WASHINGTON, D.C. — Less than an hour before he began President Obama began his State of the Union remarks last night, Sen. Al Franken introduced a bill aimed at curtailing foreign influence in U.S. elections, a measure prompted by a Supreme Court ruling last week his office said overturned not just federal campaign finance laws but also a 20-year-old Minnesota law prohibiting corporate spending on elections.

A short time later, Franken gained a powerful ally.

“I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities,” Obama said. “They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.”

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DFL Sen. Al Franken announced today that he introduced legislation to change campaign finance laws. He’s making the announcement one week after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited sums of money to buy ads supporting or opposing political candidates. Franken has introduced legislation that aims to keep foreign interests out of elections. Here’s part of the news release:

Since 1974, federal law has banned foreign companies from giving or spending in American elections. Nothing in our current laws, however, explicitly prohibits foreign companies from creating American subsidiaries or getting control of American companies and using them to flood the airwaves in support of their preferred candidates. Citizens United gives companies unlimited power to do that – and does not distinguish between American companies and companies that are owned or controlled by foreign interests.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Saying he fears that it’s “now versus never” for health care reform, Sen. Al Franken today issued an impassioned call for the House to pass the Senate’s health-care bill if senators agree to go back later and fix it using reconciliation — a process that only requires 51 votes.

“I know that there are elements of the Senate bill that are distasteful to many members of the House of Representatives,” Franken said. “Believe me, there are a few elements in our bill that I’d like to see improved.

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Sen. Al Franken’s wit came in handy this morning as he tried to raise the spirits of members of hundreds of grassroots health care reform advocates.

“I think we all thought this gathering today would be a celebration,” he said. “Well, it may not be a celebration, but it’s not a funeral either,” he said.

From that moment, Franken called for those present to keep fighting for the cause and not to give up so close to victory.

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Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken may not see eye-to-eye on the way forward for health care (She: “scale down;” He: “full bore”), but Minnesota’s two U.S. senators were singing in the same Democratic chorus on the middle-class focus of President Obama’s first State of the Union speech Wednesday night.

Franken praised Obama’s focus on the economy: “The President is where Minnesota wants him to be – focused like a laser on jobs. The only way we’re going to turn this economy around is to put people to work right away.”

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Washington, D.C. [Jan 25, 2010] – U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) today announced U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) grants totaling $553,216 for two Minnesota American Indian communities and the Indian Health Board of Minneapolis. Sen. Franken sits on the Indian Affairs Committee.

The Special Diabetes Program for American Indians establishes community-directed programs that incorporate a wide range of proven diabetes treatment and prevention strategies, such as patient education, quality diabetes care services, as well as physical fitness, nutrition, and weight loss activities.

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St. Paul, Minn. — Sen. Al Franken introduced a plan Tuesday that he believes could put half a million workers back to work, including 15,000 Minnesotans.

Franken’s dubbing the plan “Cash for Jobs,” but its formal name is the “Strengthening Our Economy Through Employment and Development Act,” or SEED Act.

On the Senate floor, Franken proposed using $5 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to subsidize job creation in the private sector.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Al Franken today introduced his jobs plan, a so-called “Cash for Jobs” bill [PDF] that would provide federal wage subsidies to incentivize hiring new workers.

Cash for Jobs would take $10 billion from remaining Wall Street bailout funds and redirect half to create private-sector jobs. Fifty percent of wages for new, private-sector hires would be subsidized for the first nine months, up to a $12-per-hour subsidy, Franken’s office said, with additional credits for hiring Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, and a three-month bonus would be paid if the employee was retained for 15 months.

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Today, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) introduced his plan to put around 15,000 Minnesotans back to work. The “Strengthening Our Economy Through Employment and Development (SEED) Act,” informally known as “Cash for Jobs,” would take $10 billion in existing funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and re-allocate it to creating jobs in the private and public sectors. This means the initiative would create jobs without adding to the national debt or deficit.

Sen. Franken’s ‘Cash for Jobs’ plan is based on a successful 1983-1987 Minnesota program, the Minnesota Emergency Employment Development program, that got 7,400 workers back on the job in its first six months. Franken’s bill provides $5 billion for wage subsidies to incentivize hiring in the private sector. The additional $5 billion will provide direct grants to states, local governments, and tribes to create green jobs.

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Op-Edit by Sen. Al Franken — The American Dream, and its promise of prosperity, has long been predicated on the simple idea that opportunity is a right, and not a privilege, and that every individual should be afforded a level playing field on which to set out into the world.

To fulfill this promise to our children, we must close the school achievement gap that is leaving so many of our children behind.

Yet reversing decades of educational inequality is no easy task. There are exemplary schools scattered across the country that are proving every day that while they cannot solve all of their students’ problems, they can push them to increasingly higher levels of achievement under the most trying of circumstances.

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