There is a reason the 3rd District of Kansas keeps sending Dennis Moore back to Washington...

Every few weeks, usually after the last vote is cast on a Monday night, members of the Center Aisle Caucus head to Hunan Dynasty — “one of the few things people can agree on in Washington is Chinese food,” says the group’s founder — to practice their radically civil ways.

There, they ponder and debate the big issues of the day, including war and peace, far from the cameras that prompt so much division two blocks away on the House floor..

The Center Aisle Caucus has equal membership from each party and four co-chairs - one of whom is our very own Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore of Kansas.

The caucus got a kick start in suburban Kansas City in the summer of 2005, when Israel joined Emerson and Moore for an event on congressional civility at Johnson County Community College. When hundreds turned out, organizers knew they had struck a chord.

"I think people in this country are just really fed up with all the partisanship they see on television and they read about in the papers," Moore said.

The "Holt Bill" is due on the House floor this week and would require a paper record of every vote cast nationwide beginning in 2008. In addition to the paper-trail mandate, the bill would also require random audits of close races and would make voting-machine software available for inspection.

Voicing his concerns regarding funding of the bill, Congressman Dennis Moore is working to protect voters from voter fraud while also looking out for the best interest of our state.

Kansas Democrat Dennis Moore, a leader of the conservative Blue Dog Collation, has suggested that deadlines in the bill should be postponed if funds are not appropriated to help the states pay for the new requirements.

Another serious problem Kansas voters face in the upcoming 2008 elections is the unequal distribution of voting machines and polling locations across the state. For example, last year in Sedgwick County, the county reduced the number of polling places from 208 to 62 and nearly doubled the number of voters per voting machine.

Making voting more difficult - whether because of the equipment or the poll locations - can cripple the Democratic process. If you are interested in this issue and are passionate about protecting every Kansan's right to vote, sign up for the Kansas Democratic Party's Lawyer's Council Training - September 29th at the Hyatt Regency in Wichita, KS. To learn more about the Democratic Lawyer's Council or the training, click here or email Matthew Anderson for details!

Starting today, tens of thousands of Kansans will get a hard-earned raise because Kansas Democrats Dennis Moore and Nancy Boyda kept their promise to America's working families. During the 2006 elections, Democrats pledged to pass the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade.

Over the next two years, nearly 13 million Americans will benefit from increasing the minimum wage to $7.25, including 105,000 Kansas workers. [Economic Policy Institute, June 2006; CBPP, 8/2/06]

Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver spoke today in Kansas City:

...Congress was rightfully concerned with lifting workers out of poverty. Since the last increase in the federal minimum wage, bread prices have risen 25 percent, health insurance costs have risen 97 percent, and the price of regular gasoline jumped 149 percent.

"The nation has left poor people in the dust," Cleaver said.

He also noted that minimum-wage increases draw 80 percent public approval and that states that have put minimum-wage increases on the ballot have received majority approval.

Yet when Democrats in the Kansas House introduced legislation last year to increase the Kansas minimum wage from the lowest in the nation to the national average, Republicans not only blocked the effort but even went so far as to suggest throwing the minimum wage out completely.

The follow through by our Democrats in Washington alongside the inexcusable inaction of Kansas House Republicans offers further proof that Democrats have done more for our working families in six months than the Bush Republicans did in six years.

Keeping their promises to open up the congressional budget process to public scrutiny, Congressman Dennis Moore and Congresswoman Nancy Boyda have released their list of earmark requests to the public.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Kansas’ Republican members of Congress, who continue to operate in the same kind of secrecy which led to the Republican scandals of recent years. According to CNN, Congressman Todd Tiahrt has refused to make his list public and Congressman Jerry Moran didn’t respond to requests.