Tag: Congress

Vote for Democracy ’24 #2

Back in September, I published a post about the age and health of President Biden and former President Trump. In it, I wrote:

On the other hand, when Donald Trump was president, he was not known to keep a very rigorous schedule of official duties. He didn’t seem to understand the complexities of the job, such as dealing with classified materials. He was volatile and resorted to bullying, name calling, and lying to try to get his way, regardless of facts, laws, or policies. Sometimes, when he is speaking without a teleprompter, he doesn’t seem able to construct cogent sentences. I don’t know if there is a medical diagnosis that elucidates these behaviors or not, but I don’t think his age is the salient factor.

While there are some in the media who have been talking about these things for years, Trump’s recent behavior has pushed these topics into the mainstream, both in the press and among some politicians. A few days ago, Trump repeatedly referred to his primary opponent, Nikki Haley, when he seemingly meant to say Nancy Pelosi. When campaigning, he has sometimes been confused about where he is. He has repeatedly said that he ran against President Obama, which he did not. He doesn’t seem to have much control over his emotional reactions and speech, for example, when he went on a rant at the New York trial over damages for fraud regarding his real estate businesses. His victory speech after the New Hampshire primary featured rambling, repetition, threats, and vitriol.

It seems that some of the tendencies he had during his presidency have heightened. What is even more alarming to me and to some observers is that Trump’s cognition and control seem to have slipped. I’ve been exposed to numerous people as dementia was developing and observed how their language skills eroded and how they struggled with self-control. It makes Trump’s recent behavior seem eerily familiar. That others are pointing it out confirms that it is not just a personal bias.

Donald Trump’s father, Fred, had dementia from Alzheimer’s disease for years before his death. Alzheimer’s disease is known to run in families and Donald’s age does become salient on this point, given that he is now 77 years old and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s increases with age. It’s also frequently not diagnosed in its early stages. While Fred Trump was diagnosed in his 80s, it’s likely that cognitive decline began years earlier, which would put Donald in the same age bracket as his father was when symptoms started to develop.

Despite all this, many Republican elected officials are currently endorsing Trump for the nomination and the presidency. They don’t seem to recognize the danger of having someone in cognitive decline and with poor impulse control exercising the powers of the presidency. Things could go very badly very quickly.

There is no health test to run for president. I do hope that, at the very least, there will be pressure for Trump to debate Nikki Haley so that potential voters can see how he answers questions and reacts to issues in real time. This would also reveal to other Republican party leaders what his current capabilities are so they could assess if he is fit to serve for the next presidential term. I don’t know whether or not they can set aside their own hunger for power or not but, perhaps, it will scare them enough to act to safeguard the country from the disaster of having a mentally incompetent person in charge.

Trump has been using increasingly authoritarian language and issuing threats against opponents and even other Republicans who disagree with him. He should not ever again be in a position where he can carry out these threats, many of which are illegal and would threaten the stability of our democratic institutions. Oh, and Trump is insisting a president should enjoy total immunity from prosecution, no matter what he does.

Please consider these things before you vote. Look at what each candidate says, does, and believes. Don’t just look at their party or family name.
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/26/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-26th-2024/

Immigrants to the US

My great-grandparents on my father’s side came to the United States fleeing hunger and political repression. My grandparents on my mother’s side came to the United States for safety as war threatened. Though some at the time decried them for being Irish or Italian and said they didn’t belong here, they found work and safety, raised families, contributed to their communities, and became citizens. My family has members with ancestral roots in Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, other European countries, and Canada. My town has people who came from or are descendants of people from around the world, as well as indigenous people. Some have been here for generations; some arrived recently.

We all belong here.

I am appalled at the recent rhetoric from Donald Trump and others of his ilk that migrants “poison the blood of our country.” I believe every person has inherent dignity. Our blood is a life force we hold in common. If you need a transfusion, it’s only the blood type – O, A, B, AB, Rh – or + – that matters, not the race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, or any other attribute of the donor.

My ancestors made their way here without much in the way of financial resources. Some didn’t speak much English. Despite their pale skin, some were not classified as White by the society at the time. They were fleeing hunger, poverty, political upheaval, danger, and violence, the same kinds of things that are now forcing thousands upon thousands from around the world to flee to the United States. Additionally, some of today’s migrants are fleeing due to climate change, for example, because of crop failures, damage from global-warming-enhanced weather systems, desertification, or sea level rise.

