Tag: Congress

Can “Justice and Truth Win Out?” A heckler yells at Obama. Here’s what happened next…

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Deportation, Heckler, Obama

A heckler yelled at Obama. Here’s what happened next…
US President Barack Obama arrives to speak on immigration reform in San Francisco, Nov. 25, 2013.
US President Barack Obama arrives to speak on immigration reform in San Francisco, Nov. 25, 2013. | JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

At some point Congress will wake up and do it’s job.  I suspect it won’t be until we vote out the slackers (from both parties) in 2014….

MSNBC

Arguing “there’s no reason we shouldn’t get immigration reform done right now,” President Obama demanded on Monday for the umpteenth time that Congress pass his top legislative priority already.

So you can understand if he was a bit annoyed when, towards the end of his speech in San Francisco’s Chinatown, pro-immigration activists started heckling.

“Mr. President, please use your executive order to halt deportations for all 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in this country right now!” one protester yelled. As Obama tried to respond, the shouting continued: “You have a power to stop deportation for all undocumented immigrants in this country!”

“Actually I don’t,” Obama replied. “And that’s why we’re here.”

A month earlier, Senator Ted Cruz was interrupted by anti-deportation activists, whom he nonsensically accused of being “President Obama’s paid political operatives,” during a speech to a conservative conference. Immigration protesters have shadowed administration officials for years, popping up at Congressional hearings to target Janet Napolitano, who was in the audience for today’s speech, and even occupying Obama’s campaign offices in 2012.

These protesters are confronting a fundamental contradiction in Obama’s record: he’s made immigration reform his top second-term priority even as his administration has presided over record deportations.

After Senate Republicans filibustered the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to young undocumented immigrants, activists slowly convinced Obama to halt deportations for undocumented youth until Congress came around. Now they’re demanding he do the same for the broader unauthorized immigrant community, or at the very least, for their parents and siblings who still face the threat of removal every day. After all, if you’re fighting to get them on a path to citizenship, why would you want to kick them out? These arguments are likely to get louder if immigration reform dies in the House.

The president, however, has argued that such a sweeping move would require a change to the law. He repeated the claim on Monday.

“What you need to know, when I’m speaking as President of the United States and I come to this community, is that if, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so,” he said Monday. “But we’re also a nation of laws. That’s part of our tradition.  And so the easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our laws.”

Politically, Republicans don’t have an obvious way to exploit these tensions, but they are trying.

“Democrats are facing credibility problems, whether it is from Obamacare failures or massive deportations, that’s why you see the president’s approval ratings suffer,” Izzy Santa, who handles Hispanic outreach for the Republican National Committee, told MSNBC. “The fact is that Republicans continue to work on immigration reform, which is more than Democrats ever did when they controlled the White House and Congress.”

The RNC, which has backed efforts to pass immigration reform, may be able to tweak Obama a little over deportations. But the vast majority of Republicans in Congress are on record demanding even more aggressive deportations. The only House vote Republican leaders have allowed on the topic this year was an amendment by anti-immigration firebrand Steve King calling on the White House to deport DREAMers. It passed with almost unanimous Republican support.

It’s true Democrats didn’t pass immigration reform in Obama’s first two years, when Democrats briefly had 60 votes in the Senate. But for most of that session they were stuck at 59 votes and the only Republican willing to negotiate with them, Senator Lindsey Graham, backed out in a procedural dispute. Mitt Romney tried the exact same “Where was Obama?” argument with Latino voters in 2012, even as he advocated “self-deportation” in debates. It didn’t work.

Obama is doing his best to convince protesters which party to blame if reform collapses once again.

“Right now it’s up to Republicans in the House to decide if we can move forward as a country on this bill,” Obama said. “If they don’t want to see it happen, they’ve got to explain why.”

House Republican leaders have offered a variety of excuses lately as to why they haven’t come up with an immigration plan of their own. The schedule’s too tight, or they’re mad at the White House over health care, or Obama is secretly trying to kill immigration reform with unrealistic demands so Democrats win Latino voters.

The president’s goal this month has been to box them in by saying “yes” to their demands whenever possible. Speaker John Boehner doesn’t like the Senate’s bill? Fine, you can pass a bunch of smaller bills instead. They say I’m demonizing Republicans to scare them away from a bill? Well, I think the Speaker is just swell!

