Latest news with #SenateCommitteeonAppropriations
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Business
- Newsweek
Susan Collins' Chances of Losing Maine Senate Election, According to Polls
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Susan Collins' chances of being reelected in Maine are improving, according to latest polling. A new survey shows the Republican Senator's favorability rating has risen compared to previous polls, ahead of the November 2026 midterms. Why It Matters Collins, a moderate who spoke out against Donald Trump during his first term, has represented Maine since 1997. The state is politically split because it is also represented by independent Senator Angus King, and Governor Jane Mills, a Democrat. Former vice president Kamala Harris won the state by seven points in 2024 and former President Joe Biden won it by nine points in 2020. In 2020, when Collins was most recently up for reelection, she beat former Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, a Democrat, with 51 percent of the vote. This was a smaller margin than when she won her 2014 reelection with a 37-point margin. Sen. Susan Collins, R,Maine, questions witness Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., during a Senate Committee on Appropriations subcommittee hearing to examine proposed budget estimates for fiscal year 2026 for the Department... Sen. Susan Collins, R,Maine, questions witness Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., during a Senate Committee on Appropriations subcommittee hearing to examine proposed budget estimates for fiscal year 2026 for the Department of Health and Human Services, on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Washington. More AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta If Collins loses her seat, it will prove more difficult for Republicans who currently control the Senate with a 53 to 47-seat majority. What To Know According to a Pan Atlantic Research poll of 840 Maine likely voters, 49 percent of people see Collins favorably, 45 percent unfavorably, making her net favorability +4 percent. The polling was conducted between May 12 and May 26 with a margin of sampling error of +/- 3.5 percent. This is an improvement on previous polling released by the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in April, which showed 71 percent of respondents did not believe Collins should be reelected. That poll also showed only 12 percent of respondents had a favorable view of the Senator, and 58 percent had an unfavorable view. What People Are Saying Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), who ran the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) during the 2020 cycle told the Hill: "In general, for any senator who's served their state and been out there and talking to the voters and engaging them and working to solve those problems, they're going to be effective with their voters to gain their support." James Melcher, a professor of political science at the University of Maine at Farmington, previously told Newsweek "there's no question" that a run by Collins would make it more difficult for Democrats to flip the seat. "Mainers are ticket splitters to a large degree, and even in a polarized climate, many may vote for her and also vote for a D for governor," he said. "She's also generally run well ahead of top of the ticket Republicans, though last time she lost a lot of D and independent support compared to past runs." Dan Shea, a professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, told Newsweek in March: "It's a blue state that she can win. But the snag is that group is getting smaller and smaller. Swing voters might not be extinct in Maine, but they are on the endangered species list." What Happens Next With over a year to go until the midterms, Collins' popularity and chances of winning her seat are likely to fluctuate depending on her policies and on what other politicians step into the ring in opposition.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Federal funding for Hawaiian Home Lands on chopping block
The state agency helping Native Hawaiians with housing needs is at risk again of a federal funding cutoff. President Donald Trump is proposing to eliminate the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant program as part of a rough budget plan for the next federal fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 In a May 2 letter from Trump's Office of Management and Budget to the chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, OMB Director Russell Vought indicated that the federal grant funding for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands should be cut off in part because DHHL has an accumulation of unspent proceeds from prior years. 'The program has large balances and only one grantee, which would be more appropriately funded by the State of Hawaii, ' the letter said. Annual funding from the program in each of the last three years has been about $22 million. However, such funding at times has been much lower, and got zeroed out during the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama in 2016 because DHHL had amassed a pile of unspent funding that drew the ire of some state leaders and DHHL beneficiaries. U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii ) disagrees with the proposed move by the Republican president, but also believes DHHL needs to be spending more of its past federal grant awards. 'Sadly these carryover balances, and these high annual re-appropriations that they have, kind of made it low-hanging fruit for the Trump Administration, ' Tokuda said. 