Politics & Government

Ellison Ranked One of Most Influential Congress Members On Twitter

The Minnesota Congressman and his fellow members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus released their 'Budget for all.'

Last week, Rep. Keith Ellison was ranked on several top 10 lists of members of Congress on Twitter. He was listed as the fifth most engaged, the eighth most influential and the eighth most trusted. However, on the list of the most trusted, he is listed as a Republican instead of a Democrat.

The lists were in a study called "Yeas and Nays of the Congressional Twitterverse," published by public relations firm Edelman. The lists were created using TweetLevel, which uses an algorithm to track tweeters and score them using 40 different metrics.

On the same day the Twitter study was released, Ellison and other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus released their "Budget for all" in response to the Republicans' "The Path to Prosperity."

According to Ellison's campaign website, "The CPC version emphasizes new spending programs for infrastructure, defense cuts and increased taxes on the wealthy."

“In the Republican vision for America, the Medicare guarantee is stripped from our parents and grandparents, Wall Street greed is rewarded while the middle class continues to shrink and more of our tax dollars are handed over to millionaires, billionaires and the corporate special interests who can afford an army of lobbyists," Ellison said.

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Also last week, Ellison appeared on The O'Reilly Factor. O'Reilly asked him if he would support military action against Iran if sanctions fail.

"No, I wouldn't. I would have to know much, much more than that. At this point, Bill, what we know now is that neither Israeli or American military experts have the ... have come to the conclusion that Iran has even decided to build a bomb. And then their conclusion is that if and when that conclusion is arrived at by Iranian leadership it will take a year to develop one. Then they'll take years after that to come up with a delivery system.

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"So, I'm not on your show today going to say I'm going to authorize military action. There is a long way before that. We need diplomacy. And that's what we need right now."

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