Jo Ann Emerson

The U.S. Senate passed a $17.6 billion jobs bill today by a 68-29 vote, sending it to the White House for the President's signature. "The bill includes a payroll tax break for small businesses and highway funding designed to spur job growth," according to Politico.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson is telling DC donors about the threat from Democratic challenger Tommy Sowers in invitations for an upcoming event at a downtown DC steakhouse. 

Tommy Sowers – my Democratic opponent – spent 11 years in the U.S. Army, including an assignment as a Special Forces officer in Iraq. He returned to the states and taught at the U.S. Military Academy before recently retiring from the Army. I honor his service to our country.

He appears to be an aggressive campaigner and fundraiser. I am ready for the challenge. Let the superior candidate with the better agenda win.

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Via Politico, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified Missouri's 8th District as one of their "emerging" targets for 2010.  The DCCC:

"These strong candidates are getting the attention of folks back home because of their willingness to be independent voices for their districts and prevent a return to the same failed Bush policies that drove America into an economic ditch," said Jon Vogel of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "As these strong candidates continue building excitement for their campaigns to create jobs and help middle class families back home, the DCCC will help them become even more competitive in November."

The full list is here.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson attended her very first tea party on Saturday to scrounge up votes from the super conservative wing of her party.  It's hard to tell how things went -- there weren't any real fireworks in the press and first-person accounts of the event, but both Emerson and tea party activists are working to keep their distance from each other.  The tea partiers obviously don't like a lot of her votes, and she (to her credit) wasn't all that enamored with their birther jokes and "socialist coup" rhetoric. 

From Rudi Keller's story on the rally in yesterday's Southeast Missourian:

While Emerson said she doesn't agree with everything said on stage -- she singled out [Poplar Bluff radio personality C.R.] Woolard's joke about Obama's citizenship as one example -- she said she doesn't turn away from chances to hear from any constituents. "It was my first Tea Party, and I felt I should go and listen," she said.

Bob Parker, who's running in the 8th Congressional District GOP primary against Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, is still not on the agenda for tomorrow's Patriot Rally in Poplar Bluff, but he's sendinghis best in a letter to the gathering. The SEMO Times has the whole letter -- here's an excerpt:

The truth about candidates and issues must be told if we are going to take back our Country. We must have an open debate on these issues. This is not a Democrat verses Republican debate. Many in my party, the Republican party, have failed at upholding our freedoms and rights. That is not working for Missouri, and that is not working for America. We must be ever vigilant against those that would wrap themselves in the flag but vote for un-constitutional freedom destroying bills in Washington!..

Yesterday we noted the incredibly ironic list of keynote speakers for an upcoming "Patriot Rally" in Poplar Bluff for "the next generation of the Tea Party."  Roy Blunt and Jo Ann Emerson are headlining the event, despite their considerable differences with most tea party activists. 

Bob Parker, the Texas County rancher who is challenging Emerson in the GOP primary this August, saw our story and is predictably unhappy with the establishment's hijacking of the tea party brand.  In fact, he says he tried to get on the list of speakers, but was not allowed by organizers. 

Here's what he wrote on our Facebook page:

Is it possible for the "tea party movement" to jump the shark?

A group calling itself the Tea Party of Butler County is hosting a "Patriot Rally" in Poplar Bluff this Saturday which organizers promise will be "the largest indoor demonstration Poplar Bluff has ever had." 

Welcome to the next generation of the Tea Party THE PATRIOT RALLY!!!

Get ready 'cause here it comes. The Patriot Rally is now officially HUGE!!! Mark your calendars for January 9, 2010. We are gonna kick this crucial, crossroads of a year off with a bang! More AMAZING details to come!

I see that Rep. Jo Ann Emerson is excited about the "extremely beneficial" funding for projects in the 8th District included in a recent budget bill, and happy to praise herself for her hard work on behalf of her constituents.

Washington County and the Mineral Area Drug Task Force are among several recipients in U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson’s (MO-08) district that will receive money under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010, Emerson announced on Friday.

Bill 3288 passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and should be signed into law shortly, she added..

"I'm very proud to advocate for the wide range of projects that give our congressional district a return on the tax dollars we send to Washington,” Emerson explained. “These transportation, law enforcement, economic development and other priorities I am able to identify with the help of advocates in Missouri are extremely beneficial to our congressional district."

One minor note on the bill and its "extremely beneficial" projects left unmentioned in the Daily Journal story quoted here: Emerson voted against it.

