A push-polling campaign with live telephone interviewers is underway in Iowa House district 43, where two-term Republican State Representative Chris Hagenow faces Democrat Susan Judkins. Following my own advice, I took detailed notes on last night’s call.

UPDATE: I am hearing reports of similar push-polls against John Forbes, Democratic candidate in House district 40, and John Phoenix, Democratic candidate in House district 38. If you have received these calls or push-polls targeting other Democratic House candidates, please let me know: desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com. If you get one of these calls, take notes if possible, and don’t be afraid to ask the caller to repeat the question.

SECOND UPDATE: Mark Blumenthal explained the difference between a real opinion survey and a push-poll on his Mystery Pollster blog. Whereas a real poll is designed to collect data from respondents and measure opinions, a push-poll is all about spreading negative information about a political opponent to as many people as possible, under the deceptive guise of conducting a survey.

Three days after proudly announcing the largest set of tax incentives Iowa has ever offered to a corporation, Governor Terry Branstad criticized President Barack Obama’s “penchant for trying to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.”

Voting for the so-called “failed stimulus” has become a stock phrase in Republican attack ads against Congressional Democrats. But as Bleeding Heartland has discussed many times before, the “Great Recession” would have been more devastating without the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

State budget cuts are a huge drag on the economy. Follow me after the jump for a picture that’s worth a thousand words on how a favorite conservative punching bag helped soften the recession’s impact in Iowa.

Hope the Bleeding Heartland community has been enjoying the long holiday weekend. This is an open thread. I’ve enclosed some Labor Day-related links after the jump, including an excerpt from the Iowa Policy Project’s recent report on wage theft, which “deprives low-wage Iowa workers of an estimated $600 million, deprives state and local government of revenue, and puts law-abiding businesses at a competitive disadvantage.”

Governor Terry Branstad issued two new executive orders last week. One directive rescinded 12 executive orders issued between 1998 and 2009, including two that were intended to make state government operate more efficiently. Branstad’s other order granted “stakeholder groups” new levers for blocking potentially “burdensome” administrative rules.

Highlights from the new and the disappeared executive orders are after the jump.

AFSCME Iowa Council 61 filed a prohibited practice complaint yesterday with the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board, charging that Governor Terry Branstad disregarded Iowa’s collective bargaining law when he signed an executive order allowing state employees to contribute to their health insurance premiums.

Governor Terry Branstad confirmed earlier this week that employee contributions to health insurance premiums will be a major battleground during the next round of contract negotiations with unions representing state workers.  

Roughly 150,000 people, or about 5 percent of Iowa’s population, will not receive Medicaid coverage under the 2010 federal health insurance law if Governor Terry Branstad gets his way. The governor repeated yesterday that he does not intend to go along with the Medicaid expansion, because he doesn’t believe the federal government should or will provide the promised funding to cover the cost.

Congressional Republicans including Representative Steve King are urging governors to reject other aspects of the Affordable Care Act, such as the state-based health insurance exchanges. Branstad has not yet decided whether to take that route. More details on these stories and other fallout from last Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling are after the jump.  

Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds defended Governor Terry Branstad’s veto of $500,000 allocated to funding Iowa’s food bank network yesterday while rolling out a fundraising drive for the Food Bank of Iowa.

Summer unofficially kicks off next weekend, which means lots of Iowans will be enjoying themselves at lakes and rivers. Follow me after the jump for recent news related to lake and river projects, flood prevention, and water quality in Iowa.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

In the final days of the 2011 Iowa legislative session, funding for passenger rail was one of the last disputes House Republican and Senate Democratic negotiators resolved. The final deal called for no passenger rail money in the state budget for fiscal year 2012, but left “intent” language describing future state funding to match federal grants for a train route between Iowa City and Chicago. At that time, news reports indicated that legislators would need to allocate $6.5 million toward passenger rail in fiscal year 2013 to keep this project alive, plus $10 million total in subsequent years.

Before the Iowa House and Senate adjourned last week, I saw no mention of passenger rail funding in any reports about the infrastructure budget for fiscal year 2013, which begins on July 1. Wondering whether no news was bad news, I started asking around. What I learned is after the jump, along with new links on the potential for passenger rail across Iowa.

