U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, R-Fla., who was a just another chairman of a major Florida law firm last summer when health care town halls were all the rage, looks to get into the fun Monday when he holds his own in Fort Lauderdale. The event starts at 2:30 p.m. at the Beach Community Center, 3351 NE 33rd Ave.

LeMieux, who Republican state lawmakers hope will bring home a re-up of about $1.2 billion in extra Medicaid money for Florida’s budget hole, has been opposed to President Obama’s suggestions for reducing costs and increasing access to health insurance coverage. From a press release this week:

“This proposal still seeks to cut half a trillion dollars from Medicare. That’s a direct cut in health care benefits for seniors” LeMieux said. ”The proposal fails to achieve its main goal which is to lower the cost of health care for Americans.  It takes money from programs, like Medicare, and seeks to create new federal programs. It is clear that the American people do not support this bill.”

Read about it this week’s Politics column.

Also: Read about how prosecutors want tougher residency standards in response to Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher’s frequent address changes when she was a state House member. And Robert Wexler returns to South Florida this week.

UPDATE: Beaven has sent out this e-mail apologizing, saying the subject line was written by an “impassioned staffer.”

Beaven

Beaven’s e-mail today included the latest newsletter from her campaign, which announced that equal-pay-for-women activist Lilly Ledbetter will stump for Beaven next month.

The e-mail also highlights that Flagler County is No. 1 the state in underemployment, which apparently inspired Beaven’s colorful exclamation.

From the e-mail:

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Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said on Tuesday that he planned to join several other state attorneys general objecting to the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback.”

The letter was sent today to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate President Harry Reid:

We believe this provision is constitutionally flawed. As chief legal officers of our states we are contemplating a legal challenge to this provision and we ask you to take action to render this challenge unnecessary by striking that provision.

Read the full letter here.

Full-body imaging might have detected that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had stuffed his underwear with explosives before he boarded a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas day.

But a considerable bipartisan majority of U.S. House members are on record opposing the widespread use of such scans in a vote that saw privacy concerns trump security measures. In June, the House voted 310-to-118 for an amendment by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, that would have prohibited whole-body imaging as a “primary screening” method at airports. The amendment died in the Senate.

Chaffetz’s amendment would have allowed such scans as a “secondary” screening method, but passengers would be given the option of a pat-down search in lieu of whole-body imaging and the Transportation Security Administration would have been banned from “storing, transferring, or copying any images” from the scans.

Local U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar; Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta; and Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, supported the ban on whole-body imaging. U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, voted against the Chaffetz amendment.

Wexler

Update: Wexler to leave Congress, Democratic source confirms

Amid rumors he might step down from the congressional seat he’s held since 1997, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, plans to talk to reporters about his future plans Wednesday.

One source says Wexler may be considering a “public policy position.”

Wexler was a key early supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential bid when most of the Florida Democratic establishment backed Hillary Clinton. Since Obama’s election, there’s been speculation Wexler might be in line for a plum appointment in the Obama administration.

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U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler of Delray Beach, Alcee Hastings of Miramar, Kathy Castor of Tampa and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Pembroke Pines are among 92 House Democrats who have co-sponsored the “Respect for Marriage Act,” a bill introduced Tuesday to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. That 1996 law bars some benefits from same-sex couples.

From the South-Florida Blade:

Absent from the sponsorship of the bill is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), an openly-gay and usually vocal proponent of GLBT rights. Both Pelosi and Frank believe the bill has little chance of passage, and prefer to implement legislation that would take gradual steps to repeal DOMA.

“Given that there is zero chance of this bill becoming law in the near future, it is a mistake to explicitly introduce this crossing state lines issue,” Frank said. “The controversy now will not be about whether we should have the federal government treat people fairly in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, etc., but whether we should export [marriage recognition] to Ohio and Florida.”

President Obama addresses a joint session of Congress in February. He focused on economic issues then, but will talk about his health care agenda tonight at 8 p.m.

