Daily Digest: Sunday sales debate reopens
Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday. Here's the Digest.
1. Minnesota lawmakers renewed their decades-old debate over Sunday liquor sales Tuesday as the House Commerce Committee advanced a bill to the House floor on a lopsided 15-4 vote. As in previous years, supporters of the move are convinced that the time has come to lift Minnesota’s longtime ban on Sunday liquor store sales. This time they could be right. (MPR News)
2. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton held a news conference Tuesday with some Minnesotans facing health insurance premium spikes to try to get lawmakers to act immediately on his rebate plan. He wants them to delay consideration of bigger changes to the insurance system until later in the session. Many of those facing big increases without eligibility for federal subsidies are struggling with the expense. (Star Tribune)
3. Gov. Dayton announced a $500 million program that will take thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive land out of farm production in order to prevent water pollution. The federal government is putting up $350 million and the state is expected to contribute $150 million. The program will pay farmers to take 60,000 acres of land out of production, and demand for enrollment is expected to be strong. (Star Tribune)
4. A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says repealing major parts of Obamacare would leave 18 million people without health insurance. That number would rise to 32 million over 10 years with a doubling of individual insurance premiums. Republicans said the report should be taken with a grain of salt because it gave only one view by looking at the impact of a repeal without a replacement. But Republicans still haven't settled on a replacement plan, so the CBO hasn't looked at one. The office was considering the repeal bill Congress passed last year that President Obama vetoed. (New York Times)
5. In one of his final acts in office President Obama commuted the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, meaning Manning's 35-year sentence will end in May. Manning has been behind bars for more than six years. She was known as Bradley Manning when she was convicted of leaking classified government and military documents to the website WikiLeaks. Manning was an intelligence analyst in Iraq and has acknowledged leaking the documents, but has said it was done to raise public awareness about the effects of war on civilians. Obama also commuted the sentence of Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez-Rivera among others, and pardoned 64 people, including retired Gen. James Cartwright, who was charged with making false statements during a probe into disclosure of classified information. (AP)
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