Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, enact paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and expand Medicare. 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.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. Kyrsten Sinema said no to this in the Build Back Better Act -- for what reason, we'll never know, since she values negotiating with Republicans more than her real job, which is negotiating with her constituents -- but President Biden's revised Build Back Better framework includes a 5% surtax on income over $10 million, a surtax that goes up to 8% on income over $25 million. (This would essentially create two new 42% and 45% tax brackets.) The framework also includes a 1% tax on stock buybacks and a 15% minimum corporate tax. Maybe Ms. Sinema says no to all of that, too, because chaos. But not before we've had our say, which is, after all, the most important say.
Moms Rising also helps you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Joe Manchin said no to this in the Build Back Better Act, because, and I quote, "to expand social programs, when you have trust funds that aren’t solvent — they’re going insolvent — I can’t explain that...It doesn’t make sense to me...I just can’t do it." In other words, because Social Security's trust fund is "going insolvent" (which it's not, and you didn't know any of this was about Social Security, did you?), nobody gets paid family/medical leave, even though that would have been paid for by the bill's revenue hikes, most of which Kyrsten Sinema nixed. Got it? Me, I don't think this needs to be that damn deep -- the American people want it, and it ain't that hard to pay for, so we should have it.
Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, and Penn PIRG all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. Kyrsten Sinema nixed this, too, even though H.R. 3, which would have let Medicare negotiate the price of some-but-not-all drugs, would have saved (per our Congressional Budget Office) over $450 billion over the next decade; if we let Medicare negotiate the price of all drugs, that would have saved $840 billion, per the right-wing Mercatus Center, of all entities. As I said, the American people want it, and it would actually save us money, so we should have it. Even if the big pharma corporations have a tantrum about it. Like they'd make it without taxpayer handouts anyway!
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Again, Joe Manchin complains about Medicare's "stability" as his excuse to deny expanding coverage for health care seniors need, like the expansion wasn't going to be paid for or something! His "government should be a partner, not a provider" shtick is bunk -- we-the-people pay our taxes, so we provide for each other, not "the" government. The Biden framework includes Medicare coverage of hearing care, but not dental or vision care; while that's an improvement, seniors are still going to have dental and vision problems in the meantime. And our job right now is same as it ever was: communicate our will, as many times as we need to, until we get the results we deserve.
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