Heading into tonight’s address from President Obama, several of Florida’s U.S. House members say the dramatic moments from the August recess (here and here for just a couple examples) have served only to reinforce their positions heading into the break.

Wexler

U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, says his pledge to oppose a bill that does not include a so-called public insurance option (essentially a new government health care program that would compete with the private market), isn’t so iron-clad. More on that shift here.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Ron Klein seems to moving in the other direction.

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President Obama’s grassroots group, Organizing for America, announced today it will bring its “Health Insurance Reform Now” bus tour to Florida.

The bus has made 10 stops between Pheonix and Raliegh since Aug. 26 and claims to have made contact with more than 12,000 supporters.

The bus is scheduled to stop Wednesday in Atlanta before Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. Following the event, the bus will stop in Tallahassee, Orlando and Tampa during the next couple weeks.

Attorney General Bill McCollum bashed the “public option” included in President Barack Obama’s and Congressional Democrats’ proposed health care reforms, saying it would ration health care.

McCollum, the presumptive GOP candidate for governor, held a campaign event this morning in which he trashed the government-backed option to health insurance and challenged his presumptive Democratic opponent Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink to do the same.

McCollum, who served in Congress for more than two decades, announced the creation of a health care advisory board and dragged out a six-year-old report issued by businesses and the insurance industry as a guideline for health care fixes in Florida.

The best way to fix health care maladies in the Sunshine State, according to McCollum: more tort reform.

Medical malpractice premiums are the main cause for the state’s escalating health care costs, he said.

He asked Sink to join him in opposing the health care reforms now being considered by Congress if the plan includes:
- the public option or any government-run insurance;
- a $500 billion reduction in Medicare that would be passed on to the states;
- any expansion of Medicaid.
McCollum also asked her to reject the plan if it does not include significant tort reform.

McCollum showed more tolerance towards Obama’s speech to schoolchildren, which Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer has publicly pounded on national television.

“I have no problem with the president addressing schoolchildren,” he said when asked about it. McCollum also said he would allow his own children to watch it if they were school-age.

McCollum

Gov. Charlie Crist performed as the Sunshine State’s chief pitch-man, blowing off Florida’s historic population loss and touting the fine weather in a CNBC interview this morning.

Florida saw a drop of 58,000 residents last year, the first population decrease since military residents left the state after World War II.

“It’s not that big a deal, to be honest with you,” Crist shrugged off the decline on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” show today.

The governor then launched into a Sunshine State sales pitch, touting declines in property taxes and property insurance rates and the weather.

“And it’s Florida. It’s a beautiful place. It’s a gorgeous day today down here in South Florida. You just can’t beat the Sunshine State,” said Crist, who is in Miami. Florida I really think is on the rise and it’s a great deal for an awful lot of people, too.”

Although Florida’s unemployment rate is nearly 11 percent, Crist was upbeat about the job market and pointed to Palm Beach County as a shining example.

Palm Beach County’s unemployment rate was 11.7 percent in July, one percentage point above the state average.

“Even in the Palm Beach County area where Scripps and Torrey Pines and some of these other scientific institutes have located, Max Planck…it’s been great for that area of the state,” Crist said. “We’re very pleased with the direction things are going. We wish they were better, don’t misunderstand me. But we’re not sitting still. We’re on the move. And I continue to be optimistic and encouraged about where we’re going.”

Crist, who drew the wrath of fellow Republicans by urging Congress to pass President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, reversed that position on the health care reforms now being considered in Washington.

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Officials in Gov. Charlie Crist’s administration responded to a report showing the state last in highway transportation spending by saying that states spend the money in different ways.

“We believe that all state DOTs are doing an outstanding job in implementing the Recovery Act funds,” Crist’s stimulus adviser Don Winstead and state Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos wrote in a letter to U.S. House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn.

Oberstar wrote to Crist on Thursday urging him to speed up highway spending. Crist’s likely U.S. Senate opponent, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, issued a press release today saying Crist is responsible for a series of missteps with the stimulus money that has delayed potential relief for thousands of out-of-work Floridians.

