Women's interests are America's interests

Yesterday the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting for the State of Massachusetts held it’s thirteenth and final public hearing on redistricting.  As the Boston Herald mentioned in their coverage of the hearing (which took place at the Statehouse), a number of people stressed the importance of minority representation, including Rep. Stephen Lynch of South Boston.  And they were right to point this out.  Effective minority representation is essential to our democracy, for we must ensure that all voices are heard in our communities, not just those of a few classes of people.  

What the Herald article didn’t mention was the testimony of a state representative who spoke shortly after Rep. Lynch.  She argued that not only do we have to preserve minority representation, but we also need to protect underrepresented majorities - specifically women.  Despite the fact that women make up a majority of the population, she said, Massachusetts only has one Congresswoman (Niki Tsongas of Lowell).  The other nine are all men.

The problem is not unique to Massachusetts.  Out of all 535 members of the current Congress, only 89 of them are women – 72 in the House of Representatives and 17 in the Senate.

I’m not saying that men can’t do a good job representing women’s interests - women have had some great male advocates in Congress like Ted Kennedy - nor am I saying that women are always better at representing the interests of women than men are (for instance, GOP Presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann voted against equal pay for women last Congress).  What I am saying is that women's interests need to be protected.      

The bottom line is that women make up a majority of the population, a majority of college graduates, and - for the first time - a majority of the workforce.  The well-being of our country is inextricably connected with the well-being of women.  It's about time we started looking after the interests of the majority for the good of the country.

Read My Lips: No More Voodoo Economics

As I understand it, a representative democracy is a system of government in which the people elect individuals to advocate for them in legislative bodies.  In theory, our legislative bodies represent the greater populace, and, through effective deliberation and a spirit of civic responsibility, our representatives ensure that the general will of the people will prevail.

Apparently the Republican Party didn’t get that memo.

Throughout the country state legislatures face massive budget shortfalls and tough decisions have to be made to ensure fiscal stability in the coming years.  Yet all republicans seem to care about is ensuring that the uber wealthy never have to share in any of the sacrifices that the rest of the country is forced to face.

Over the weekend the state of Minnesota went into a government shutdown because it failed to pass a budget, resulting in the layoff of more than 20,000 state workers and countless other Minnesotans being cut off from essential government services.  You would think that the republican state legislature and the democratic governor could have come to an agreement.  After all, weren’t they elected first and foremost to make the necessary compromises and sound policy decisions required to serve the interests of the people of Minnesota? 

The reason: the republicans in the Minnesota state legislature refused to go along with any plan that raised taxes on even the 0.3% of the wealthiest members of the state.  The concept of shared responsibility was unthinkable to them.  Instead, they proposed to shift the burden to everyone else.

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton refused to go along with the republican proposal, because, he said, “I cannot accept a Minnesota where people with disabilities lose part of the time they are cared for by personal care attendants so that millionaires don’t have to pay $1 more in taxes.  I cannot accept a Minnesota where young people cannot afford the rising tuition at the University of Minnesota or a MnSCU campus so that millionaires do not have to pay $1 more in taxes.”

Spoken like a true patriot.

We’re seeing this trend at the national level as well.  As we all know, the Republicans took over the U.S. House of Representatives last fall after promising to create jobs and reduce the national debt (as is no doubt the will of the nation).  But since they took over Congress the republicans have pursued a radically different path.  Six months into their term in the majority the republicans in Congress are yet to pass - or even consider - a single jobs bill.  In fact, they’ve proposed not to create, but to CUT over 6 million jobs nationwide http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201106270010 in addition to taking away benefits like Medicare and Social Security that hard working Americans have spent their lives paying into. 

So far the republicans haven’t been successful in these endeavors, but they have been successful in enacting one of their agenda items, which to them seems to be the only thing that matters: cutting taxes for millionaires.

They say that this is what the people want, and that Americans would NEVER accept any attempts at deficit reduction that involved tax increases for even the most well-off.

Perhaps they haven’t been listening lately http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2292/americans-support-higher-taxes-really

The purpose of our government is to protect the interests of all of the people, not simply the privileged few.  It’s time the republicans got that through their heads.