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raja krishnamoorthi
Bill Would Subject Lawmakers to Same Work Reporting Mandates GOP Just Imposed on Medicaid, SNAP Recipients
"If congressional Republicans think these burdens are appropriate for struggling families, then members of Congress should shoulder them too," said BURDEN Act sponsor Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi.
Jul 17, 2025
In response to Republicans' new law giving tax breaks to the rich while gutting the social safety net, U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi on Thursday introduced legislation that would force members of Congress "to personally comply with the same burdensome work requirement paperwork they imposed on low-income Americans."
Under the Illinois Democrat's Bringing Unfair Reporting Duties to Electeds Now (BURDEN) Act, federal lawmakers "would be barred from enrolling in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program unless they submit monthly proof of 'community engagement,' the same bureaucratic reporting required of Medicaid recipients," his office said.
Krishnamoorthi's two-page bill would also force members of Congress to file the same paperwork as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to verify eligibility, employment, and income. The proposal comes less than two weeks after President Donald Trump signed congressional Republicans' budget reconciliation package.
During the debate over the GOP megabill, Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, argued in The New York Times that "refusing medical care to people in their time of need based on how much they happened to work the month before is a cruel and pointless policy."
The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act is expected to leave 17 million Americans without health insurance, and, according to an Urban Institute analysis, an estimated 22.3 million families are projected to lose some or all of their SNAP benefits.
"President Trump's reckless 'Large Lousy Law' forces millions of vulnerable Americans to jump through hoops just to keep food on the table or get the medical care they need," Krishnamoorthi said in a statement. "If congressional Republicans think these burdens are appropriate for struggling families, then members of Congress should shoulder them too. The BURDEN Act simply says, if you want taxpayer-funded health coverage, prove you meet the same standards you're imposing on the American people."
Krishnamoorthi's bill is unlikely to go anywhere in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, both controlled by the GOP, but it sends a message to the public. His office said that "by exposing the double standard in how burdensome requirements are applied, the BURDEN Act seeks to restore basic fairness and highlight the real-world consequences of Republican policies that target working families."
He introduced the bill amid intense debates among Democratic politicians and their supporters about how to battle Trump and the GOP's agenda and prepare for the 2026 midterm elections, following devastating losses for Democrats in the last cycle.
On Wednesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus—of which Krishnamoorthi is not a member—announced four task forces as part of an effort to "reclaim the House majority in 2026—with a sharp, populist, pro-working-class agenda that meets the moment."
Similarly but separately, a coalition of labor groups and other progressive organizations on Wednesday launched the Battleground Alliance PAC, a political action committee that plans to pour at least $50 million into flipping the lower chamber for Democrats.
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House Dems Urge Biden to 'Swiftly' Appoint Postal Board Governors
"Five price hikes since 2020, continual service delivery problems, and constant declines in mail volume are all indicators that the business model of the Postal Service needs careful attention."
Feb 01, 2024
Scores of U.S. House Democrats on Thursday urged President Joe Biden to "swiftly" nominate two members to the Postal Service Board of Governors to fill empty seats amid delayed deliveries and higher customer prices.
"Given the fundamental role that the Postal Service plays in the lives of countless Americans, there must be great care taken to choose those who influence its direction," Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) said in a letter to Biden signed by 80 other Democratic lawmakers.
"Unfortunately, the Postal Service currently suffers from slow rates of delivery service and increased costs," the lawmakers asserted. "Despite the passage of the Postal Service Reform Act, the Postal Service still faces a litany of challenges. Five price hikes since 2020, continual service delivery problems, and constant declines in mail volume are all indicators that the business model of the Postal Service needs careful attention."
Noting the vacancy left by the expiration last month of Postal Govs. Lee Moak and William Zollars, the letter asks Biden to:
- Swiftly nominate two new members of the board to ensure no disruption in service to the American people; and
- Choose two candidates who will be wholly committed to lowering costs for everyday Americans and restoring the Postal Service as a public good to be enjoyed by all and not only those who can afford expensive specialty services.
"Now more than ever, it is important [to] have a full, diverse, and future-oriented Postal Board of Governors in place that will uphold its mission of public service," the lawmakers wrote.
Last October, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) asked the head of the Postal Service's accountability unit to launch an investigation into the impacts of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's 10-year austerity overhaul plan. Critics argue the plan is ultimately a privatization scheme championed by Republicans including former President Donald Trump, the 2024 GOP front-runner. DeJoy donated at least hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump's 2016 campaign prior to his appointment.
A Thursday
statement from Krishnamoorthi's office took aim at the USPS chief.
"Under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, far too many Americans, including rural Americans, small businesses, seniors, and tribal communities, have experienced increased costs and diminishing service," the statement said, "harming those who depend on the USPS for both personal and business correspondence."
