Reps. Sensenbrenner and Conyers Lead Bipartisan Reintroduction of Legislation to Restore the Voting Rights Act

WASHINGTON – Today, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers (D-Mich.) reintroduced the bipartisan Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015.  The legislation aims to uphold the most vital principles of the historic law, which was first enacted 50 years ago.

Reps. Conyers and Sensenbrenner reintroduced the legislation in response to the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision which struck down Section 4b, the core provision in the Voting Rights Act that determines how states are covered under Section 5 of the Act (which requires federal preclearance of voting changes by covered jurisdictions to protect against discriminatory voting measures).  The bill updates the coverage formula by making all states and jurisdictions eligible for coverage formula based on voting violations in the last 15 years. 

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

“The Voting Rights Act was designed to eliminate evolving legal barriers to the voting booth and to give minority voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.  The Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate the Section 4b formula for coverage under Section 5 is a critical blow to its future relevancy and will make it more difficult to challenge existing barriers” said Rep. Conyers, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus who cosponsored the original Voting Rights Act in 1965.  “I have witnessed firsthand the stain that discrimination has placed on our democracy.  Though the Shelby County v. Holder decision struck at the heart of the Act, today, it is with much pride that my colleagues and I are reintroducing a renewed Voting Rights Amendment Act to reaffirm our constitutional commitment to protecting the right to vote.”

“The VRA is one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation ever passed.  Combating both discrimination and fraud is essential to ensuring Americans’ right to vote is protected.  Our legitimacy as elected officials relies on the integrity of the ballot box.  I urge my colleagues to support the VRAA because it is vital to our commitment to never again allow racial prejudices in the electoral process,” said Rep. Sensenbrenner.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in August of 1965, and it has been reauthorized four times since.  President George W. Bush signed the most recent reauthorization into law in 2006, after the House voted 390-33 and the Senate 98-0 in favor of the legislation.

An outline of the legislation can be found here, and text of legislation can be found here.

Key provisions in the bill include:

·         Through a coverage provision based on current conditions, the bill establishes a rolling nationwide trigger that covers states or jurisdictions that have a persistent record of recent voting rights violations over the last 15 years.

·         Allows our federal courts to bail-in the worst actors for preclearance.  The current law permits states or jurisdictions to be bailed in for intentional violations, but the new legislation amends the Act to allow states or jurisdictions to be bailed in for results-based violations.

·         Greater transparency in elections so that voters are made aware of changes.  The additional sunlight will deter discrimination from occurring and protect voters from discrimination.

·         Allows for preliminary relief to be obtained more readily, given that voting rights cannot often be vindicated after an election is already over.

Additional original co-sponsors of the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 include: Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Charles Dent (R-PA), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), John Lewis (D-GA), Christopher Gibson (R-NY), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY),  Bobby Scott (D-VA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Sheila Jackson Lee ( D-TX), Steve Cohen (D-TN),  Hank Johnson (D -GA), Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR),  Judy Chu (D-CA), Cedric Richmond (D-LA), David Cicilline (D-RI), Karen Bass (D-CA), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Scott Peters (D-CA).

Voting Rights Acy 2015 Section by Section

Voting Rights Act of 2015

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America's New Single-Payer Majority

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

The Republican-led House of Representatives just unsuccessfully attempted to undo the Affordable Care Act for the 56th time.

While it's been well established that repealing Obamacare without a plausible replacement would leave tens of millions of people uninsured and worsen our deficits by accelerating the growth in healthcare costs, it's also important to note that this continued GOP crusade to get government out of health care runs directly counter to the stated will of the majority of Americans.

A new poll shows that more than half of Americans -- including 80 percent of Democrats and a quarter of Republicans -- support expanding health reform to "Medicare for All." While Obamacare has been a step in the right direction, more and more people across the country understand that a single-payer healthcare system is the only way to guarantee quality care and at the same time reduce medical costs.

The United States spends almost twice as much per person on health care as any other country, yet our key outcomes -- life expectancy, infant mortality and preventable deaths -- too often lag behind our peers. A recent Commonwealth Fund study ranked the U.S. healthcare system dead last among 11 highly developed countries in terms of quality, efficiency and access to health care.

What are we doing wrong?

