President Barack Obama’s 2011 defense budget proposal includes language that would prevent the government from working with contractors who deny victims of sexual assault the right to their day in court.

Buried deep in the Department of Defense budget proposal (page 92 of 94 of this PDF file) released on Monday is language that mirrors an amendment passed into law this year by Sen. Al franken (D-Minn.).

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The White House has included Sen. Al Franken’s anti-rape amendment, which would prohibit Defense contracts of more than $1 million (a vast majority of them) from going to firms that required their employees to accept binding arbitration for claims of sexual or any other kind of harassment.

The Franken Amendment, as it has become known, was successfully attached to the Fiscal 2010 Defense Appropriations bill.

Inclusion in the Fiscal 2011 budget would be a step toward permanence for the amendment, which stands as among the highest-profile legislative victories for Franken in his first year in the Senate.

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Minnesota Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar generally agree on the issues, but not on the vote to confirm Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday. Klobuchar supported his confirmation while Franken was opposed, along with 30 other liberals and conservatives.

Party lines on the vote were extremely blurred (roll call here). The “nay” votes ran from the staunchly liberal Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to the extremely conservative Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

Franken said in a statement on Thursday that he voted no because he didn’t trust Bernanke to protect consumers.

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“Cash for Jobs” is U.S. Sen. Al Franken’s plan to put Minnesotans back to work.

National unemployment is greater than 10 percent with Minnesota not far behind. High and lingering unemployment is clearly an issue in Northeastern Minnesota where several cities on the Iron Range have unemployment rates exceeding 10 percent. We need Washington to pass a bill that puts Minnesota back to work as quickly and efficiently as possible — and that’s what Sen. Franken has proposed.

“Cash for Jobs” would create jobs in the private sector by targeting small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to grow but that are unable to make hires necessary because of the economy. The legislation could provide immediate assistance to small businesses with a hiring incentive.

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Carol and Dave Plamann counted their blessings last week when the two young sons they’ve adopted from Haiti stepped off a plane in Miami, safe at last.

Patrick and Bridget Menke still have only a photo of Roxanne, the 6-year-old Haitian girl they’re in the midst of adopting. “When the quake happened, the bottom fell out of everything,” Bridget Menke said.

The Plamanns and Menkes embody the anguish and vexing difficulties that come with trying to navigate a dense labyrinth of paperwork and the vast bureaucratic breakdown after the earthquake that has shattered Haiti.

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Washington, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Friday (Jan. 29) announced a coalition of support in Minnesota for his “Cash for Jobs” proposal to put people back to work. More than 50 Minnesota workforce councils, advocacy organizations, chambers of commerce, and faith groups endorsed Franken’s jobs bill.

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. The plan is based on the Minnesota Emergency Employment Development (MEED) program, which created thousands of jobs in the 1980s.

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North Dakota and Minnesota politicians and lobbying groups offered varying reactions Thursday to President Obama’s State of the Union mention of the controversial health care reform legislation being considered by Congress.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., advocated strongly for the passage of the Senate’s health care reform bill during a speech Thursday morning at the Families USA Health Action 2010 conference in Washington.

“I’m hopeful the American people recognize that ‘no’ doesn’t come close to cutting it as a solution to our health care challenges,” Franken said in prepared remarks.

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Sen. Al Franken has caught the populist anti-bank fervor going around, voting against the confirmation of Ben Bernanke to a second term chairing the U.S. Federal Reserve Board on Thursday.

“Working Minnesotans deserve to have the same or better protections from the Federal Reserve than Wall Street and the big banks,” Franken said in a statement released after the Senate vote, which went 70-30 for Bernanke. “I opposed the bailout because I didn’t believe it afforded enough taxpayer protections, and that’s why I oppose this nomination today.”

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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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