Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to get the lead out of our drinking water, raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, stop obsessing about SALT caps, 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.
Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. Yeah, the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" the House just passed does do some of that, and that's not nothing, but we need to do more of it. And remember: if you don't have clean water, you don't have health care, period. And no clean water isn't something we "took care of" a long time ago and don't need regulations to take care of now -- we always have to take care of clean water, just as we always have to take care of the things we win. The fight for justice never ends; only right-wingers want you to believe that, and only about the things they hate. You see they're always fighting! And they'll come for your clean water if you let them.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. The Build Back Better Act as currently constructed doesn't whiff on these matters -- an effective 42% bracket on income over $10 million and a 45% bracket on income over $25 million, plus a 15% minimum corporate tax and a 1% stock buyback tax -- but my goals are always 91% on millionaire income and 55% on corporate profits over $1 million, and just because certain people don't want those rates to go up at all doesn't mean we should stop fighting for them. Don't worry about getting blamed for the bill's failure, because America already blames liberals for everything. Freeing, isn't it?
You may want to get on the phone with your Congressfolk and tell them not to make or break the Build Back Better Act over SALT caps (or caps on deducting state and local taxes). Tom Suozzi's red line (NO DEALZ WITHOUTZ TEH SALT CAPZ GONEZ!!!!!) ain't any less stupid than all of Kyrsten Sinema's red lines, and restoring state-and-local-taxes deductions to their pre-2017 levels will mainly benefit the very wealthy. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) has proposed eliminating the SALT cap only for Americans making less than $400,000 annually, and I think that's a good compromise, because most folks just don't care about rich folks in blue states getting their state and local tax deductions back, because gosh, they're just trying to eat. And Democrats want to be about that, right? It's hard to tell.
Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Our House Democrats are dutifully putting it back in the bill as we speak, and Joe Manchin must be laughing. "Didn't they hear me the first time I said no?" The more pertinent point is that Joe Manchin doesn't hear all the good Americans who say yes. And that's no less true in West Virginia (where the whole BBB agenda is very popular) than anywhere else! And if he wants to be an asshole, that doesn't mean you walk on eggshells around him -- it means you keep doing the right thing, and see if that keeps prompting him to be an asshole. We have to teach people not to enable assholes, after all.
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. You'll be happy to hear that Democrats have heard you about that -- putting a very, very small version of Medicare drug price negotiation back in the Build Back Better Act, one that would let Medicare negotiate drug prices for 10 drugs in 2025 and 10 more three years later, which is exactly the kind of reform that sounds like very weak tea now, but which folks will fight for when Republicans take control of either Congress or the Presidency again. There is absolutely no harm, however, in expressing your will for more comprehensive Medicare drug price negotiation. "Making bad Democrats lose elections" does not count as harm.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. This is the thing we've made the least progress upon, largely due (and stop me if you've heard this one before) to the bloviation of Joe Manchin, who wouldn't dare expand Medicare services until "we put Medicare on a more solid footing." Medicare, the program that's been around longer than I've been alive, longer, even, than Star Trek has been alive? What is it that keeps Medicare going? Oh, right -- the will of the American people, who have worked for it, paid into it, fought for it, and deserve to have it when they need it. These are all principles that seem to elude Joe Manchin, since he doesn't seem at all conversant in them.
One more thing: just because the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" is now law -- and yes, though it's a flawed bill, it's not a bad bill, and Democrats will no doubt spend the next ten months forgetting to take the credit they deserve to take for it! -- doesn't mean we still shouldn't act on the Build Back Better Act. Withholding a vote on the infrastructure bill was the Democrat liberal wing's best chance at getting "moderate" Democrats to acquiesce on the larger Build Back Better package, and now that that's gone, what can still hold "moderates" to doing the right thing? Oh, right, us -- the only thing that has ever made politicians do the right thing. So let's hold their feet to the fire, folks.
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