XPost: alt.politics.economics, sac.politics, alt.politics.republicans
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns

The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation is set to hand out its annual
Profile in Courage Award on May 4 to a politician or other public figure
who the foundation thinks has demonstrated extraordinary political
courage, especially when doing so subjects him or her to criticism from
those with whom they are ordinarily allied.

If the deadline for nominations hadn’t already passed for this year’s
awards, there are four congressional Democrats who would have fit that description. They should be considered for next year’s Profile in
Courage Awards.

On April 10, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed
the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, 220-208, with
the votes of four Democrats who defied their party’s strident, knee-jerk opposition to the measure, which is aimed at ensuring election
integrity.

The four Democrats who courageously crossed the aisle were Reps. Ed Case
of Hawaii, Jared Golden of Maine, Henry Cuellar of Texas, and Marie
Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state.

Though the SAVE Act would have passed even if the four had voted against
it, their support for the legislation—authored by Rep. Chip Roy,
R-Texas, and designed to ensure that only American citizens can vote in
U.S. elections—was not deserving of the condemnation they received from
within their own party.

Golden, among the last of the dying breed of genuinely moderate Blue Dog Democrats, posted on X: “There are a lot of misleading claims out there
about the SAVE Act. Let me set the record straight: I voted for the SAVE
Act for the simple reason that American elections are for Americans.
Requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote is common sense.”


One of those “misleading claims” about the SAVE Act came from far-left
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who claimed—“without evidence,” as the legacy
media like to say when President Donald Trump makes an unproven
assertion—that it would disenfranchise “millions.”

“In a bold new departure for the forces of voter suppression, MAGA’s
so-called ‘SAVE’ Act will make it harder for tens of millions of
eligible Americans to vote, including tens of millions of people, mostly
women, who change their names after marriage,” Raskin falsely asserted
in a statement to the leftist news site Democracy Docket. Not
surprisingly, that website is run by Democrat superlawyer Marc Elias,
who is best known for legally contesting election integrity measures
whenever and wherever they are proposed.

Raskin’s flagrantly false talking points were echoed by failed 2016
Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who called the
SAVE Act a “Republican voter suppression measure that threatens voting
access for millions of Americans, including 69 million women whose
married names don’t match their birth certificates.”

That’s also flagrantly false, because when women marry and adopt their husbands’ surnames, they need to change a lot of records and documents,
from their driver’s license to their Social Security card to their
credit cards. Changing one’s voter registration would be just one more
record to update. It would only need to be done once—not for every
election—and there are two years between elections, so there would be
plenty of time to update one’s registration without missing a vote.

Furthermore, it’s beyond patronizing to suggest, as Raskin and Clinton
are doing here, that women are incapable of navigating the process to
update their voter registrations—as everyone must do if and when they
move and change their address, for example.

In similar fashion, opponents of election integrity measures such as the
SAVE Act—again, like Raskin, Clinton, and Elias—have no answer when
confronted and asked to explain why they think voters shouldn’t be
required to show an ID to cast a ballot when there are at least two
dozen other business and personal transactions for which a valid ID must
be presented:

Buy alcohol or tobacco or vape products
Open a bank account
Apply for a job
Rent or buy a home or apartment, apply for a mortgage, and sign up for
utility services (e.g., gas, electricity, water, and cable TV) Buy or
rent a car Drive a car
Board an airplane
Get married
Adopt or foster a child
Adopt a pet
Rent a hotel room, beach house, or boat
Apply for a hunting or fishing license
Enroll in school or college
Buy a cellphone and sign up for cellphone service
Enter a casino or gamble legally
Fill a prescription
Obtain certain over-the-counter drugs
Be admitted to a hospital
Obtain a permit to stage a rally or protest march
Donate blood
Purchase pornography
Apply for unemployment compensation
Apply for food stamps
Apply for welfare and other safety-net programs
Apply for Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security
Note that those final four items are government programs that require an
ID to prevent noncitizens and other ineligible people from taking
advantage of them. Yet, opponents of election integrity don’t think that
the process of choosing the elected officials who make the laws
governing those programs should be limited to those who can prove they
are who they say they are and that they are U.S. citizens.

Voting shouldn’t be the only government program for which an ID is not required.

Moreover, one would have to be living a hermitlike existence akin to
that of the infamous Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, in a shack in the middle
of nowhere, without electricity or running water, not to need or have an
ID.

As such, the only people who would be disenfranchised by the SAVE Act
are those who cannot get a voter ID because they are noncitizens—illegal immigrants or those in the country on visas—or otherwise ineligible and shouldn’t be voting in the first place.

And if, as Democrats like Raskin and Elias insist, there are only a
negligible number of noncitizens on the voter rolls now, what do they
have to worry about if the SAVE Act removes them from the registry? The
dirty little secret is, the only reason for opposing the SAVE Act is
because opponents want ineligible people not only on the rolls, but
actually voting.

“They want illegals to vote,” Roy told national talk radio host Vince Coglianese on Wednesday, referring to his bill’s opponents.

Since there aren’t likely to be the requisite seven profiles in
political courage among Senate Democrats to overcome a partisan
filibuster when the SAVE Act moves to the upper chamber, Republicans
should find a way to include the election integrity measure in their forthcoming budget reconciliation bill so it won’t need Democrat votes.

https://amac.us/newsline/economy/massive-numbers-trumps-economic-agenda- sparks-7-trillion-in-investment/

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