“The good news is, just this past week Speaker Boehner said that he is ‘hopeful we can make progress’ on immigration reform,” Obama said. “And that is good news. I believe the Speaker is sincere.  I think he genuinely wants to get it done.  And that’s something we should be thankful for this week.”

While Obama faces his own pressures, his refusal to back away from talks puts the onus on Boehner to prove his party can deal with the deportation issue at all. And right now there’s no consensus within the party as to whether the country should let any  undocumented immigrants remain, let alone get on a path to citizenship. Until they can start naming some demands, they’re for self-deportation by default.

Watch Obama and the hecklers:

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32 Republicans Who Caused the Government Shutdown

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Government Shutdown, Republican Clown Car

32 Republicans Who Caused the Government Shutdown
Here’s the Republican clown car!
Meet the House conservative hardliners.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Friday was the fourth day of the government shutdown, and there’s still no sign of an exit. What’s surprising about the ongoing fight is how a small group of members of Congress have managed to bring Washington to a halt. Just months ago, Speaker John Boehner was warning that forcing the government to shut down over Obamacare or anything else was politically hazardous. Yet Boehner remains stuck, his strategy dictated by a small rump of members in the Republican caucus who refuse to budge. On Monday night, as government funding ran out, a group of around 40 hardline conservatives refused to support any resolution to fund the government that didn’t defund Obamacare. Since Monday night, their goals may have become less clear, but their resolve has not weakened. While it’s widely believed that a “clean” resolution would pass the House handily, it would also likely lead to a right-wing rebellion in the caucus that would spell the end of Boehner’s speakership.

So who are those hardliners? To compile this list, we started with a roster that the Senate Conservatives Fund, a group aligned with Ted Cruz, created of representatives who were allied with them. We cross-checked it with the list of members who signed an August letter by Rep. Mark Meadows demanding that Boehner use a shutdown as a threat to defund Obamacare, and against other public statements this week. It’s not a comprehensive roll — there’s no official “wacko bird” caucus that keeps a register — but it’s a window into the small but powerful group of men and women in the House of Representatives who brought the federal government to a standstill.

Representative: Justin Amash

Home District: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Quoted: “President Obama and Senator Reid refuse to negotiate over giving regular Americans the same breaks they give themselves, government workers, and big business.”

Representative: Michele Bachmann

Home District: Stillwater, Minnesota

Quoted: “This is about the happiest I’ve seen members in a long time because we’ve seen we’re starting to win this dialogue on a national level.”

Representative: Marsha Blackburn

Home District: Brentwood, Tennessee

Quoted: “There is some good news out of the shutdown, the EPA can’t issue new regulations.”

Representative: Mo Brooks

Home District: Huntsville, Alabama

Quoted: “America survived the last 17 government shutdowns.”

Representative: Paul Broun

Home District: Athens, Georgia

Quoted: “[The Democrats] need to look in the mirror, because they’re the ones to blame. They’re the ones that shut the government down.”

Representative: John Carter

Home District: Round Rock, Texas

Quoted: “We must postpone this overreaching and damaging law that I believe will bankrupt the hard-working every day American.”

Representative: John Culberson

Home District: Houston, Texas

Quoted: “The whole room [said]: ‘Let’s vote!’ I said, like 9/11, ‘Let’s roll!”

Representative: Ron DeSantis

Home District: Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

Quoted: “It is a simple issue of fairness: Members of Congress, their staff, and the political elite should not be given special relief from the harmful effects of Obamacare while the rest of America is left holding the bag.”

Representative: Scott DesJarlais

Home District: Jasper, Tennessee

Quoted: “I remain committed in refusing to vote for any proposal that funds the president’s health-care law, and I call upon my colleagues to join me. A temporary government shutdown pales in comparison to the long-term negative consequences that Obamacare will impose on our economy and our healthcare system.”

Representative: Jeff Duncan

Home District: Laurens, South Carolina

Quoted: “I believe Obamacare has shut down America, so I’d rather shut down the government than continue doing what we’re doing, which is penalizing businesses and families in this country.”

Representative: John Fleming

Home District: Minden, Louisiana

Quoted: “This is what my constituents send me here for. This does underscore just how serious we are and how serious our constituents are about putting an end to Obamacare.”

