Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to "scrap the cap" on income that can be taxed into Social Security. The occasion? Folks making a mere $1 million annually have already hit that income cap (about $137,700) as of yesterday, and won't be paying any more money into Social Security this year. Of course, H.R. 860/S. 269, the Social Security 2100 Act, would tax income above $400,000 as well as income below $137,700, and I wonder why that bill has to have a "donut hole" of funding. Of course I have advocated for the bill's passage, and will again, but we now have an opportunity to communicate our will that all income get taxed into the Social Security system, and thus fund benefit increases now and trust fund shortfalls in the future. We worked for it, we paid into it, we fought for it, and we deserve to enjoy it when we retire, so don't let weakling politicians fearmonger you about it, or tell you that it's just not "possible" to demand better stewardship of it. By demanding what we want, and fighting for it, we always widen the palette of the possible.
You know how our Administration always says regulations hurt businesses with all their rules and stuff? Well, now, our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) wants to scuttle rules that require corporations to demonstrate that they're financially able to clean up after their own accidents -- their oil spills, their gas leaks, their coal ash pit leaks, you know. I don't have to explain, I trust, the necessity of making sure big corporations clean up their own messes -- hey, nobody but me cleans up my messes! -- and I'm sure you can also see that this proposal amounts to corporate welfare for the coal industry in particular, an industry about to die at the hands of cheap natural gas and cheaper renewable energy sources. And of course you can also see who's going to pay to clean up their messes if they don't -- we are. You want to be an enabler of bad corporate behavior when they befoul our air and water? If not, let Public Citizen help you tell our EPA to reject its own plan to weaken accountability for polluting corporations.
Finally, our President plans to divert another $3.8 billion of defense spending toward the building of his vanity border wall -- you know the one? The one that a reciprocating saw can cut through, the one a halfway decent climber can scale, the one that an inopportune flood could cause to fall if you don't keep gates open, the one a stiff wind can knock over? I hope we still have historians who will note these ironies -- if, indeed, ironies are what they are! Is it ironic, really, that a drama king who prances and preens about immigration can't actually build a wall that can stand on its own? Do we expect better from drama kings? Do we call it ironic merely because we think so well of our country? We should keep thinking well of our country, of course, and keeping it a country of which we think well means fighting the evils our President perpetrates, so Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to defund our President's vanity border wall. Seriously, "national emergency" my ass.