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Human Rights Defenders Blast Biden's 'Shameful' Red Carpet Welcome for Indian PM Modi
"We have taken the view that geopolitics and countering China is more important to us right now than the values-based diplomacy the Biden administration came in saying they would prioritize," said one critic.
Jun 18, 2023
Human rights defenders this week condemned President Joe Biden's upcoming state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—who was once banned from entering the United States for supporting violent Hindu supremacists who massacred Muslims—as part of an ongoing U.S. "whitewash" of the right-wing leader's extremism.
Modi—who represents the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—is set to meet with Biden and speak before Congress this week in a visit the White House says "will strengthen our two countries' shared commitment to a free, open, prosperous, and secure Indo-Pacific."
However, rights groups and activists are condemning Biden's embrace of Modi while underscoring the grave human rights violations committed by the prime minister, his party, and their allies.
"Increasingly in recent years, BJP leaders have used toxic and hateful speech targeting religious minorities, inciting violence or discrimination against them."
"For almost a decade now, human rights activists and others have regularly brought to the White House—Democrats or Republicans—that Modi's regime is authoritarian, it's right-wing, it's anti-Muslim, and it's anti-minority" Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, told HuffPost.
"The fact that they continue to whitewash him by giving them a platform is very worrying," she added.
Vijayan noted that "despite who is in the White House, the U.S. has a long history of propping up authoritarian regimes for its own personal ends."
\u201c\u201cDespite who is in the White House, the U.S. has a long history of propping up authoritarian regimes for its own personal ends.\u201d\n\u201cWhat happens in a country of a billion people will have global ramifications,\u201d\n\nImportant piece by @Rowaida_Abdel \nhttps://t.co/W1arZrWd1W\u201d— Suchitra Vijayan (@Suchitra Vijayan) 1687103295
John Prabhudoss, chairman of the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations, told HuffPost that Indian pastors and their families live in constant terror.
"Their family could be jailed or even the worst, killed. The fear is real," he said. "For the president to bring [Modi] to the White House... is shameful. Mr. Biden, shame on you."
In a June 8 letter to Biden, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Modi's visit "an important opportunity for the U.S. government to raise concerns—both privately and publicly—about India's worsening human rights situation."
\u201cIt's bad enough the Biden will give Modi the prestige of a state visit despite his HIndu nationalist attacks on Muslims and his censorship of journalist and civil-society critics. At least Biden should speak publicly about these human rights violations. https://t.co/cJdpM6iBu3\u201d— Kenneth Roth (@Kenneth Roth) 1686916859
The letter stated:
There are numerous areas of concern. Increasingly in recent years, BJP leaders have used toxic and hateful speech targeting religious minorities, inciting violence or discrimination against them. BJP-led authorities have tightened restrictions on free speech while ramping up censorship and using overbroad and vague laws to investigate and prosecute critics. Modi's government has also demonstrated blatant bias in protecting BJP supporters and affiliates accused [of] a range of crimes, including murder, assault, corruption, and sexual violence. At the international level, Modi's government has often proven unwilling to stand with other governments on key human rights crises, abstaining or refraining from condemning grave human rights violations elsewhere.
HRW and Amnesty International are set to host a private screening of a BBC documentary on Modi and his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. The film, India: The Modi Question, was banned by the government, which raided the BBC's India offices over what officials called a tax probe but critics condemned as retaliation in line with Modi's attacks on press freedom.
Reporters Without Borders ranks India 161st out of 180 nations in press freedom, behind Afghanistan and just ahead of Russia.
\u201c#EconWatch: In @RSF_inter\u2019s 2023 World Press Freedom Index, India ranks a HORRIBLE 161st out of 180 countries.\u00a0This is a dismal state of affairs in the world's so-called largest "democracy."\u201d— Steve Hanke (@Steve Hanke) 1687094700
Modi, who was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat at the time of the 2002 slaughter, blamed Muslims for torching a train full of Hindu pilgrims, an attack that killed around 60 people. Hindu mobs then murdered at least hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Muslim men, women, and children in a retaliatory rampage, with many women raped and mutilated.
More than 250 Hindus were also killed during the violence, which displaced an estimated 150,000 people.
A U.K. government probe found that Modi was "directly responsible" for the "climate of impunity" surrounding the massacre.
While Modi was accused of deliberately allowing the violence, a special investigation commissioned by the Indian Supreme Court cleared him of complicity in 2012. Still, Modi's alleged role in the massacre led to a U.S. visa ban, first instated during the George W. Bush administration in 2005. The ban was lifted by then-President Barack Obama's administration in 2014 after Modi became prime minister.
Violence—sometimes deadly—against religious minorities and others has continued, and increased, under BJP rule.
