Is GOP DeliveringFor You?
by Bob Henderson
Elections last week indicate voters, in some states at least, agree and are signaling Republicans their party has moved too far to the right.
In Ohio, voters overwhelmingly repudiated a Republican-passed law curbing union bargaining rights for public employees.
In Mississippi, voters rejected the anti-choice law declaring every fertilized egg a “person.” This was intended to ban abortion, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the woman.
And in Arizona, Russell Pearce, the state’s most powerful legislator and the architect of its tough immigration law, was recalled and replaced by a more moderate Republican.
Maybe it’s time for Oklahoma Republicans to ask yourselves just what your party has done to represent your interests. Besides protect you from Sharia law, I mean.
For example, did Senate Republicans serve Oklahoma’s best interests when they killed President Obama’s American Jobs Act?
This cost Oklahoma more than $900 million that would have kept 5,900 state teachers, police, fire-fighters and first responders on the job, helped refurbish Oklahoma’s community colleges, and helped repair Oklahoma’s highways and bridges. The total number of jobs the act would have created or saved in Oklahoma exceeded 12,000.
This all could have been paid for by asking millionaires and billionaires to pay a little more in taxes, a request that even most of them agree is fair.
Hardly anyone needs to be reminded that our schools are reeling from deep budget cuts three years running, and our bridges and highways are among the nation’s poorest. Another 12,000 Oklahomans with good jobs would have been excellent medicine for our state’s small businesses, too.
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But you might as well face it. Republicans in the Senate didn’t intend to do any favors for small businesses, for you, or for anyone else when they killed the jobs act. A blind man can see they don’t want the nation’s economy to improve until after next year’s presidential election.
That’s pretty cynical of me to say. But it’s even more cynical of Republicans to delay, for more than a year, anything that could improve national economic conditions just to hurt President Obama and better their own election chances. Nationwide, the President’s act would have created more than a million jobs. Think of the suffering by working families that could alleviate.
But instead of working to create jobs, as Republicans promised in the 2010 campaign, they have made election law itself a partisan political issue.
New laws passed in 30 states, including Oklahoma, where Republicans have taken majority control target the oldest, the youngest and the newest American voters. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates new laws in these states will disenfranchise as many as 5 million voters in the 2012 election.
Of course, no one has to be disenfranchised by these new laws if they follow the rules “exactly.” But shouldn’t the idea be to encourage more citizens to vote, not to discourage them by making it more difficult?
I reject the idea this is what Oklahoma Republicans want from your party.
I believe you want, just as I do, good schools and roads, fair treatment of public employees, democratic elections, and good jobs for everyone who wants one.
But I don’t believe Republican legislators, in Washington or Oklahoma City, are doing a good job of delivering for you or your family.
When are you going to get fed up and stop voting against your own interests?
(Henderson is chairman of Kay County, OK, Democrats.)