House Republicans will begin working the first day of the 2011 legislative session on finding "several hundred million dollars" to cut in the current year's budget, House Speaker-elect Kraig Paulsen and House Majority Leader-elect Linda Upmeyer announced this week after being selected for their new leadership positions.

"We're going to look for opportunities to reduce spending in the current year's budget, and we will be doing that on day one," said Paulsen (R-Hiawatha). "I think it's several hundred million dollars. Are people going to notice? I don't know. I would say 'probably not' because I think there's several hundred million dollars in the current year's budget of marginal or no value to Iowans."

The legislature convenes January 10 and is expected to run 110 days - through April 29 - although Paulsen said he's amenable to shortening the session.

Republican Party of Iowa Chair Matt Strawn attributed this week's big Republican wins at the statewide, legislative, and county levels to the party's focusing on independent voters - just like President Barack Obama did with his win in 2008 - and a clear, consistent message.

"We did it with unprecedented coordination, and we did it by targeting independent voters," Strawn said two days after the election in which Republicans wrested control of the governor's office and the Iowa House from Democrats. "One thing that we had learned in the past is Republicans spend a lot of time talking to Republican voters, but they hadn't reached out to independent voters in this state."

Strawn said that's what the Obama campaign did very effectively in 2008. So Republicans began identifying and targeting those independent voters in fall 2009, finding out what issues they cared about.

Iowa's November 2 vote November on whether to retain three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were part of the unanimous ruling legalizing same-sex marriages in Iowa has national implications, National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown said in helping to kick off the statewide Judge Bus Tour urging a "no" vote on retention.

"The whole country is looking at you," Brown said. "What kind of country are we? Are we a country in which seven judges can take the entire constitutional and common-law history of marriage and throw it aside and the people will not have a say, or are we a country where the people of Iowa are going to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough.' We just say 'no' to activist judges."

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell told Iowa Democratic Party faithful Saturday night that he'd rather lose fighting for something he believes in than win standing for nothing - but he doesn't believe Governor Chet Culver will lose to former Governor Terry Branstad on November 2.

"For a moment, don't worry about the other guy," Rendell said. "An incumbent deserves to be re-elected if he's done a good job. Chet Culver has done a very good job."

Rendell also said Culver and other Democrats should stand up and talk about their accomplishments more clearly with voters, but also be honest about the tough times many Iowans and Americans are facing.

"We've got to continue reminding voters, 'Hey, you may be disappointed in the way things are going in the country; you may be disappointed in the president.' In Pennsylvania, they may be disappointed in some of the things I've done. But it's not a referendum; it's a choice," Rendell said.

All three members of the state's Revenue Estimating Conference said they are "cautiously optimistic" about the economy as they voted to increase the estimate of Iowa's state revenues this fiscal year by nearly $300 million since their last estimate in March.

The new projection for Fiscal Year 2011 is $5.76 billion, a 2.2-percent increase over last year. The panel also made its first revenue estimate for fiscal year 2012 of $5.95 billion, which would be a 3.3-percent increase over the projection for the current year.

Trailing in the polls and with time running out before Election Day, Governor Chet Culver on Thursday came out gunning for rival Terry Branstad in their second debate, repeatedly stating that Branstad raised taxes on multiple occasions during his previous tenure as governor and broke promises to Iowans when it came to job-creation and other policy initiatives.

"Terry Branstad has broken his promises to Iowans since he was governor back in 1983," Culver said. "Branstad has been a serial promise-maker and a habitual promise-breaker when it comes to jobs."

Branstad has promised to add 200,000 jobs to the state over the next five years if he is elected. Culver argued this was an empty promise, much like earlier job-creation promises that weren't fulfilled during Branstad's tenure as governor. Meanwhile, Branstad claimed the 200,000 figure to be an "ambitious goal" that could be accomplished.

For his part, Republican Branstad criticized Democrat Culver multiple times on spending and his handling of the state budget, noting the one-year anniversary of Culver's decision to cut the state budget 10 percent to account for a budget shortfall. Branstad said the cuts were the result of Culver signing a too-large budget in the midst of a recession.

President Barack Obama used a backyard discussion in Des Moines this week to urge patience on the economy and defend a plan to end the Bush tax cuts for Americans making more than $250,000, saying the nation can't afford the $700-billion price tag and must make tough choices.

"What we've proposed is to extend the Bush tax cuts for all income up to $250,000," Obama said. "The reason I think it's important for us to do this is not because I'm not sympathetic to small businesses. It has to do with the fact that 98 percent of small businesses actually have profit of less than $250,000."

Iowa Democrats are targeting those who don't normally vote in midterm elections along with first-time voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008 in the push for early voting, which began Thursday in Iowa and lasts for 40 days.

"Tomorrow is Election Day in Iowa," Iowa Democratic Party Chair Sue Dvorsky declared Wednesday. "Iowans will be able to vote early; they'll be able to vote by mail; they'll be able to vote early in person at their auditor's offices. We have been preparing for Election Day tomorrow since last year, and we are very excited to get ready to kick it off."

As of Friday, Iowa Democrats had requested more than twice as many absentee ballots as Republicans - 40,632 compared with 16,286 - according to the Iowa secretary of state's office. There have been a total of 69,376 requests for absentee ballots.

Governor Chet Culver repeatedly asserted that former Governor Terry Branstad is not telling the truth and is misleading Iowans, while Branstad argued that Culver's across-the-board state-budget cut led to property-tax increases across the state during the first televised debate between the two in Sioux City.

The spirited, hour-long debate offered the first direct exchange between the current and former governor. Eighteen minutes into the Tuesday-night event, Branstad said Culver has acknowledged publicly that he's made mistakes and asked him to name the three biggest.

"Well, Terry, like all governors including you when you were in office for 16 years, we've made our fair share of mistakes. The difference is that we've taken responsibility for those mistakes," Culver said. "In your case, you've had 20 different scandals in 12 separate state agencies. You continue to not be honest with the people of this state. You attack day after day after day and I think tonight, it's important that you be straight and honest with the people of Iowa. What happened during your administration?"

Jonathan NarcisseGiven the density of Jonathan Narcisse's ideas and plans, he's smart to dispense the easy-to-grasp metaphor or example.

"Imagine you have a kid who hasn't cleaned his room for six months," Narcisse said in a phone interview last week. "And you can try to go in and you can try to clean the room. Or you can get some heavy-duty garbage bags and just go through that room and basically throw everything away, except the bed, the dresser, and a couple other things."

The 47-year-old Narcisse, a former member of the Des Moines school board, is running an independent candidacy for Iowa governor, appearing on the ballot under The Iowa Party banner. And he wants to approach Iowa state government with some heavy-duty garbage bags in hand. (Full disclosure: River Cities' Reader Publisher Todd McGreevy is a co-chair of Iowans for a Fair Debate, which is pushing for Narcisse to be included in gubernatorial debates.)

Narcisse's proposals are radical in the sense that they have no respect for the status quo. Narcisse thinks the two major-party candidates - Governor Chet Culver and former Governor Terry Branstad - are like parents who think a light cleaning is good enough. He disagrees: "We just literally wipe out the massive bureaucracy, because at the end of the day, we spend that money wiser."

In total, Narcisse is proposing cutting state and local taxes by $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year, with the caveat that equivalent spending reductions must precede tax cuts. For perspective, the Iowa Revenue Estimating Conference in March put the state's Fiscal Year 2011 general-fund receipts at $6.6 billion.

That type of bold plan has the potential to connect with voters who are dissatisfied with government and politicians.

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