Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to protect voting rights, let states create their own Medicare-for-All-style health insurance systems, and reject any Social Security/Medicare benefit-cutting commission. 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.
Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would give our Justice Department the authority to pre-clear voting rights law changes from any state or locality with a demonstrated history of vote suppression. That would replace the section of the Voting Rights Act our Supreme Court struck down because it supposedly discriminated against Southern states (which then instituted a slew of voting restrictions the next day, which nobody could have predicted!). With this bill, we could act against any state or locality, anywhere in our country, that discriminates for real against certain voters. And that’s a good work worth doing, so we should tell our Congressfolk to do it.
Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the State-Based Universal Health Care Act. Since our federal government won’t pass Medicare-for-All legislation, perhaps we can get a state to do it; indeed, Canada’s Medicare-for-All-style system started in Saskatchewan. Vermont passed such a system last decade, but then-Democratic Gov. Shumlin abandoned it, citing the “cost.” I’ve gone over how easily we could pay for it many times, but Mr. Shumlin was really just trying to support Hillary Clinton at Bernie Sanders’s expense. This story has a happy ending! Hillary Clinton lost, and Vermonters have sent a Republican to the Governor’s office four times since then! Maybe serving the people is the way to keep power?
Finally, the Alliance for Retired Americans helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose any fiscal commission legislation concerning Social Security and/or Medicare. Because it’s just their way of trying to cut your earned Social Security and/or Medicare benefits without subjecting themselves to very much public scrutiny! Think of that the next time some knuckle-dragger on TV says we have to have the “courage” to cut these benefits, because hiding behind a commission that fast-tracks legislation without proper debate is the very definition of cowardice. If they were so “courageous,” they’d do it through the legislative process we’ve been using for centuries! I’d never want someone like that in my foxhole, and I hope you wouldn't, either.
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