Squander. It is the word that comes to mind to describe the results of the Republican agenda. Surplus into deficits. Strength into weakness. Growth into decline. Responsibility into recklessness. Confidence into fear. Everyday they are making a mockery of our proud democratic traditions, squandering an inheritance they did not earn and clearly do not honor.
That’s why this week we’ve escalated our new national campaign to Restore the Promise of America. This week we launched our video on our new and improving web site. Next week ads begin to appear on the internet. And soon after, we will launch television ads in at least three critical states making our case that with Democrats all of us will have a better life – that it is our agenda and plan that will Restore the Promise.
You can
watch our compelling video, learn more and contribute to the campaign. With your help we can take this powerful argument to Americans needing to hear our story. And if you believe in our efforts, please email our video to people you know who might want to join us in this critical fight.
To help you understand how completely the Republicans in Washington are failing all of us we send along a powerful editorial from The New York Times. We hope you will take the time to read it and take action by supporting our national campaign today.
Simon RosenbergPresident
Congress Slouches Toward Home
The New York Times Editorial, September 24, 2004
The Republican-controlled Congress is shambling to the end of one of the lightest workloads in decades without a hint of embarrassment, concentrating on the defense of the flag, tax cuts and marriage while failing at the most demanding obligations of government.
When the lawmakers get back home, voters should ask them how they could quit their posts while leaving a dozen basic spending bills in next year's budget unfinished - hung up once more in back-room feuds about pork and logrolling. The assault weapons ban was allowed to lapse to appease the gun lobby. A simple $5 billion corporate-tax plan to satisfy a violation of tariff laws remains mired in a $150 billion pork fest, while American products suffer retaliatory sanctions in the billions. As for fully financing and enforcing the No Child Left Behind Act, voters have to settle for lawmakers' posing tenderly with schoolchildren.
Equally disturbing is how our elected representatives have been spending their time.
Eager to help the middle class, a goal no one can argue with, they threw moderation to the winds this week on a $145 billion extension of existing tax cuts benefiting families. They hoped voters would not notice that they had not bothered to find budget savings to offset the costs of this program, and that these tax cuts will spawn a borrowing binge by the government from banks around the world. The loans will come due for America's children and grandchildren, whose earnings may just as well be stamped "Payable to the Bank of China." Republican leaders did find the fiscal constraint to brush aside proposals to extend minimal credits for millions of children in working-poor families, only to add a $13 billion dollop of tax boons to corporations.
The House began its work on the decades-delayed reform of the American intelligence agencies by announcing that its kudzu patch of competing committees, one of the central points of criticism by the 9/11 commission, was too sacred to touch. Beyond that, House Republican leaders' most enthusiastic response to the call for reform seemed to be in trying to tack on a Patriot Act postscript that would grant law enforcement even more powers that could curtail civil liberties.
Republican leaders have also been chipping away at the Constitution by proposing to deny judges jurisdiction to review selected acts of Congress. The House passed a measure yesterday retaining the Pledge of Allegiance's "under God" phrase and prohibiting any federal court - including, outrageously, the Supreme Court - from judging the law's constitutionality.
In essence, the House proposed to protect a patriotic ritual by trashing the constitutional system it celebrates. This measure was spurred by discontent over a 2002 federal appeals court ruling that invalidated the recitation at public schools of the pledge with the "under God" phrase in it, and the Supreme Court's recent choice to dismiss the case on technical grounds rather than addressing the merits. It echoed the mean-spirited and unconstitutional Marriage Protection Act, which the House approved in July to bar federal courts from reviewing the legal definition of marriage.
The other day, Congressional Republicans celebrated the 10th anniversary of their ascendancy to power with the Contract With America, somehow failing to mention that their fervid conversion to unchecked deficits was not exactly part of that contract. Once upon a time, gridlock was considered the ultimate problem with Congress. That looks better than what we're getting right now.
