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Houston leaders asking for President Biden to put words in action
Local officials say attacking the pandemic, expanding healthcare, and addressing racial injustice should be at the top of the list for President Biden.
HOUSTON - With a call for national healing both fervent and solemn, Joe Biden became America's 46th President - a commander-in-chief charged with facing down the daunting, simultaneous plagues of the pandemic, political extremism, and long-lingering bigotry.
"A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer," said Biden adding, "History, faith, and reason show the way, the way to unity."
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Here in the hometown of George Floyd, justice advocate and former death row inmate Anthony Graves is making a potentially game-changing "ask" of the incoming President.
"What we are talking about here is resources need to be more on the front end to keep people from going into those prisons. There needs to be more focus on education. There needs to be more focus on community development. There needs to be more focus on economic opportunities in our neighborhoods because people are not just waking up wanting to go do wrong," said Graves.
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In the struggle to limit the Coronavirus death toll and undo the deep economic damage inflicted by months of the pandemic, Commissioner Adrian Garcia is calling on the new President to bypass state leaders and deliver aid directly to the nation's third most populous County.
"Let us help people pay their mortgages. Let us help our small businesses stay open. Let us help people pay their rent, help us expand health care, and get us those vaccines," said Garcia.
From the Lone Star State's Democratic Party, a call on Joe Biden to keep his pledge of expanding Obamacare sooner rather than later.
"So in the middle of a pandemic, as we try to get on the other side of the pandemic, making sure that more Texans, more Americans have some type of coverage so that they can go see the Doctor," said Ryan Poppe, Deputy Communication Director for the TDP.
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Collectively, it is a huge wish list to load on an incoming President armed with the narrowest of congressional majorities.
Biden's Texas Advisor Mike Collier predicts pragmatism will guide America's new chief executive.
"I believe this, the moderate Joe Biden that we have watched work in the Senate for a long, long time is not going to change his stripe and I think he is very firm in his beliefs and because this is probably his last job, I think he will be stubborn and I think that's good," said Collier.
President Biden's pledge to offer a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented residents has drawn praise from activists but criticism from those who warn of an oncoming wave of illegal crossings on our southern border.