These new migrants have a right under United States and international law to seek asylum and a new life here. Yes, it would be safer for them to apply for asylum or visas in the US from their home countries but US immigration policy and infrastructure is decades out of date, which is certainly not the fault of the migrants. Many people who say, “Yes, but I/my ancestors came here legally,” need to realize that it was their country of origin/timeframe that made that possible in a way that is not available to many of the mostly black and brown folks now trying to cross the US southern border, some of whom originate from continents outside the Americas.

They also need to realize that it has been Congressional Republicans who have blocked meaningful, comprehensive immigration reform. For example, the immigration bill passed by the Senate in 2013 would most likely have passed the House on a bipartisan basis but the Republican House leadership wouldn’t put it up for a vote because the majority of the Republican members would have voted against it. Another example, the first bill that President Biden proposed to Congress was a comprehensive immigration reform bill, but it has not even been brought up for debate.

We have appalling actions by some governors, such as Abbott in Texas and DeSantis in Florida, that demonize and further endanger already vulnerable migrants. (Newsflash: People seeking asylum are not “illegal.” They have legal status under national and international law. And, no, states may not set their own immigration policy.) There are chilling promises of detention camps and mass deportations from some in Trump’s camp, were he ever to regain the presidency.

While comprehensive immigration reform will need to wait for a future Congress, the present Congress could take action to help alleviate the current problems. They could allocate funds for more processing centers and immigration judges to assist new migrants and those who are currently awaiting hearings in the coming months/years. They could give additional aid to communities and programs for resettling immigrants. My county has a long history of welcoming immigrants and there are existing organizations that can help people get re-settled.

Most importantly, they could make provisions to get work visas to newcomers and to immigrants who are already in the United States. Unemployment rates in the United States are low and there are a lot of jobs that aren’t being filled. Some of the sectors that need workers are agriculture, hospitality, caregiving, and construction. Many migrants have those skills and are eager to work to support themselves and their families. It’s a win-win situation.

At the same time, there are many unscrupulous employers who have been hiring workers without documents, often at substandard wages and without proper workplace protections. This needs to stop! The workers should be given work visas and the employers should pay fines and be brought into compliance for wages and working conditions. If they were complicit in human trafficking, they should be held responsible for that, as should anyone else involved.

Another threat from the Trump camp is to end birthright citizenship. Under the United States Constitution, anyone born in the United States is automatically granted citizenship. Period. The only way to change it would be to amend the Constitution, which would take a two-thirds vote from both chambers of Congress followed by ratification of three-quarters of the states. No executive order or even a Congressional law can change birthright citizenship because it would be unconstitutional.

One of the strengths of the United States is that it becomes home to people from all over the world and their descendants. In our communities, we share the food and cultural traditions that traveled with us or our ancestors and are free to do so, enriching all who participate. The United States has always been a diverse country, although it’s taken a long time to grant equal rights and that process is still ongoing. We must not turn our back on new arrivals who want to join us. They have gifts to share with us and we have gifts to share with them.

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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/04/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-4th-2024/

plans for a second Trump administration

The Trump presidency featured a wide range of cruel and immoral speech and actions, including separation of children from their parents/guardians who came to the US seeking asylum in violation of national and international law, then not keeping the records to reunite them; suppressing scientific COVID information while spreading misinformation that contributed to higher rates of death and illness in the US than in other nations with comparable medical systems; speaking approvingly of authoritarian governments while criticizing our allies; bullying and firing government officials he deemed insufficiently loyal to him personally; and lying about his election loss, filing baseless legal challenges, and fomenting an insurrection.

It was a difficult, dark time for the country that laid bare and worsened existing divisions along racial/ethnic, religious, partisan, gender, and geographic lines. The Republican party has devolved into a party driven by grievance rather than one dedicated to governing for the common good of all the people.

Donald Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 while under indictment on 91 federal and state felony counts. There is a planning operation underway for a second term, dubbed Project 2025, through a group of right-wing think tanks that seeks to politicize the Justice Department to seek revenge for political views, to deport millions of immigrants and refugees, to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow the US military to operate domestically, and to give the president additional powers that are not subject to checks by the courts or Congress. Trump’s rhetoric during the primary campaign includes him talking about seeking revenge and retribution against members of the Biden family and administration and against Republicans who don’t agree with him, including former members of his administration. He has raised the possibility of the death penalty for former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. He is using overtly fascist language, such as calling his perceived enemies “vermin.” Trump’s verbal attacks, both via social media and in person at campaign rallies and interviews, seem to be increasing threats of violence against those Trump targets, such as Judge Engoron and his law clerk in the New York civil fraud trial.