'I know for beneficiaries it's extremely frustrating because there's so much need.' Under the program, which is part of the 1996 Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act also known as NAHASDA, DHHL has helped beneficiaries in ways that include homestead development, rent subsidies for low-income seniors, home loans, affordable-housing construction, land acquisition, emergency rent and utility payments, and financial literacy training. Homestead development is the agency's main mission and costliest endeavor. There are close to 30, 000 DHHL beneficiaries waiting for homestead leases that cost $1 a year but require recipients to buy or build their own homes. The homestead program was established in 1921 by Congress to return Hawaiians to their ancestral lands after the U.S. annexed the islands. The program, administered by the state since 1959, offers residential, agricultural or pastoral land leases to DHHL beneficiaries, who must be at least 50 % Hawaiian. DHHL Director Kali Watson said in a statement that the agency fully supports Hawaii's congressional delegation in efforts to educate and convince the current federal administration of the grant program's value and importance. 'We are very appreciative of the recent increased funding over the last three years and are hopeful we can continue to receive the same level of funding, ' Watson said. Tokuda said DHHL has a $53.6 million unspent grant funding balance from prior years, not including a $22.3 million appropriation for the current fiscal year. According to DHHL's most recent annual performance report for the federal program produced in September 2024, the agency's fund balance at that time was $66.6 million, of which $36.8 million was encumbered by contracts for spending and $29.8 million was unencumbered. The agency reported spending $12 million in the 2024 fiscal year, which included $3.2 million for capital improvement projects, $1.9 million for home loans, $1.8 million to assist seniors with rent, $1.5 million for planning and administration, $1.2 million for general homeowner assistance and $875, 000 for emergency rent and utility assistance. DHHL's stockpile of federal funding coincides with an effort by the agency to encumber $600 million appropriated by Hawaii lawmakers in 2022 before a June 30, 2026 deadline. Watson has said that the agency has pretty much done so, and earlier this year asked the Legislature for another $600 million that he said could roughly double homestead deliveries. The Legislature did not approve the additional funding. Tokuda is hard-pressed to understand why DHHL, which is using the state funding to produce more than 3, 000 homesteads at 29 projects and used much of the $600 million to buy land for longer-term homestead development, has not spent more of its federal funding. 'This was something that literally generations of members of Congress have fought for and protected, ' she said, 'and now it's going to be very difficult to defend why we need this money when they're not spending it.' Tokuda vows to fight the proposed cutoff, in part because she said DHHL has committed to spend most of its federal funding from past years by the end of June. She also said eliminating NAHASDA funding for DHHL disregards the federal trust responsibility to Hawaiians, and unfairly shifts the duty solely to the state, thus ignoring generations of legal, historical and moral obligations. 'DHHL must step up and the federal government must not walk away, ' Tokuda said. Previously, DHHL has been able to ramp up spending of federal funds after drawing fire from federal and state leaders for amassing an even bigger stash of cash from the U.S. government. In 2012, DHHL was holding $75 million received under NAHASDA, which led to complaints that the agency was making poor use of the federal appropriations that had been around $10 million a year during the preceding decade. In 2016, during the last year of the Obama Administration, DHHL got no federal funding. And then from 2017 to 2021, which included Trump's first term and one year with Democratic President Joe Biden in office, funding for DHHL was $2 million a year. During a state budget briefing in 2016 for the administration of then-Gov. David Ige, members of Hawaii's Legislature including Tokuda and Sylvia Luke, who then was chair of the House Finance Committee and is now lieutenant governor, chastised DHHL for the hoard of unspent federal funds. 'NAHASDA money was no strings attached … ' Luke said during the briefing. 'All that the federal government wanted us to do was was to spend the money. But what does DHHL do ? They don't spend the money.' DHHL was at that time working to level-up spending federal dollars. From 2015 to 2018, the agency more than doubled such spending to around $15 million per year during those four years. Spending subsided from 2019 to 2021 as federal appropriations stayed low, but then didn't rebound much in tandem with the big appropriation increases under President Biden from 2022 to 2024. According to the most recent annual report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees NAHASDA funding for DHHL, $155 million of such funding has been spent by DHHL over 22 years through the 2023 fiscal year largely to help develop 693 homestead lots and to build, acquire or rehabilitate 765 affordable homes. Some of the spending also was used to rehabilitate three community centers and provide 4, 098 families with housing services that included financial literacy and home ownership education, self-help home repair training and rental assistance, the HUD report said. Watson, in his statement, said continued federal funding is critical and needed to sustain a similar variety of help for beneficiaries. 'We will continue to be diligent and very active in the use of these funds, which have been instrumental in increasing our rental and homeownership housing opportunities for our DHHL beneficiaries, ' he said.
