Tell Your Members of Congress and President Biden: Do Not Give In to Selfish Greed!
Call BOTH of your Senators.
Call ONE of the Representatives. Note: only one of these Congressmembers represents you. Find out which one here.
Contact the White House via their comment line or web form, and now, Resistbot!
Hate the phone? Resistbot is your friend. Resisbot now allows you to send text directly to the White House the same as with Members of Congress. If you use Resistbot or write an email to your elected officials, make sure to use your own words. Copy-pasted emails are discounted by Congressional staff. In-depth, personal stories are most effective.
Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
I want you to enact economic legislation that is actually effective. Don’t surrender to the selfish greed of the elite few. Don’t put the interests of giant corporations and obscenely wealthy billionaires ahead of what we the American people need and want.
Don’t abandon the climate proposals originally included in the Build Back Better Act
Don’t abandon the fair-tax proposals originally included in the Build Back Better Act
Don’t abandon the drug-price negotiation proposals originally included in the Build Back Better Act
Don’t vote for the so-called “Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill” without an adequate and effective Reconciliation Bill that meets the essential needs of us, your constituents.
Background
By emphasizing the proposed dollar amount of $3.5T, most media coverage distorts what the focus of the negotiations should be: the policies and programs in the Built Back Better Act (BBBA), which are immensely popular with the American people across party lines and will strengthen our economy. The discussion about the dollar amounts of cost reductions to the overall plan has been used as a cover for surrendering to the armies of lobbyists stalking the halls of Congress.
The three provisions we emphasize in our Ask above are examples of policies that corporate Democrats are trying to kill behind a “too costly” smokescreen:
Moving away from fossil fuels to protect our planet and create tens of thousands of clean energy jobs in all fifty states,
Increasing taxes on the wealthy and the corporations to previous levels, and
Empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
They say these things are too costly, when they are all actually cost-saving measures.
Though all three of these provisions are broadly popular, for this issue of the ISF newsletter we will focus on the third item.
Four new Public Policy Polling surveys conducted among voters in Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, and West Virginia find strong bipartisan support for the key reforms to health care that are part of the BBBA: lower drug costs and insurance premiums, expanded Medicare benefits, and increased coverage. Overwhelming majorities of voters across party lines in each state support giving Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug pricing: 73 percent of Arizona voters, 74 percent of West Virginia voters, 77 percent of New Jersey voters, and 78 percent of Delaware voters support it, with a majority in each state saying they strongly support it. This is a majority across party lines, including 65-74 percent of independents and 63-74 percent of Republicans. (MEMO: Widespread Support in Key States for Medicare Negotiations to Lower Drug Prices, Other Key Health Provisions, and the Overall Build Back Better Plan — Protect Our Care, 10/14/21 )
The debate about the scope of the BBBA is not about left versus right or moderate versus progressive. It is about the future of our country: competitiveness versus complacency and opportunity versus decay.
How can we compete in the global economy if millions of American parents – especially moms -- can't be part of the workforce because they can’t afford the cost of child care?
President Biden’s BBBA will change that. It will cut the cost of child care for most families in half, ensure that no middle class family pays more than 7 percent of its income on child care, and get more parents back into the workforce.
We can’t afford to lag behind while other countries have continued to invest in building an educated workforce. When America made twelve years of public education universal more than a century ago, it gave us the best-educated and best-prepared workforce in the world. The BBBA will prioritize public education again:
Provide two years of high-quality preschool for every child in America. In the US today, only about half of three- and four-year-olds are enrolled in early childhood education, whereas In Germany, France, the UK, and even Latvia, that number is over 90 percent.
Invest in higher education, increasing Pell Grants to help students from lower-income families attend community colleges and four-year schools.
Invest in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to make sure young people from every neighborhood have a shot at the well-paying jobs of the future.
Extend the Child Tax Credit, one of the biggest middle class tax cuts in history, to help working families provide better lives for their children. This continues a very successful part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expanded the value of the Child Tax Credit and arranged for monthly disbursement of the tax credits directly into tens of millions of hard-working families’ bank accounts. It has already dramatically reduced child poverty-- almost by half.
When we give working families a break, we’re not just raising their quality of life: we’re also positioning our country to compete for the future in a challenging global economy.
Another under-discussed part of President Biden’s full BBBA is that it is all paid for; it does not raise the national debt. It is paid for by a moral decision to prioritize tax cuts for working families over continuing tax giveaways to big corporations and the super-rich. American majorities understand that there’s no reason why billionaires should pay lower tax rates than school teachers or firefighters.
The American people understand that when families have a little more breathing room, America has a better shot at building a stronger economy. They know this is about dignity and respect – and building our economy from the bottom up and the middle out strengthens our economy while giving all our working families the respect they deserve.
References
Biden Meets With Manchin and Schumer as Democrats Race to Finish Social Policy Bill, New York Times, Oct. 24, 2021
Sen. Joe Manchin wants to restrict who gets the child tax credit. These West Virginians would be affected if he prevails., The Washington Post, Oct. 24, 2021
Perspective | Manchinism can help the Democrats. Sinema’s politics are a dead end., The Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2021