I’ve been skeptical that Iowa House Republicans and Iowa Senate Democrats would agree on comprehensive education or property tax reform in an election year. Until today, though, it never occurred to me that anyone would propose adjourning the 2012 legislative session without passing a budget for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

Then State Senator Bill Dix floated one of the worst ideas I’ve heard lately.

A conference committee of Iowa House and Senate members has yet to determine whether the Iowa legislature will allocate $5 million over two years to rebuild the dam at Lake Delhi in Delaware County. However, it’s already clear that more worthwhile lake restoration projects in Iowa will go without funding next year thanks to money set aside to rebuild the Delhi dam.

Recreation on Iowa rivers generates enough economic activity to support about 6,350 jobs, according to a new study by Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development.

Unfortunately, a new report by Environment Iowa indicates that this state’s rivers are among the country’s most polluted waterways.

Follow me after the jump for excerpts from both reports, published last week.

The nice thing about a large majority, like the 60 to 40 Republican advantage in the Iowa House, is not needing every vote in your caucus for every bill. Members can oppose the party line when local interests are threatened without derailing the legislative process. Retiring State Representative Steve Lukan showed how it’s done when he voted against the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund budget in the House Appropriations Committee last week, because that bill left out $5 million in funding for a major project in Lukan’s district.

This basic concept of representing your constituents is apparently lost on Walt Rogers. The first-term Republican from a district covering parts of Cedar Falls and Waterloo just voted for an education budget that slashes funding for the University of Northern Iowa.

UPDATE: Scroll down for Rogers’ weekly newsletter, which discusses his vote on the education budget.

The Iowa legislature’s second “funnel” deadline passed on Friday, which means that most non-appropriations bills are dead unless they have been approved in one chamber and in at least one committee in the other chamber. It’s time to catch up on the most significant bills being debated in the Iowa House and Senate.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that Governor Terry Branstad impermissibly used his line-item veto to strike language about Iowa Workforce Development field offices without vetoing the money allocated to fund those offices.

UPDATE: Added Branstad’s reaction below as well as statements from Iowa House and Senate Democrats.

Iowa is one of five states to receive a failing grade in the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund’s new report, Following the Money 2012: How the 50 States Rate in Providing Online Access to Government Spending Data. The full report is here (pdf). I’ve posted highlights and excerpts after the jump.

Several environmental groups are mobilizing against $5 million in proposed state funding to rebuild the Lake Delhi dam on the Maquoketa River in Delaware County.

It’s the most list-making time of the year. Let’s start talking about Iowa political highlights of 2011.

This thread is devoted to master strokes. I don’t mean our elected officials’ wisest actions, or the policy choices that affected the greatest number of Iowans. I mean acts of such skill that even opponents had to grudgingly acknowledge their brilliance.

My top picks are after the jump. Tomorrow Bleeding Heartland will review the year’s most bewildering acts of incompetence. On Thursday we’ll look at the events that are likely to have the greatest long-term impact on Iowa politics.

When an elected official wants a certain phrase or point of view to be transmitted in a news story, a spokesperson often has to do the heavy lifting. Governor Terry Branstad’s communications director Tim Albrecht showed this week how pros get the job done while explaining an apparent contradiction in the governor’s stance on the federal health insurance reform law.

The state agency Iowa Workforce Development has replaced 36 field offices with hundreds of new “enhanced access” computer terminals this year.

Although the shuttered offices are unlikely ever to reopen, they may live on as talking points in many competitive Iowa House and Senate races next fall.

Republican business owner David Maxwell is running to represent the new Iowa House district 76. Previously declared GOP candidate Mark Dix dropped out of the race yesterday. A map of this swing district and background on Maxwell are after the jump.

UPDATE: More recent absentee ballot numbers are here, and a precinct-level analysis of the early voting is here.

Democrat Liz Mathis and Republican Cindy Golding debated two nights in a row this week. Highlights from their encounters are after the jump, along with updated absentee ballot numbers for the Senate district 18 special election.

