Senate Majority Leader Schumer (D-NY) plans to move jobs legislation this week, so now's a good time to tell (or remind) your Senators what you want from jobs legislation. There'll be a lot of links today, so I'll keep this post relatively short, and of course you can simply use this post to make a list to your Senators in a phone call. First, we want to remind our Senators that we want to do the right thing with jobs legislation, so Daily Kos helps you tell Democrats to go big on jobs legislation, while Food and Water Action helps you tell your Senators to reject any privatization of public services in that legislation.
Next, we move to paying for the legislation, since right-wingers pretend to wring their hands over it and moderates pretend that you can pay for everything with "user fees." Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to make rich folks and corporations pay at least $4 trillion more in taxes over the next 10 years, Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a Wealth Tax on millionaire and billionaire estates, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact a "millionaire's surtax," and the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the End Polluter Welfare Act, which would free up some more money to pay for the projects we're going to describe in the next paragraph.
Finally, we move to the things we want jobs legislation to do -- things that will actually create jobs for people, even if they don't meet the Republican definition of "real infrastructure." Both Social Security Works and Public Citizen help you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare so that it covers vision, hearing, and dental care and also so that it covers folks from the age of 60, not 65. Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices -- which, since it would free up an extra $85 billion annually, would also count as a "pay-for." The Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure renewable energy funding is a big part of jobs legislation. And both the League of Conservation Voters and Penn PIRG help you tell your Congressfolk to invest in getting the lead out of our water pipes. Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that jobs legislation includes funding for home- and community-based care and paid family/medical leave. And Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to include expanded broadband funding.
We should ignore the machinations our politicians have foisted on us -- how much of the legislation should be "bipartisan" and how much not, for example -- and simply communicate our will, in numbers they can't deny. Then we'll start to get what we want. People tell me I'm naive for believing this, but I've seen it happen many times. And when you see it happen even once, you want to see it happen all the time. Certainly as Americans we deserve to have it happen all the time. It's a lot better than politicians selling us out to their big donors like they usually do. But we won't get a thing if we don't speak out, and this is the week we absolutely must speak out, because if we do, we might get the best legislation we've seen in decades.
Good luck, and God bless.
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