Representative: Scott Garrett

Home District: Wantange Township, New Jersey

Quoted: “I am deeply disappointed that President Obama and the Senate refused to come to the negotiation table and failed to fund the federal government.”

Representative: Phil Gingrey

Home District: Marietta, Georgia

Quoted: “A majority of Americans think Obamacare will make health care in our country worse, and they’re right. House Republicans are listening to the American people, and I urge Harry Reid and Senate Democrats to do the same.”

Representative: Louie Gohmert

Home District: Tyler, Texas

Quoted: “There are just so many broken promises that we need to slow this train wreck, this nightmare. It’s time to put the skids on this thing and slow it down before more people get hurt.”

Representative: Tom Graves

Home District: Ranger, Georgia

Quoted: “House GOP is united around a very reasonable policy: POTUS should give families the same Obamacare delay he gave to businesses.”

Representative: Vicky Hartzler

Home District: Harrisonville, Missouri

Quoted: “The American people have spoken already on this: They do not want Obamacare …. It is hurting people.”

Representative: Tim Huelskamp

Home District: Fowler, Kansas

Quoted: “Most Americans realize the government shutdown has no impact on their daily life. They got their mail today; they’re going to get their Social Security check.”

Representative: Jim Jordan

Home District: Urbana, Ohio

Quoted: “We have to get something on Obamacare, because that — if you want to get this country on a fiscal path to balance, you cannot let an entitlement of this size that will truly bankrupt the country and, more importantly, one that’s not going to help Americans with their health care, you can’t let this happen. ”

Representative: Steve King

Home District: Kiron, Iowa

Quoted: “The American people have rejected Obamacare. The president is willing to put all of that on the line to save his namesake legislation, which I think would go down in history as the largest political tantrum ever.”

Representative: Raul Labrador

Home District: Eagle, Idaho

Quoted: To Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “You know, your boss, Tip O’Neill, shut down the government 12 different times. And you didn’t call him a terrorist.”

Representative: Tom Massie

Home District: Garrison, Kentucky

Quoted: “It’s just not that big of a deal.”

Representative: Tom McClintock

Home District: Elk Grove, California

Quoted: In response to Harry Reid calling Tea Partiers “anarchists”: “When the other guy starts calling you names, you know that you’re winning the debate, and you know that he knows you’re winning the debate.”

Representative: Mark Meadows

Home District: Cashier, North Carolina

Quoted: “James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 58 that ‘the power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon . . . for obtaining redress of every grievance.’”

Representative: Randy Neugebauer

Home District: Lubbock, Texas

Quoted: “We get tons of mail and E-mails and phone calls. And overwhelmingly, those phone calls say, ‘Congressman, do everything you can to get rid of this very onerous piece of legislation. We don’t want the government running our health care.’ And so, from my perspective, we’re doing the people’s work here.”

Representative: Matt Salmon

Home District: Mesa, Arizona

Quoted: “I was here during the government shutdown in 1995. It was a divided government. we had a Democrat president of the United States. We had a Republican Congress. And I believe that that government shutdown actually gave us the impetus, as we went forward, to push toward some real serious compromise.”

Representative: Mark Sanford

Home District: Charleston, South Carolina

Quoted: “Our society has been held together for over 200 years in no small part due to the belief that our system was fair or equitable, yet the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has been anything but that.”

Representative: Steve Scalise

Home District: Jefferson, Louisiana

Quoted: “Either Obamacare is good enough that it should apply to all or it is so bad that it should apply to none. It is time for the sweetheart deals and backroom exemptions to end.”

Representative: Dave Schweikert

Home District: Fountain Hills, Arizona

Quoted: “I know it’s not comfortable for a lot of people here, but this is how it’s supposed to work. It’s supposed to be cantankerous. It’s supposed to be this constant grinding.” *

* A previous version of this story quoted Schweikert saying that the shutdown “is my kind of fun.” That statement was taken out of context. The congressman was referring to an interview with NPR, not with the government shutdown. We regret the error.

Representative: Steve Stockman

Home District: Clear Lake, Texas

Quoted: “Americans want Congress to do two things, work together on our national fiscal crisis and stop Obamacare. It’s time Congress started listening to them.”

Representative: Marlin Stutzman

Home District: Howe, Indiana

Quoted: “We aren’t going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

Representative: Randy Weber

Home District: Pearland, Texas

Quoted: “When the Democrats passed [Obamacare] over 60 percent of America’s wishes three years ago, they began this government shutdown.”

