CROOKED CRAMER’S CHRONICLES – CRAMER’S WEEK OF LIES – THREE PINOCCHIOS – CRAMER TAKING CREDIT FOR HEIDI’S WORK

Welcome to Cramer’s Chronicles where, every Friday, we’ll break down the latest and greatest weekly hits about Cramer’s crooked, self-serving, extreme, and gaffe-prone behavior that puts himself and his partisan politics ahead of North Dakotans.

CRAMER’S WEEK OF LIES. It wouldn’t be a day that ends in ‘Y’ if Cramer wasn’t caught stretching the truth about the issues or papering over his record to mislead North Dakotans before Election Day.

THREE PINOCCHIOS FOR HEALTH CARE CLAIM ON PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. Cramer’s false claim that the Republican House bill prevented price discrimination against folks with pre-existing conditions was highlighted in the Washington Post and published by the Forum:

  • [The GOP’s pledge on preexisting conditions] may look great on paper, but the reality is that it is not a sustainable pledge.
  • Thus Cramer goes too far to claim that in the AHCA, there are “safeguards to make sure that there’s not price discrimination as a result of preexisting conditions.” […] He earns Three Pinocchios.

CRAMER AD CLAIMS HE LED CRUDE OIL BAN REPEAL, BUT OTHER LAWMAKERS CREDIT HEITKAMP. Both NBC News and Washington Post highlighted Senator Heitkamp’s leading role in helping to lift the crude oil export ban – and Cramer’s attempt to take credit for her accomplishment.

NBC News:

  • North Dakota Democrat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp went out on limb three years ago to convince skeptical members of her party to support legislation that lifted 40-year ban on exporting crude oil from the United States to countries around the world.
  • Heitkamp […] first called for the repeal of the ban on crude oil exports in August 2014. She wrote a standalone repeal bill and began trying to sell the issue to her fellow Democrats throughout 2015, pitching it as an economic boon and a source of good jobs while lobbying the White House on the issue.
  • She worked with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to push the issue, and started putting the oil industry in the same room with unlikely supporters like Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, to talk a repeal out.
  • Heitkamp turned “no” votes into “yes” votes in the Senate, and by many accounts, was crucial to getting the bill across the finish line and signed by the White House.

Washington Post:

  • Lifting the ban, however, is an accomplishment for which many lawmakers in both parties give Heitkamp credit.
  • Without Heitkamp, “I don’t know that it would have happened,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) in 2015, according to Bloomberg Government. Sen. Lisa Murkowksi (R-Alaska) added that Heitkamp was “just dogged in her efforts to help educate her party.”

MORE TARIFFS ANNOUNCED, SOYBEANS NOT SELLING, BUT CRAMER IS ABSENT. On Monday, the president further escalated the trade war, announcing tariffs on an additional $200 billion of Chinese imports and prompting the Chinese to retaliate. There haven’t been orders for soybeans from the Pacific Northwest for over 13 weeks, but Cramer still hasn’t become “concerned” enough to do anything. In fact, he’s still maintaining that “the trade issues [are] to the benefit of North Dakotans and North Dakota farmers.” Anything to increase his political capital, we guess.

Reminder: It’s been more than 20 days since Cramer missed his self-imposed deadline for when he’d become “concerned” enough to stand with North Dakotans against the trade war. But all we’ve seen from him is paying lip service to the president.

MORE ON CRAMER’S HEALTH CARE AGENDA. Cramer’s dangerous health care agenda was back in the spotlight this week after being called out for his false claim on preventing price discriminations against folks with pre-existing conditions. Besides lying to North Dakotans about their care, Cramer voted FIVE times to repeal the current health care law without a replacement and actively supports a reckless lawsuit – both of which would get rid of patient protection laws that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to folks with pre-existing conditions or charging them more for their care.

TWEET OF THE WEEK.

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North Dakota in “Eye of Trade Storm”

(BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer is “betting the farm on the president,” choosing to stand with the president 100 percent of the time even as “[t]he trade dispute continues to drive soybean prices lower, as China’s retaliatory tariffs hurt orders for soybeans.” Just this week, “soybean prices fell to a decade-low” – a result of the growing trade war – but Cramer is still kowtowing to the president and putting his political capital first.