One major problem is that billing and insurance-related administrative costs -- in other words, bureaucratic red tape -- cost the American people $471 billion in 2012. That's enough money to pay for our country's whole interstate highway system. At least 80 percent of that extraordinary cost was, according to a respected study, due to inefficiencies in our for-profit, multipayer healthcare system.

By adopting a "Medicare for All" model -- which, by the way, is the standard for health care throughout the industrialized world -- we can achieve hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings that can be used to cover the nation's remaining uninsured and upgrade coverage for millions of underinsured citizens. While the ACA has brought insurance to 19 million Americans, 13 percent still lack health insurance, including one out of every five young adults. Notwithstanding the fact that the ACA has significantly reduced out-of-pocket costs, 21 percent of insured Americans are still spending 5 percent or more of their income on out-of-pocket costs.

This week I was joined by 44 members of Congress in reintroducing the only healthcare legislation that will overcome these persistent challenges to our healthcare system: H.R. 676, or "The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act." This bill has been introduced in every Congress since 2003 and has a broad base of support among healthcare activists, organized labor, physicians, nurses, and social-justice organizations across the nation. The bill has been endorsed by 26 international unions, Physicians for a National Health Program, two former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, National Nurses United, the American Medical Students Association, Progressive Democrats of America, the NAACP, and countless others.

This isn't just good ethics; it's also good economics. H.R. 676 will boost the economy by enabling America's small businesses to focus on building their companies rather than on dealing with the cost and complexity of providing healthcare for their employees. H.R. 676 keeps the delivery of health care a private matter, enabling health providers to engage in market-based competition and innovation.

Half a century ago, addressing the convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, Martin Luther King Jr. declared, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." It's time to adopt a serious comprehensive plan to address it.

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House passes small-business bill

The House on Thursday passed a bill requiring federal agencies to measure the costs of regulations on small businesses.

Approved 260-163, the measure would require federal agencies to calculate the direct, as well as indirect, costs of proposed rules.

House Small Business Committee Chairman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), the bill's sponsor, said it would help give small businesses a more influential role in the regulatory process.

"H.R. 527 is not a bill that stops regulations; it allows small businesses to be a part of the solution and provide valuable input during the rule-making process. This bill simply makes government think before it acts by answering, ‘How will this impact America’s working families?' " Chabot said.

Democrats warned the measure's provisions would drag out agency rule-making.

"Under the guise of protecting small businesses from allegedly burdensome regulatory requirements, this bill is just another attempt to prevent regulatory agencies from promulgating regulations that promote and protect the health and safety of Americans," said Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

The White House issued a veto threat against the bill, saying it would "impose unnecessary new procedures on agencies and invite frivolous litigation."

Before final passage, the House rejected, 172-248, an amendment offered by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) that would exempt all regulations issued by the Food and Drug Administration related to consumer safety.

The House has passed versions of the same bill in the last two sessions of Congress.

Thursday's vote was for the second bill on the House floor this week to reform the regulatory process. The House passed legislation on Wednesday to require federal agencies to report the full economic effects of regulations.

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CONYERS REINTRODUCES THE ONE-SENTENCE BILL TO CANCEL THE SEQUESTER

WASHINGTON– Today, Representative John Conyers, Jr. (MI-13) introduced the “Cancel the Sequester Act of 2015.”  This one-sentence bill would repeal the across-the-board-cuts that are scheduled to go into effect once again this fall. 

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

“Six years after the onset of the financial crisis, there are still millions of Americans seeking full-time employment and a livable wage.  The misguided budget cuts known as ‘the Sequester’ would make life significantly harder for these hard-working people and the families they struggle to support,” said Conyers.  “These across-the-board budget cuts are unique among American public policies for a simple reason: They were purposefully designed to be a bad idea.  During the debt ceiling standoff of 2011, the Sequester was designed as a default option so revolting to both Democrats and Republicans that it would force the bipartisan “Super Committee” to form a workable budget plan.  While that committee failed at this objective, the American people have been left to pay the price.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Sequester, if fully implemented, would put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk—including many associated with small businesses.  Macroeconomic Advisers, an independent consulting firm, estimated that the first round of sequestration and the related budget battles of the 112^th and 113^th Congresses have cost the United States roughly $700 billion in economic activity.