Representative: Ted Yoho

Home District: Gainesville, Florida

Quoted: “It only takes one with passion — look at Rosa Parks, Lech Walesa, Martin Luther King.”

This post has been amended to clarify the context of a comment by Rep. Dave Schweikert.

All photos: Wikimedia Commons 

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Reliving The Crazy: Michele Bachmann’s Greatest Hits

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Michele Bachmann, Reliving The Crazy

Reliving The Crazy: Michele Bachmann’s Greatest Hits

by Sahil Kapur
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announced Tuesday her tenure in Congress will come to an end in 2014. First elected in 2006, the Minnesota congresswoman rose to fame — and notoriety — around the 2008 election, after which there was a cushy place in the GOP for her brand of apocalyptic hysteria and zealous social conservatism.
Here are some of her greatest hits.

1) Barack Obama Has ‘Anti-American Views’

One MSNBC appearance in October 2008 all but sealed Bachmann’s reputation — as a paranoid wacko to liberals and a fearless hero to the tea party crowd.

“Absolutely. I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views,” she said of candidate Barack Obama. “That’s what the American people are concerned about.”

And members of Congress should be investigated for having anti-American views, she added. “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?”

2) Obamacare Allows Abortion Field Trips For 13-Year-Olds

Referring to patient privacy protections in the Affordable Care Act, Bachmann wondered if young teenagers could go get abortions during school days.

“Does that mean that someone’s 13-year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night?” she said on the House floor. “Mom and Dad are never the wiser.”

3) Census Data Can Put You In Internment Camps

In a June 2009 Fox News interview, Bachmann linked the census to Japanese internment camps.

“Between 1942 and 1947,” she said, “the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into internment camps. I’m not saying that that’s what the administration is planning to do. But I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against them to round them up in violation of their constitutional rights.”

4) Iraq Should Reimburse America For Being Liberated

During a debate while running for the Republican nomination for president, Bachmann said Iraq and Libya should reimburse the United States for being liberated.

“Cutting back on foreign aid is one thing. Being reimbursed by nations that we have liberated is another,” she said. “We should look to Iraq, and Libya, to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations.”

5) Founding Fathers ‘Worked Tirelessly’ To End Slavery

In a Jan. 2011 speech, Bachmann credited the Founders with ending slavery, even though it was abolished generations after they died.

“We know there was slavery that was still tolerated when the nation began,” she said. “We know that was an evil and it was scourge and a blot and a stain upon our history. But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”

6) HPV Vaccine Leads To ‘Mental Retardation’

While running for president, Bachmann said she has reason to believe the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has “dangerous consequences” such as mental retardation.

“There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine,” she told on Fox News. “She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result. There are very dangerous consequences.”

7) People Keep Urging Me To Impeach Obama

Just this month, Bachmann floated the possibility of impeaching President Obama.

“As I have been home in my district, in the 6th District of Minnesota,” she said on Capitol Hill, “there isn’t a weekend that hasn’t gone by that someone says to me, ‘Michele, what in the world are you all waiting for in Congress? Why aren’t you impeaching the president? He’s been making unconstitutional actions since he came into office.'”

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House of Turds

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Government Shutdown, House of Turds

Today’s NYDN Front Page Sums Up What 74 Percent of Voters Are Thinking

By Josh Voorhees
1380633347

You can take a full tour of today’s shutdown-themed front pages over at the Newseum, but trust me, it doesn’t get any better than this one from the New York Daily News.

A new Quinnipiac poll out this morning highlights just how unpopular the House strategy has been: By a 72-22 margin, voters opposed Congress shutting down the federal government to block the implementation of Obamacare. Even though Americans were divided on the merits of the healthcare law itself—with 45 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed—they were against the idea of Congress cutting off funding for the law, 58 percent to 34 percent.

Self-identified Republican voters backed the shutdown by a narrow 49-44 margin, but that’s where the support ended. Democrats (90-6 oppose) and independents (74-19) overwhelmingly were against the shutdown. And while Obama receives a negative 45-49 job approval rating in the poll, those figures look like a standing ovation compared to the 74 percent of respondents who said they disapproved of the job Republicans are doing in Congress. More poll results here.

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20 Percent of Americans Don’t Believe in God–So Why is Our Congress So Religious?

