The American Association of Retired Persons AARP will hold a discussion on the future of the Social Security entitlement from 10:30 a.m. to noon Tuesday at the South County Library.

The group says more than 140 people have signed up to attend.

You can find out more, including a list of who’s speaking, by reading the group’s release after the jump:

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Bill Bolling

Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling said today that Virginia should not expand its Medicaid program that provides health coverage for the poor, asserting that such a move “would place tremendous fiscal pressure on the Commonwealth and divert funds from other state programs.”

Bolling, a candidate for governor in 2013, made his case in a letter to Gov. Bob McDonnell.

“Medicaid is already one of the fastest growing areas of the state budget, accounting for almost 20 percent of total state general fund expenditures,” Bolling wrote.  “The cost of administering the Medicaid program has increased by more than 80 percent from 2002 to 2011.  This is simply an unsustainable rate of growth that will only get worse if we add 425,000 more people to the program.”

McDonnell said earlier this week that he is considering opting Virginia out of  expanding eligibility for the Medicaid in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling preserving the federal health care overhaul. In its decision, the court ruled that the federal government could not withhold existing federal Medicaid funds from states that opt out of  expanding their programs to include individuals and families with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty level.

The federal government would cover the full cost of the expansion for three years beginning in 2014,  and then gradually reduce its share to 90 percent by 2020. But McDonnell has said the expansion still would cost the state as much as $2.2 billion over 10 years, an estimate his administration is reassessing. He told state lawmakers earlier this week that he wants more information from the Obama administration about rules for Medicaid expansion and health benefits exchanges. But he also hopes the health care law is repealed after this fall’s elections.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who also will run for governor next year, said on the day of the court’s ruling that Virginia should examine opting out of the expansion.

Virginia’s Medicaid eligibility standards are among the strictest in the country, but McDonnell routinely complains about the program’s rising costs, which are split between the state and federal governments.

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Fairfax County, urged McDonnell to move forward with the expansion. In a letter to the governor, Connolly said the state would lose $9.2 billion in federal funds over the first five years by opting out of the program. Refusing to participate would leave as many as a quarter-million Virginians, who would then turn to more expensive hospital emergency rooms for care.

“It is time to put policy decisions ahead of political posturing for the good of the Commonwealth and its citizens,” Connolly wrote.

The advocacy group Virginia Organizing, which focuses on issues affecting poor and low-income citizens, charged that McDonnell’s “wait and see” approach is motivated by politics.

“The Governor seems to think that gambling with the health and lives of real people is an appropriate response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision,” said Virginia Organizing Chairwoman Sandra Cook in a news release. “This is nothing more than Governor McDonnell playing partisan politics while disregarding the well-being of those who obviously need this expansion in order to have health coverage.”

– Michael Sluss

Tim Kaine

While Reps. Bob Goodlatte and Morgan Griffith are issuing statements today on the Supreme Court ruling on the Arizona immigration law, Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine is issuing one on something else the high court did today.

Or rather, something it didn’t do.

The court decided not to change its decision in the Citizens United case on campaign contributions.

Here’s what Kaine had to say:

“The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United has triggered a fundamental shift away from the person-to-person contact that has characterized American politics for more than two centuries. This misguided decision has empowered a small band of extremely wealthy individuals to disproportionately influence the political process by flooding the airwaves with millions of dollars in false attack ads. Montana courageously stood up to this unacceptable system, invoking its own campaign finance law to combat Citizens United, and I am extremely disappointed that the Supreme Court rejected Montana’s right to craft their own model of campaign financing.

“In my first debate with George Allen I asked him to work with me to keep outside groups and their secret money away from the Virginia Senate race. He refused. I offered to work with him to ensure that, at the very least, these groups disclose their donors. Again, he refused. If chosen to serve in the U.S. Senate, I will work from day one to bring secret money into the open and protect the grassroots participation that has been a staple of our electoral process. George Allen, on the other hand, proudly touts his endorsement from Citizens United and is reaping the benefits of more than $3 million in outside spending on his behalf, filling Virginia airwaves with falsehoods and distortions.

“This campaign is going to be about two very different visions for our economic future, but it will also be about how our leaders conduct themselves. For too long, special interests’ vice-grip on Washington has contributed to our country’s inability to get things done. As Senator, I will be a voice and a vote for reforms that limit special interests’ influence over our politics and our policies.”

The pavilion at the Daleville Town Center, which next week will host the band Trampled by Turtles. Has private enterprise done in Botetourt what city government is trying to do in Roanoke?

A more or less accurate conversation between Mason Adams, city hall and politics reporter, and Dwayne Yancey, senior editor (and Botetourt County resident):

Dwayne: Hey, Mason, what’s the status of the amphitheater the city was talking about building?

