SPRINGFIELD - Lieutenant Governor Sheila Simon will discuss pending state and federal legislation that could improve education equity and local food access in rural Illinois Thursday at a meeting of the Governor's Rural Affairs Council (GRAC).

State Sen. Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill) will also discuss progress of the Education Funding Advisory Committee, which is examining the state's current education funding system and propose a system that provides adequate, equitable, transparent, and accountable distribution of funds to school districts that will prepare students for achievement and success after high school. Simon, who serves as the state's point person on education reform, testified before the committee this week regarding inequities that often hamper rural school districts in Illinois.

A representative of Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), a member of the 2013 Farm Bill Conference Committee, will provide a status report regarding negotiations of the federal farm bill, which includes funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Simon has signed on to two letters to Congress in recent months asking that SNAP and farmers market incentives be protected from devastating cuts.

DATE: Thursday, Jan. 16

TIME: 10 a.m.

LOCATION: Stratton Office Building, Room 413, Springfield

NOTE: Media availability following meeting.

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Whether It's the Lottery or an Inheritance, a Payout Over Time Beats
Taking the Money & Running, Expert Says

If current trends continue, 2014 will be the year of mega lottery jackpots and generous (if not millionaire-making) inheritances, says Ted Bernstein, (www.lifeinsuranceconcepts.com), a longtime life insurance consumer advocate.

Five of the top six biggest lottery jackpots in the United States occurred in 2013 - from  No. 2, the $648 million Mega Millions jackpot before Christmas,to No. 6, a $399.4 million Powerball pot.

Talk about striking it rich!

Odds are slightly better that you'll claim a nice inheritance, whether it's an estate or life insurance benefits, Bernstein says.

"American retirees plan to leave their beneficiaries some of the biggest estates in the world," he says, citing a recent HSBC survey, the Future of Retirement Report. "A fifth of those polled will leave legacies of more than $390,000."

Most who strike it richin the lottery - 98 percent, according to some experts - opt for a lump-sum cash payout versus guaranteed checks over 30 years, Bernstein says.

"Those who receive life insurance benefits almost always opt for the big cash up front, too," he says. "But in both cases, you're almost always better off financially if you choose the payout over the lump sum."

Here's why:

• An estimated 70 percent of people who experience a sudden financial windfall are broke within a few years. That's according to the non-profit National Endowment for Financial Education, Bernstein says. "First, you have the unexpected emotions that go along with suddenly having more money than you ever expected," he says. "People react in unpredictable ways - and that leads to a lot of bad decision-making.

"Second, people want control of the money, even if they have zero experience managing large finances. That's a recipe for disaster!"

Having a guaranteed check from a life insurance company provides valuable safeguards, he says.

• Generally, you'll get more money if it's paid to you over time. "If lottery and life insurance benefits are paid over time or by installment, they will pay more as the money is allowed time to grow," Bernstein says.

For a $400 million win, you'd get only $223.6 million if you took the lump sum option. You'll get the full $400 million only if you choose deferred payments, he says.

If you own a life insurance policy, you can now opt to purchase a policy that instructs the insurance company to pay the proceeds over time, and your beneficiaries may get more because of guaranteed interest, he says.

"Since the insurance company knows it will have more time to pay, you can either choose to pay a lower premium or get up to 50 percent more in face value for the same premium."

• The tax hit - lump sum versus checks over time. In most cases, for a huge lottery jackpot, you can expect to pay the highest federal income tax rate, which is 39.6 percent in 2014 after the first $450,000 or so for a married couple filing jointly.

"On the $400 million jackpot, you'll have a net $135.1 million after federal income taxes," Bernstein says. "If you take the win in checks over 30 years, you'll have $242.9 million after federal taxes."

With life insurance benefits, there are some caveats, but generally you won't pay taxes on the lump sum. "If you take the benefit over time, you won't pay tax on the life insurance portion, but you will on the excess interest. You still come out ahead because you'll have more money over time!" he says.

Almost any way you slice it, if you have a choice of taking your windfall in a lump sum versus deferred payment, you're safer and potentially better off opting for the latter, Bernstein says.

"If the payments are spread over time, you don't have to worry that it won't be there 20 years from now," he says. "It's not like the stock market - the payments are guaranteed."

About Ted Bernstein

Ted Bernstein is a third-generation life insurance specialist with decades of speaking out and advocating for changes on behalf of consumers. He was the first to introduce life insurance without commissions, or "no-load" life insurance, in the mid-1980s and developed the Installment Life Option in response to concerns expressed by his clients. Bernstein is a nationally recognized expert in alternative distribution strategies and life insurance product development. In the late 1980s, he launched the first fee-based Life Insurance Policy Audit and Review service for Trust companies and life insurance fiduciaries.  He is a member of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting.