Iowa House and Senate members have plenty of work to do during the next legislative session, scheduled to begin in January 2012. Governor Terry Branstad wants to pass a big education reform package as well as commercial property tax cuts he wasn’t able to get through the legislature this year. Lawmakers also face a deadline for adopting a new system for funding and delivering mental health services. Disagreements over the state budget pushed the 2011 legislative session two months beyond its original adjournment date, and I doubt Democrats and Republicans will find it easier to agree on spending priorities in 2012. Election years aren’t typically the most productive times at the state capitol.  

As if there weren’t enough contentious issues on the table, the governor’s transportation advisory commission will urge legislators to approve an 8-cent to 10-cent gas tax increase.  

Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass and Governor Terry Branstad’s senior education adviser Linda Fandel rolled out a blueprint for reforming Iowa schools yesterday. The plan didn’t include any big ideas not mentioned by Glass and Fandel a few weeks ago. It also didn’t estimate how much state government and/or school districts would need to spend to make the blueprint a reality.

Democratic delegates in Iowa Senate district 18 nominated former television news anchor Liz Mathis last night for the November 8 special election. No other candidate sought the nomination. Republicans picked businesswoman and Linn County GOP co-chair Cindy Golding in a three-way nominating contest last week.

Both Mathis and Golding indicated yesterday that they will focus on jobs and the economy rather than social issues during the short campaign.

Catching up on news from last week, Governor Terry Branstad has withdrawn Iowa’s membership in the leading advocacy group for passenger rail connecting the Midwest.  

Four Democratic state legislators and the leader of Iowa’s largest public employee union filed a lawsuit yesterday challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s line-item veto of a provision barring Iowa Workforce Development from closing 36 of its 55 field offices around the state.

UPDATE: Further details are at the end of this post.

Defending his veto of a tax measure designed to help lower and middle-income working Iowans, Governor Terry Branstad hinted yesterday that he won’t allow any expansion of that tax credit unless legislators approve corporate income and property tax reform costing more than twenty times as much.

Iowa Department of Public Health Director Mariannette Miller-Meeks on Friday reversed plans to eliminate the top administrator’s position at the Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control. Her comments came several hours after Democratic State Senator Jack Hatch predicted “legal action” to challenge the way IDPH downsized its smoking prevention programs.

Iowa Department of Public Health Director Mariannette Miller-Meeks insisted on August 1 that state efforts to reduce and prevent smoking will continue deep despite budget cuts, which just cost a senior department staffer her job.

Governor Terry Branstad won’t push for major changes in the state’s universal voluntary preschool program for four-year-olds during the next two years, according to Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass. While taping Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program on July 28, Glass said the governor had decided “to move past this debate” on whether preschool should be universal or targeted to needy families. Branstad’s communications director Tim Albrecht confirmed to Mike Wiser the same day,

“Now that preschool funding is in place, Gov. Branstad does not believe a preschool funding debate should overshadow a meaningful debate on how to again make Iowa’s schools the best in the country,” Albrecht wrote in a follow-up email. “Now that Gov. Branstad has allocated funding for preschool over the next two years, he does not desire this settled issue to get in the way of our education reform goals.”

That is the smartest thing Branstad has done all week.  

Iowa Workforce Development officials can move ahead with closing 37 36 of the agency’s 55 field offices around Iowa, thanks to a line-item veto by Governor Terry Branstad. State lawmakers included language in the economic development appropriations bill to require Iowa Workforce Development to maintain its current number of field offices through the 2012 fiscal year. However, Branstad rejected that provision yesterday:

“This item would prohibit Iowa Workforce Development from putting forth an enhanced delivery system that broadens access to Iowans across the state in fiscal year 2012,” Branstad said. “In order to develop a sustainable delivery system in light of continually fluctuating federal funding, the department must put forth a system that embraces the use of technology while providing enhanced benefits through maximum efficiencies.”

Branstad said Iowa Workforce Development has more than 190 “virtual access point workstations” in over 60 new locations throughout the state to increase access to these critica services. He says Iowans are already using the expanded hours of operation, six days a week.

“At my direction, IWD will have hundreds of additional virtual access points by the end of fiscal year 2012,” he said.

