Three of the four members of Rhode Island’s all-Democratic congressional delegation will take aim Wednesday at someone who’s an unusual target for them: President Obama.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman David Cicilline are among the eight members of Congress co-hosting a summit on Capitol Hill to criticize a proposal in Obama’s latest budget that would trim Social Security benefits by switching to a measure of inflation known as “chained CPI.”

Rhode Island’s entire delegation slammed the policy when it emerged, and Cicilline has garnered national attention for introducing a resolution that would have Congress express formal disapproval of chained CPI. U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are also among the summit’s hosts, giving it a decidedly New England flavor.

There were 207,122 Rhode Island residents receiving Social Security benefits in December 2011, the most recent month for which figures are available – meaning nearly 20% of state residents are on Social Security. Two-thirds of Rhode Island’s beneficiaries were 65 or older, while 35,905 were disabled and 15,704 were children. The Rhode Islanders’ combined Social Security benefits totaled $236 million that month.

The congressional event at 12:30 p.m. will be streamed live online by Strengthen Social Security, a coalition of unions and progressive groups that supports increasing benefits.

• Related: RI congressional delegation slams Obama over Social Security (April 10)

Treasurer Gina Raimondo has a message for members of Congress: don’t tax municipal bonds.

Raimondo and 41 of her fellow state treasurers sent a letter [pdf] last week to the top Republican and Democrat on the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, emphasizing “the importance of maintaining the current tax exemption for municipal bond interest” as they consider plans to overhaul the U.S. tax code.

The letter was organized by the National Association of State Treasurers, which describes itself as “a bipartisan organization of state treasurers and other finance officials with similar duties.” The group said tax-free municipal bonds save states and municipalities an average of 25% to 30% on interest costs.

“The tax-exempt bond market has worked effectively for over a century,” Virginia State Treasurer Manju Ganeriwala, the association’s president, said in a statement. “Let’s not dismantle something that works.”

Raimondo, a Democrat, is considering a run for governor in 2014. Here’s her signature on the letter:

President Obama isn’t getting any support from Rhode Island’s congressional delegation for his controversial proposal to trim future Social Security benefits.

All four Democrats – usually loyal defenders of the president – issued statements Wednesday criticizing Obama for his proposal to use a different measure of inflation, known as “chained CPI,” to calculate Social Security benefit increases, which would reduce payments over time compared with current law.

The harshest critique came from U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a leading liberal in the chamber. “The so-called ‘chained CPI’ proposal included in President Obama’s budget is nothing more than a benefit cut disguised behind technical jargon,” he declared.

Whitehouse said he thinks the way Social Security currently calculates inflation already “shortchanges” senior citizens and should be changed to increase benefits – the exact opposite of Obama’s proposal. “I made a promise to the people of Rhode Island that I would always oppose cuts to Social Security, and I’m going to keep that promise,” Whitehouse said.

(more…)

By Tim White

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Newly minted Congressman Joe Kennedy III is crediting the freshman class of the U.S. House with being more open to finding common ground in the hyper-partisan atmosphere of Washington, D.C., as he pushes for the South Coast Rail project and a $10.10 minimum wage.

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​By Ted Nesi

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – Hours before Joe Kennedy III’s swearing-in last week, his brand-new congressional office looked like a college dorm room on freshman move-in day.

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• Related: Joe Kennedy III met his wife in Warren’s Harvard Law class​ (Jan. 3)

WPRI.com’s Ted Nesi is reporting from Capitol Hill this week.

WASHINGTON – Wayne Gretzky retired more than a decade ago, but he’s still inspiring congressional Democrats from Southern New England.

In separate interviews this week, Rhode Island U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and newly elected Mass. Congressman Joe Kennedy III both cited the wisdom of the legendary Canadian hockey star as a model for how they’ll approach the 113th Congress.

“If you remember the great Wayne Gretzky,” Whitehouse told WPRI.com, “he used to say you become a great hockey player not when you go to where the puck is but when you go to where the puck is going to be. And I think there’s four issues where the puck is going to be where we really need to be working hard even if it’s not the so-called issue of the moment.”

Whitehouse’s four issues: climate change, the oceans, cybersecurity, and streamlining the way health care gets delivered.

The next morning, Kennedy had the same lesson on his mind.

“Wayne Gretzky was famous for saying he doesn’t go where the puck is, he goes to where the puck’s going to be,” he said, arguing that members of Congress need to think the same way.

Informed that Senator Whitehouse had used Gretzky’s famous aphorism less than 24 hours earlier, Kennedy said, “Did he really? You’re kidding me!” He laughed and added: “Maybe he and I can talk about that.”

