From Republican Lt. Governor to Democrat: Loving my neighbor is easier now
Credit: AP
My journey to becoming a Democrat started well before Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election in Georgia. There’s no date on a calendar or line in the sand that points to the exact moment in time my political heart changed, but it has.
My decision was centered around my daily struggle to love my neighbor, as a Republican.
Throughout the course of time one of the most recognizable moral standards that communities around the world hold themselves accountable to is “love my neighbor.” The brilliance of this simple faith-inspired phrase is it takes on a different meaning every minute of every day with no asterisks.
There will never be a shortage of people or places to exercise the time-tested approach of loving your neighbor, regardless of race, religion, lifestyle or immigration status.
Too many Georgians lack health insurance and that number will grow
My time in elected office has taught me the most effective way to love your neighbor on a mass scale is through prudent public policy. Authoring the now $75 million rural hospital tax credit as a state representative and then later partnering with Democrats as lieutenant governor to successfully pass hate crimes legislation has helped give me that rewarding perspective.
There’s more work to be done in pursuit of loving our neighbors here in Georgia.
Credit: Geoff Duncan
Many are surprised to learn that 1,219,600 or 11.4% of Georgians wake up every day without health insurance for a multitude of complicated reasons. These uninsured Georgians face an impossible decision every time they or their family get sick.
Go to the hospital as an uninsured patient and get financially destroyed or deal with the health implications of not going to the hospital.
Republicans have argued for decades the fix to this scenario is simple: a job. As the famous radio personality Paul Harvey used to say, now for the rest of the story.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, approximately 85% of uninsured Georgians live in working households but remain uninsured due to issues with affordability or eligibility. So, the reality is they have a job, just the wrong job. One that doesn’t offer health insurance or generate enough spare money each month to afford their own health insurance plan.
Making matters worse, an estimated 500,000 of those same neighbors wake up every day with a huge asterisk over their heads, commonly referred to as the Medicaid coverage gap. In other words, they make too much money to qualify for traditional Medicaid or ACA subsidies, but not enough to afford buying it on their own. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place!
Medicaid funding is now in shambles because of the not so “big beautiful bill” with budget cuts totaling $911 billion over the next 10 years. Any state-led expansion of Medicaid now will be complicated and expensive given the current dynamics. Nobody ever said loving your neighbor was going to be easy or cheap, just worth it.
GOP takes tax cuts and ignores Americans’ pleas for change
The tragic effects of poverty come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, some more heartbreaking than others. An estimated 19.6% of children (500,000) in Georgia lack consistent access to food. There must be no heavier weight on a child’s shoulders than walking into school hungry day after day.
Further troubling is the brutal reality of the recent $200 billion budget cuts to SNAP and the program’s effectiveness to continue to help feed hungry kids at school through free and reduced cost meals. We should all be looking for ways to love these kids better than continuing to send them to school hungry under the guise of an income tax break, even if the solution has to be financed out of our state’s abundantly funded $17 billion rainy-day fund.
Sometimes loving your neighbor doesn’t cost money, it just requires us to make better decisions.
According to a Quinnipiac poll, 92% of our neighbors across the country want universal background checks and 83% support red flag laws in place before someone buys a gun. Additionally, 74% want to raise the legal age limit to purchase a gun to 21. Sounds like the best way to love our neighbors in this instance is to pass meaningful gun legislation in Georgia that does more than nibble around the edges of a national crisis.
Recent immigration policies have turned into a lesson on how not to love your neighbor. Ordering military style raids on undocumented but law-abiding families for the sole purpose of creating a feeding frenzy on social media is the epitome of heartless, not to mention pointless. For anyone willing to look through a nonpartisan lens, the solution to our immigration woes is simple: Secure the border, identify and deport undocumented immigrants guilty of a felony and offer a pathway to citizenship to everyone else. Problem solved.
The list of reasons why I’m now a Democrat continues to grow. Most importantly, my decision puts me in the best possible position each day to love my neighbor.
Geoff Duncan, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributing columnist, served as Georgia’s lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023. He is a former professional baseball player and the author of “GOP 2.0: How the 2020 Election Can Lead to a Better Way Forward for America’s Conservative Party.” He is also a contributor to CNN.