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Atheism, Belief, God, Religion

By Alex Kane           

20 Percent of Americans Don’t Believe in God–So Why is Our Congress So Religious?

The new Congress includes a Hindu, a Buddhist and someone who doesn’t identify with any religion, but the majority of members remain Christian.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

The new, 113th Congress that was sworn in last week may be more religiously diverse than any other session, but the body as a whole is more committed to religion than the U.S. population. New data analysis  released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life bears this out.

When the new Congress gathered last week in Washington, D.C., a Hindu and a Buddhist were sworn in–a first in U.S. history. Rounding out the religious diversity in the new Congress is Kyrsten Sinema, a representative from Arizona, who is not religious at all (she d oesn’t identify with the terms “non-theist, atheist or nonbeliever”).

But Congress remains more religious than Americans are. As  the Pew Forum states, “perhaps the greatest disparity, however, is between the percentage of U.S. adults and the percentage of members of Congress who do not identify with any particular religion. About one-in-five U.S. adults describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’– a group sometimes collectively called the ‘nones.’”

Those numbers are a striking contrast to the religious beliefs of Congress. The majority of Congress remains Protestant–56 percent, to be exact. 30 percent identify as Catholic, with Mormons, Jews and other religious minorities rounding out the list. Still, the Pew Forum notes that “the proportion of Protestants in Congress has been in gradual decline for decades, and the number in the 113th Congress is lower than the number in the previous Congress (307), even if the difference in percentage terms is slight.”

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Atheists and Non-Religious Underrepresented in New Congress

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Atheists, American Liberty, Atheists, Atheists Underrepresented, Catholic Dominated Congress, Congress, Non-Religious

New Congress Underrepresents Nonreligious And ‘Nones’, But Gains In Diversity With Hindu, Buddhist

New Congress Religion

Members of the 113th US House of Representatives recite the Pledge of Allegience during the opening session at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on January 3, 2013.

Nearly one-in-five Americans have no religion, but only one member of the 533 people in the new 113th Congress that was sworn in Thursday would fall into one of the largest and fastest growing American demographics when it comes to religion or lack thereof.

A new analysis from the Pew Forum shows that while the new Congress is more diverse than ever before — it includes the the nation’s first Buddhist Senator and the first Hindu in either chamber of Congress, for example — it’s still far less diverse than the nation it represents.

Like the one before it, the new Congress is majority Protestant, but its changing membership is part of a “gradual increase in religious diversity that mirrors trends in the country as a whole,” according to the Pew analysis. Congress is “far less” Protestant today than it was 50 years ago, when almost three-quarters of its membership was Protestant, according to the analysis.

“Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Mormons each make up a greater percentage of the members of Congress than of all U.S. adults. The same is true for some subgroups of Protestants, such as Episcopalians and Presbyterians. By contrast, Pentecostals are a much smaller percentage of Congress than of the general public,” the analysis says. “Due in part to electoral gains in recent years, Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus now are represented in Congress in closer proportion to their numbers in the U.S. adult population. But some small religious groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, are not represented at all in Congress.”

Pew says that “perhaps greatest disparity, however, is between the percentage of U.S. adults and the percentage of members of Congress who do not identify with any particular religion.” One-in-five U.S. adults are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” a group that’s altogether often called the “nones.” But only one person in the 113th Congress, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), does not affiliate with any particular religion, though Sinema has also said through a spokesman that “the terms non-theist, atheist or non-believer are not befitting of her life’s work or personal character.”

In addition to Sinema, ten other members of the new Congress (about two percent) don’t specify their religion, an increase from six members (about one percent) in the previous Congress. According to Pew, that two percent figure is the same as the share of U.S. adults who have said in surveys that they don’t know or will not specify their religion.

The religious group to have the biggest increase in Congressional membership is Catholics, who have gained seven seats for a total of 163, making just above 30 percent of Congress Catholic. The biggest declines in numbers are among Jews and Protestants. Jews now have 33 seats in Congress (six percent), which is six fewer than before. Protestants lost eight seats, but they the current Congress has nearly the same percentage of Protestants (56 percent) as the previous one (57 percent).

The share of Protestants in each party remains nearly the same, too, as the 112th Congress. About seven-in-ten Republicans are Protestants, while less than half of Democrats are. But members of Congress who were sworn in for the first time on Thursday are significantly less Protestant than the Congressional freshmen class of 2011. Forty-eight percent of this year’s freshmen class are Protestant, compared to 59 percent of the freshmen class two years ago.

