Congressional Democrats, after passing a highly controversial health care reform bill, said they would ensure midterm election victories by casting their action as a moral imperative. Thus, they have declared themselves America’s moral leaders.
Are they kidding? Even without debating the merits of their legislation, there are many questions about whether Democrats are high-ground travelers.
Consider the facts resting in their backyard. That’s where 600,000 citizens of the District live who are being denied voting representation in Congress. If there isn’t a moral obligation with that one, certainly there is a political one: Most city voters are members of the Democratic Party.
Local and national advocates have pleaded, protested and, at times, groveled before President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to give the District’s congressional representative full voting rights in the House. While the Senate voted last year 61 to 37 to provide residents in the nation’s capital the same right as those in the 50 states, Democrats in the House have yet to consider the bill.
“We are a little dismayed that the measure has not moved in the House,” said Eugene Dewitt Kinlow, public affairs director for D.C. Vote, a nonprofit group that advocates for voting rights. He said now that health care reform has been approved, the organization “wants to urge [Democrats] to feel empowered in their moral imperative by taking up this issue.”
“We want them to bring the big gavel back on behalf of the people of the District of Columbia,” Kinlow added.
But Kinlow and the folks at D.C. Vote shouldn’t cross their fingers, hold their breath or otherwise anticipate Democrats in Congress or Obama will do the right thing by District residents.
But Kinlow and the folks at D.C. Vote shouldn’t cross their fingers, hold their breath or otherwise anticipate Democrats in Congress or Obama will do the right thing by District residents.
The saga involving the education of more than 1,700 children receiving an annual federal subsidy of about $7,500 under the Opportunity Scholarship Program is yet another example of the Democrats falling short as so-called moral leaders.
Despite staging rallies and personally lobbying members of Congress, the pleas by the families of those children were rejected last month. That was when the Senate voted 55 to 42 against an amendment introduced by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., to reauthorize the program.
Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the majority of Democrats in Congress have decided not to accept any new enrollees, phasing out the program as current participants graduate from high school. That means children from poor and low-income families won’t have the same opportunity as Obama’s daughters: to attend a school of their choice.
Democrats in Congress can get the big head, as my mother would say, thinking that because they have passed health care, they can’t fail. But each day they prevent children in the District from receiving a high-quality education and subject residents in the nation’s capital to the status of second-class citizens, Democrats are, in fact, failing and surely can’t rightfully claim the mantle of moral leader.
