Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, expand Social Security, expand Medicare, lower drug prices, get the lead out of our nation's water pipes, and protect workers' rights. 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 and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. You've heard that big corporations have worked their nefarious will on Democrats by shrieking about "international competitiveness"? You've heard that Joe Manchin says he won't support a reconciliation bill over $1.5 trillion? Ain't nothing over until we say it is! If we say, in large enough numbers, that corporations and rich folks need to pay more taxes, then nothing corporate lobbyists or drama-hound Senators will matter. It's that simple! There is no law of physics that says "whatever Joe Manchin says goes." There is no law of physics that says "nothing can be done because there's just too much corporate money in politics." The only law of physics is the popular will. And we have to act like it.
Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Social Security. Don't believe the hype that TEH SOSHUL SECURITIEZ IZ TEH INSOLVENTZ!!!! Big corporations trot that lie out every few years, in the hopes they will get their grubby hands on what you worked for, paid into, fought for, and deserve. Truth is we can make Social Security by expanding benefits, and we can shore up whatever hole might appear in the Social Security trust fund in 20 or 30 or 70 years' time by raising the ceiling on payroll taxes. Currently Social Security simply doesn't tax income over $142,000, when that's where all the money is! Seriously, lifting the income cap on Social Security's taxes will infuse a lot of life into the greatest pension there ever was. And like I said, Americans deserve to live a dignified retirement.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare in the budget reconciliation bill. Democrats have proposed lowering the Medicare age to 60, expanding coverage to dental, vision, and hearing care, and letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, which will save the taxpayer enough money to fund all the new coverage. And, frankly, lowering the coverage age to 60 will probably save some money, too, as folks do tend to be healthier at 60 than they are later. Indeed, we could very well apply the same logic to argue that Medicare should include everyone, since folks are also generally healthier when they're 20 or 40 than they are at 65 and up. And we will argue that! For now, we need merely argue that expanding Medicare is actually better, even if Chicken Littles say otherwise.
Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to lower drug prices for everyone. Why do big pharma corporations charge us more for the same drugs people get in Canada and England and France? Because they can, that's why! And they don't charge more money in those other nations because they can't. Letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices would be a start -- Medicare buys drugs on behalf of over 60 million Americans, after all -- but we can do other things as well, like empower our government to produce generics of a drug if the manufacturing corporation won't lower the price. Hell, we can enact price controls, too! I don't know where "price controls" became this nasty epithet; a lot of good Americans would like our government to control drug prices.
Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1352/S. 916, the WATER Act, which would get the lead out of our drinking water pipes all over America. Don't hesitate to support the WATER Act just because you also supported H.R. 1376, the GET THE LEAD OUT Act, which essentially does the same thing -- it's more important right now for our Congressfolk to hear that we want the lead out of our water pipes, since the budget reconciliation blueprint passed by both Houses of Congress aims to do just that. And they need to hear that more than they hear "international competitiveness" or "ZOMG inflation" or "ZOMG the deficit," which is what the forces of evil are pummeling our Congressfolks' ears with as we speak. Like I said in today's earlier post, I hate it when horseshit wins. We are the horseshit killers.
Finally, both The Juggernaut Project and Daily Kos help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act. The PRO Act would repeal state-level "right-to-work" laws all over America -- the PRO Act's opponents act like that's a bad thing to do or something -- and would also protect workers from their bosses dragging them away from their important work and forcing them to watch anti-union propaganda. Because if you were treating your workers right, you wouldn't need to propagandize them against unions! One good thing about this pandemic? We demand more from our jobs than the back of our boss's hand. If we pass the PRO Act, we can get more of what we want from our jobs.
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