“A new round of sequestration this fall would undermine educational quality, research output, and military readiness while leaving us with longer airport security lines, more untreated mental illnesses, more hunger, more homelessness, and fewer federal criminal prosecutions.  We have an obligation to act.  This legislation would repeal the section of the Budget Control Act of 2011 that created these job-killing budget cuts.”  

Original Congressional co-sponsors of the Cancel the Sequester Act of 2015 include: Reps. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) , Gwen Moore (D-WI), James McGovern (D-MA), Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM), Frederica Wilson (D-FL), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Mark Pocan (D-WI), and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ).

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REP. CONYERS AND 44 HOUSE DEMOCRATS REINTRODUCED “THE EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL ACT”

WASHINGTON – On February 3, 2015, Congressman John Conyers (MI-13), joined by 44 Democratic  Members of Congress reintroduced H.R. 676, “The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.”  The bill, which has been introduced in every Congress since 2003, would have the United States join the rest of the industrialized world in adopting a single-payer model for healthcare financing.

Under H.R. 676, every resident of the United States would receive a card at birth that would guarantee access to a full range of medically-necessary services that include primary care, dental, prescription drugs, mental health and long term care.  The bill places no restrictions on choice of physician or health care provider.  

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

“While Obamacare has been a step in the right direction, people across the country understand that a single-payer healthcare system is the only way to guarantee quality care and sustainably cut costs,” Rep. Conyers said.  “While I continue to be a strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act, which has brought health insurance to 19 million Americans, I remain deeply concerned for the nearly 13 percent of U.S. adults that still lack coverage.  H.R. 676 would also eliminate the out-of-pocket medical expenses that lead many to forgo needed treatment, prolonging illness and resulting in increased financial costs when the condition is eventually treated.” 

The reintroduction of H.R. 676 comes after a new poll found that more than half of Americans—including 80 percent of Democrats and a quarter of Republicans—support expanding health reform to “Medicare for All.”  The reintroduction also came on the same day as House Republicans voted for the 56th time to undermine or repeal the Affordable Care Act.

A recent study demonstrated that 21 percent of Americans spent 5 percent or more of their income on out-of-pocket costs and 13 percent of Americans spent 10 percent or more.

“While the Affordable Care Act has made great strides in addressing these issues, it is time we leave the burdensome multi-payer healthcare model behind and join the rest of the industrialized world,” Conyers added.

The United States currently spends almost twice as much per person on healthcare as any other country, but key outcomes—life expectancy, infant mortality and preventable deaths—lag behind other nations.  A recent Commonwealth Fund study ranked the US healthcare system last among 11 highly-developed countries on measures of quality, efficiency and access.  Another recent study found that billing and insurance-related administrative expenses cost the American people $471 billion in 2012.  At least 80 percent of that extraordinary cost was, according to the study, due to inefficiencies in our for-profit multi-payer healthcare system.

H.R. 676 has the support of 26 international unions, Physicians For A National Health Program, two former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, National Nurses United, the American Medical Students Association, Progressive Democrats of America, and the NAACP.

Original Congressional co-sponsors of the measure included Reps. Katherine Clark (D-MA), Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Michael Doyle (D-PA), Donna Edwards (D-MD), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Sam Farr (D-CA), Al Green (D-TX), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Mike Honda (D-CA), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), John Lewis (D-GA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rick Nolan (D-MN), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Bobby Rush (D-IL), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Robert Scott (D-VA), Mark Takano (D-CA), Paul Tonko (D-NY), Peter Welch (D-VT), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Frederica Wilson (D-FL), John Yarmuth (D-KY), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Eliot Engel (D-NY), José E. Serrano (D-NY), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), James E. Clyburn (D-SC), Robert Brady (D-PA), Jared Huffman (D-CA), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Gwen Moore (D-WI), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA), and Karen Bass (D-CA).

HR 676 Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act 2015

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Rosa Parks papers give insight into the civil rights icon

WASHINGTON – The mother of the modern civil rights movement received a Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was sought out by world leaders, popes and politicians as a symbol of quiet resistance and strength. A statue of her stands in the U.S. Capitol.