I doubt many unemployed Iowans would consider a computer terminal “enhanced” access, compared to an office staffed by a real person explaining the available services.

Controversy over shutting down these offices nearly derailed the Iowa Senate confirmation of Teresa Wahlert. Opposition from lawmakers of both parties didn’t persuade her, although two of the 39 field offices originally targeted will be spared. Iowa Workforce Development started closing some of its field offices even before legislators had adopted a final budget. In early July, the agency laid off 13 employees as part of the planned reorganization. Iowa Workforce Development Communications Coordinator Katie Hommer communications director was unable to tell me today when the agency will finish shutting down the offices slated for closure. She said staff are still going through the signed budget, which they only just received.

Hommer also did not know whether enough funds were provided for the agency to keep open its New Iowan Centers, which offer specialized services for recent immigrants. Those centers are currently located in Muscatine, Ottumwa, Marshalltown, Mt. Pleasant, Iowa City, Des Moines, Sioux City, Storm Lake, Council Bluffs, Mason City and Denison.

On a related note, Branstad’s love for streamlining government doesn’t extend to the U.S. Postal Service, which may close as many as 178 Iowa post offices. The downsizing is part of a plan to eliminate 3,700 of nearly 32,000 post offices nationwide. Branstad has repeatedly criticized plans to eliminate rural Iowa post offices, and yesterday he told Radio Iowa that the postal service is not using “common sense.” He wants the independent federal agency to explore alternatives to closing offices that small-town residents rely on.

Conservatives talk a good game about running government like a business, but a private business with declining revenues could never afford to operate retail outlets in as many locations as the U.S. Postal Service. The independent agency gets almost all of its revenues from postal fees (not federal budget allocations). As Americans send fewer paper letters and documents, postal service revenues have declined.

Branstad and his wife own 12 Iowa buildings that are leased to the U.S. Postal Service. So far only one of those, in Lohrville, is on the list of post offices to be closed.

UPDATE: Iowa House and Senate Democrats will reach out to Republicans to convene a special legislative session “with the sole purpose of overriding Governor Branstad’s line-item vetoes of legislation prohibiting the closure of the [Iowa Workforce Development] offices.” Details are in a press release I’ve posted after the jump. That document lists all the towns that would lose Iowa Workforce Development offices, as well as the county unemployment rate in each area.

SECOND UPDATE: Sounds like Republicans are not game for a special session to deal with this narrow issue. I’ve added Iowa Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley’s statement below.

THIRD UPDATE: Only 36 field offices will be closed, because federal funding came through to keep the Webster City office open. The closure of the Electrolux factory has been a particular hardship for Iowans in the local area. After the jump I’ve posted an Iowa Workforce Development press release, which lists all the cities and towns that will have the “regional integrated one-stop offices,” as well as all the localities that will lose their field offices.

Meanwhile, Iowa House and Senate Democrats formally called for a special session on July 29. Republicans are not interested. Expect these office closures to become a campaign issue in a bunch of statehouse races next year. The Golden Dome Blog found a video of Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds praising a “phenomenal” and “user friendly” workforce development office during last year’s gubernatorial campaign.

Democratic State Representative Dave Jacoby serves on the Iowa Workforce Development Board and is angry that board didn’t get to weigh in on whether these field offices should be closed.

Yesterday’s heartbreaking attacks in Norway are the big global news story this weekend. This man, Anders Behring Breivik, is suspected of setting off a bomb in downtown Oslo on July 22. The explosion killed seven people and destroyed the prime minister’s office building. The suspect then reportedly dressed in a policeman’s uniform and shot to death at least 85 people at a youth camp run by Norway’s governing Labor Party. Breivik has “confessed to the factual circumstances,” according to his attorney, who said his client planned the crimes long in advance. Police are trying to determine the motive for the attacks. The suspect reportedly had right-wing and anti-Muslim views, but why would anyone attack teenagers at a summer camp?

The big U.S. news story is that House Speaker John Boehner was too stupid to take the deficit reduction deal President Barack Obama offered:

Obama said he had demanded $1.2 trillion in additional revenues over 10 years, in exchange for spending cuts, including cuts to Medicare and Social Security. He said the revenues had been structured in a way that marginal tax rates would not be increased, and no Republicans would be forced to cast a vote that would violate the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which most Republicans in Congress have signed.

