linnposts.com

It’s easy to like Joe Biden.

That was the consensus opinion of people who attended President Biden’s Town Hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Tuesday night, even those who voted for Trump.

They found him genuine, which means they thought he was being honest and straight with them, even when they didn’t like his answer to their question. They described him as real.

On the other hand, it was never easy to like Donald Trump. It’s hard to like a president who acts like a child. The fact that he was never genuine, never honest, never straight with people, and never real made it that much harder.   

But President Biden (I really like the sound of that) is more than likable. He is competent, something we haven’t seen in a president in four years.

Part of competency is having a well-thought-out agenda for the country and Biden clearly has that, which is why 69% of the country supports his 1.9 trillion dollar Rescue American Plan.

Republicans in Congress don’t. All they have to offer the country is to oppose whatever President Biden proposes.  

They say they want to do something to help the American people, just not a lot, which is the same position they took when President Obama submitted a recovery plan to save the economy George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and two unpaid-for wars had just wrecked.

This time will be different, though. President Biden is listening to economists across the spectrum who universally say the danger is not doing too much, but repeating the mistakes of 2009 and doing too little and he has the votes to get it passed.

The American Rescue Plan will become law because Democrats control the House and Senate.

But Biden and Senate Democrats must go further. They have to get rid of the filibuster so they can enact two other critical bills that will help save our democracy from Republicans.

The first involves making Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico states.

D.C. has over 705,000 residents and Puerto Rico has 3.1 million. Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota have fewer than both. Alaska and South Dakota have slightly more than D.C., but two-plus million fewer than Puerto Rico. 

The residents in both D.C. and Puerto Rico are U. S. citizens, but only D.C. residents have the right to cast votes for president and vice-president.

Because they are not states, neither has a Senator and only one representative each in the House who is called a “delegate” and has limited voting privileges.

Because residents in both D. C. and Puerto Rico pay federal income taxes, they are classic examples of “taxation without representation.”

The time to make Washington D. C. and Puerto Rico states is overdue, but Republicans will oppose both because they know if passed, initially it will likely send four more Democrats to the Senate and at least two to the House.  

Democrats must eliminate the filibuster. They did so to get federal judges confirmed during the Obama years and Republicans did so to get Trump’s Supreme Court nominees confirmed. 

Eliminating it for statehood would not be difficult. Even Democrat Joe Manchin who wants to keep the filibuster for legislation is open to removing it for statehood. It should be done as soon as possible.

The second bill Democrats need to pass is the John Lewis Voting Rights. In 2013 the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the original 1965 Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of voter suppression to get “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department before enacting changes to voting rights.

“Times have changed,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, but more than 30 Republican states prove him wrong by proposing and/or passing laws making it harder for minorities to vote. Some have already begun the process of proposing limits on mail-in voting because more Democrats voted that way in 2020 than Republicans. 

The House passed the John Lewis Voting Act in July of 2020. Mitch McConnell refused to bring it up, perhaps because he knew there would be enough Republicans voting with Democrats to pass it.

Democrats plan to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. Republicans will filibuster it, but there is a good chance enough Republicans will join with Democrats to break it, allowing a vote that will pass it.

These two bills along with the American Rescue Plan will not only help all Americans, they will also help America.

In addition, they will be shining examples of what can be done in a mere 100 days when the right person is President and the right party controls Congress.

Who says it doesn’t matter who gets elected?