Welcome to the Woman's National Democratic Club

BACKGROUND
The Woman’s National Democratic Club has a long history of supporting the TREATY FOR THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN (officially, the Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) since its inception in 1980 in the United Nations and signing by President Jimmy Carter. Despite its adoption by 185 members of the United Nations, CEDAW has never been given a chance in the US Senate for approval. In 1998, WNDC took action and sought hearings. More recently, the WNDC Global Women's Task Force led a coalition of like-minded organizations and obtained a DC Council resolution adopting CEDAW, as scores of American cities have done.

RESOLUTION
With an opportunity now to achieve endorsement and join the 173 countries that have adopted CEDAW,

WNDC urgently requests Senator Joseph Biden, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to give priority to obtaining passage of CEDAW (the Treaty for the Rights of Women) and issue a call for hearings as soon as possible. We ask the Senate to stand unequivocally with women of the world by ratifying the Treaty for the Rights of Women.

WNDC Public Policy Position on Voting Rights for Residents of the District of Columbia

WNDC supports voting rights based on the following:

Residents of Washington, DC, pay taxes, serve our country in time of war, vote in presidential elections and are subject to federal laws. Yet, since 1800, they have been denied local autonomy and representation in their federal government. The District of Columbia entered the 21st Century with less voting status than it had in 1799.

The Constitution was written and ratified before the District of Columbia was founded and neither provides for nor denies District residents voting rights in Congress.

Congress gives itself the power to review and approve every line of the District budget and freely and frequently restricts how locally raised revenues are spent. Such federal interference in local affairs would be unthinkable in any other U. S. jurisdiction.

The DC Voting Rights Bill has passed the U. S. House of Representatives. Senate bill S-1257, now in committee, is a bipartisan effort to add two delegates to the House, one District of Columbia (D) voting delegate and one additional Utah (R) delegate. Hawaii and Alaska were admitted to the union on a similar basis.

There is greater bipartisan support for District voting rights than ever before: Republicans need to counter global criticism that the U. S. does not practice democracy at home, and the DC voting rights bill presents them with an opportunity to demonstrate independence from purely partisan politics.

Washington, DC, is the world’s only capital city in a democracy where residents of a federal district do not have full representation in the federal government.

WNDC Public Policy Position on Immigration Reform

WNDC supports comprehensive immigration reform containing the following elements:

This statement has been passed unanimously by the Public Policy Committee. The WNDC Public Policy Committee includes task force and special project chairs. The mandate o the PPC is to study and discuss timely national and international issues and develop and advocate public policy positions on these issues.

RELIGION AND POLITICS: THE ROMNEY MESSAGE

-- Betsy Spiro Clark, Chair, Public Policy Committee

Mitt Romney is doing well enough in the Republican primary season to make him a plausible eventual Republican presidential nominee. It is important therefore for Democrats pay attention now to the pernicious ideas that permeate the "Faith in America" speech Romney delivered December 6 at the George Bush Presidential Library, and to challenge them. The speech opened a door on a religious ideology that arguably unites a large swath of Republican leadership, including President Bush. With some decoding, the ideology explains why its true believers see government as their enemy. In this ideological universe wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on a misbegotten war is a good thing, not just because it promises "victory" in Iraq, but because it denies the "other enemy", our own government, hundreds of millions of dollars for health care, disaster relief, infrastructure maintenance and education.

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone." This was Romney's central theme, using "freedom requires religion" to play off the threat of secularism to Americans. "Freedom requires religion" means absolute opposition to the "religion" of secularism. Romney says, in so many words, that all faiths are ok; the only thing that is unacceptable is no faith.

Perhaps more interesting as an ideological marker is the second clause � "religion requires freedom" - and its link to the dogma of small government. In Romney's view government must be smaller (except in defense), but religion bigger. This, he says, is because despite differences in theology between churches "we share a common creed of moral convictions." "We acknowledge the Creator," including, as Romney enumerates, "with religious displays in public places." "I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from the 'the God who gave us liberty.'"