Des Moines, January 14, 2014? On Wednesday, January 15, 2014, at 10 a.m., in the House Chambers of the Iowa State Capitol, Chief Justice Mark Cady of the Iowa Supreme Court will address a joint convention of the General Assembly on the State of the Judiciary.

 

Chief Justice Cady will recognize the critical role of the cooperation and support from Governor Branstad and the Iowa Legislature in helping make the Iowa court system the best, most advanced, and the most responsive court system in the nation. The chief justice will highlight the progress the Iowa Judicial Branch has made in the last year on its priorities of protecting Iowa's children, providing full-time access to justice, operating an efficient and full service court system, providing faster and less costly resolution of legal disputes, continuing openness and transparency of the courts, and providing fair and impartial justice for all.

 

Live video will be streamed on the Iowa Legislature website beginning at 10:00 a.m. To stream the video, go to  https://www.legis.iowa.gov/chambers

 

Members of the media may obtain advance copies of the speech January 15, 2014, at 8:30 a.m., in the supreme court courtroom at the Capitol. The message will be posted on the Iowa Judicial Branch website www.iowacourts.gov at 10:45 a.m.

 

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Floor Speech by Senator Chuck Grassley on How the Senate Should Work

Delivered Monday, January 13, 2014

Senator McConnell has made a very important call to restore the Senate as the great deliberative body it was designed to be.

I would like to continue to add my voice to that call and expand on some observations I have made previously before the Senate.

The U.S. Senate is a unique body designed with a unique purpose in mind.

In Federalist Paper 62, attributed to the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, the unique role of the U.S. Senate is explained:

"The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions."

When Madison talks about "factious leaders" and "intemperate and pernicious resolutions" he basically means what we call partisanship and the "my way or the highway" approach to legislating that is all too common these days.

What might come as a shock to anyone who has followed the United States Senate lately is the fact that the Senate was specifically designed to check partisan passions and ensure that Americans of all stripes are fairly represented though a deliberative process.

Clearly the Senate is not fulfilling the role the Framers of the Constitution intended.

To find out what went wrong, we first have to examine how the Senate was supposed to function.

About this propensity of legislatures to be dominated by factious leaders acting intemperately, Madison goes on to say:

"Examples on this subject might be cited without number; and from proceedings within the United States, as well as from the history of other nations."

Note that in advocating for the creation of a Senate to counter this negative tendency, Madison references examples from proceedings within the United States.

Many state legislatures in the early days of our Republic were unicameral with frequent elections and weak executives.

This led to many instances where a temporary majority faction would gain control and quickly pass legislation that advantaged the majority at the expense of the minority.

The U.S. Senate has been called the greatest deliberative body in the world because it was specifically designed to proceed at a measured pace and to guarantee the rights of the minority party.

As James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper Number 10:

"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."

What's unique about the Senate is that the rules and traditions force senators to work together to prevent an "overbearing majority" from steamrolling the minority party.

Because the rules of the Senate are built around consensus, as opposed to the House of Representatives where the majority party dominates, it forces senators of all parties to listen to each other and work together.

At least that was true for most of my time in the Senate.

That has changed in recent years.

If anyone wonders why the tone in Washington has become so heated recently, the loss of the Senate as a deliberative body is certainly a big factor.

There's an apocryphal story, that may or may not be historically accurate, but which certainly depicts how the Senate was intended to function.

The story goes that when Jefferson returned from France where he was serving during the Constitutional Convention, he asked George Washington why the Senate had been created.

Washington replied by asking Jefferson "Why did you pour that tea into your saucer?"

"To cool it," said Jefferson.

"Even so," responded Washington, "we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it."

In the House of Representatives, the Rules Committee sets out the terms of debate for each bill.

If you want to offer an amendment in the House, you have to go hat in hand to the Rules Committee and ask permission.

If the House leadership doesn't like your amendment, you're out of luck.

By contrast, the Senate has a tradition of allowing extensive debate and amendments by any senator without prior approval by anybody.

However, that tradition has gone out the window under the current majority leadership.

We have seen an unprecedented abuse of cloture motions to cut off the deliberative process paired with a tactic called "filling the tree" to block amendments being considered.

The Senate Majority Leader has effectively become a one-man version of the House Rules Committee, dictating what amendments will be debated and which ones will never see the light of day.

He has done so again on the unemployment bill currently before the Senate.

In fact, he's been quite unashamed about saying that he is not going to allow any amendments.

This strips the ability of individual senators to effectively represent their state, regardless of party.

Blocking amendments also virtually guarantees that any legislation the Senate votes on will be more partisan in nature, violating the very purpose of the Senate according to James Madison.

By empowering the majority leader at the expense of individual senators, the people of the 50 states lose their voice in the Senate and party leaders get their way instead.

The people of Iowa sent me to the United States Senate to represent them, not to simply vote up or down on a purely partisan agenda dictated by the Majority Leader.