What is most alarming is that many Republicans in government and many Trump supporters are openly embracing anti-democractic, unconstitutional, and illegal actions, such as doing away with birthright citizenship, limiting voting rights for people who disagree with them, using the military against the public, and outlawing abortion and birth control. I am appalled that there are those characterizing the United States as a white Christian nation, when it is, in reality, a pluralistic society made up of people of many races and ancestral heritages with a wide range of personal beliefs.

I know that I will not vote for Trump or any candidate for office at any level who supports him and his dangerous ideas. I will try to get the word out as best I can what those dangerous ideas are because some of the people who support Trump only hear his rhetoric and not the countervailing facts. For example, I encourage people to read the indictments against Trump, which lay out a lot of the underlying evidence. It’s also helpful to read the report of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, as well as the Mueller Report. I also am supporting voices and organizations that are working to uphold democracy, the rule of law, and the common good.

I’m also worried and scared about violence, oppression, and losing my free, if flawed, country to demagogues, authoritarians, and fascists.

This post was difficult to write, in part because I am so disturbed about what has been happening and in part because I know I’m just a small voice in a very large and loud media environment. But I had to try. The future envisioned by Trump and his acolytes is just too terrifying to silently ignore.

Photo credit: Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

failure of leadership

The search for a new Republican House speaker was long, fraught, and ugly – and resulted in the election of Mike Johnson of Louisiana who apparently does not have the mindset, skills, and experience to effectively govern.

Given that his own Republican conference is fractious and has only a slim majority, he should follow the lead of the Republicans in the Senate and work with the Democrats to craft legislation that can garner the votes of both a majority of Democrats and Republicans. Passing bills with only Republican support in the House isn’t going to do any good when they will not be taken up in the Senate and, even if they were, wouldn’t get the president’s signature. Legislation needs to be in line with the budget agreement already passed in the spring. Bills also need to be “clean,” meaning that they shouldn’t have unrelated amendments tacked on, such as federal abortion restrictions.

There are crucial pieces of legislation that need to pass soon. One is for funding for Israel and Ukraine, for border security, and for humanitarian and disaster relief, both at home and abroad. Another is a continuing resolution to keep the government funded until the final appropriations bills are adopted. The current resolution expires on November 17, so this needs to happen very soon to avoid a government shutdown. The Farm Bill, which covers a five-year period and is up for renewal now, needs to be enacted; besides framing bills, it also includes important nutrition programs. It would be nice if actual appropriations bills were passed – the Senate committees have passed these bills but the full Senate can’t vote on them until the House has acted – but an omnibus bill that folds all the budgetary bills together is also a possibility.

It’s possible that if Speaker Johnson does put bipartisan bills on the floor, a disgruntled House Republican will force a vote to vacate the chair, meaning to remove the Speaker, but the vote won’t succeed if the rest of the conference sticks together.

The Republicans have an opportunity to show that they are able to govern in a responsible way, fulfilling the promises made in the Preamble of our Constitution. Any member who instead chooses obstructionism should not be re-elected in 2024. We send our representatives to Washington to govern, not whine.

Photo credit: Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

Lewiston

Another mentally ill man with an assault rifle mowing down people, including children, who were out with family and friends enjoying recreation and sharing meals in another US city. This time, it was Lewiston, Maine. As I write this, there are 18 confirmed dead, although only eight have been officially identified. Assault weapons cause such grievous injuries that even family members may not be able to identify victims by sight, so forensic methods need to be used. Thirteen people are injured.

As of October 27th, the Gun Violence Archive has recorded 566 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2023, which is tragic and appalling. The total number of deaths due to gun violence is 35,389 with 19,800 of those being self-inflicted, which is also tragic and appalling.

The entire population of Lewiston, Maine was listed as 36.617 in 2021. Would we finally be able to get more governmental attention to the issue of gun violence if we think of it as an entire small city dying due to guns rather than looking at each individual instance in isolation?