Zawya
01-05-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Nigeria: Ogun will soon join oil-producing states, Senator Adeola assures
Senator Olamilekan Adeola has assured that Ogun, the Gateway State, will soon join the league of oil-producing states in Nigeria, as drilling of crude oil will commence soon at Tongeji Island, Ipokia Local Government Area of the state. The lawmaker representing Ogun West in the National Assembly disclosed this on Tuesday, while speaking in Ota at the 2nd Edition of the Town Hall Meeting/Mega Empowerment and Thank You Tour of Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area. He said that all machinery has been set in motion for the commencement of the drilling on the island that shares a border with the Republic of Benin. Adeola, who is the Chairman Senate Committee on Appropriations, said the yet-to-commence activity on the Tongeji Island could be attributed to the economic policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the disposition of the Governor of the State, Prince Dapo Abiodun, towards socioeconomic advancement. He submitted that Ogun will witness tremendous economic prosperity and growth when the drilling activities commence in the oil-rich Tongeji Island. He added that the nation's crude oil production will receive a boost as soon as the activities commence. Senator Adeola noted that President Tinubu, in his two years in office, had attracted more Foreign Direct Investment into the country, with the same feat being recorded by Governor Dapo Abiodun in Ogun. While further praising the Ogun State governor for completing the agro-cargo airport, which has attracted other mega projects from the private sector, establishing a dry sea port and delivering other infrastructural projects across the state, Adeola declared that the governor will be remembered as the best in terms of delivery of infrastructural and socioeconomic development. On the empowerment programme, Adeola explained that he decided to decentralise the programme to empower more constituents in the senatorial district. He added that the programme was also facilitated to reward the people of Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area, as one of the five LGAs in the senatorial district, for their support during the 2023 general election. Reeling out his achievements as the senator, Adeola said that the largest project he facilitated is situated in Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area. He informed the constituents that 15 road projects have been completed as his constituency projects, while 9 road projects are ongoing in different locations in the LGA. The senator, however, disclosed that a sum of N26 billion has been mobilised for the construction of Atan-Ikonga-Alapoti-Ado-Odo Road, submitting that when the road project is completed, it will enhance the socioeconomic development of Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area. While assuring the people that he will continue to offer qualitative representation at the Senate, stated that 'I moved 10 bills under two years, and 70 percent of them have scaled second reading.'