Reuters: Grains-Soybean Prices Edge Down, Linger Near Decade-Low

Fence Post: Brazil soybean exports to China soar

Markets Insider: Soybeans plunge to near their lowest level in a decade

  • “Soybean prices fell to a decade-low on Tuesday after data pointed to a quickly advancing US harvest and as the Trump administration escalated trade tensions with the China, the largest destination for American exports of the legume.”

Farm Bureau News: As Harvest Marches On, Tariff Pain to Follow

  • “[T]he feeling that the worst is yet to come hangs over producers. The consensus is that the impact of lower prices and weak demand from some key foreign customers will be most widespread as the combines roll and harvest 2018 gets underway.”

Bloomberg: Soy Boom State Finds Itself in Eye of Trade Storm

  • North Dakota — home to the fourth-smallest U.S. population — is suddenly finding itself at the center of the escalating trade war between the world’s largest economies.
  • Positioned closer to western U.S. ports than most areas of the soy belt, farmers [in North Dakota] were in a unique position to capitalize on China’s skyrocketing demand for the oilseed that’s used to make animal feed and cooking oil. Now that the crop has been caught in the crossfire of the U.S.-China trade spat, that demand is disappearing.
  • “It’s been built up, built up, built up — and now, it’s like the faucet has been turned off,” said Nancy Johnson of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association.
  • With export elevators in Portland not posting bids, or purchase offers, through February, the state’s basis — the spread between Chicago futures and local cash prices — has “crashed” to a discount of almost $2 in some areas, he said. That’s about double the discount this time last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
  • The pain of lower prices is especially acute in export-dependent areas like North Dakota.
  • Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota, criticized the trade war in a Sept. 17 tweet, saying it’s left the state’s “farmers without any soybean orders from China” and pointed growers to a North Dakota State University presentation warning them to be prepared to store beans until mid-summer 2019.
  • As harvest starts near Berthold Farmers Elevator’s two locations in northwest North Dakota, the company will only be accepting soybeans that were previously contracted for delivery, said General Manager Dan Mostad. The elevator also won’t run storage programs for farmers, which let them deliver crops that are priced later in the season. “Those options aren’t available now because of the risk associated with price,” he said. “It’s really been not a fun problem to deal with for the whole soybean supply chain. It’s uncharted waters.”

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Cramer’s Long History of Jeopardizing Coverage for Pre-Existing Conditions

(BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer’s history of jeopardizing coverage for pre-existing conditions goes back long before the AHCA and his endorsement of the partisan lawsuit that would get rid of the current health care law. Once elected to Congress, Cramer voted five times to repeal the current health care law without a replacement, which would have gotten rid of vital patient protections and had devastating effects on North Dakotans. See what repealing the current health care law without a replacement would do to North Dakotans’ care:

  • Nearly 300,000 North Dakotans with pre-existing conditions would lose protections that prevent insurance companies from denying them insurance entirely or charging higher premiums
  • Older North Dakotans could be charged five times more for their care than younger people
  • North Dakota seniors could be forced to pay more for prescription drugs

“No matter how much Kevin Cramer tries to rewrite history and paper over his record, North Dakotans know that, when push came to shove, Cramer prioritized his own political self-interest by consistently voting to gut protections for pre-existing conditions,” said Courtney Rice, Press Secretary for the North Dakota Democratic-NPL.

Read more about Cramer’s dangerous health care agenda here.

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Cramer Gets Three Pinocchios for Health Care Claim on Pre-Existing Conditions

Washington Post: Would the House GOP plan have prevented ‘price discrimination’ against people with preexisting conditions?
By Glenn Kessler
September 19, 2018

Key Points:

  • [W]e are going to examine Cramer’s statement that the American Health Care Act (AHCA), passed in the House, had safeguards that prevented price discrimination as a result of preexisting conditions. (The bill never advanced in the Senate.) Cramer serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and has said, “I have read the 200-page bill in its entirety and debated nearly every section of it during a 27-hour hearing.” So he certainly should understand the nuances.
  • Before Obamacare, insurance companies could consider a person’s health status when determining premiums, sometimes making coverage unaffordable or even unavailable if a person was sick with a problem that required expensive treatment. The ACA prohibited that, in part by requiring everyone to purchase insurance, in what was known as the individual mandate.
  • The waiver system designed under the AHCA was criticized by health-care experts. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office sketched a scenario that described unraveling insurance markets and spiraling health-care premiums if the AHCA had become law.
  • Matthew Fielder of the Brookings Institution, who had been chief economist of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, said that under the MacArthur Amendment, he believed the higher premiums would extend even to people without coverage gaps. That’s because healthy people would have an incentive to drop out of community-written pools and just buy insurance based on their health status, as premiums would be lower. Thus the community pools would be filled with increasingly sicker people facing increasingly higher premiums.
  • The CBO, in its report, said that states that took advantage of these provisions could perversely end up blowing up their insurance markets, leaving spiraling costs for people with preexisting conditions, even as average premiums might end up lower.
  • Eventually, the CBO said, community-rated “premiums would be so high in some areas that the plans would have no enrollment. Such a market would be similar to the nongroup market before the enactment of the ACA, in which premiums were underwritten and plans often included high deductibles and limits on insurers’ payments and people with high expected medical costs were often unable to obtain coverage.”
  • The CBO was highly skeptical that the GOP legislation provided enough funding for states to offer assistance to people who could not afford insurance. “The funding would not be sufficient to substantially reduce the large increases in premiums for high-cost enrollees,” the agency said, so over time, less-healthy people “would be unable to purchase comprehensive coverage with premiums close to those under current law and might not be able to purchase coverage at all.”
  • [The GOP’s pledge on preexisting conditions] may look great on paper, but the reality is that it is not a sustainable pledge.
  • Thus Cramer goes too far to claim that in the AHCA, there are “safeguards to make sure that there’s not price discrimination as a result of preexisting conditions.” […] He earns Three Pinocchios.

Read the full article here.

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Cramer Missing in Action on Farm Bill

(BISMARCK, ND) – With the deadline looming to pass a bipartisan Farm Bill before it expires on September 30th, Kevin Cramer is nowhere to be found. North Dakotans rely on a strong Farm Bill, especially now that the Cramer-endorsed trade war is escalating. But rather than working on behalf of North Dakotans, Cramer is taking the week off – choosing to campaign for higher office rather than do his job.

Should it really come as a surprise that Cramer is absent on the Farm Bill? He’s been oblivious to the ins and outs of the bill and its importance to farmers and is a member of an extreme anti-ag group that pushed for eliminating the Renewable Fuel Standard, eliminating the sugar program, and for devastating cuts to crop insurance and nutrition programs. Furthermore, Cramer has a history of playing politics with the Farm Bill – and it seems like this time around is no different.

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Cramer Supports DeVos’ Anti-North Dakota Education Agenda

(BISMARCK, ND) – What does it cost to convince Kevin Cramer to support an anti-public education, anti-North Dakota agenda? Apparently only $21,600. That’s how much Cramer has taken in campaign contributions from the DeVos family.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who “made her reputation by undermining public schools,” was overwhelmingly opposed during her confirmation hearing: ND United urged against her confirmation, as did the Williston Herald and Forum editorial boards. And, across the state, “local educators [found] DeVos unqualified and worr[ied] about the impact her support for charter schools would have on public education.” That’s why Senator Heitkamp opposed DeVos’ nomination. But Cramer? He’d rather increase his political capital and stand with his financiers than with North Dakota.

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Cramer Still Wants to Gut Pre-Existing Condition Protections

(Bismarck, ND) – Kevin Cramer can spin all he wants to try and convince North Dakotans that he’ll protect coverage for pre-existing conditions, but here’s the truth: Cramer supports a reckless, partisan lawsuit that would get rid of the current health care law, including patient protections that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to folks with pre-existing conditions or charging them more for their care.

“Kevin Cramer can see the writing on the wall: his dangerous health care agenda, including gutting protections for those with pre-existing protections, is deeply unpopular with voters on both sides of the aisle,” said Courtney Rice, Press Secretary for the North Dakota Democratic-NPL. “But no amount of election year spin can cover up the fact that for his entire career in Washington, Cramer has voted dozens of times to undermine the care and patient protections North Dakotans rely on.”

Background:
HuffPost: GOP Senate Candidates Are Scrambling To Rewrite Their Record On Pre-Existing Conditions
CNBC: Kaiser poll: 75% of Americans want to keep key ACA protection as GOP challenges constitutionality
High Plains Reader: Cramer’s Office Threatens Constituents

Read more about Cramer’s dangerous health care agenda here.

