Remember when the Senate passed a bill aiming to end our participation in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen last month -- but then the House promptly added a rider to the Farm Bill (of all things!) preventing a House vote on that matter for the rest of the year? Well, the calendar has turned and the House has changed hands, so why not let Roots Action help you tell your House Reps to vote to end our participation in the war on Yemen? A new year should create new possibilities, after all. Note well that the Senate's anti-war resolution probably got 56 votes last year because the Senate already knew the House wasn't going to pass it, making it a show of courage for a lot of Senate cowards, but Mob Boss Mitch will no doubt come up with a litany of absurd excuses not to even hold a vote on the bill if it passes this House. But that presents us an opportunity to embarrass them for their hypocrisy, and of course as good citizens we should not pass up such opportunities. They're teachable moments, after all.
Meanwhile, H.R. 663/S. 191, the Burn Pits Accountability Act, is back in Congress, with over 100 Congressional co-sponsors, and if the bill resembles past iterations (Congress.gov has neither a summary nor text for either bill at this writing), it would help our soldiers get the health care they need from burn pit exposure. Our military used burn pits to dispose of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those burn pits had all kinds of trash in them -- chemicals, paint, plastic, rubber, human and medical waste, even munitions! -- and burning them does what? Puts all kinds of toxic crap in the air our soldiers breathe, of course! The Burn Pits Accountability Act would require our Department of Defense to ask soldiers whether they've been exposed to burn pits during routine health exams and exit interviews so they can better assist our Veterans Administration maintain its Burn Pit Registry, and that, at least, is a start. Hence the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America help you tell our Congressfolk to help our soldiers by passing the Burn Pits Accountability Act.
Finally, the Paycheck Fairness Act is apparently back, too (Congress.gov doesn't even have a bill number for it at this writing), and if it's like past iterations, it would prevent corporations from prohibiting employees from discussing their pay with their co-workers -- since these are the very discussions that let women know they're being shorted by their employer! -- and would limit the factors employers can use to pay women differently to "bona fide factors" including education, training, and experience. The 79-cents-on-the-dollar figure is the one you're likely most familiar with, but even when you adjust the data for education, training, experience, you still don't get women making a dollar for every dollar a man makes. And that's only fair! If the bill passes the House, Mob Boss Mitch will just say "the bill only helps trial lawyers," though that does tend to be a side effect of injustice. You'd think he'd want to remedy that by fighting injustice or something. Anyway, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support fair pay by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.
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