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How priorities of Noem's final budget address have fared
SIOUX FALLS S.D. (KELO) — By the time former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem gave her budget address in December, she would have less than two months left in Pierre before becoming secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security. But before she left, Noem shared priorities for the state. 'Last year during this speech, I asked you to make a permanent tax cut for the people of South Dakota,' Noem said during December's budget address. 'And I am reiterating that request to all of you today. Our people deserve better than a temporary sales tax holiday, and I look forward to that conversation during this legislative session.' Spring Creek fire spreads In 2023, Noem signed legislation to drop the state's sales tax rate from 4.5% to 4.2%. However, it is set to return to 4.5% in 2027. Senate Bill 214 during the ongoing legislative session would have kept the sales tax rate at 4.2%; in other words, it would have made the cut permanent. But lawmakers on the Senate Committee on Appropriations decided to table the bill on Jan. 20. Noem also sought to set up vouchers to put public money toward private education and homeschooling. 'I am proposing that we establish education savings accounts for South Dakota students in this upcoming legislative session,' Noem said in December. The legislation to make that a reality also failed, with the House Education Committee killing HB 1020 on Jan 29. HB 1025 also failed; in its original form, it would have appropriated money to build a new men's prison in Lincoln County. 'The current building is falling down,' Noem said in December. 'It's long past time for us to replace it for the safety of our people.' But lawmakers gutted HB 1025 and eventually decided to not send it over to the Senate. Rhoden's office announced Wednesday afternoon that he is going to 'announce next steps for a new prison' Thursday morning. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Deal reached to limit state's use of unclaimed property
PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — A compromise that would gradually reduce the amount of unclaimed property revenue in South Dakota's state government budget and would increase the amount that the state treasurer holds in reserve to pay future claims has cleared a key test in the Legislature. SD native deals with loss of federal job The Senate Committee on Appropriations gave a nod of approval on Tuesday to a proposal that originated from one of its members, Republican Sen. Taffy Howard. Appropriators voted 9-0 to recommend the amended version of Senate Bill 155 to the full Senate for debate. That could come as early as Thursday afternoon. The amended version of Howard's legislation was reached through negotiations involving the office of Gov. Larry Rhoden, Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen, State Treasurer Josh Haeder, state Finance Commissioner Jim Terwilliger and several lawmakers including Howard and Republican Rep. Chris Kassin. South Dakota has an entire chapter of state laws on unclaimed property and defines it as 'money, rights to claim refunds or rebates, postal savings deposits, bonds, United States savings bonds, notes, certificates, policies of insurance, other instruments of value, choses-in-action, obligations whether written or unwritten and anything of value of any nature whatsoever' that has been abandoned or forgotten. After three years, financial institutions, businesses and others holding unclaimed property must remit it to the state treasurer. The state treasurer must deposit nearly all of it in state government's general fund. However, there's no limit of time for a legitimate claim to be filed. Currently state government has $1.2 billion of liability for unclaimed property revenue that's been spent but could be claimed by its rightful owners at any time. State government in 2024 received what was then a record amount of unclaimed property totaling $133,617,777, minus $38 million paid in claims. This year, Haeder's office had taken in an estimated $247,259,387 as of February 12. The amended version of SB 155 calls for using no more than $61,384,827 for state government's general fund expenses in the 2026 budget. That cap would decrease by $4 million annually through 2035, when the amount would reach $25 million. It would remain at $25 million after that. At the same time, the amended SB 155 calls for placing whatever is left after payments and expenses in what would be known as the unclaimed property trust fund. The legislation calls for state government to then receive 4% of the earnings from the unclaimed trust each year. Howard has introduced various proposals on unclaimed property in past years but none won acceptance. On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Venhuizen told appropriators that he's been working with Howard on the latest one, including while he was still in the Legislature. 'It's an idea that in my estimation, its time has come,' he said. State Treasurer Haeder told the panel there's currently no money set aside for any large future claim. He said establishing an unclaimed trust fund would protect state government and taxpayers and, through the interest-bearing feature, would ensure a long-term stable revenue source. 'We have the opportunity to plant a tree today,' Haeder said. The amended version had support from South Dakota Retailers Association executive director Nathan Sanderson and from state Finance Commissioner Terwilliger. 'I think this puts a well thought-out process into place over the next several years,' Terwilliger said, noting that establishing a trust would improve state government's annual financial statements by eliminating most of the unfunded liability that unclaimed property represents. 'This is a huge step in the right direction.' Republican Sen. Glen Vilhauer, a committee member, recalled the struggle from a week ago when appropriators decided how much unclaimed property revenue should be included in revenue estimates for 2025 and 2026. Vilhauer said as an accountant he had been concerned that state government was treating unclaimed property as revenue rather than as a liability. 'It will make our budgeting process easier to grapple with as we go forward,' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
