More dismal news regarding our country’s fiscal standing was released yesterday by Moody’s Investors Service. As reported by Bloomberg News, the cost of servicing our debt is raising, therefore the United States has been brought “substantially” closer to losing our AAA, or highest level, credit rating.

“Under the ratings company’s so-called baseline scenario, the U.S. will spend more on debt service as a percentage of revenue this year than any other top-rated country except the U.K., and will be the biggest spender from 2011 to 2013.”

Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer their insight into the biggest news story burning up the blogosphere today.




Today's question:

House Democrats are set to "deem" the Senate healthcare bill passed. Is this an appropriate maneuver? Is it any different from Republican tactics? Read more...

Health care reform -- here's where we are. The House of Representatives is about to vote on a Senate bill without a public option. It looks like the reconciliation amendment will not have a public option. The House bill had a public option, but once the House passes the Senate bill, that's history.

Which is why I introduced H.R. 4789, the Public Option Act. This simple four-page bill lets any American buy into Medicare at cost. You want it, you pay for it, you're in. It adds nothing to the deficit; you pay what it costs.

Let's face it. Health insurance companies charge as much money as possible, and they provide as little care as possible. The difference is called profit. You can't blame them for it; that's what a corporation does. Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, health insurers got to rip you off. And if you get really expensive, they've got to pull the plug on you. So for those of us who would like to stay alive, we need a public option.

Today Congress is listening to 4 million silenced Americans.  Leaders of the House Judiciary Committee are holding a hearing on the Democracy Restoration Act, legislation that seeks to restore the right to vote to people with a criminal records who are out of prison, living in the community.   This bill would eliminate the last blanket barrier to the franchise, and reverse decade of discrimination create by laws firmly rooted in our country’s Jim Crow history.

Today 5.3 million American citizens are denied the right to vote because of a criminal conviction in their past. Four million are people who are out of prison, living in the community.  States vary on whether, when and how they restore voting rights to people with criminal conviction, but all told 35 states continue to disenfranchise people who are out of prison, often for decades and sometimes for life.

Criminal disenfranchisement laws trace directly back to Jim Crow and were part of a concerted effort to maintain white control over access to the polls. Enacted alongside poll taxes and literacy tests, criminal disenfranchisement laws were part of a larger backlash against the adoption of the Reconstruction Amendments. At the same time states enacted these disenfranchisement provisions, they began to expand the criminal codes to punish offense they believed freed slaves were most likely to commit. The result: suppressed African-American political power for decades.  Today, 13% of African-American men in our country have lost the right to vote.  

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This past Sunday I was thrilled to host Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at two forums, one in Cedar Rapids and one in Des Moines, that focused on the future of our public schools.  Secretary Duncan’s Blueprint for Reform, which he unveiled this weekend, revises the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – also known as No Child Left Behind - to help states raise expectations of students and reward schools for producing dramatic gains in student achievement. Attending our forums were local education leaders, parents and students to ensure that our work to re-draft ESEA includes the ideas and needs of our communities.  I felt it was appropriate to begin this discussion in Iowa – the first state to establish core academic standards, and a state respected nationwide for the quality of its public schools and teachers.

We have an opportunity before us to fix the problems with the No Child Left Behind Act and start making federal policy that will help our educators ensure that all students succeed.  President Obama has taken the lead by laying out a bold vision for how we can make America’s schools the best in the world.  As Chairman of the Senate HELP Committee I look forward to working with the President, the Secretary and my colleagues in Congress on both sides of the aisle to write an education law that maintains our focus on the success of all students, while giving states and districts the support to do their jobs.

The author is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

My colleague of twenty five years, Ted Kennedy, left an enormous imprint on the Senate and on our country. Today we quietly mark the 30th anniversary of one of his most visionary legislative accomplishments.

The Refugee Act of 1980 paved the way for what is now the most robust and effective refugee program in the world. Thirty years later, we can celebrate the almost three million refugees we have welcomed into our land and our lives.

Many fled unspeakable horror and persecution. All learned firsthand our country's generous spirit of welcome. The "lost boy" from southern Sudan whose village was destroyed in civil war. The young man unlucky enough to be born an ethnic Rohingya in Burma, despised by his own government and denied even the basic identity papers that connote official personhood. The mother of three whose husband was killed by insurgents in return for his service to American troops in Iraq. The American people have welcomed all of them -- and many more.

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Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer their insight into the news burning up the blogosphere today.


Today's question:

Sen. Dodd is set to unveil financial regulatory reform today with little or no Republican support. Are Republicans right to back away from this bill?

Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer their insight into the biggest news story burning up the blogosphere today.




Today's question:

What will the fallout be if Congress does not pass healthcare reform by the Easter/Passover recess?
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The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) has just joined with 199 other companies and organizations as a member of the Broadband for America (BfA) coalition.  Like most organizations we are very careful with our brand, and don’t join organizations without doing a great deal of homework.  When the opportunity to join BfA was presented to us, we quickly realized that it fit perfectly with many of the aims and goals of LCLAA.
 
The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement is a national advocacy organization representing the interests of over 1.7 million Latino and Latina trade unionists throughout the U.S. and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.   Why would a trade union organization join hands with many of the Internet service providers and content distributors in the private sector?  For the same reason that the Cuban American National Council, Dominican American National Roundtable and others joined, to advocate for providing broadband Internet access to every home and business in America.  
 
LCLAA stands arm-in-arm with the Latino Health Institute of Beth Israel Medical Center, League of United Latin American Citizens, and the dozens of other Latino-focused organizations which have joined Broadband for America.

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