Mason: Dwayne, that’s part of the council’s plan to rework Elmwood Park. If you remember the council had initially considered a $14 million “commercial” amphitheater, but when the recession hit it scaled back those plans considerably. Now they’re looking at a stripped down version, as well as additional changes to the park – taking out the lily-pad ponds, reworking the wooded area along Elm Ave. into a series of “outdoor rooms,” that sort of thing. The price tag for the whole shebang is $4.7 million.

In April, Hill Studio presented some designs for the amphitheater, which will be pushed back to the corner of Williamson Road and where Bullitt Avenue would intersect if you extended it out. My understanding is that Hill Studio is reworking those designs quite a bit and probably will present the new version to the council next month. They’re taking bids now for the first phase of the park renovation – basically Bullitt Avenue north to Franklin Road – and the second phase, which includes the amphitheater, will be put out to bid this fall.

Any reason for the interest?

Dwayne: Well, I see where the Kirk Avenue Music Hall is bringing the band Trampled to Turtles to town. But here’s the thing – they’re not playing on Kirk. They’re playing out at the Daleville Town Center – you know, that development on U.S. 220 where Layman Brothers Orchard used to be. There’s a pretty nice bandstand that’s been built there — The Botetourt Wine Trail has had some concerts there, but this is the first time some outside promoter has brought something in.

So here’s the thing: Does Roanoke still need to build an amphitheater if promoters are bringing shows to the Daleville Town Center? Why do the taxpayers of Roanoke need to foot the bill for amphitheater when it looks like private enterprise has just filled the market need on its own? Read more »

Bob Goodlatte. Photo by Sam Dean, The Roanoke Times.

Earlier today, President Obama announced his administration would stop deporting illegal immigrants who came to this country as children.

In response, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, has issued the following statement:

“Today’s politically motivated announcement from the Obama Administration that it is going to immediately stop deporting illegal immigrants who came to this country and instead grant them work permits is an outrageous abuse of power by the Executive Branch. With this announcement President Obama has completely bypassed the Congress, which is charged with writing our immigration laws, in order to grant possible amnesty to many illegal immigrants. This policy shift is in direct conflict with the law of our land.

Not only do I believe President Obama lacks the authority to make such a change to our immigration laws but I find it particularly egregious that he would want to hand out work permits to nearly 1 million illegal immigrants when many Americans are struggling to find work themselves.

America is a land of great opportunity and promise. Our nation was founded by those who sought a better life and our strength and diversity come from our immigrant heritage. However, our nation was also founded upon a set of principles, among them the rule of law and fairness and today’s announcement by the Obama Administration is contrary to these very principles.”

As an appetizer to our live chat on the Republican primaries for U.S. Senate and the 6th Congressional District at noon, we’d direct your attention to a post on the Roanoke Tea Party’s website that rates the candidates in both of those races.

Keep in mind that the Tea Party is not a unified voice but is made up of hundreds of autonomous groups. That’s especially so with the Roanoke Tea Party, which has blazed its own path apart from the state federation.

With that in mind, click below the fold to find the Roanoke Tea Party’s news release, which includes its rating system and its evaluations of Bob Goodlatte and Karen Kwiatkowski in the 6th and George Allen, E.W. Jackson, Bob Marshall and Jamie Radtke in the Senate race.

And don’t forget to come back at noon for our live chat on those two primaries. (That link takes you to info on the live chat, but check the blog itself for a new post that will include the live chat window.)

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When I was growing up buying comics at the 7-Eleven behind our church in Clifton Forge, I occasionally picked up issues of “What If…?” which was an odd series that proposed tweaks in the continuity of the Marvel universe, then explored how they played out. It asked questions like, “What if someone else besides Spider-Man had been bitten by the radioactive spider?” and “What if the Hulk had the brain of Bruce Banner?”

Many of those stories — not all, but many — ended with everybody dead. They also helped, in a weird sort of way, to untangle some of that dense continuity and help explain why stories had played out the way they did.

With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to play around with the “What If…?” format with some questions of Roanoke and western Virginia politics as a way to draw out some of the nuances of various issues.

Today: What if Roanoke had moved elections to November ahead of the 2008 mayoral race?

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Chris Head

The National Federation of Independent Business held a news conference this morning at Home Instead Senior Care with co-owners Chris and Betsy Head to protest a proposed regulation from the Department of Labor.

We missed the conference, but I caught up this afternoon with Chris Head — who represents the 17th District in the House of Delegates — to find out what’s going on.

At issue is a proposed change to regulations for “domestic service” workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Congress expanded the act in 1974, but carved out exemptions so that casual babysitters and companions for the aged and infirm did not have to be paid minimum wage or overtime. Now, the Labor Department is considering dramatically limiting those exemptions so they don’t apply to employees of businesses like Home Instead Senior Care.

