Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the TABS Act, reject any proposed cuts to Medicaid and CHIP, and pass the Junk Fees Prevention Act and the Stock Buyback Accountability 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.
Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Taking Account of Bureaucrats’ Spending (or TABS) Act, which would replace our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s independent funding mechanism – a mechanism good enough for other banking regulators – with the whim of Congressional funding. You’d think with all these bank failures, our Congressfolk would understand that we actually need a strong CFPB, but up is down in their world. I’m sure they’ll use this as a bargaining chip in debt limit “negotiations”; they might even succeed. But to hell with what they want, because they’re supposed to negotiate with us.
The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any proposed cuts to Medicaid or the Childrens’ Health Insurance Program (or CHIP). Again, to hell with what the deficit peacocks want! Medicaid and CHIP help a lot of good Americans, and they sure in hell ain’t breaking our budget’s back. Now, throwaway defense spending and low taxes on the rich? Those things are breaking our budget’s back. But Medicaid and CHIP are popular across the political spectrum, probably because even right-wingers have to use it! If you come to rely on something, you’ll hate the politicians who take it away, and you’ll punish them. Right, Sam Alito?
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Junk Fee Prevention Act, which would vastly reduce the harm junk fees – like ticket fees, airline fees, and “early termination” fees – cause good Americans. Who likes junk fees that far outstrip whatever expense a corporation incurs to fix a problem or make something convenient? Nobody but the people who collect those fees, that’s who! And they ain’t a majority of a damn thing in America! OK, they may be a majority of bad people, but let’s not deal civilization yet another body blow because a majority of bad people demanded it. I have a feeling our descendants would not want that to be our epitaph.
Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stock Buyback Accountability Act, which would quadruple the stock buyback tax that only corporations will ever have to pay. Stock buybacks used to be illegal, and for good reason – not only do they concentrate corporate power in a few hands (and concentrated power in a few hands should concern all Americans regardless of ideological predisposition), but corporations tend to spend more on stock buybacks than on, you know, new equipment. Everyone needs to buy that every once in a while! And if they won’t do the right thing, then our government’s gotta step in on our behalf. This ain’t hard.
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