\u201cIndia\u2019s Bnei Menashe community in crisis as ethnic violence burns synagogues and displaces hundreds\n\nhttps://t.co/rSW8P8IllH\u201d— Suchitra Vijayan (@Suchitra Vijayan) 1687023521
As the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) notes:
The U.S. government and numerous internationally recognized organizations have condemned Modi for his and his political party's attacks on core democratic freedoms, as well as their roles in enabling violence against Indian minorities. The 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom by the Department of State highlights hate speeches by leaders of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, which have contributed to anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence; the BJP's criminalization of religious conversion; BJP-led demolitions of Muslim-owned properties; Hindu supremacist rewriting of school curricula; arbitrary arrests of Muslims; and denial of bail for jailed Muslim activists. For four years running, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has designated India as a Country of Particular Concern for its egregious violations of human rights and religious freedoms, citing similar abuses.
"To fail to note Modi’s violent, anti-minority, authoritarian tendencies, and his corrupt mismanagement of the Indian economy, is not only to ignore the U.S. government's own findings but a strategic blunder with the potential to jeopardize global stability," IAMC said.
\u201cThis video shows Muslims being publicly flogged in Gujarat, India, following violent protests against a demolition order for a Muslim shrine \u2935\ufe0f\u201d— Al Jazeera English (@Al Jazeera English) 1687102200
"The turmoil Modi and the BJP have sown within Indian society is a profound threat to regional stability and has the potential to substantially undermine any joint initiatives," the group argued.
Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst with the Rand Corporation, said in an interview published Saturday by the Financial Times, "The question is, are we propping up an increasingly illiberal democracy here?"
"In my view, we are," he asserted. "We have taken the view that geopolitics and countering China is more important to us right now than the values-based diplomacy the Biden administration came in saying they would prioritize."
\u201c\u201cWe have taken the view that geopolitics and countering China is more important to us right now than the values-based diplomacy the Biden administration came in saying they would prioritise,\u201d says @DerekJGrossman\n\n https://t.co/YCih1scbT0\u201d— Indian American Muslim Council (@Indian American Muslim Council) 1687100543
Some congressional Democrats have also faced criticism for their varying degrees of support for Modi and the BJP.
When then-President Donald Trump embraced the Indian leader at the raucous 2019 "Howdy Modi!" rally in Houston, six Democrats took to the stage to greet Modi: then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.); Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas); Rep. Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.); Rep. Danny Davis (Ill.); Rep. Tom Suozzi (N.Y.), an erstwhile critic of Indian human rights abuses in Kashmir; and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.).
Krishnamoorthi has attended the World Hindu Congress, a notorious platform for Hindu nationalists including Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a fascist-inspired political and paramilitary movement whose brand of Hindu supremacy heavily influenced the rise of the BJP. Modi is a former RSS regional director.
\u201cWashington Post Editorial board on Modi\u2019s visit to the United States. \n\n\u201cMr. Modi should be encouraged to brake the spiral of communal violence and toxic hate directed at India\u2019s roughly 200 million Muslims and other minorities\u201d https://t.co/lqsTdiuTO4\u201d— Rana Ayyub (@Rana Ayyub) 1687077689
Others, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), have been unwaveringly critical of Modi's policies and practices.
Then there is the curious case of Rep. Ro Khanna. Invoking the name of his grandfather Amarnath Vidyalankar, a figure in India's independence movement who served multiple terms in parliament, the California Democrat in 2019 declared that "it's the duty of every American politician of Hindu faith to stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist, and Christians."
Hindutva—literally, "Hindu-ness"—is the modern political ideology espoused by Modi, the BJP, and many of their extremist allies advocating Hindu supremacy and the transformation of secular India into an ethno-nationalist state.
\u201cDid we beg for an invite? Congressional India Caucus' Co-chair Ro Khanna says, he pleaded with House Speaker McCarthy for securing an invite to PM Modi to address US Congress' Joint Session for 2nd time. There's no freebie in diplomacy. What'll be the quid pro quo for this favor?\u201d— Seema Sengupta, (@Seema Sengupta,) 1686320621
However, last month IAMC expressed its disappointment that Khanna asked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to invite Modi to deliver a joint address before Congress during his state visit to Washington. Khanna's request—which was made with Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.,)—contended that "granting a joint address to Congress is a commensurate honor for the leader of the world's largest democracy and perhaps the most critical partner to countering China in the 21st century."
In response, IAMC cautioned that "the opportunity to speak before Congress will help to legitimize Modi's brand of Hindu nationalist politics and the systematic persecution of religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, under his rule."
"Khanna has previously and admirably criticized Hindu nationalism, Rahul Gandhi's expulsion from parliament, and disingenuous cries of Hinduphobia used to deflect legitimate criticism of the Indian government," the group added. "IAMC urges Rep. Khanna to continue this fight, cancel his request, and instead educate his constituents about the harms the Modi regime has done to India."
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