'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Fresh from the November elections in which both parties complained that voters' rights had been curtailed, House Democrats are pushing election reforms as a central tenet of their legislative agenda for the new Congress.
President Obama gathered Democrats and Republicans at the White House Rose Garden on Thursday to sign a bill designed to encourage investment in startup businesses and take a break from election-year partisan sniping.
The Democrats still claim that extending unemployment checks helps the economy and that the new House Republican majority has not passed one jobs bill. President Obama, meanwhile, is repeating his focus on job creation, which he first stated in 2009.
Despite President Obama's portrayal of Tuesday's congressional elections as a "shellacking" for Democrats, the party's congressional leadership team is shaping up to be more of the same.
"The urgent need to address flaws in the electoral system became even clearer after our most recent election," Rep. John B. Larson of Connecticut, chairman of the House Democrats' Task Force on Election Reform, said Jan. 3, the first day of the 113th Congress. "It is crucial that we work to end voter suppression and civil rights abuses (and) make it easier for citizens to cast ballots."
"What we see unfolding in the former Republican Party is the capitulation to special interests — the special, narrow interests of one [conservative] segment of a party that is controlling the very future of all Americans," said Rep. John B. Larson of Connecticut, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