(Crist was also targeted today by his GOP primary opponent, Marco Rubio, who mocked Crist for supporting the stimulus money in the first place.

Winstead and Kopelousos wrote that the report from Congress was “outdated and does a disservice to the tireless efforts of the Crist administration.”

To read the entire letter, click here

From the letter sent to Gov. Charlie Crist on Thursday from U.S. House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn.

Florida is falling behind other states in putting to work its Recovery Act highway formula funds. … I strongly urge you to refocus your efforts to implement the Recovery Act and use available funds to create and sustain family-wage jobs.

Read the full letter here.

From Reuters in Washington:

Florida ranks last among all states in spending its share of highway money from the U.S. economic stimulus plan, a congressional committee said on Thursday.

In a letter to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, the committee’s chairman, Rep. James Oberstar, wrote that as of June 30, Florida had begun construction on highway projects totaling only 2 percent of the $1.346 billion set aside for it in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“I strongly urge you to refocus your efforts to implement the Recovery Act and use the available funds to create and sustain family-wage jobs,” said Oberstar, who heads the House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

It was supposed to be a routine public meeting by the staff of U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton.

By the end, The Miami Herald reports, about 100 protesters besieged Klein’s staff at a north Broward County library on Wednesday, yelling in opposition to Democrats’ health-care reform proposals and even questioing whether President Obama is really a U.S. citizen. (more…)

Democratic St. Lucie County Commissioner Chris Craft didn’t mention incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney in his statement Wednesday announcing he’s running for Rooney’s District 16 congressional seat. Rooney didn’t comment on Craft’s announcement, with a spokesman saying the congressman is too busy with his job to focus on 2010 politics.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Andy Sere and Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff, however, served up some harsh commentary.

Read their statements after the jump…..

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Craft’s announcement, rumored for months, came a day sooner than he planned.

A press release scheduled for release Thursday was briefly posted on Craft’s old commission reelection Web site today, then taken down. The National Republican Congressional Committee saw the announcement and a spokesman branded Craft “a job-killing army of one” before the candidate himself had even gone public.

“I’m running for Congress because we need a representative who has shared the struggles of hardworking Floridians and can relate to the people of this district,” said Craft, who pledged to work with Republicans and Democrats as a “moderate voice” in Washington.

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From Michael Vazquez at The Miami Herald:

Boasting a seven-casino empire throughout Florida, the Seminole Tribe is awash in gambling dollars. The Miccosukee tribe has fared well, too, with its casino operations in Miami-Dade.

Despite the two tribes’ growing wealth, the Obama administration has awarded them a combined $4 million in federal stimulus money. That may rise in the coming months as federal agencies continue to dole out stimulus grants.

The money awarded includes:

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U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, a Tequesta Republican who Democrats apparently hope will just quit his office (they’ve yet to field an opponent), was put in the crosshairs Wednesday of the latest round of stimulus politics.

Hoping to push back against Republican claims that the stimulus plan isn’t working, the Democratic National Committee released a cable today ad (watch to the right) that targets veteran Republicans who are “playing politics with our economy.”

Rooney, a freshman lawmaker, is not included in the ad, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee simultaneously sent out this press release questioning Rooney’s commitment to law enforcement:

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TALLAHASSEE — Less than three weeks after President Obama complained about liberal activists attacking Democrats over health care reform, his own grass-roots campaign will put the heat on U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson on Thursday by rallying outside six of the Florida Democrat’s offices around the state.

Organizing for America, which continues to operate an Obama campaign Web site and use the president’s campaign logo, is scheduled to hold afternoon rallies in front of six of Nelson’s eight state offices. They include his West Palm Beach location at 500 Australian Ave., where the rally begins at 3 p.m.

Nelson has given little indication of how he would vote on key aspects of the health care legislation being debated, and he’s one of a key group of Senate Democrats whose support would be critical to overcoming a GOP-led filibuster.

The group will also demonstrate outside one of the seven Florida offices of Republican U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez.

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