(First Published March 12, 2021)
With Covid relief on the way, the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress must pivot quickly to create more profound, long-lasting change.
What Democrats accomplish in the next 18 months -- and how voters respond in the elections of 2022 and ’24 -- will affect for generations the course of our democracy and the well-being of Americans.
The past four decades – starting long before Trump’s democracy-threatening lies and bigotry -- are littered with law-making wreckage that has directed wealth to the few and hurt quality of life for the many. Relentless Republicans and ineffective, sluggish Democrats share the blame for:
The increasing wealth gap in America, unequal health outcomes skewed by race and ethnicity, health care denied as a human right, Medicare and Medicaid funding threatened, Social Security’s future uncertain, renewed voter suppression, cynically gerrymandered election districts that favor Republicans in otherwise closely divided states, criminal justice that imprisons black men disproportionately, non-sensical gun control, unaffordable higher ed and predatory loans that keep younger generations in economic distress, lack of early child-care and learning that puts low-income children behind from the start, un-American denial of desperate immigrants, a minimum wage nobody can live on, and erratic climate policies that risk our grandchildren’s future on an inhabitable planet.
Enter Biden and Democrats, who passed – with zero Republican support – pandemic relief that aids those in immediate need and begins to level the playing field for struggling Americans. So far, so good.
But the hard part starts now – passing legislation in the next year and a half that cleans up the wreckage, creates more opportunity for all Americans, repairs the cracks in our democracy and restricts the ever-upward flow of wealth.
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
Brandeis, the first Jewish member of the Supreme Court, lived through the rise of Fascism and Communism and saw how both created totalitarian regimes. He did not support strong, centralized government and opposed some of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies as federal overreach. But above all, Brandeis supported equal rights and equal opportunity to keep democracy strong.
The concerns Brandeis outlined back then are just as real today. For Democrats, and for the very future of our precious democracy, time is wasting.
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What Democrats get done in D.C. already has benefitted and will continue to benefit Louisiana, where our deep-red legislature limits the scope of state-generated change. But we can make progress, and the stakes here are higher than in most states.
We’re a backwater when it comes to health and education, teacher pay, early childhood learning, equal justice and opportunity, and lawmakers’ ability to envision a Louisiana reboot as oil and gas recede as dominant energy sources.
The state legislature will convene April 12. Republicans will propose tax reform, which historically means cutting taxes and reducing funds for services like health, education, safe roads and bridges.
But a simpler tax system could address fair-share burdens, avoid the annual fiscal emergencies of the Bobby Jindal era and increase public dollars to priority quality-of-life issues for Louisianans. And while legislators are looking at taxes, an increase in the gas tax – untouched in three decades -- might help fix those roads and bridges.
— Paul Anger, 2nd Vice Chair, JPDEC, March 12, 2021