Bipartisan citizen initiatives can work in Congress
If Iwere to promise inspiring stories of citizens just like youworking with Congress in a bipartisanway on big issues, whatwould you think? Not a chance! Impossible!
Well, here goes. Three real-life examples. You decide.
I recently attended the American Promise Conference inWashington, DC. American Promise isworking to enact a 28th amendment to the Constitution thatwould overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which gave human constitutional rights to corporations and struck downa century of laws that provided limits on campaign spending. Eight out of 10 Americans agree that our political system is out of control with billions of dollars pouring into campaigns fromcorporations, unions and thewealthy. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-West Boca, brought three students who’d attendedMarjory Stoneman Douglas High School and who spoke at the conference and on Capitol Hill.
During the first LobbyDay three citizens fromWyoming, who had led in gathering 15,000 signatures to get this issue on the Wyoming ballot, had a joint meeting with theirU.S. Senators, John Barrasso andMike Enzi and their staff along withU.S. Rep. Liz Cheney and her staff, allRepublicans, all in the same roomtogether discussing what to do about the avalanche of money in politics. No protests. No sit-ins. Just a first conversation, no more or less valuable than the protests.
Earlier in June I attended the Citizen’s Climate Lobby conference. I’d been to all nine of their annual conferences and Lobby Days including the first one in 2010 attended by a mere 25 people. This time it had grown to1,400 participants and1,200went to LobbyDay. Thanks to theCCLlobby visits membership on the bipartisanHouse Climate Solutions Caucus led byReps. Carlos Curbelo, R-Miami, and Deutch has grown to 42Republicans and 42 Democrats when three years ago you couldn’t have gotten oneRepublican to put their name on anything with theword climate in the title.
In July I’ll attend the RESULTS conference inWashington, D.C., where the Sun Sentinel’s editorial page editorRosemary O’Hara will receive the Cameron Duncan MediaAward given each year to a journalist or editor for outstandingwork on issues related to poverty. For 34 years RESULTS has played a lead advocacy role in the steep decline in child deaths around theworld from41,000 child deaths a day in the early 1980s to 15,300 daily child deaths today. WhenPresidentTrump took office the maternal and child health account, which has contributed mightily to that progress, stood at $814.5 million. After the President called for a cut in 2018 of $65 million, or 8 percent, RESULTS volunteers enrolled 142 HouseRepublicans and Democrats in signing a letter to the lead appropriators asking them to reject those cuts. Earlier this year Congress agreed and actually increased funding by 2 percent instead.
Why not join in and make history?