Mormons have 15 seats (about three percent) in the new Congress, the same number as in the previous Congress.

From Pew:

Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard is the first Hindu in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran who has served on the Honolulu City Council and in the Hawaii state legislature, represents Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district. Gabbard takes over the seat held in the 112th Congress by Rep. Mazie K. Hirono (D), who on Nov. 6, 2012, became the first Buddhist elected to the Senate.In 2006, Hirono and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) became the first Buddhists to be elected to the House. Four years later, they were joined by a third Buddhist member, Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii). Johnson and Hanabusa were re-elected to serve in the 113th Congress.

The first Muslim to serve in either the House or the Senate, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), was elected in 2006. Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) became the second Muslim in Congress when he won a special election in 2008. In 2012, Michigan Democrat Syed Taj lost his bid to become the third Muslim member of Congress. Ellison and Carson were re-elected.

Members of other small religious groups started serving in Congress more than a century ago. The first Jewish member arrived in 1845, when Lewis Charles Levin of the American Party began representing Pennsylvania in the House. The first Mormon in Congress, John Milton Bernhisel, began serving in 1851, after Utah was officially recognized as a territory. California Democrat Dalip Singh Saund, the first and so far only Sikh to serve in Congress, served three terms starting in 1957.

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), a Unitarian who joined Congress in 1973, became the first member of Congress to publicly declare, in 2007, that he does not believe in a Supreme Being. He lost his re-election bid in 2012.

Of the 533 members of the new Congress, 299 are Protestant, which is about the same percentage (56 percent) as in the 112th Congress (57 percent) and higher than the share of Protestants in the U.S. adult population (48 percent). But the proportion of Protestants in Congress has been in gradual decline for decades, and the number in the 113th Congress is lower than the number in the previous Congress (307), even if the difference in percentage terms is slight.

From Pew:

In many ways, the changes in the religious makeup of Congress during the last half-century mirror broader changes in American society. Congress, like the nation as a whole, has become much less Protestant and more religiously diverse. The number of Protestants in Congress has dropped from three-quarters (75 percent) in 1961 to 56 percent today, which roughly tracks with broader religious demographic trends during this period. As recently as the 1980s, General Social Surveys found that about six-in-ten Americans identified themselves as Protestants. In aggregated surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2012 and reported in the Pew Forum’s October 2012 report “‘Nones’ on the Rise,” the share of self-identified Protestants has dipped to just under half (48 percent).Likewise, many of the major Protestant denominational families have lost ground in Congress in the past 50 years. Methodists, who made up nearly one-in-five members (18 percent) of the 87th Congress, which was seated in 1961, make up nine percent of the 113th Congress. Some other Protestant denominational families also have seen a decline in their numerical representation in Congress. For example, Episcopalians have gone from 12 percent to seven percent and Congregationalists from five percent to less than one percent during this period.

A few Protestant groups have fared somewhat better, however. From 1961 to today, the proportion of Baptists in Congress has increased slightly from 12 percent to 14 percent, and the Lutheran share has stayed roughly the same (around four percent).

Meanwhile, other religious groups have seen their share of congressional seats grow, in some cases dramatically. Catholics, for instance, have gone from 19 percent of the congressional membership in 1961 to 31 percent today. The percentage of Jewish members of Congress has risen from two percent in 1961 to six percent today.

Top 10 Most and Least Religious States
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  • #1: Mississippi (59 percent)

  • #2 Utah (57 percent)

  • #3 Alabama (56 percent)

  • #4 Louisiana (54 percent)

  • #5 Arkansas (54 percent)

  • #6 South Carolina (54 percent)

  • #7 Tennessee (52 percent)

  • #8 North Carolina (50 percent)

  • #9 Georgia (48 percent)

  • #10 Oklahoma (48 percent)

  • #51 Vermont (23 percent)

  • #50 New Hampshire (23 percent)

  • #49 Maine (25 percent)

  • #48 Massachusetts (28 percent)

  • #47 Alaska (28 percent)

  • #46 Oregon (30 percent)

  • #45 Nevada (30 percent)

  • #44 Washington (30 percent)

  • #43 Connecticut (31 percent)

  • #42 District of Columbia (32 percent)

  • #42 New York (32 percent)

  • #42 Rhode Island (32 percent)

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Study Says Republicans Regressive and More Right Wing Than Last 100 Years

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in GOP Backwardness, Republicans Regressive

Most Conservative Congress in How Long?