• Related: More stories from Ted Nesi’s trip to Washington this week

​(photo: Wikipedia)

​By Ted Nesi

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – With the Providence issued receding and his political future looking secure, Congressman David Cicilline and his aides are clearly excited to refocus on his work in Congress.

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WPRI.com’s Ted Nesi is reporting from Capitol Hill this week.

WASHINGTON – Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren’s class was an important one for future congressman Joe Kennedy III, and not just because he and his teacher would soon be serving together in Congress.

Kennedy, 32, met his wife, Lauren Birchfield, when they were both students in Warren’s class. “He sat in the front row, on my left, and Lauren was in the back row on my right,” Warren recalled Thursday in an interview with WPRI.com.

Kennedy and Birchfield married last month. “Joe tells me there are five couples from that class, and I take credit for all of them!” Warren said.

“She was and is an amazing professor,” Kennedy, who received his law degree in 2009, said in a separate interview. “There’s a reason she always wins the best-teacher award.”

He recalled: “I’d get lost in the intricacies of the bankruptcy code, and I’d go up to her office, and this was when she was the overseer of TARP – and she’d say, ‘Yes, senator, yes, senator, I need to go because I have a student here.’”

“He was a good student,” Warren said, laughing.

(more…)

​By Ted Nesi​

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – They didn’t love it, but in the end all four Democrats in Rhode Island’s congressional delegation stood by President Obama and voted for this week’s “fiscal cliff” compromise, once again standing with their party’s leadership during a major confrontation.

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Rhode Island is going to need a pretty sizable reversal in its ongoing population decline if the state wants to avoid losing one of its two congressional seats following the next U.S. Census in 2020.

“For 80 years, tiny Rhode Island has stubbornly remained at two House seats and four electoral votes,” Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian wrote after new population estimates were released last week. “But it’s on a path to lose a seat and join the ranks of the states with a single at-large seat.”

Right now the states with one at-large U.S. House seat are South Dakota, North Dakota, Vermont, Alaska, Delaware, Wyoming and Montana.

Rhode Island has had at least two U.S. House seats since 1793, and from 1913 to 1933 the state briefly had three. Downsizing to an at-large seat starting in 2022 would shift the dynamic in Rhode Island’s congressional delegation, since all three members of Congress – the two U.S. senators and one House lawmaker – will represent the whole state. It could also make it even harder for Republicans to win federal office.

Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics ran the numbers under two scenarios and in both cases projected that Rhode Island wouldn’t even be a runner-up for an additional seat after 2020. Last year, Nate Silver calculated that Rhode Island had the second- and third-smallest House districts in the nation.

Another option: Rhode Island could push to expand the size of the U.S. House. More seats for everyone!

• Related: Start getting ready for a Cicilline vs. Langevin race (March 24, 2011)

Congressman David Cicilline is moving up the ranks.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has appointed Cicilline to the House Budget Committee for the new Congress that convenes in January, an assignment that will put the sophomore lawmaker at the center of some of the Beltway’s biggest battles, her office announced Thursday.

The two top lawmakers on the Budget Committee are both national figures: its Republican chairman is Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, who was Mitt Romney’s running mate, and its Democratic ranking member is Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen, an influential member of the House Democratic caucus.

“The House Budget Committee is a less prestigious ‘B’ level committee in the House, but its profile has risen dramatically under the helm of Rep. Paul Ryan,” Beltway newspaper The Hill noted last week. Cicilline attacked Ryan and his eponymous budget frequently on the campaign trail this year.

Cicilline will also continue to serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he’ll be joined by Mass. Congressman-elect Joe Kennedy III. House committees are less intimate than Senate committees: the House Budget Committee has a whopping 38 members, 16 of them Democrats this session.

Cicilline will give up his post on the low-profile House Small Business Committee to join the budget panel. Pelosi did not announce any appointments to the prestigious Appropriations, Rules or Ways and Means committees on Thursday.

​By Tim White

​WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – Rhode Island’s congressional delegation is expressing support for President Barack Obama’s order assembling a task force charged with delivering gun safety recommendations by January.

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Brendan Doherty wielded Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles like a shield during his failed bid for Congress: the Republican highlighted his support for the ideas of the beloved-in-the-Beltway budget-cutters to signal he wouldn’t march in lockstep with the national GOP.

Doherty’s embrace of Simpson-Bowles reached its apex in mid-October when he traveled to New York to receive their blessing in the flesh. Doherty’s campaign trumpeted an endorsement, though in the end it was unclear that Simpson and Bowles had actually endorsed him.

