on payouts for injuries suffered by neglect?

John Kline Parroting Bush

Posturing and obfuscation are tools of the trade for most Republicans and Congressman John Kline is no exception. No one is surprised when Kline parrots the lies talking points of the Bush administration like: 'We need to fight them over there', 'Saddam Hussein has WMD', blah, blah blah ..

Kline continues to ignore the facts 'on the ground' and continues to pursue the Bush lies bad intelligence myths. John Kline is nothing more than a 'talking head parrot' for Bush. Instead of solid leadership based in reality with supporting facts, John Kline has opted for bullying machismo based on Bush's personal destructive agenda (an of course...faulty intelligence!). al Qaeda has become even a greater force in Iraq with Kline's support of Bush's war...especially since toppling Hussein.

Is it any wonder that so many of the remaining people who call themselves Republicans are the looney right-wing fringe 'Terri Schiavo' Republicans like John Kline?

Kline And Steenland Flying High On NWA

Who would not support the idea of the owners of a corporation being able to publicly express their position on executive pay and severance packages? Hmm, let’s see, ‘only those who have an interest in keeping executive pay and severance packages hushed up’ like Rep. John Kline?

Kline failed to support or vote for H.R. 1257. This bill would simply permit shareholders in a public corporation -- aka the owners -- to cast an advisory, non-binding vote approving or disapproving of executive pay packages, golden parachutes, and gigantic pay packages corporate executives often give themselves as a condition of being fired for poor performance.

Why is Representative Kline interested in hushing up executive pay and severance packages? Perhaps Kline wants to protect his good friend NWA CEO Steenland who was award $26 million in stock options, a total of almost $27 with equity. The recent fury over Steenland's outrageous pay after running NWA for six years without showing a profit and into and through a bankruptcy, 40% employee pay cuts, increased out-sourcing and reduced benefits!

I’ve posted on this before in depth including that fact the Kline wouldn’t even sign a petition regarding out-sourcing of NWA jobs but he votes to protect and keep private CEO pay packages! Time and again Kline sides with the corporation over Minnesotans. This is the same Bush credo we hear everyday: everyone needs to sacrifice but it never applies to the top 2%ers.

Both Kline and CEO Steenland are flying high on NWA.