Senator Kay Hagan

Senator Kay Hagan Hosts Telephone Town Hall Meeting NOW online

Wednesday, November 30, 2011 6:30 pm

Adding her signature to a letter sent to the leader of the Senate:

“We believe the scale of this challenge dictates the need for a comprehensive solution that includes making polluters pay through a price on greenhouse gas emissions,” wrote Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Roland Burris of Illinois, Al Franken of Minnesota, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Ted Kaufmann of Delaware, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Udall of Colorado, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Warner of Virginia.

And I believe you're right.

It's nice to know somebody's looking out for them:

Hagan is cosponsoring two amendments to the Senate version. One of them, which would exempt family operations from new performance and record-keeping requirements, is now being rewritten.

“We had started out having it by a dollar amount,” Hagan explained. “It was $500,000 [in gross income] but now it’s being looked at [by] the metric … like how many bushels of peaches that they would sell.”

Focusing on the metric of production will make it easier to isolate smaller-scale operations, explained the senator.

That's two more blue stars, Kay:

U.S. Senator Kay R. Hagan (D-NC) has cosponsored two amendments to the food safety bill that will protect small, local food producers from unnecessary and burdensome regulations that could harm their businesses.

"I am working with my colleagues to make changes to the food safety bill to allow our smaller producers to continue operating under existing state regulations. These amendments will ensure we do not overburden our small farms."

This sounds about right to me.

Do they think they have a chance of beating their next Republican opponents if progressive activists aren't enthusiastic about writing checks, making phone calls and going door to door?

This may not be true in North Carolina as a whole, but it's sure as heck true in my house.

Please sign this petition so we can deliver a ton of names to Senator Hagan's office before time runs out.

If you take only one political action this month, take this action. Stand with breast cancer survivors of North Carolina.

Thanks to Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake for leading the charge.

Kay Hagan may be talking about a public option as she tours the state this week, but her office says she's still considering various plans and has not yet even endorsed any form of public option — let alone a robust one.

That's interesting, because Talking Points Memo is reporting that a draft of a public option has been leaked from the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee - one of the committees Hagan sits on, and the committee most likely to introduce a public option in the Senate. Here's TPM's take on the draft:

Of course this isn't news to anyone at BlueNC, but lately Senator Kay Hagan has come to the center of the debate regarding the central tenant of the Obama health care plan--a public health insurance option to compete with private plans helping drive down costs and giving consumers more choices. For several weeks now, progressives and conservatives alike have been flooding her office urging her to either support or oppose the public plan. Recently, the North Carolina Coalition for Health Care for America Now (NC HCAN) brought over 150 citizens to Washington for a town-hall style meeting in order to lobby Senator Hagan on the issue. An excellent discussion of the meeting and a smaller correspondence between Hagan and several Durham constituents was posted on Daily Kos by TriangleNC. If you haven't read it yet, check it out.

Just this morning in Charlotte, Senator Hagan spoke before a group of people at Shelter Health Services and told them that her critics need to stay tuned to what is going on with the healthcare debate in Washington D.C.

"We haven’t taken a 'public option' off the table," she told reporters today. She said it depends on what that means. A member of a key Senate health committee, she said she’s working with colleagues to find a way to expand coverage, ensure quality of care and be fiscally accountable.

You can read the short article from the News and Observer online here. http://projects.newsobserver.com/node/14582