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More Tariffs Announced – Where Is Cramer?

(BISMARCK, ND) – Over the weekend, the administration announced tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese imports, which are set to take effect “weeks before [the] November elections” and “are all but certain to be met immediately by Chinese retaliation against U.S. exporters, especially against farmers.” This announcement follows the president’s threat of additional tariffs on $257 billion on Chinese goods that were announced en route to Kevin Cramer’s fundraiser in Fargo less than two weeks ago.

Reminder: It’s been more than 16 days since Cramer missed his self-imposed deadline for when he’d become “concerned” enough to stand with North Dakota against the trade war – and bizarrely, Cramer is still maintaining that “the trade issues [are] to the benefit of North Dakotans and North Dakota farmers.” Cramer cowered when had the opportunity to stand with North Dakota against the trade war, instead choosing to put his political capital and financial self-interest ahead of the folks he’s supposed to represent.

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CROOKED CRAMER’S CHRONICLES – SKIPPING AG FORUM TO FUNDRAISE – DECLINING DEBATES

Welcome to Cramer’s Chronicles where, every Friday, we’ll break down the latest and greatest weekly hits about Cramer’s crooked, self-serving, extreme, and gaffe-prone behavior that puts himself and his partisan politics ahead of North Dakotans.

CRAMER SKIPS AG FORUM TO FUNDRAISE. 💰Kevin Cramer made his priorities clear when he chose to hobnob with donors at an up to $50,000 closed-door fundraiser in Texas rather than discuss important ag issues with North Dakotans at Big Iron, the largest farm show in the upper Midwest. But of course Cramer wouldn’t want to attend, he would’ve been forced to discuss “topics [on which he] has a relatively weak position,” including “trade where he has backed the President’s actions and the farm bill where he is limited in what he can do because he chose not to be on the House Agriculture Committee.”

WATCH WDAY’s coverage of the event: “WDAY reached out to Cramer’s campaign to see if the congressman had a response. The congressman is traveling today, and could not be reached before the show.”

Our take: Not only is Kevin Cramer too cowardly to face farmers and manufacturers attending Big Iron after he repeatedly kowtowed to the administration on the trade war, but he’s using the opportunity to seek financial gain. Unfortunately, that’s typical behavior for Cramer – North Dakotans have come to expect nothing more from the same politician who puts his finances above all else.

DECLINING DEBATES. As Tyler Axness points out, Cramer’s “snub” of the ag issues forum “is the latest in a growing list” of debates and forums Cramer has refused to participate in. So far, Cramer has declined six events with Senator Heitkamp. What is he afraid of? Perhaps it’s his health care agenda that threatens coverage for many folks in North Dakota, including individuals with a pre-existing condition. Or maybe it’s his reckless embrace of the administration’s trade war that’s hurting North Dakota’s farmers, manufacturers, and producers. Or maybe it’s his repeated calls to cut Social Security or Medicare. Since he’s turning down debates left and right, we may never know.

“MR. CRAMER… YOU DON’T SEEM TO CARE.” Be sure to watch Heidi for North Dakota’s newest ad, “Blame,” in which a Carrington soybean farmer calls out Cramer for not caring about the havoc-wreaking consequences this trade war is having on the state.

ICYMI: CRAMER TRADE WAR GOES “FROM BAD TO WORSE IN CAVALIER COUNTY.”

  • With no end in sight to the current trade war with China, projected lower yields, and limited ways to store the beans that are harvested long term, the once cash crop is now a cash flop.
  • In years prior, soybean growers in the area could expect around $8.50 to $8.75 per bushel. This year’s prices have been completely different, with prices hanging close to $6.75 per bushel. Since July, the basis for soybeans has dropped about 70 cents.
  • “Farmers didn’t have anything to do with the tariffs; we were simply a pawn in the game which makes it difficult,” [Nancy Johnson, Executive Director of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association] said. “We certainly are not getting any indications that the trade with China will be resolved. Farmers are looking at long-term storage and hoping for better prices in Spring.
  • Johnson explained that after nearly four decades of creating a market in China that takes 70 percent of U.S. soybeans and streamlining the transportation process in North Dakota to expedited the shipping, the lack of foresight into how the tariffs would effect producers is frustrating. “We did the work, and now we are being punished,” Johnson stated.
  • Senator Heidi Heitkamp has been working diligently to support farmers amid the ongoing trade war.