But Rosa Parks also had a recipe for featherlight pancakes. She liked to jot prayers that would come to her on slips of paper, or on the back of church bulletins.

For most of her life, she kept a handful of letters from a classmate who moved away when they were girls — the two gossiping in them about boys and their studies.

But there also are notes of her arrest and the important work and shared struggles between fellow icons of the civil rights movement, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And we also learn how much she missed her husband while fighting the good fight.

On Wednesday, the 102nd anniversary of Parks' birth, the Library of Congress will open to researchers a trove of 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photos from her personal collection; an archive of handwritten notes, mementos, honors and correspondence that had languished in warehouses in New York and Michigan for nearly a decade since her death in her adopted home of Detroit in 2005.

DETROIT FREE PRESS

2013 Selma trip connected Detroit-area students to civil rights era

In them, she talks about the Jim Crow laws in the South she grew up under, and sketches notes about the seminal 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., she sparked when she was arrested for refusing a bus driver's order to give up her seat to a white passenger.

There are photos of her with Stokely Carmichael and Shirley Chisholm. There is a postcard from Rome from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"We are really in the thick of it now. Rev. King's home was bombed last night while we were at the First Baptist Church mass meeting. His wife and baby were in the house but not hurt," she writes her mother in a letter drafted after the Jan. 30, 1956, attack in Montgomery.

Parks acknowledges admirers from a United Air Lines jetway in Seattle in 1956. (Photo: Gil Baker)

Pope and poll tax

But amid all the witness-to-history artifacts — a note after she's had dinner with future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, for instance, or her ID card for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's 1968 Poor People's Campaign, or a copy of a 1999 letter she sent to Pope John Paul II after meeting him — is the ordinary, the everyday, the mundane.

It is made all the more remarkable for it being hers.

A copy of a 1957 poll tax receipt for $1.50, a remnant of a now-forbidden Jim Crow practice forcing blacks and others to pay their way into the voting booth. A pocket-sized Gideon Bible she carried in her purse. A dues book for her membership in the Order of the Eastern Star, State of Alabama, 1940.

Snapshots of her husband, Raymond Parks, and her childhood home. A long-ago letter from a young niece. Her husband's barber certificate.

DETROIT FREE PRESS

Aretha Franklin, legendary attorney highlight MLK celebration

"I hope you are all right and that mother is well and you do not miss me too much. I am fine," she wrote to "Parks, my dear husband" in Detroit in October 1957 from Hampton, Va., where she — unable to find work elsewhere — had taken a job as a hostess at an inn for a salary of $308.33 a month.

She was looking for work for him there as a barber so he could join her, she wrote, even enlisting the help of someone who ran an all-white barbershop to let her know if he heard of any positions open.

"I miss you so very much and wish you were here," she continued. "The weather is not cold now but you should be here to warm my feet by the time winter comes."

Life in Detroit

The Parkses moved to Detroit in 1957, unable to work in Alabama, and much of the collection stands as a growing testament not only to their time in Michigan — a program from St. Matthew AME Church on Glendale, a program for a local African History Club and its annual tribute to Paul Robeson in a school auditorium — but to their troubles.

They were so financially strapped, they relied for a time on donations to help pay medical bills.

"I was so glad to get your letter and hope some money has come in, other than the $100. … Ralph Abernathy said the hospital bill was over $500 so I know you are in a bad fix," white civil rights activist Virginia Durr, a friend of Parks in Montgomery, wrote her in 1960, after she had returned from Virginia and was hospitalized with an ulcer.

Her financial troubles would continue until she helped elect John Conyers to Congress in 1964 — asking King for his help in doing so — and Conyers hired her. She worked in his office until 1988.

Rosa Parks and U.S. Rep. John Conyers in Detroit circa 1990. She worked in the Democrat’s office until 1988. (Photo: Library of Congress)

Loan to library

"I would say personal is the perfect way to describe it," said Margaret McAleer, senior archives specialist for the library. "These are the things she carried with her from home to home to home. And it's amazing it survived."

The collection came to the library late last year on a decade-long loan from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which purchased them from the estate for $4.5 million.

A sampling of items from the collection will be on display in glass cases in the library's historic Jefferson Building in Washington from March 2-30. And several items will be included in the library's exhibit on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which begins March 7 and runs through Sept. 12.