You read that right. While agreeing to cuts in programs that tens of millions of Americans rely on, Obama was ready to guarantee no increases in any tax rates, even at the highest income levels, for the next decade. Not only that, he bent over backwards to give Republicans political cover, so they could accept his offer without facing blowback from Grover Norquist. The same Grover Norquist who now wants Congress to stop playing chicken with the debt ceiling. And Obama was angry Boehner walked out on negotiations, saying he felt “left at the altar”! I don’t see how this so-called Democrat could be handling the budget negotiations any worse. For the first time, I am seriously thinking about writing in a candidate for president in November 2012.

The Iowa Policy Project analyzed the latest state jobs numbers here. Iowa has more than a billion dollars in various state reserves, but Governor Terry Branstad and Iowa House Republicans insisted on an extremely tight budget for fiscal year 2012. The predictable result was a “sharp drop in government jobs” in June, which “fully accounted for the first net drop in Iowa nonfarm jobs in the last six months.” Shrinking government does not help the private economy create more jobs. On the contrary, government job losses contribute to our unemployment problem. Iowa’s unemployment rate is 6 percent, still well below the national average, but that’s no excuse for unwarranted austerity policies.

Here’s one good thing that happened this week: Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Admiral Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all certified “that the U.S. military is prepared to accept openly gay and lesbian service members, and that doing so will not harm military readiness.” As a result, the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy will officially end 60 days from July 22.

This is an open thread. What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers?

UPDATE: Iowa native Chuck Manatt passed away this week at age 75. He chaired the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985 and co-chair Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. The Los Angeles Times published a good obituary of Manatt. He will be buried this week in Audubon, near the farm where he grew up.

The Iowa House and Senate finally passed a budget and got out of town yesterday with only about eight hours remaining before the end of the fiscal year.

Every legislative session has its own dynamic, and I’ve been thinking about what surprised me most about this year’s maneuvering in the capitol.  

Iowa legislative leaders made significant progress toward avoiding a government shutdown this week. After the Senate approved new budget bills on Tuesday and Wednesday, negotiators reached new compromises on Thursday. Conference committees cut deals on two-year budgets for economic growth, justice and agriculture/natural resources. The Iowa Senate then passed those three compromise bills on Friday with bipartisan majorities. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal expressed confidence that the House and Senate can finish work on the budget in time for the end of the fiscal year on June 30. Early next week I’ll publish more details on the budget compromises taking shape. To my knowledge, statehouse Democrats and Republicans are still far from agreeing on property tax reform, which Governor Terry Branstad has said must get done this year.

Branstad won a major victory by getting legislators to pass a two-year budget. Senate Democrats had previously warned that biennial budgeting would facilitate a “power grab” by the governor. On Friday the Iowa Senate unanimously approved a bill to address that concern, limiting how much money the governor can transfer between legislative sessions.

The Rebuild Iowa Office, a temporary agency created by then-Governor Chet Culver after the historic 2008 floods, closed this week as scheduled. Lynn Campbell published a good piece about the office and its work. The closure isn’t timely, as western Iowa deals with major flooding along the Missouri River.

“We still feel that there is a need for a recovery office of some sort – they can call it whatever they want – to continue to focus on all these disasters that are happening over and over again,” said Ron Randazzo, Rebuild Iowa’s strategic planner. […]

Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division now will be the lead agency for the state’s disaster response and recovery.

But Susan Judkins Josten, RIO’s intergovernmental affairs director, said the Legislature hasn’t acted on a transition plan and hasn’t required the homeland security division to change its operations. The state also doesn’t have plans to retain the knowledge developed by RIO.

Leading Iowa Republicans aren’t worried. House Speaker Kraig Paulsen told Campbell that he never supported creating a separate office to handle disaster recovery efforts. Governor Terry Branstad was scathing in comments to Rod Boshart:

“I think it really turned out to be kind of an ineffective agency and I think the Legislature was right in their decision in 2009 to sunset it,” the governor said. “All RIO did was paper shuffling and coordination. […]”

Branstad said he believes his administration has established a better system of direct accountability and management by having the state’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management agency take the lead on dealing with disasters such as the current flooding along the Missouri River, while other state agencies address funding issues with the federal government, public safety and other issues.