There is a new study out by a pair of political scientists saying that the current Republican caucuses in Congress are the most conservative in a hundred years. I think they are underestimating.

The 1911-12 congressional Republicans, after all, at least had some Teddy Roosevelt Republicans still in the Congress, so while a distinct minority, the party had some reformers and moderates in their caucuses. No, I think you would have to go back into the 1800s, into the Republican Congress swept into power with William McKinley‘s 1896 election, to find a party as thoroughly reactionary as this one. This is somehow appropriate, because these Republicans clearly do want to repeal the 20th century. Starting with the early Progressive movement reforms Teddy Roosevelt got accomplished, the tea party GOP is trying to roll back all the progress our country has seen over the last century plus.

Let’s go back to those late 1890s Republicans — who they were, what they believed, how they operated. This was the heart of the era dominated by Social Darwinists and Robber Baron industrialists, and the McKinley presidency was the peak of those forces’ power. The Robber Barons were hiring the Pinkertons to (literally) murder union leaders, and were (literally) buying off elected officials to get whatever they wanted out of the government: money for bribery was openly allocated in yearly corporate budgets. These huge corporate trusts were working hand in hand with their worshipful friends in the Social Darwinist world, the 1800s version of Ayn Rand, who taught that if you were rich, it was because that was the way nature meant things to be — and if you were poor, you deserved to be. Any exploitation, any greed, any concentration of wealth was justified by a survival of the strongest ethic. It was an era where Lincoln’s and the Radical Republicans of the 1860s’ progressive idea of giving land away free to poor people who wanted to work hard to be independent farmers through the Homestead Act was being overturned by big bank and railroad trusts ruthlessly driving millions of family farmers out of business. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was being completely ignored by McKinley. And of course, none of the advances of the 20th century were yet in place: child labor laws, consumer safety, the national parks or later environmental laws, consumer safety, popular election of Senators, women’s suffrage, a progressive tax system, decent labor laws, a minimum wage, Social Security, Glass-Steagall, the GI Bill, civil rights laws, Medicare, Medicaid, Legal Services, Head Start. None of it existed.

Flash forward to today. With the exception of women’s suffrage (and given the gender gap, I have no doubt that secretly Republicans would be happy to get rid of that), various high-level Republicans from this session of Congress have argued for the repeal or severe curtailment of all of those advances. This is not just Conservative with a capital C, but Reactionary with a capital R.

This is why the worship by so many pundits and establishment figures of bipartisanship and meeting in the middle as the all-around best value in American politics is so fundamentally wrong as a political strategy for Democrats. With the Republicans in Congress actually wanting to repeal the gains of the 20th century, for Democrats to meet them halfway becomes a nightmare strategy. Repealing half of the 20th century is just not a reasonable compromise, even though that would be meeting the Republicans halfway. What we need to do instead is to propose our own bold strategy for how to move forward and solve the really big problems we have. Our country needs to have this debate, and I am confident once people understand the two alternatives, they will choose our path forward rather than the Republicans’ path backward.

Ultimately, this is a debate about values. Conservatives believe in that old Social Darwinist philosophy: whoever has money and power got that way because nature intended it, and they ought to get to keep everything they have and to hell with anyone not strong to make it on their own. Selfishness is a virtue, as Ayn Rand said; greed is good, as Gordon Gekko proclaimed in the movie Wall Street; in nature, the lions eat the weak, as Glenn Beck happily proclaimed to a cheering audience. That is the underlying ethic of the Ryan-Romney Budget. What progressives argue is the opposite: that we really are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers; that we should treat others as we would want to be treated, and give a helping hand to those who need it; that investing in our citizens and promoting a broadly prosperous middle class that is growing because young people and poor people are given the tools to climb the ladder into it is the key to making a better society and growing economy.

The debate is well worth having. The good news is that the Republicans are hardly shying away from it: by embracing this radically retrograde Ryan-Romney Budget, they are wearing their hearts on their sleeves and openly yearning to return to 1896. The Democrats should welcome this debate with open arms.

 

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