Senate candidates go round on crime, health care
09/20/2006
Mark Kennedy and Amy Klobuchar have more sharp words on immigration and Medicare in their TV debate.
Patricia Lopez And Jay Weiner,
Star Tribune staff writers
Last update: September 20, 2006 – 12:16 AM
U.S. Senate candidates Mark Kennedy and Amy Klobuchar went at it again Tuesday night, picking up where they left off at a raucous State Fair debate earlier in the month.
In the quieter setting at Twin Cities Public Television studios in downtown St. Paul, Kennedy, the Republican congressman from Watertown, and Klobuchar, the DFL Hennepin County attorney, tangled over crime, Social Security, prescription drugs, health care and the deficit.
Minutes after the debate opened, Kennedy accused Klobuchar of proposing government-rationed health care because she favors government negotiation of prescription drug prices. Agencies such as the Veterans Administration may offer lower prices through such negotiation, Kennedy said, but “one in five drugs” isn’t covered.
“You are doing this fear-mongering,” Klobuchar said.
“I’m talking about negotiating, not rationing,” she said.
The hourlong debate—sponsored by AARP, which represents people over 50—included Independence Party candidate Robert Fitzgerald.
Although the debate was supposed to focus on AARP-related issues, candidates branched out to the deficit, the war, national security and, in a rare moment of humor, government subsidization of personal rapid transit, which Fitzgerald said he opposed. He noted it when asked to cite a major difference with his party.
On deficits, Klobuchar said she would roll back the tax cuts on the wealthiest 1 percent (those making more than $330,000 annually), eliminate tax write-offs for pharmaceutical ads and allow re-importation of price-controlled drugs from Canada.
Kennedy said such tax cuts would send high-paying jobs overseas, that restrictions on drug companies might shut off drug research vital to future cures. Re-importation, he said, had not yet been proven safe.
“It’s a dodge,” Fitzgerald said, jumping in, to imply that Canada does not have the proper safeguards.
After the debate, Kennedy said that Medicare Part D “isn’t perfect” but that “84 percent of seniors are happy with their plan. I stand with the 84 percent of seniors that are happy.”
Throughout a tension-filled debate, Kennedy repeatedly accused Klobuchar of “saying one thing and doing another,” echoing a line from his latest ad, while Klobuchar several times accused him of “scare tactics.”
Kennedy brought up illegal immigration several times, saying “the biggest gamble” Minnesotans could take would be to elect someone “who wants to give illegal immigrants Social Security.”
Klobuchar said she supported securing borders and giving illegal immigrants who had been in the country long term a way to earn citizenship. “I do not favor illegal immigrants getting Social Security,” she said.
Klobuchar at one point told Kennedy that “you need to start telling the truth. ... You think we can just keep living on a credit card.”
Klobuchar was asked about crime by moderator Mary Lahammer, who noted that new statistics showed a 26 percent jump in violent crime in Minneapolis. Klobuchar said crime for Hennepin County as a whole was down 20 percent and attributed the rise in city crime to cuts in police, dismantling of the juvenile crime unit under a previous police chief and cuts in state, federal and local funding.
Kennedy, who has said Klobuchar must take some responsibility for crime increases, said she had contributed to the rise by allowing too many plea bargains of serious crimes.
Asked about the results of a recent Minnesota Poll that showed Klobuchar ahead by 24 percentage points, Kennedy pointed out that Klobuchar’s father, Jim Klobuchar, had been a columnist for the Star Tribune. “If my dad’s company did a poll on this race I’d be ahead,” Kennedy said. “I think that poll is pure fiction.”
The next debate is set for Oct. 10 in Moorhead.