Progressive Democrat Issue 109: I HELPED ELECT A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS AND ALL I GOT WAS ALL THESE BILLS

For years we have had a do-nothing, rubber stamp Congress, with Republicans blindly following Bush and Democrats largely excluded from the process by Republican strong arm tactics...and excessive cowardice by Democrats when they WERE allowed a part in the process.

Well, November 2006 changed all that. We now have possibly the hardest working Congress of my life time. The result is a rush of excellent bills in Congress. I want to mention a few of them and urge you to write your Congress Critters and the media to express your opinion on any of these bills you have an opinion on. Most of this came to my attention at the last Democracy for NYC meeting in my neighborhood. See what you can learn if you stay involved with the grassroots?

First, there is the revived, somewhat improved Rush Holt (D-NJ) bill to ensure a paper trail for elections, introduced last year but prevented from coming to a vote by the Republican Congress. This year Holt is back with HR 811. (NOTE: It is only Feb. and they are already up to 811? Busy people!!) This bill doesn't cover everything, but it does a lot to ensure our elections are at least verifiable. Simply put, it would prevent the situation we had in FL-13 in November where there was a highly suspicious undercount of Democratic votes for Congress but no legal way to do a recount. HR 811 would help fix that.

Second, I recently already wrote about what is probably the best of the "get our asses out of Iraq" bills that are a response to the overwhelming anti-Iraq war vote that brought the Democrats to victory in November. HR 455, proposed by Jarrold Nadler (D-NY) not only specifies that no money can go to escalation and sets a deadline for withdrawal, but also attaches the bill to an appropriations bill for the war meaning a Bush veto would be cutting funds off for the troops, effectively turning the tables on the Republicans. This seems like our best shot for getting out of the quagmire Bush got us into and McCain wants to get us further into.

Other bills that address getting us out of Iraq and/or preventing the McCain/Bush escalation of the quagmire include S.223, (Kennedy D-MA), HR 353 (Markey, D-MA), HR 508 (Woolsey D-CA), and HR 746 (McGovern D-MA).

Nice to see so much competition to sponsor bills to get us out of the Iraq mess!

Some other bills of interest are:

HR676: United States National Health Insurance Act (also called the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act) (Conyers D-CA);

S 453: Prohibition of Deceptive Practices in Federal Elections (Obama D-IL);

and S 359: Student Debt Relief Act of 2007 (Kennedy D-MA).

So come on folks! Let your Congress Critters and the media know what YOU think of these bills.

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