Long story short: tell your Congressfolk, once again, to listen to us as they consider jobs legislation, and fund it with higher taxes on the wealthy. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. And good hunting!
You've heard that a group of 10 Senators (only five of whom are Republicans, when you'd need 10 to overcome a filibuster) have come to an "agreement" about a $1.2 trillion (really only $569 billion in new spending) infrastructure bill? One that doesn't raise taxes on corporations or the wealthy, doesn't promise to fund renewable energy infrastructure, and doesn't fund the care economy we're all going to be a part of as we get older? Well, we've got action alerts for you today, then! Daily Kos still helps you demand a "big, bold, and green" jobs plan. Hey, why should we care what 10 Senators agreed to? None of them seem to think it's all that important to agree with us. Which is why we keep telling them, as often as we need to.
Both the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Moms Rising help you demand that your Congressfolk help build a care economy infrastructure. Think about it: child care costs an arm and a leg, elder care costs an arm and a leg, and workers in these fields get paid in dung pellets; keep leaving it up to the "free" market and we'll have a nation of debt slaves with a few CEOs at the top who gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. Spend our taxpayer money insuring that care workers get good pay for good work and we'll start to build something we can be proud of. And it'd be nice if Republicans would stop pretending that it's not "infrastructure" if you can't drive on it. A civilization needs an infrastructure of hard-working, dedicated citizens more than it needs roads.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3805/S. 2028 and thus enact a "millionaire's surtax." I think millionaire income should be taxed at 91% just like the good old days and the bill's "millionaire's surtax" would raise the 37% rate on millionaire income only to 47%, but I try not to let the perfect murder the good, and we should take every opportunity we can to send our Congressfolk the message that the rich don't pay enough in taxes, a matter about which we got a painful reminder this week from ProPublica. Afraid it's not "biparatisan" enough? Over half of Republicans support it, per a Hart Research poll, so enough of that.
Inequality.org helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1979/S. 794, the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act. This bill would actually raise corporate taxes if a corporation's highest-paid employee makes more than 50 times as much as its median-salaried employee; that tax rate would go up a half-percentage point in that case, and the rate would scale upward, such that a corporation with a 500-to-1 pay ratio would wind up paying five percentage points more. Again, I'd raise it all the way up to 55% for corporate profits over $1 million (and I would expect to lower the ratio that way, too), but let's communicate to our Congressfolk the fact that we think some people make too much money while the rest of us are scraping along, and that they should do something about it.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1459/S. 510, the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act. This bill would enact a "wealth tax" that would finally start to get at the trillions of dollars the ultra-rich sit on -- you know, that money right-wingers always say will "trickle down" to the rest of us? Well, it doesn't, but the wealth tax would impose an annual tax of 2% of assets between $50 million and $1 billion and 3% on assets above $1 billion. It'd raise a lot of money, and the super-rich would still be super-rich -- sure sounds pretty harmless, doesn't it? Then all the whining right-wingers will do about might leave you scratching your head.
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