Tell Speaker Pelosi: Fight for the Human Investment We Need!
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
Speaker Pelosi, I ask you to stand firm: no vote on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill until the Senate has either passed the Reconciliation Bill or there is an iron-clad agreement that it will do so without fail or betrayal.
Speaker Pelosi, I ask you to support President Biden’s original human infrastructure proposals as they are incorporated in the draft $3.5 trillion Reconciliation Bill passed by the House Budget Committee.
Speaker Pelosi, I support the full $3.5 trillion amount. But if the only way to get the Reconciliation bill through both the House and the Senate is to lower its total cost, then rather than eliminating any programs or provisions, I urge you to reduce the amount by either shortening the time frame to fewer years or using an across-the-board percentage reduction. It will be easier in the future to increase an appropriation for an existing program that has proven its worth than it will be to recreate from scratch something that was excluded from this bill. So, please retain the corporate tax increases, drug-price negotiations, and provisions for climate change & green energy child and family programs, and healthcare, housing, and education.
Background
Terminology: The big Reconciliation Bill is also known as the American Jobs and Family Plans, $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill, human infrastructure bill, inclusive recovery bill, and the Build Back Better Act (BBB). The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIB) is also known as the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF), and the roads and bridges bill.
The Reconciliation Bill covers a wide range of issues. As is normally the case with such large and complex pieces of legislation, it incorporates all or parts of bills that have been previously introduced and/or bills that were passed in the House but blocked in the Senate by Republican filibusters. It also incorporates proposals and ideas from congressional caucuses and interest groups.
Biden’s proposals enjoy wide public support among voters. But Republican Party officials remain adamantly committed to their small-government, no-public-spending (except for military & police), and lower taxes for the wealthy dogmas--even though a significant number of Republican voters support many of Biden’s proposals. Corporate America supports the BIB’s large-scale investment in physical infrastructure (steel & concrete), which delivers hugely profitable government contracts. But they reject as unnecessary the Reconciliation Bill’s human investment provisions related to families, healthcare, housing, education, and child poverty. And of course they hate with raging passion Biden’s proposal to pay for these programs by raising taxes on the wealthy and big business.
Conservative Democratic senators, who prefer to call themselves “moderates” or “centrists,” aligned themselves with corporate America to separate out the provisions favored by business interests and the construction-trades unions into a separate Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIB), which they passed and sent to the House in August.
The Progressive Caucus argued for passing Biden’s full plan in one single reconciliation bill but were told that if the Senate passed the BIB, most of what they (and Indivisible) wanted would later be included in the Reconciliation Bill. So progressives are demanding that the House honor its agreement to delay adopting the BIB until the Senate has also passed a human infrastructure bill that the House can enact in tandem with the BIB.
References
House panel advances $3.5T spending bill
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/budget/573948-house-panel-advances-35t-spending-bill
FACT SHEET: The American Jobs Plan, White House, 3/31/21
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/
Fact Sheet: American Family Plan (White House) , which includes the Made In America Tax Plan https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/28/fact-sheet-the-american-families-plan/
Here's What's Included In The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIB), NPR, 8/10/21
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009923468/heres-whats-included-in-the-infrastructure-deal-that-biden-struck-with-senators
Pelosi on $3.5T spending package: It 'seems self-evident' it will be less than proposed
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/573972-pelosi-says-it-is-self-evident-that-spending-bill-will-be-less
Pelosi on infrastructure bill: 'I'm never bringing a bill to the floor that doesn't have the votes'
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/573976-pelosi-on-infrastructure-bill-im-never-bringing-a-bill-to-the
House passes sweeping defense policy bill
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/573751-house-passes-sweeping-defense-policy-bill