Even though there is support from over 80% of the public for some gun safety measures like universal background checks for all gun sales, Congress has not been able to pass these into law. The House Representative whose district includes Lewiston has apologized to his constituents for his prior opposition to gun safety laws and now promises to support them. I challenge other members of Congress to look at gun violence in their own districts and states, whether they are mass shootings, individual homicides, accidents, suicides, or woundings, and determine a path to make life safer for all people.

It’s too late for 35,389 people this year but not too late for countless others. Congress, act now.

Photo credit: Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

Another new Speaker

Not that there is ever a good time for the United States House of Representatives to be without a Speaker – and thus unable to consider any legislation – but now seems like a particularly unfortunate time to be in that situation, with no House-passed budget bills that could clear the Senate; ongoing wars in Ukraine, Israel, and elsewhere; and important work needed domestically and internationally around climate action and disaster relief.

The two leading candidates for Speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, probably don’t have the votes to be elected by the majority Republican conference because they are too far to the right to work with the Senate to get legislation through both chambers.

I think the more moderate Republicans should look among their ranks for a nominee for Speaker who can work with Democrats to craft bipartisan legislation that can pass the House and the Democratic-majority Senate. The Senate has managed to pass all twelve fiscal year 2024 appropriation bills out of committee with large bipartisan majorities, which are in line with the spring debt ceiling legislation. If a new Speaker were to put these bills on the House floor, they could pass with Democratic and Republican votes from members who actually want to govern, as opposed to the Freedom Caucus and other similarly inclined Republican House members who seem intent on just not having a functioning government at all. (The Constitution stipulates that government funding bills must originate in the House, so the Senate can’t pass their version of the bills until the House acts.)

I believe that this Republican nominee should not be someone, though, who voted against certifying the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election after the mob had attacked the Capitol and sent members fleeing for their safety.

My hope is that, if a reasonable candidate comes forward and speaks with the Democratic leadership, the House Democrats will supply enough votes to elect a Speaker quickly so that needed legislation can be put in place, showing our citizens and the international community that our democracy can function in a civil way for the common good. If the new Speaker keeps their promise to preside in a bipartisan way, following the lead of the Senate, they would be insulated from threats by the far right Republicans to “vacate the Chair,” i.e. throw the Speaker out of their job as we just witnessed for the first time with the ousting of Kevin McCarthy.

House Republicans, it’s time for you to step up and put our country first. You were elected to govern, not obstruct. The Senators and President Biden have shown that bipartisanship is still possible.

Follow their lead.

Photo credit: Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

Supreme Court reform?

Back in October 2020, I posted some ideas about possible changes to procedures for the Supreme Court and other federal courts.

There has been much more public debate about this these past few years, particularly since the Supreme Court majority has been tossing precedents and inventing new doctrine on a regular basis of late.

One idea that makes sense to me is to raise the number of Supreme Court justices to thirteen to match the number of federal appellate courts. When the number of justices was changed to nine, there were nine appellate courts, so it makes sense to update the number to match because a Supreme Court justice is assigned for each appellate court. As it is now, some justices are responsible for more than one circuit. Doing this now would also help to redress some of the shenanigans that Mitch McConnell pulled in not allowing consideration of President Obama’s nominee while rushing through one of President Trump’s.

As I wrote in my October 2020 post, I think there should be rules for voting on judicial nominees in a timely manner, committee votes within sixty days and floor votes within ninety. The exception would be a Supreme Court vacancy that occurs after July first in a presidential election year which would be kept open for appointment by the winner of the election.

Because lifetime appointments are not stipulated in the Constitution, there has been a lot of discussion of making the term of Supreme Court justices eighteen years, after which they would serve on an appellate court if they were not ready to retire. I don’t know what that would mean for people who have already served longer than that or that were appointed expecting to serve for a lifetime. There is nothing in the Constitution that says Supreme Court nominations are for life, so no amendment is necessary to effect this change.

There have been a number of issues that have come to the fore more recently. One of them is the urgent need for ethics reform for the Supreme Court. Unlike other levels of the courts, there is no written code of conduct with guidance for recusals, conflicts of interest, etc. In other courts, judges are supposed to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. Given that both Justices Thomas and Alito are known to have accepted lavish gifts from prominent, rich Republicans, it would be helpful to have explicit rules to follow. It also upsets me that two members of the Court have been credibly accused of sexual harassment. There are serious questions about the spouses of two members of the Court earning money from work for/with people who might be seeking to influence the Court. I think there should be ethics reform and ways to enforce violations. As it is now, the Supreme Court justices are accountable to no one, which leaves them outside the usual system of checks and balances. (While it is true that provisions for impeachment and trial through Congress are in place, political forces are so prominent there that votes tend to be on partisan concerns rather than the evidence presented, so the threat of that doesn’t function as a deterrent to judicial misconduct.)

