Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to stop interfering with enforcement of the No Surprises Act, make a full year of postpartum Medicaid coverage permanent, pass the MORE Act, force reporting of factory farm waste, and pass the Agriculture Right to Repair Act and the Postal Service Reform 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 and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to abstain from any interference (including lawsuits) their brethren might be contemplating against the enforcement of the No Surprises Act. The No Surprises Act essentially empowers the Executive branch of our government to stop "surprise" billing by medical providers -- you know, the kind where your doctor and your surgeon are in-network, but somehow your anesthesiologist isn't and now you owe $10,000? The Biden Administration announced fairly vigorous rules earlier this year, but naturally some of our Congressfolk, from both parties, are trying to scuttle them, all saying things like "the rules go too far" and "we need a light touch here." What's more unpopular than a surprise medical bill? The bankster who benefits from it! Isn't that enough of a reason for these Congressfolk to STFU on this matter?
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to make permanent the 12 months of post-partum Medicaid coverage. Before the American Rescue Plan Act, Medicaid post-partum coverage ended after 60 days, but though the physical aftermath of a birth might be dealt with by then, the mental side might not be -- post-partum depression is a thing, after all, no matter what right-wing male punditoids say. (I don't need to gender-equivocate here, because the opposition to Medicaid post-partum care has not developed enough that our opponents rush out women who say toughen up, girls!) And, actually, it's not all about mental health -- it's also about poorer Americans who can't just take a day off to go to the doctor, and who thus need more time to get the care they need. Now I'm just waiting for Joe Manchin to say families just spend their extra Medicaid coverage on drugs.
The Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell House Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Hoyer to schedule a vote on H.R. 3617, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (or MORE) Act. The MORE Act would essentially legalize pot (by removing it from Schedule I, where it's never belonged anyway) and would also expunge marijuana convictions, which would help a lot of folks injured by our "war on drugs." And no I don't care that Democratic leadership might be afraid Republicans will attack them for being "soft on crime" if they pass the MORE Act! Nobody says Republicans are "soft on crime" when they pass bills allowing banksters to steal more of your money and allowing polluters to befoul your air and water! Let's ensure that's the conversation we have every time someone tries to complain about crime.
Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that our EPA can enforce reporting of factory farm waste. You may well be asking yourself: self, why can't our EPA enforce factory farm waste reporting already, using its authority under the Clean Air Act? And that's a reasonable question to ask! The reason they can't, as it happens, is because unscrupulous Congressfolk, doing the bidding of big ag donors, constantly slip riders into other bills defunding any EPA effort to enforce rules on factory farm waste! So our EPA makes lawful regulations and then Congressfolk starve them of the money they need to enforce them? Why, you might well call that defunding the police! Hey, enforcing lawfully-made regulations ain't no different from enforcing the law.
Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 3549, the Agriculture Right to Repair Act. S. 3549 will do as its title suggests: make it easier for farmers to repair their equipment when it breaks down, when a broken tractor, for example, could mean thousands of dollars in lost income if it doesn't get repaired right away. And with big corporations abusing intellectual property rights to keep tools, software, and manuals away from farmers, farmers can only go to a narrow, corporate-approved number of repair techs, so they can't get what they need fixed right away. Our FTC has made helpful noises about the right to repair lately, but some corporations won't do the right thing until we make them. So let's make them. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and power is evil when wielded to do wrong.
Finally, People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 3076/S. 1720, the Postal Service Reform Act. Sen. Rick Scott (E-FL) blocked consideration of the Postal Service Reform Act last month, even though our House passed the bill by an actually bipartisan 342-92 vote, and the Senate version of the bill has 14 Republican sponsors. But now that Mr. Scott got caught advocating tax hikes for folks just trying to make ends meet, how does his obstruction look? This bill would remove the crushing mandate (for prepayment of retiree benefits decades in advance) placed upon our Postal Service by Congress in 2006; it wouldn't get us, say, postal banking, which was a feature of post offices until the late 1960s, but getting rid of the mandate would represent significant progress.
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