Whatever the case, embracing Simpson-Bowles didn’t save Doherty from a 12-point loss – and apparently Bowles’ decision is now coming back to haunt him, too.

The former North Carolina U.S. senator was seen as a leading candidate to replace Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary for Obama’s second term, but Mother Jones’ David Korn reports Democrats haven’t forgotten that Bowles backed Cicilline’s opponent (sort of):

[Jacob] Lew, who as White House chief of staff has won much praise from colleagues, has another advantage over Bowles: better standing within his own party. … This past campaign, Bowles joined with former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson (who co-chaired their deficit reduction commission) to endorse two House Republican candidates over Democrats in tight races. … Both [New Hampshire's Charlie] Bass and Doherty lost, but congressional Democrats are not eager to forgive Bowles his apostasy. A Bowles nomination, a senior House Democratic staffer says, “would cause an uproar among congressional Democrats, and the White House is aware. He endorsed Republican candidates against some of our vulnerable people … [and this has caused] extremely bad feelings over here.”

(photo: Doherty for Congress)

By Ted Nesi and Tim White

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Incumbent Democrats U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Jim Langevin still hold sizable leads over their Republican challengers just a week before Election Day, according to an exclusive WPRI 12 poll released Tuesday night.

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• Interactive: Check out the complete WPRI 12 poll results breakdown

Coming on Tuesday: Obama vs. Romney; Chafee for re-election; schools, business climate

By Ted Nesi and Tim White

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Democratic Congressman David Cicilline is clinging to a wafer-thin lead over Republican challenger Brendan Doherty with just a week to go before voters head to the polls, according to an exclusive WPRI 12 poll released Tuesday night.

Read the rest of this story »

• Interactive: Check out the complete WPRI 12 poll results breakdown

Coming up at 11 p.m.: Whitehouse vs. Hinckley, Langevin vs. Riley.

The Washington Post is doing an interesting investigative series called “Capitol Assets” which looks at the personal finances of members of Congress, many of whom are, well, rich. On Sunday, The Post reported the wealthiest members of Congress “were largely immune from the Great Recession.”

As part of the series, the paper crunched the numbers for each member of the House and Senate to see where their fortunes comes from. Since their financial disclosures use broad ranges, The Post took the midpoint as each asset’s value. The disclosures don’t include personal homes or non-interest-bearing bank accounts, which don’t have to be disclosed.

Three of the four members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation are wealthier than their colleagues, with U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse having four times more money than the median senator; U.S. Sen. Jack Reed is the exception. Click the links for a breakdown of each man’s financial profile.

1. Sheldon Whitehouse: $8.9 million ($7 million more than the median)
2. Jim Langevin: $2 million ($1.3 million more than the median)
3. David Cicilline: $966,001 ($266,001 more than the median)
4. Jack Reed: $568,521 ($1.3 million less than the median)

A good week for David Cicilline keeps getting better.

In the wake of a new WPRI 12 poll showing the congressman with a six-point lead over Brendan Doherty, two national outlets on Thursday upgraded the freshman Democrat’s chances of holding onto his 1st Congressional District seat.

National Journal moved the 1st District down 12 slots on its list of the nation’s most competitive U.S. House races, shifting it to #27. “Doherty has a steeper hill to climb,” the Beltway magazine’s Scott Bland wrote.

Hours later, Roll Call changed its rating on the 1st District race from tossup to Leans Democratic. “Cicilline seems to have rebounded and looks to be in much better shape than he was a few months ago in this very Democratic district,” the Capitol Hill newspaper’s Lauren Whittington wrote.

The Sabato Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics made the same move last month, changing its rating on the race to “Leans Democratic.” One holdout that’s still rating Cicilline-Doherty as a tossup is The Cook Political Report, though its editor is also considering a change.

Still, the incumbent is far from out of the woods. Cara Cromwell, who managed John Loughlin’s campaign against Cicilline in 2010, noted during a Friday taping of Newsmakers that he’s only polling 44% in the new poll despite widespread name recognition, which could mean Doherty has more room to build support.

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Jim Langevin both hold commanding leads over their little-known Republican challengers with five weeks to go before the election, according to an exclusive WPRI 12 poll released Monday evening.

Read the rest of this story »

• Interactive: Check out the complete WPRI 12 poll results

Coming on Tuesday: Obama vs. Romney, approval ratings for Chafee, Reed, Raimondo, Taveras.