The Republican-appointed justices of the majority have undertaken what seems to be a concerted effort to overturn long-standing precedents. The most obvious is the Heller decision overturning national abortion rights but there are other instances, such as the recent decision against using race as a factor in college admissions which had been upheld numerous times since the 1978 Bakke decision, most recently in 2016. It’s not that precedents should never be overturned, for example, the Dred Scott decision, but those decisions usually advanced people’s rights; this Court seems to be taking away rights that had been previously recognized by the Court and the public. During their confirmation hearings in the Senate, these justices had all proclaimed their intent to respect precedent and “settled law” but they seem to have abandoned this principle.

The Republican-appointed majority are also inventing or embracing new legal constructs, such as the “major questions” doctrine, insisting that Congress must explicitly state the actions that they intend the executive branch department to implement. The Court used this to prevent rules regarding carbon pollution from the power industry. However, the justices overlooked explicit language from Congress giving authority to the Secretary of Education to waive student loans in time of national emergency in the recent case against the Biden administration’s targeted student loan forgiveness program. So, these justices appear to want Congress to be specific about things they don’t favor while ignoring the legislative language when they are specific. That’s not how our legal system is supposed to work.

There have also been major problems with the Court accepting cases without standing. In order to bring a case in federal court, a plaintiff has to show that they were harmed. The most obvious example of this is the 303 Creative case, in which a prospective web designer did not want to design sites for gay marriages but was afraid she would be violating a Colorado law barring discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. She said that a man had approached her to create such a site, giving the man’s name and contact information as part of her case. There are a number of problems, though. She had not started the business and so hadn’t had any legal challenges that caused harm. When a reporter contacted the man that had been named as the prospective gay client, they found out that he had no idea he was named in the suit, had never contacted the web designer for wedding services, is not gay, has been married for fifteen years, and is a web designer himself who wouldn’t need her services. The case should have been thrown out of court but the Republican-appointed justices still ruled in her favor on free speech grounds, saying that she shouldn’t be forced to use her words to support gay marriage, which she opposes on religious grounds. [As a creative who uses words as her medium, I have trouble thinking of a web designer for wedding sites as using “her words” when it’s usually the clients’ words/content/story that goes into a wedding website. It seems more like being a reporter. Whether or not you agree with what is being said, it is your job to report it accurately.]

All of this has led to a lack of public confidence in Supreme Court. Many of their recent decisions are opposed by a majority of citizens. What bothers me more, though, is that the courts are supposed to uphold our rights and freedoms, whether those are popular or not. If a person has the right to make their own medical decisions in conjunction with their health care provider, it should not matter what state the person is in, what their gender is, whether or not they follow a religious practice, or what their skin color is. A parent has a right to object to a book being taught in their child’s school and request an alternate assignment; that parent does not have the right to make that decision for anyone else’s child.

In the United States, every citizen is supposed to enjoy “equal protection of the laws” under the Fourteenth Amendment. It’s an ideal we should be working toward continually but sometimes it seems we are in the Orwellian situation of some being “more equal than others.” We need to get back on track and court reform can help to do that.

Really?

I try to follow governmental/political news in the US and often write about it here, but, there has been such an avalanche of stories lately that I have been too overwhelmed to write about it. Yesterday, though, was such an odd conglomeration of things that I thought I’d try to post about it.

Speaker McCarthy and his slim majority in the House of Representatives seem incapable of actual governance, even after resolving the debt ceiling crisis. Instead of working on budget bills that put that legislation into practice, the majority-Republican committees are drafting proposals that make cuts in human needs programs that were slated to stay flat. They are also having a lot of investigations, even when they can’t produce evidence to support their allegations. They don’t seem interested in actually governing for the good of the people.