The Wall Street Journal posted a story tonight about a recent luxurious trip to Scotland for Rep. Jo Ann Emerson and 11 of her colleagues to attend a NATO Parliamentary Assembly conference.  Her trip is highlighted as an example of the growing taxpayer-financed travel costs for Members of Congress and their staffs.

The expenses racked up by U.S. lawmakers traveling here for a conference last month included one for the "control room."

The Central West End home of David and Becky Nelson overflowed with enthusiastic contributors and well wishers last night for 8th congressional district hopeful Tommy Sowers of Rolla. Among the guests were St. Louis City Democratic Central Committee Chairman Brian Wahby; Chair of the Board of Alderman Lewis Reed, former Clayton Mayor and wife Ben and Susan Uchitelle and former U.S. Senator Jean Carnahan.

Sowers, 33, is an 11-year veteran, having served in Kosovo and twice in Iraq as an Army Ranger and Green Beret. Most recently he taught at West Point before returning to his home in Rolla to teach Political Science at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Sowers is putting together a campaign that resembles a well planned military engagement.

Watch out Jo Ann Emerson!     

Yesterday, the House voted 225-200 to permanently extend the estate tax at its 2009 level -- 45% for estates valued at more than $3.5 million, or $7 million for a couple.  As part of the 2001 Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthiest 5% of taxpayers, the estate tax gradually decreased and was set to disappear for all of 2010, only to come back in 2011 at a 55% rate for estates worth more than $1 million. Media Matters:

Rep. Earl Pomeroy's (D-ND) H.R. 4154, the Permanent Estate Tax Relief for Families, Farmers, and Small Businesses Act of 2009, which passed the House today, will fix the problem by making the estate tax permanent at 45% and raising the exemption to $3.5 million.  According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, H.R. 4154 is actually a $233.6 billion tax cut.  Republicans, who want to entirely abolish the estate tax, must choose between supporting a Democratic tax cut or having rates rise in 2011. 

Perhaps responding to her energized challenges from the left and right,  Rep. Jo Ann Emerson has set up a new leadership PAC called GOJO.

Leadership PACs provide a campaign bank account for candidate travel, and "allow politicians to donate dollars to (and collect favors from) friendly candidates."

Six years ago yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a controversial and still-unfunded Medicare prescription-drug bill with an historic and extremely controversial early morning vote. At least three of Missouri's Representatives -- Roy Blunt, Jo Ann Emerson and Todd Akin -- played key roles in the drama.

Bruce Bartlett, a former policy advisor to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, recalled the vote last week in a column about Republicans' deficit hypocrisy:

[W]hen the legislation came up for its final vote on Nov. 22, 2003, it was failing by 216 to 218 when the standard 15-minute time allowed for voting came to an end.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary events in congressional history. The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principled Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-SPAN cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.

The Hill's Bob Cusack wrote an amazing article about the 'night the clocks and scoreboard stood still" two years after the vote. He recounts:

Lawmakers say it was the most intense environment on the [House] floor in decades...

The Daily Dunklin Democrat profiles Bob Parker today, a Republican challenger to Jo Ann Emerson in the 8th Congressional District. Like we've seen in numerous other races, Parker is staking his candidacy on tea party anger.

Parker said concerns over last fall's federal bailout of financial institutions was one of his determining factors [in running], adding that the $700 billion bailout has failed to deliver on its promises...

"What are we going to do? The national media isn't saying anything about it. We've got to take America back. I'm not going to wait until they come and knock on my door; I'm going up to Washington and knock on their doors."

CNN Commentator and Democratic strategist Paul Begala has some very nice words for 8th Congressional District candidate Tommy Sowers today in The Huffington Post:

I must say I tried to talk him out of it [running for Congress]. The district, I said, is too Republican, and the election cycle too challenging. Tommy would have none of it. This is his home, he said, and this is his duty.

While the district is undeniably Republican-leaning, Sowers is at home there in a way the incumbent, Jo Ann Emerson, is perhaps not. Emerson's husband, Bill, represented the area until his death in 1996, and Jo Ann Emerson succeeded him. She has won by overwhelming margins ever since. But her background is more K Street than Cape Girardeau. A former Washington lobbyist, Emerson has over the years been a darling of Washington PACs. In fact, 56.9% of the money she has raised in her career has been from PACs. She risks being seen as of Washington special interests, by Washington special interests and for Washington special interests.