IT OCCURRED TO ME the other day that in January I stopped reaching for my phone every morning to see if the president of the United States had done anything frightening, stupid, or dangerous overnight.
Thank you, Joe Biden. Life is more pleasant since you became president.
I knew Biden would be a much better president than his predecessor. What surprised me is just how good a president he would be, going big with policies and programs to benefit all Americans.
Silly me. Of course, he would go big when he had the chance — he grew up in an America that had recently conquered a depression and defeated fascism. No wonder he so often says, “This is the United States of America, and there is nothing we can’t do when we do it together.”
He believes it, and he makes us believe it.
He also believes in opportunity. The only opportunities Donald Trump believed in were his own personal business opportunities.
Opportunity for all is the underlying theme of two initiatives on the Biden agenda: the American Jobs Plan and the For The People Act. The first is about economic opportunity and the second is about the opportunity to vote.
Under the Jobs Plan, highways, roads, and local streets will be updated, and failing bridges fixed. Rebates and tax incentives will encourage purchase of electric and hydrogen vehicles. Lead pipes in schools will be replaced. The power grid will be updated and housing made energy efficient. This bill along with the recently enacted American Rescue Plan will give jobs and economic opportunity to millions of Americans, while addressing both the climate crisis and a national infrastructure badly in need of repair.
Senate Republicans oppose the plan claiming that it costs too much, something they did not worry about when cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations instead of addressing the needs of America’s middle and working classes.
As Biden would say, here’s the deal. The Jobs Plan creates millions of jobs for families that will lift up the next generation. It invests in providing a sustainable future for that next generation, instead of a planet ravaged by climate change.
The For The People Act will help all American citizens participate in determining our country’s future. It stops Republican dominated state legislatures from making voting harder. Angry that the former president was ousted in a fair election, those legislatures are limiting voting hours, imposing unnecessary voting requirements and gerrymandering congressional district boundaries.
One of the myths Republicans are circulating is that the bill will “federalize” elections. What they do not talk about is that under Article I, Section 4 of the United States Constitution, the founders explicitly gave Congress the authority to regulate federal elections of senators and representatives.
Republicans like to talk about the Constitution when it comes to guns, but elections? Not so much.
Congress usually leaves management of elections to the states. When states try to rig the process, however, Congress has used its constitutional authority. In the Reconstruction Era, steps were taken to make sure Blacks could vote. Unfortunately, during the Jim Crow Era, Congress forfeited its authority, subjecting Blacks and other minorities to racist state laws preventing them from voting.
Those Jim Crow laws went away when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. But some states are again enacting laws to make voting more difficult, under the guise of “election integrity.” And that bad behavior is why Congress is being forced to get involved again.
Senate Republicans are making false, scary claims about the For The People Act, such as saying it will allow undocumented immigrants to vote. It does not. New Hampshire Republicans falsely claim that it threatens the first-in-the -nation Primary. It does not. It makes zero changes to the nominating schedule.
Biden is doing a good job as president, and instead of fighting him with scare tactics, Republicans should join him in expanding opportunity for all Americans. After all, this is America, and in America we can do big things together.
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April 11, 2021 at 11:00AM
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Kathy Sullivan: U.S. hasn't done anything stupid or dangerous lately - The Union Leader
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