Here’s the Labor Department’s reasoning:

There has been a growing demand for long-term in-home care, and as a result the in-home care services industry has grown substantially. However, the earnings of in-home care employees remain among the lowest in the service industry, impeding efforts to improve both jobs and care. Moreover, the workers that are employed by in-home care staffing agencies are not the workers that Congress envisioned when it enacted the companionship exemption (i.e., neighbors performing elder sitting), but instead are professional caregivers entitled to FLSA protections. In view of these changes, the Department believes it is appropriate to reconsider whether the scope of the regulations are now too broad and not in harmony with Congressional intent.

Head said he has no problem with the minimum wage question. Home Instead’s average wage is $9.40 an hour, he said, and no one’s working for less than $8.50.

But he does have qualms with the overtime piece. Here’s why:

“A large chunk of our workers provide a service we call a sleepover night. We charge our clients and pay our caregivers on a flat shift wage. The shift runs from 10 to 12 hours and the caregiver is expected to be able to get a good night’s sleep while they’re there.

It’s extremely important because getting in and out of bed, getting dressed and undressed — those are the times at which seniors are at the highest risk for falls. Same thing with getting up for the bathroom. So it’s important to have someone there.”

Some workers who perform those services work part-time to supplement another job. That’s no big deal, Head said. But others do that job and then come in to work day shifts. As a result, they end up with 50 or 60 hours on their timecard for that week — which of course includes at least several hours of sleep during the overnight shift.

If the Labor Department’s proposed regulation takes effect, Head said, he’ll either need to raise rates or hire a bunch of new workers, which he worries may cause problems with some cognitively impaired clients where the addition of extra people may cause confusion.

Head said the new regs would increase the cost of care by roughly 20 percent. “We anticipate that between 20 and 25 percent of our clients receiving care will have to go elsewhere, either to institutionalized settings, or do without, or go into the gray market and hire someone by paying underthe table without any of the insurance or oversight or other benefits of going through an agency,” he said.

Head said the public comment period on the proposed regulation ended about a month ago. The Labor Department must give 60 days notice before it implements the new regulation. So he and the NFIB are looking to put political pressure on the agency to keep the regulations as they are now.

You can read a more extensive discussion of the proposal with Steven Greenhouse, the labor and workplace reporter for the New York Times, on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.”

– Mason Adams

John Edwards on election night 2011. Photo by Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

President Barack Obama

Updated with Republican response at 4:09 p.m.:

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has been working in Virginia since last April, and it hit Roanoke today with a news conference in city hall with Virginia Sen. John Edwards.

Edwards stumped for Obama on the subject of energy, gesturing to two campaign-produced charts, one showing that domestic oil production has grown every year since 2008 and the other showing that the amount of foreign oil used in the country has dropped below 50 percent for the first time in years.

Edwards said Obama and U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine support an “all of the above” energy policy, while saying that Republicans — naming U.S. Senate candidate George Allen and GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney in particular — only want to “Drill, baby, drill.”

“Taxpayer subsidies to big oil and the gas companies make no sense at a time when the big oil companies are making record profits — profits larger than they’ve ever made before,” Edwards said. “These guys are cashing in when consumers are paying more at the pump. And every time gas prices go up one penny, the five biggest oil companies pocket another $200 million.”

Edwards said he, Kaine and Obama support removing those oil subsidies and investing that money into research and development of “clean,” renewable energy sources.

Edwards was asked about the Environmental Protection Agency’s new emissions limits, which some argue will hurt the coal industry. And I asked about last week’s court decision ruling the EPA overstepped its authority on the Spruce Mine project in West Virginia.

“I think Americans want to have a clean environment,” Edwards responded. “They won’t a strong EPA. Let’s not make the EPA the whipping boy.”

I also asked about rising tensions in the Middle East, particularly between Iran and Israel, as a potential factor in rising gas prices. What — if any — role should the United States play there?

“There’s going to be international tension,” Edwards said. “This is not new. Someone said if we had done what Jimmy Carter wanted to do, we wouldn’t have a problem today. These tensions are coming and going as part of history. I don’t think there’s a silver bullet there at all.

“You obviously want to make sure our diplomacy is working, but you’ve also got to prepare for the time when oil may be cut off from the Mid-East. That’s why we need to have more domestic production, which the president is doing, as well as become more efficient in the use of energy and more clean technology to protect our environment. You need to do it all.”

Meanwhile, Obama also gave some remarks on the issue of oil and gas subsidies at the White House today. You can find the full text of those comments after the jump.

UPDATE: The Republican Party of Virginia responded this afternoon to the news conference.

Statement from RPV Chairman Pat Mullins:

“Like I said, the Obama-Kaine plan of raising taxes on oil while spending more on Solyndra-style boondoggles isn’t just a bad idea, it’s a flock of bad ideas flying in formation. Virginians remember the Carter administration, and they sure don’t want to go back.”

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Health care arguments start today before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the topic will dominate headlines throughout the week.

The case is arguably the biggest topic in national politics this week.

Post your thoughts about the health care law and the case in the Supreme Court here.