A divided Republican party that was thrown into turmoil by the surprise defeat of its second-ranking member of Congress was trying to unite Thursday ahead of a vote for a new leadership team.
Six Democratic members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation had a perfect voting record in 2013 on legislation important to people living in poverty, according to a new scorecard and report published by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.
Meanwhile, no Republican Congressmen from Illinois earned a grade higher than a 'D' on the center's 2013 Poverty Scorecard, which looked at the voting record of every U.S. senator and representative on poverty-related issues during the last calendar year. The scores were tabulated based on 18 votes taken in the House and Senate on legislation covering a variety of subject areas including budget and tax, food and nutrition, health care, immigrants, cash assistance, domestic violence, education and the workforce, to name a few.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's unexpected loss Tuesday has created an opening for U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL,6) to make a play for a high House leadership position.
Most lawmakers in the GOP-led U.S. House are "failing the Latino community" when it comes to immigration issues, according to a preliminary score card released last week.
The initial 2014 National Immigration Score Card is based on immigration-related votes taken by the 435 House members of the current 113th Congress.
The worst score of 59 percent went to 219 House members, all of whom are Republicans including six from Illinois. A total of 170 House lawmakers, all Democrats, received the best score of 100 percent, with nine of them being from Illinois. As a whole, the House earned an average score of 77 percent.
“Our community is being disproportionately devastated by the broken immigration system that this Congress refuses to fix. This preliminary score card shows that most in Congress are clearly failing us on immigration right now,” said the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement's (LCLAA) Executive Director Hector Sanchez. “Latinos can no longer tolerate more excuses on why reform has not passed."
As the baby boomers are rapidly aging out of the workforce, the
nation’s Medicare program is not financially secure enough to handle the
increase in health care beneficiaries, according to a group of
panelists who discussed reform proposals for the social safety net
Monday night.
“The issue with Medicare is, we need to find
more resources and we need to find better ways of delivering care,”
said Cheryl Matheis, national senior policy strategist for the American
Association of Retired Persons (AARP). “We need to kind of hit a
balance, but nobody has agreed on what the actual balance should be in
order to make [the program] sound for the long term.”
Attempting
to address what challenges the Medicare program faces and potential
solutions for those challenges, Matheis was joined for the panel discussion by U.S. Reps. Peter
Roskam (R, IL-6) and Danny K. Davis (D, IL-7), and Richard Baehr, chief
political correspondent of the daily conservative online magazine,
American Thinker. The Union League Club of
Chicago, at which the panel was held, and WLS 890 AM, a broadcast radio
station in Chicago, sponsored the event.
The U.S. House voted this week to block the Department of the Interior from enforcing regulations on hydraulic fracturing in states that have their own standards for the controversial drilling technique.
U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth said she “has some optimism” that Congress
can pass immigration reform despite House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH,8)
announcing on Wednesday that House Republicans will not conference the
recent Senate bill.
In
a town hall meeting via teleconference Thursday evening, Duckworth told
Progress Illinois that the amount of the support for the issue may
overcome congressional Republican resistance to comprehensive
immigration reform, although she conceded that it will not be easy to
accomplish.
“It is not just Democrats who want this, I have spoken
with chambers of commerce and businesses that want to see comprehensive
immigration reform,” Duckworth said. “Where we are now won’t work. I
think we have an opportunity before the next election, but it’s going to
be a tough road.”
Inaction on immigration reform will have negative consequences for
the mostly white, male-dominated Republican Party during next year’s
election, according to a group of protesters who vowed Saturday to vote
Illinois’ GOP congressional delegates out of office if they do not work towards passing legislation that would overhaul the nation’s broken immigration system.
“Give us a vote on citizenship or risk extinction,” read flyers left outside of U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam's (R, IL-6)
downtown Chicago office doors Saturday as more than 50 immigration reform
advocates chanted, “Remember November!”
Chants of "Si Se Puede!" could be heard throughout downtown Chicago as thousands marched and rallied for comprehensive immigration reform and an end to deportations Saturday afternoon. Progress Illinois was there for the event.
Six Democratic members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation had a perfect voting record in 2013 on legislation important to people living in poverty, according to 
Most lawmakers in the GOP-led U.S. House are "failing the Latino community" when it comes to immigration issues, according to a preliminary score card released last week.
As the baby boomers are rapidly aging out of the workforce, the
nation’s Medicare program is not financially secure enough to handle the
increase in health care beneficiaries, according to a group of
panelists who discussed reform proposals for the social safety net
Monday night.
U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth said she “has some optimism” that Congress
can pass immigration reform despite House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH,8)
Inaction on immigration reform will have negative consequences for
the mostly white, male-dominated Republican Party during next year’s
election, according to a group of protesters who vowed Saturday to vote
Illinois’ GOP congressional delegates out of office if they do not work towards passing legislation that would overhaul the nation’s broken immigration system.
