Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to fix the baby formula crisis, expand Medicare to include all Americans, pass paid family/sick leave, lower drug prices and expand home health care, and pass a windfall profits tax on oil and gas corporations. 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.
First things first. You've heard of the national baby formula shortage, which is a matter of life and death for a lot of babies? Matt Stoller explains why it's happening -- short answer: monopolies -- and prescribes solutions, which you may call your Congressfolk about. These solutions include: temporarily allowing baby formula imports, particularly from nations with good (or better) food safety regulations; restructuring food stamp markets so they don't create baby formula monopolies; and breaking up our FDA so that one agency doesn't regulate both food and drugs. We may not get the change we need right away, but if we keep at it, it will. And if we do nothing, we'll get nothing.
National Nurses United helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare to include all Americans. Medicare for All will cover more folks for less money, end of story. Don't believe me? Believe the right-wing Mercatus Center, which tabulated the cost of Medicare for All at $32 trillion over 10 years -- or some $17 trillion less than the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid's forecast of all health care spending over the next decade. How do you pay for it, then? Simple: assess an employer-side payroll tax (meaning workers don't pay it!) amounting to what big corporations already pay for the private health insurance that rejects your claims for no good reason and doesn't cover everyone.
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact paid family and sick leave for all Americans. Since right-wingers constantly squeal WHEREZ WILLZ YOUZ FINDZ TEH MONEYZ!!!!!, I'll note that Sen. Gillibrand's original bill would have funded it with a 0.4% payroll tax (half paid by the employer, half by the worker), which, for someone making $50,000 annually, would amount to a little over $8 a month. $8! So everyone can take time off to take care of their kids, or their parents, or their grandparents, or themselves when they need to. And I'd fund it by bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income and the 55% tax on corporate profits, which wouldn't be "socialism" so much as "what we did in the 1950s."
The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to lower prescription drug prices and expand at-home health care services. Most people want these things, so why can't Congress do it? Because Republicans won't do it! And also because Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema won't do it, because they think they're so much smarter than everyone else! In 2 1/2 years if not sooner, these fools will be shown the error of their ways; wouldn't it be nice if a massive popular outcry helped them see the error of their ways sooner? That goes for your Republican Reps and Senators, too. If enough of us speak out, then doing nothing will actually get them fired for once.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a windfall profits tax on big oil corporations. Because sky-high prices shouldn't lead to sky-high profits! I'm old enough to remember when corporations didn't raise prices solely because of increased costs. Why? Partly because shame still meant something back then, and also partly because we had fewer monopolies then, so we had a higher chance of finding a corporation that wouldn't rob you merely because it had the opportunity. Now they just gouge us because they can. If we pass a windfall profits tax on them, then they can't.
Comments