Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to make the rich and corporations pay more taxes, expand Medicare, increase funding for home- and community-based care, fund weatherizing for low-income homes, end funding for the notorious F-35 plane, and pass the IG Independence and Empowerment Act. 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.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk that you want corporations and the rich to pay at least $4 trillion more in taxes over the next 10 years. Their machinations, their dramas, don't matter -- the message they need to hear right now is that we need to tax the rich a lot harder than we're doing, or we won't have clean water, we won't have a livable planet, and we won't have jobs. Taxing the rich and corporations more is actually quite popular in every poll that asks about it, so don't let insane Republicans and "moderate" Democrats kill all progress -- particularly when they're all just going to blame us liberals for their failures later!
Strengthen Medicare Now helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare -- which is to say, expand what Medicare covers (include dental/vision/eye care) and whom Medicare covers (people 60 and older, versus 65 and older). Again, these are all popular things, and frankly, lowering the Medicare age to zero is also pretty popular, so we're not asking for "too much" here. And frankly, let's make the Party of Sedition defend its position that "more people shouldn't get Medicare," or that "folks who get Medicare shouldn't get more out of it." If they say it'll kill Medicare, tell them to explain how. They can't. Of course, if they start yammering on about inflation, feel free to walk away. "Inflation" is the new "socialism."
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to jack up funding for home- and community-based care services. This is a main feature of President Biden's American Families Plan, and this'll be the part of the legislation Democrats will have to pass via budget reconciliation, so hostile is the Party of Sedition toward the kind of services we're all going to need a lot more of as we get older. And a civilization that progresses should make those kinds of services -- for children, for seniors, for folks with disabilities -- part of its, dare I say, infrastructure. And, ah, not for nothing, but the COVID pandemic which ain't over and is getting worse, heckuva job, anti-vaxxers! has, I think, impressed upon us the need for home-based services.
The Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to fund weatherizing for low-income homes. Remember how much fun Fox News used to make of "Cash for Caulkers"? Well, they were wrong about that, too, and not just because weatherizing homes for working families will save a lot in heating bills, but because, well, we just saw in Texas this past winter what happens when the big utility corporations don't prepare for rough weather -- people die, Senators flee to Cancun and blame their daughters for it, and Governors blame solar and wind power for the problems caused by unregulated utilities. Don't forget the "people die" part, though. There's a reason I put that first.
Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop trying to build the F-35 fighter jet. Roll call! It flies badly! It puts its pilots at risk of injury and/or death! The Navy doesn't want it and the Marines almost certainly don't want it either! We've thrown billions of dollars away on this plane for the last 20 years! A boondoggle this big, you have to wonder why it happens. It happens for a lot of reasons -- watchdogs have a lot to watch, individual Congressfolk have cronies who benefit from it, Congress generally doesn't have a whole lot of courage when confronting defense spending either in general or in its many particulars. Well, I didn't say they were good reasons. The only good reason they need to stop building them is that we tell them. So let's tell them.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2662, the IG Independence and Empowerment Act. "IG" stands for "inspector general," as in the kind of person who exposes Executive branch waste and fraud -- and, also, the kind of person Donald Trump constantly tried to replace with a crony. H.R. 2662 would make it harder for the next rogue President to do that, plus it would give Inspectors General more power to actually do their job. And I wouldn't declare this one dead on arrival in the Senate as long as Charles Grassley's there. I just worry about the price Mob Boss Mitch would extract in exchange.
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