Romney's "common creed of moral convictions" does not cover what Democrats generally mean when they use the word "moral" to describe public policy or action. Romney is far from saying � what Democrats timidly do � that, for example, extending health care coverage to more children under the SCHIP program is a moral imperative, understood as an action that reflects our common morality.

Why should nativity scenes blossom on courthouse courtyards ("religious displays on public spaces") but government health insurance programs shrink? An explanation is available, without decoding, on the web site of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty ( www.Acton.org). The Acton Institute's leader, the Rev Robert Siroco, who writes extensively in sectarian and mainstream publications, praised President Bush's SCHIP veto ("How the Faithful can oppose children's health plan expansion in good conscience", Detroit Times, 10/16). Sirocco's latest commentary is on the "Faith in America" speech. Siroco agrees with Romney that " religion and morality are core convictions in American society". But he thinks Romney is wrong to say that, as president, church authorities would not exert influence on his decisions. On the contrary, Siroco wants political leaders to bow to church authority. "Without the ability to manage our lives morally, the state steps into the vacuum, both in response to public demand and to serve the state's own interests in expanding power." For Siroco the exercise of religious authority is historically, and continues to be, a bulwark against the secular state. To the extent that leaders brush off their religious institutions, they will "tend to become obsequious toward the state."

According to Siroco, "state programs" like SCHIP undermine the creation of a "flourishing and free economy, which is the essential condition for universal coverage." The real solution to the lack of universal healthcare coverage is "eliminating taxes." Until resulting prosperity brings about universal coverage there are private efforts that can address health problems, i.e. charity. Another contributor on the Acton Institute website had this to say about charity: "The charity worker of a century ago did not press for government programs but instead showed poor people how to move up while resisting enslavement to governmental masters." Government stands in the way of the perfect liberty that is the condition for the individual to choose virtue. The "small government" position is not a pragmatic choice but is presented as a moral choice. Decisions on social welfare issues are private matters between the individual and God. In the private sphere the individual is to be free to take personal responsibility for becoming rich and famous, or a good churchgoer or mentor, or failing to become these things. Bush implements this idea by working to fence off social programs from government. Right wing ideology has consistently seen government as immoral because it is secular. Moral issues belong in the private sphere � helping poor children, education in parochial schools, helping through faith-based initiatives. Government can help if it is seen as analogous to charity.

It is long past time to say the idea that secular government is antipathetical to moral value is itself morally corrosive. Take this example: A very wealthy woman lives in the very wealthy community of, say, Aspen. She is wealthy enough to employ a cook. There is no low cost housing in Aspen, so her cook must commute many miles from her home and children. There is no public transportation available. This woman likes to think of herself as a moral and compassionate person. She pays her cook top salary and is actually unhappy at her cook's situation, but will not support public investment in good public transportation and low cost housing.

Dick Cheney once said environmental action was a question of "personal virtue". However, just as with global warming, this woman's personal virtue cannot solve the problem. No matter how wealthy, she cannot finance a low cost housing project or public transportation system. Those solutions must come through government. Her participation is not with her wallet but through the ballot and the decisions her representatives make that will improve her cook's life. Self-interest and free market "solutions" will yield just that: self-interest, and the constriction of her moral capacity for empathy. If we want to act on our moral values on large social issues, shutting off government means shutting off our (collective) power to act morally. Individuals develop their moral natures in many spheres of action, among them working together through government for the betterment of our common life.

The important equation to remember is that the small (non military) government doctrine means a shrinking not just of the public space but also of the moral space inside the individual. Democrats must confront directly, on moral grounds the extremism of the religious ideology that is the faith of a Mitt Romney or a George Bush. If they do not, they may find they win an election for "change" without being able to implement change. The Democratic Party is for expanding individual and collective moral capacities; Republican religious ideologues, wittingly or not, work to constrain them.