Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) actually wants to pay for a paid family leave bill by, get this, forcing folks who want to use paid family leave to draw it out of their Social Security benefits. As with his "groundbreaking" plan to "solve" the student loan debt problem by essentially making students indentured servants to big corporations, this is the kind of thing that passes for a "new idea" in our sick, immoral, and decadent society. It isn't just that the money folks are paying into Social Security now are paying current seniors, not sitting in a bank account waiting to be withdrawn -- it's that doing something for working families always seems to involve taking something else away from them, something they've worked for, paid into, fought for, and earned, no less! Our Glorious Elites surely smile upon Marco Rubio. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect our Social Security by rejecting this wolf-in-sheep's-clothing paid family leave "plan."
Meanwhile, Avaaz helps you tell investors to back off funding an open-pit gold mine in the Amazon rainforest. Some background: the Canadian mining corporation Belo Sun tried to start a gold-mining project along the Xingu River, but indigenous folks stood up to them, and then a federal court in Brazil revoked Belo Sun's license to build the mine, unanimously ruling that Belo Sun didn't adhere to Brazilian law mandating prior consultation with indigenous communities before building. Belo Sun could do a more rigorous social and environmental study and get their license back, so now's a good time to tell Belo Sun's potential investors that, really, this may be too much of a financial risk (not to mention a PR disaster!) for them, and maybe they should think twice about supporting a frickin' gold mine -- I mean, seriously, people still do that? You can't even convert gold into electricity! -- in the middle of a region that holds more than half the world's freshwater.
Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3773/S. 1806, the Child Care for Working Families Act. Unlike the aforementioned Rubio bill that would rob one benefit to pay for another, the Child Care for Working Families Act would actually make child care more affordable for families where both parents work, which is, like, most families now. The bill would (among other things) mandate that child care would never cost more than 7% of a family's income, which is a big deal in a world where one parent's salary could go entirely to child care. Of course, the very rich, who have not had to count the cost of anything in a very long time, tell us that it's our fault we can't afford things -- an Australian millionaire just suggested to folks that they can't afford houses because they eat too much avocado toast. Ha! He must be imagining poorer folks sharing his faults! But we know working families have real bills, and could use real help.
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