Everyone complains about the lack of bipartisanship these days, but there is no opportunity for individual senators to work together across the aisle when legislation is drafted on a partisan basis and amendments are blocked.

Bipartisanship requires giving individual senators a voice, regardless of party.

That's the only way to get things done in the Senate.

In the last decade, when I was Chairman of the Finance Committee, and Republicans controlled the Senate, we wanted to actually get things done.

In order for that to happen, we knew we had to accommodate the minority.

We had to have patience, humility, and respect for the minority, attributes that don't exist on the other side anymore.

And we had some major bipartisan accomplishments, from the largest tax cut in history to a Medicare prescription drug program to numerous trade agreements.

Those kind of major bills don't happen anymore.

The Senate rules provide that any senator may offer an amendment regardless of party affiliation.

Each senator represents hundreds of thousands to millions of Americans and each has an individual right to offer amendments for consideration.

The principle here isn't about political parties having their say, but duly elected senators participating in the legislative process.

Again, as part of our duty to represent the citizens of our respective states, each senator has an individual right to offer amendments.

This right cannot be outsourced to party leaders.

The longstanding tradition of the Senate is that members of the minority party, as well as rank and file members of the majority party, have an opportunity to offer amendments for a vote by the Senate.

The now routine practice of "filling the tree" to block amendments has been a major factor in the destruction on the Senate as a deliberative body.

This is usually combined with filing cloture to cut off further consideration of a bill, which has occurred to a truly unprecedented extent.

In a deliberative body, debate and amendments are essential so cloture should be rare and the abuse of cloture strikes to the very heart of the how the Senate is intended to operate.

It is important to note that the majority leader has tried to pass off the cloture motions he has filed, which are attempts by the majority party to silence the minority party, as Republican filibusters.

There seems to have been a concerted attempt to confuse cloture motions with filibusters but the Washington Post Fact Checker has caught the majority leader in this distortion, giving his claim of unprecedented Republican filibusters Two Pinocchios.

In fact, a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service called "Cloture Attempts on Nominations: Data and Historical Development" by Richard S. Beth contains an entire section titled, "Cloture Motions Do Not Correspond with Filibusters."

The abuse of cloture, often combined with the blocking of amendments, prevents all Senators from doing what they were sent here to do, not just members of the minority party.

And, it's gotten even worse.

Even where the majority leader has decided he's going to be open to amendments, he has created, out of whole cloth, new restrictions to limit senators' rights.

First, he normally only opens up the amendment process if there's an agreement to limit amendments.

And, this is usually only a handful or so.

Then, he has magically determined that only "germane" or "relevant" amendments can be considered.

Of course, nowhere do the Senate rules require amendments to be germane, other than post cloture.

Senators elected in the last few years appear to be ignorant of this fact.

You'll hear some senators here argue against an amendment saying it's non-germane or non-relevant.

They've totally fallen for the majority leader's creative rulemaking, thus giving up one of their rights as a senator with which to represent their state.

I can't count how many non-germane or non-relevant amendments I had to allow votes on when I processed bills when Republicans were in charge.

They were usually tough, political votes, but we took them because we wanted to get things done.

You don't see that nowadays.

The current majority avoids tough votes at all costs.

And that's why they don't get much done.

The American people sent us here to represent them.

That means voting, not avoiding tough votes.

We sometimes hear that this is a question of majority rule versus minority obstruction.

Again, that ignores that each senator is elected to represent their state, not simply to be an agent of their party.

There are policies that have majority support in the Senate that have been denied a vote.

What happened during Senate debate on the budget resolution seems to prove that point.

The special rules for the Budget Resolution limit debate, so it can't be filibustered, but allow for unlimited amendments.

A Republican amendment to the Senate Budget Resolution in support of repealing the tax on life-saving medical devices in President Obama's health care law passed by an overwhelming 79 to 20, with more than half of Democrats voting with Republicans, rather than their party leader.

A Republican amendment in support of approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline to bring oil from Canada passed 62 to 37.

Votes like these that split the Democrats and hand a win to Republicans are exactly what the majority leader has been trying to avoid by blocking amendments.

That's why the Senate didn't take up a budget resolution for more than three years.

Until we put an end to the abuse of cloture and the blocking of amendments, the Senate cannot function as the Framers intended.

We must bring back the Senate as a deliberative body.

Our politics today desperately need the cooling saucer of the Senate.

The action by the majority leader to make it easier to consider nominations on a purely partisan basis went in the wrong direction.

In the face of bipartisan opposition and with no Republican votes, the so called "nuclear option" established a precedent effectively overruling the rules on the books.

A better move would be for the Senate to establish the precedent that filling the tree and abusing cloture to block a full amendment process is illegitimate.

It's time to restore the Senate so it can fulfill its Constitutional role.

Senator McConnell has made a thoughtful and well-reasoned appeal and I hope my colleagues will listen for the sake of this institution and the country as a whole.

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