For example, yesterday they held a hearing with John Durham, who led a four-year investigation centered on the origin of the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ inquiry into possible ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. You may recall that the investigation headed by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election resulted in multiple indictments and plea deals, including Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Konstantin Kilimnik, and over two dozen Russians, including military intelligence officers and companies and employees related to a Russian troll farm that hacked into the campaign- and election-related computers in the US. While not charging him as a sitting president, the Mueller report also detailed instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump. By contrast, the Durham investigation only resulted in one minor plea deal and two acquittals at trial, hardly the revelation of a “deep-state conspiracy” that some Republicans had suspected.

Curiously, during the hearing, Durham seemed ignorant of much of the Mueller report and contemporaneous news accounts from the 2016 election cycle. He did, however, praise Mueller as “a patriot” and state unequivocally that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. A number of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, which has invited Durham to testify, seemed frustrated that he wasn’t engaging in their more conspiratorial ideas.

Then, in a bizarre counterpoint, the House Republicans voted to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) because of his work on investigating Trump, including the issue of Russian election interference. (A similar measure which had included a possible $16 million fine in addition to censure had failed last week.) Six Republicans, including five on the House Ethics Committee voted present; all other Republicans voted for censure while all Democrats voted against. Rep. Schiff, who was then chair of the Intelligence Committee and became one of the impeachment managers in the first Trump impeachment, appears to have been censured for fulfilling his Congressional duties. It’s expected that this is a first salvo in what may be a long siege of Republican efforts to impeach members of the Biden administration, including the President himself. It doesn’t seem, though, that the Republicans have evidence of actual wrongdoing that would warrant impeachments. They have been doing a lot of investigating of allegations but don’t have the actual evidence needed to prove their case.

Meanwhile, last night, Special Counsel Jack Smith turned over mounds of evidence, including grand jury testimony, to Donald Trump’s lawyers in the documents case that is being litigated in the Southern District of Florida. This is part of a process called discovery, in which the prosecutors give the defendant’s lawyers the information underlying their case, including any possibly exculpatory evidence. The indictment in the case is quite detailed but it seems that many Congressional Republicans have yet to read it. It’s sad that they seem convinced by conspiracy theories while ignoring actual evidence and that they spread this malady to voters.

It makes me very nervous for the future of our democracy, both short-term and long-term.

the (not clean) debt ceiling bill

Taking a break from posting about my chapbook Hearts to update you on the United States’ struggle on the debt ceiling.

Both houses of Congress passed a deal agreed to by President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy which suspends the debt ceiling until January 2025, after the next Congressional and presidential elections. It also limits some spending over the next two years and makes changes to some programs, such as food assistance and environmental project permitting.

While I’m grateful not to have the risk of default and national/global economic consequences hanging over our heads for the next two years, I would have much preferred for Congress to have passed a clean debt ceiling bill months ago. Then, they could have debated budgetary bills as part of the usual preparation for the fiscal year that begins October first. I also prefer raising taxes on the wealthiest individual and corporate taxpayers, in order to increase spending on social needs, while decreasing the extremely high military budget. (The CBS program 60 Minutes recently aired a piece investigating part of the reason.)

One of the absurd aspects of the bill is the inclusion of special permitting and judicial review provisions for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a partially complected methane pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia that has been held up over its poor adherence to environmental regulations. It’s a pet project of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, which he has tried and failed to include in past legislation. My heart goes out to the people and places along the pipeline route that will suffer damage because of its construction. It also flies in the face of our need, in light of global warming, to stop new fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure projects.

The best course of action for our financial future would be to eliminate the debt ceiling altogether. It seems to be in contradiction with the 14th Amendment, which states, “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” Whether this action comes through Congress or the courts, it would at least keep us from going through a similar scenario in the future with Congressional Republicans threatening to damage the economy if they don’t get their way on future budgetary policy.

A sigh of relief for now…

Discharge Petition

I am calling on my Congressional Representative, Marc Molinaro of New York’s 19th district, to sign the discharge petition to bring a clean debt ceiling raise to the House floor and to vote in favor of it there. I urge him to encourage his Republican colleagues to join him in this, which honors the 14th Amendment of the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.

After that is accomplished, all members of Congress should work on budget bills that prioritize human needs, such as programs for affordable housing, nutrition, and health care. These programs should be expanded, not cut, with additional revenue raised through making sure the wealthiest individuals and corporations pay a fairer share in taxes.

Please join me in this effort by contacting your own House member and sharing your opinions about the debt ceiling and about your budget priorities for the coming fiscal year.