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Congressman David Cicilline has engineered a remarkable eight-month turnaround in his re-election race against Brendan Doherty, rebounding from a 15-point deficit to take a six-point lead, according to an exclusive WPRI 12 poll released Monday evening.

Read the rest of this story »

• Interactive: Check out the complete WPRI 12 poll results

Coming up at 11 p.m.: Whitehouse vs. Hinckley, Langevin vs. Riley.

David Cicilline is having a pretty good week.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has released two polls since last Tuesday’s primary showing the congressman ahead of Republican Brendan Doherty. Cicilline’s campaign followed up Thursday with a survey from his longtime pollster The Feldman Group giving him a 10-point edge, with Cicilline at 46%, Doherty at 36%, independent David Vogel at 7% and 11% undecided.

All three of the polls were commissioned by Cicilline or his party and in each case the full results were withheld; Republicans haven’t released any internal polling of their own to counter the Democrats.

Cicilline is also getting a boost from a neutral analyst: his chances of keeping his seat were upgraded Thursday by the Sabato Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, whose director is the prominent political prognosticator Larry Sabato.

(more…)

If you believe the polls that Democrats are paying for, Congressman David Cicilline may be getting the same post-convention bounce as Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a second survey on Wednesday showing Cicilline with a lead over Republican Brendan Doherty. The phone interview poll by Benenson Strategy Group put Cicilline at 46%, Doherty at 35% and independent David Vogel at 8%, with 11% undecided. A DCCC robo-poll last week put Cicilline at 49% and Doherty at 43%.

The DCCC released a memo [pdf] detailing the poll’s results but refused to release the survey’s full contents after more information was requested by WPRI.com.

Doherty’s campaign, which warned Tuesday about what it called “misleading” questions being asked by pollsters in the 1st District, hasn’t released its own internal polling but dismissed the Democrats’ findings. “We’ve done our own poll, we’re up, and we’re not concerned with numbers coming from misleading push polls coming from Cicilline or DCCC trying to boost his fundraising efforts,” a Doherty aide told WPRI.com.

Benenson is a respected Demcoratic polling firm that’s also done work for President Obama’s campaign and Engage Rhode Island, the Rhode Island group that backed pension changes last year. The DCCC poll also showed Obama with a 30-point lead over Mitt Romney and Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse with a 37-point lead over Republican challenger Barry Hinckley in the 1st District.

“The district’s Democratic leanings present a formidable obstacle to Cicilline’s Republican challenger, particularly in an environment where the presidential election can be expected to dominate political coverage,” Benenson’s Danny Franklin wrote in the DCCC memo.

The Benenson poll’s most interesting finding may be that 8% of 1st District voters say they’ll support the little-known independent Vogel in November rather than one of the major-party candidates, which could damage Doherty if Vogel peels off too much of the anti-Cicilline vote.

Tim White contributed to this report.

Just one week after securing the Republican nomination in Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, Republican Michael Riley is going hard after Democratic Congressman Jim Langevin in a new campaign commercial. The Riley campaign described it as “the largest media buy in the 2nd Congressional District’s history” and said it will cost six-figures for two weeks of TV and radio play.

It’s not clear whether Langevin isn’t in any trouble – there’s been no independent polling in the 2nd District, and the incumbent has won re-election easily every two years since he won office in 2000. The congressman’s campaign hasn’t announced any plans for an ad buy. Here’s the Riley spot:

According to Riley’s campaign, the $20 million figure in the ad refers to almost $2 million in congressional salary Langevin has received since taking office; more than $6 million in campaign contributions he’s collected; and more than $11 million he’s spent running his official offices.

Update: Riley’s campaign says they’ve spent more than $100,000 on the initial ad buy, with more to come. The TV spot is running on all four big stations (WPRI, WJAR, WNAC, WLNE), Cox and Verizon, while the radio spot is running on Cumulus and Clear Channel stations. Riley will be on all those outlets through the November election, according to a spokeswoman. Langevin’s campaign is criticizing the commercial.

By Ted Nesi and Walt Buteau

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – More than half of Anthony Gemma’s supporters will desert the Democratic Party and vote for Republican Brendan Doherty if incumbent David Cicilline is the party’s congressional candidate, an exclusive WPRI 12 poll released Monday night shows.

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• Related: New WPRI 12 Poll: Cicilline 43%, Gemma 31%, undecided 17% (Aug. 27)

By Ted Nesi and Walt Buteau

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Anthony Gemma is losing ground in his Democratic primary campaign against Congressman David Cicilline, as nearly half of likely voters are still unfamiliar with the two-time candidate, an exclusive WPRI 12 poll released Monday evening shows.

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