Researchers, meanwhile, will have access to all of the materials, which, taken together, will help inform historians about the civil rights struggle. They also paint a picture of an uncomplaining woman strong enough to weather personal troubles and who had a clear understanding of the oppressive culture she was born into.

DETROIT FREE PRESS

Rosa Parks' relative chronicles her Detroit years

She drafted letters and notes describing the times, talking about how blacks could work behind the luncheonette counters but not be served at them, and how white newspaper readers objected to referring to black women as "Miss" or "Mrs."

She spoke of the "lynch-murder of Young Emmett Till of Chicago," saying, "This case could be multiplied many times in the South. ... It is the custom to keep such things covered up."

She describes her feelings leading up to her quiet act of resistance: "I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn't take it anymore. ...We soothe ourselves with the salve of attempted indifference, accepting the false pattern set up by the horrible restrictions of Jim Crow. ... Let us look at Jim Crow for the criminal he is."

"There is just so much hurt, disappointment and oppression one can take. … the line between reason and madness grows thinner."

Considering her iconic status in the history of civil rights, it is easy to look at such writings and forget she was a woman, too. It is a myth much of the rest of the collection readily dispels.

Her pancake recipe calls for peanut butter. Her childhood friend, named Galatas, wrote saying she was sorry Rosa's new boyfriend — her husband-to-be — wouldn't cut her long hair because he loved it so.

Under the word, "Closing," Rosa Parks wrote on a loose slip of paper: "Oh, man, what doth the Lord request of thee: to do justly — to love mercy and walk humbly with thy God."

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler.

Parks collects NAACP membership dues of $2, likely in 1956. (Photo: McLain’s Photo Service)

ABOUT THE ROSA PARKS COLLECTION

Purchased by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation last summer, the Rosa Parks Collection includes about 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs kept by the civil rights icon who died in her adopted home of Detroit in 2005. The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which will house them on a 10-year-loan, will make them available to researchers for the first time beginning Wednesday, the 102nd anniversary of Parks' birth in Tuskegee, Ala.

A sampling of the items will be on display in glass cases at the library's Jefferson Building from March 2-30. Several items will be included in the library's exhibit, "The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom," March 7 to Sept. 12.

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House Democrats Call on GOP to Pass Clean DHS Funding Measure and Stop Attacking Immigration Executive Actions

House Democrats Call on GOP to Pass

Clean DHS Funding Measure and

Stop Attacking Immigration Executive Actions

Series of Republican Hearings in House Call for

Mass Deportation and Offer No Hope for

Real Immigration Reform

Washington, D.C. – TODAY at 2:00 p.m., House Democrats will conduct a press conference to offer their views on what Republicans in the House are doing – or not doing – on immigration reform.  A series of hearings in the House Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security this week and next are a stage for Republicans to attack the President’s immigration executive actions but offer no hope that House Republicans will actually enact anything realistic to address border security or immigration reform.  This comes as Senate Republicans continue to play games with the budget for the Department of Homeland Security which runs out of funding at the end of this month if the Republicans fail to complete action on a workable budget proposal.

WHO:             Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

Judiciary Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI)

CHC Immigration Taskforce Co-Chair Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL)

Judiciary Member Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)

CHC Immigration Taskforce Co-Chair Loretta Sanchez (D-CA)

WHEN:           TODAY, February 3, 2015 | 2:00 p.m. ET

(immediately after votes if floor votes conflict)

WHERE:        House Radio/TV Gallery Studio A– House/Capitol Visitor’s Center

WHAT:           Press conference to discuss immigration hearings, legislation and funding issues

PRESS CONTACTS:

Gutiérrez | douglas.rivlin@mail.house.gov (202) 225-8203 or (202) 558-8240 mobile

                        Pelosi/Dem Leader | Drew.Hammill@mail.house.gov (202) 225-0100

Hoyer | Mariel.saez@mail.house.gov or (202) 225-3130

                        Conyers/House Judiciary Dems | Stephanie.Baez@mail.house.gov (202) 225-6906

Jackson-Lee | Michael McQuerry (202) 225-3816

Sanchez | barb.solish@mail.house.gov

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