OUT OF TOUCH WITH ND: EXAMPLE ∞ . Cramer once again proved that he’s out of touch with North Dakotans, claiming that, in today’s economy, $1,000 “isn’t really that high a price” in reference to his fundraiser last week.

READ OF THE WEEK: “WHAT DO NATIVE AMERICANS HAVE TO LOSE WITH CRAMER? A LOT.” Mike McFeely lays out what exactly Native Americans have to lose by voting for Cramer. The answer? “A hell of a lot.”

  • What the hell do they have to lose? An advocate in the Senate for starters. A voice. An ally. Somebody who has made Native American issues one of the centerpieces of her stay in the Senate.
  • Heitkamp has kept Native American issues at the forefront. She’s a member of the Indian Affairs Committee, an assignment she’s held since shortly after being elected in 2012. The first bill Heitkamp introduced, a bipartisan one, called for a commission on Native children. She worked with Republican Sen. John McCain to expand AMBER Alerts to reservations. She recently introduced Savanna’s Act to protect missing and murdered Native women in the wake of the horrific murder of Fargo’s Savanna Greywind. Heitkamp supported greater protections for Native American women in the Violence Against Women Act. She’s fought for better federal law enforcement presence in Indian Country.
  • And Cramer? He’s so sympathetic to Native Americans that he told a gathering at Spirit Lake he didn’t feel safe on the reservation because he’s white, in the midst of lecturing a domestic abuse survivor on the constitutionality of tribal provisions in the Violence Against Women Act.

TWEET OF THE WEEK.

Cramer’s Two Faces on Trade

(BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer has pledged to support the president 100 percent of the time – even if that means going against the best interests of North Dakotans. Take the trade war. Cramer previously supported free trade – saying North Dakota needed access to markets and a global “marketplace” – but as soon as the president announced tariffs that deeply impact our agriculture community, Cramer flipped and became a rubber stamp for the escalating, reckless trade war.

Now, Cramer will do or say anything to prove his loyalty to the president, calling farmers’ concerns “hysteria,” suggesting that they hang tough in the face of “short-term pain,” and going so far as to compare someone wanting him to stand up against tariffs to “shoot[ing himself] in the head.”

“North Dakotans are fiercely independent and they expect the same of their representatives,” said Courtney Rice, Press Secretary for the North Dakota Democratic-NPL. “So when Kevin Cramer campaigns on standing with the administration 100 percent of the time, even with regard to this reckless trade war, they know Cramer isn’t looking out for them.”

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Cramer Not Telling Truth on Cutting Social Security, Medicare

(BISMARCK, ND) – With Election Day only 54 days away,  Kevin Cramer is desperately trying to paper over his record of supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Last week, Cramer once again called for “tweak[s]” to both programs, arguing that they weren’t the same as cuts and that no one approaching eligibility for the programs would be affected.

But, as PolitiFact pointed out, “experts said” calls for such tweaks like raising the eligibility age and increasing means testing “could be interpreted as calls for cuts,” a position Cramer “has held… for years.”

No wonder The Forum’s Jack Zaleski called Cramer “one of the best fudge masters in Washington, D.C.”

Read more on Cramer’s continued calls to jeopardize Social Security and Medicare here, here, and here.

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Boschee Presents Vision for SoS, Jaeger Bombs

During the debate on Prairie Public, Dem-NPL candidate for Secretary of State outlined a vision to modernizing the office, while the 25-year incumbent shows he doesn’t have the answers

(BISMARCK, ND) — After tonight’s Secretary of State candidate debate, Executive Director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Scott McNeil released the following statement:

“Tonight’s debate made it clear: Josh Boschee is the only candidate for Secretary of State who has any vision of modernizing the office and making it easier for businesses, nonprofits, and family farmers to operate in North Dakota. Al Jaeger has not kept up with the times and made plenty of false promises about reforming. It is time for new leadership and Josh Boschee’s record as a legislator and business leader prove he is qualified and ready to be North Dakota’s next Secretary of State.”