“In my opinion there’s been money wasted in having an extra layer” that has now been eliminated, the governor said. “When you have to go through a coordinating agency and you have the paperwork involved, it just slows things down. I think the change will be for the better, speed things up, cost us less, be much more efficient and make it possible for people to get straight answers quicker.”

Democratic State Senator Rob Hogg praised RIO officials for keeping the focus on flood prevention efforts as well as disaster recovery. I share Hogg’s concern that in RIO’s absence, no state agency will push for better floodplain management in Iowa. Branstad did virtually nothing on that front after Iowa’s 1993 flooding (at the time the worst ever) and hasn’t pushed for action since returning to office.

In happier news, New York became the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage last night. Four Republicans in the GOP-controlled state Senate voted for the marriage equality bill, which Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo immediately signed into law.

This is an open thread. What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers?

Governor Terry Branstad today: “I just want to assure the people of Iowa that I know what I’m doing.”

He has “no written plan” for how state government will function if a 2012 budget hasn’t been adopted by June 30. But no worries, he’s “been through emergencies before,” “understands and respects the responsibility that I have” and will use emergency powers if necessary to provide “the services the people need.” Anyway, Branstad told reporters, “There’s not going to be a shutdown.”

This budget standoff should have been resolved weeks ago, and the governor has been a big part of the problem. Despite improving state revenue collections, Branstad demanded significant cuts in education and human services when submitting his draft budget in January. A few months later, he line-item vetoed a Democratic tax cut priority, having raised no objections to that policy when legislators negotiated that bill with the governor’s staff in the room.

When the Iowa legislature’s scheduled adjournment date passed with little progress toward a 2012 budget, Branstad said don’t worry, we have plenty of time, we just need to “get serious” about working things out with “patience and perseverance.” But instead of advocating for a middle ground between House Republicans and Senate Democrats, Branstad decided in May to insist on the House Republican general fund spending target ($5.99 billion). That figure was about $160 million less than what Branstad proposed in his own draft budget. Moving away from the middle ground made no sense, because by the spring, Iowa’s revenue projections for fiscal year 2012 had improved compared to late last year.

Now Senate Democrats have agreed to the Republican overall spending target, but the governor won’t make significant concessions on Democratic funding priorities. The parties are still far apart on spending levels for human services, for example.

Iowans deserve more from Branstad than “trust me,” the government won’t shut down, and if it does, I know what to do.

New YouTube Video: Environmental Protections Undermined Nationwide

A national network of state level environmental organizations, including the Iowa Environmental Council, has produced a new, YouTube video: “Our values, our environment, our future,” to draw attention to the impact of current and proposed state and federal budget cuts on environmental safeguards across the nation.

Melissa Gavin, Executive Director of the State Environmental Leadership Program, explains: “Basic protections for air and water quality are on the chopping block in states throughout the country. At the same time, EPA’s budget has also been under attack. People need to know that part of what is getting slashed is our capacity to enforce laws that protect health and quality of life—even funds that help us maintain sewage treatment and drinking water purification plants.”

READ MORE  ...

Seven- and three-minute versions of the video are available for viewing at the following urls:
Our values, our environment, our future – 7 minutes
Our Values, our environment, our future – 3 minutes

Please share this video with others!

Iowa’s current fiscal year ends on June 30, which gives Governor Terry Branstad, Republican leaders in the Iowa House and Democratic leaders in the Iowa Senate just ten days to approve a 2012 budget without disrupting state government operations. Although the parties have settled on a total spending target for the next fiscal year, they are still at odds over funding for key programs. They appear to have made no progress toward a compromise on commercial property tax reform, which Branstad demands as part of any final budget deal.

Lots of links on spending priorities, rival tax proposals and government shutdown scenarios are after the jump.

UPDATE: Scroll to the end for further details Senate Democrats released on June 20 regarding a budget compromise.