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Democrat Franken hopes to become new U.S. senator Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Al Franken in running for Senate. He received endorsement from DFL party.
Al Franken
Party: Democrat
Age: 57
Occupation: Candidate for U.S. Senate
Town you live in: Minneapolis
Family: Wife, Franni. Two children.
Education: Harvard, bachelor's degree.
Work experience: Satirist and author, host of Air America Radio's "The Al Franken Show," fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Political offices held: First run for political office.
Web site: www.alfranken.com/
Al Franken says he wants to strengthen the farm safety net, keep rural communities strong and fight for funding for rural roads, bridges and education.
If elected to the U.S. Senate, he said he will be someone that Minnesota farmers can count on. He also pledged to carry on Minnesota's tradition of having both its senators serve on the Senate agriculture committee.
Franken said feed and input costs have skyrocketed since the farm bill was written. There's more volatility in the market and more swings in a week than there used to be from year to year.
"I think one of the challenges on the farm bill is that when it was written nobody could have predicted what farm finances would look like today," he said.
He would like to see triggers to strengthen the safety net and wants to make sure grain elevators have their credit needs met when they need to be. There also needs to be some kind of emergency assistance for livestock producers, perhaps patterned on the feed adjustment in the Milk Income Loss Contract program.
Franken has talked about an Apollo project for renewable energy since the early days of his campaign. Renewable energy is a potential economic bonanza for rural Minnesota, he said.
Tax laws need to be changed so a farmer can used earned income for a wind energy tax credit. The way laws are now written, a farmer can only get a tax credit on his investment income, he said.
"We need to change our energy policy and we need to move to renewables," Franken said.
The nation has lost eight years because of the Bush administration and it's time for action, he said.
"This is an amazing opportunity for Minnesota because we've already got a jumpstart on biofuels and wind," Franken said.
Wind turbine blades should be built in Minnesota, not Denmark.
"Renewable energy is an opportunity for jobs in rural Minnesota and different kinds of jobs -- it will be good for our farmers, there are white-collar jobs, blue-collar jobs, manufacturing jobs, lab-coat jobs," he said. "Also the studies show when towns, communities have wind farms, young people stay."
Energy efficiency is the other side of the equation and the nation needs to do a lot more to be energy efficient, he said.
"The most important barrel of oil is the one you don't buy," Franken said.
Health care
"We have to find a way, an American way, to provide health care for every American," Franken said.
There's a lot of cost built into the U.S. system, he said. In this country, 34 percent of every dollar is spent on administrative fees. No other industrialized society spends more than 21 percent, he said.
Franken said nearly half of all bankruptcies are caused by a medical crisis.
He says the nation needs to move to universal health care. He would allow each state to set up its own system for covering all of its citizens, giving the nation 51 laboratories, including the District of Columbia. There would be one requirement: All states must cover every child age 18 and younger with a single-payer system.
Conservation
Franken said the nation should strive to maintain Conservation Reserve Program levels as high as possible while allowing farmers their prerogative to sign up for the program. He wants to make sure marginal land is enrolled in the program.
Transportation
"I've actually proposed a stimulus package that involves addressing roads and bridges and some other infrastructure as well using the money that we're now using in Iraq, or is in the pipeline to be used in Iraq, to use it here instead," Franken said.
The United States does have a responsibility to rebuild infrastructure in a country it has invaded and largely destroyed, but the United States has crossed the line in rebuilding Iraq, he said. Iraq has a huge surplus while American taxpayers are paying for building their roads and bridges instead of their own roads and bridges.
Infrastructure, along with research and development and education, is a key part of prosperity, Franken said.
He said he's OK with the DM&E expansion as long as the train doesn't go within 80 yards of the Mayo Clinic with hazardous materials. This needs to be mitigated by finding a way to travel around Rochester and not near the Mayo Clinic, which is the largest private employer in Minnesota.
Food costs
A lot of factors contribute to the rising cost of food in the grocery store, Franken said. One of them of course is energy, the cost of transporting food. Another factor is the emerging middle class in China and India that is consuming meat for the first time. Weather challenges are a third factor. There's been a drought in Australia and flooding in other areas.
"I think ethanol is blamed too much for food prices," Franken said.
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