Tell President Biden and your Members of Congress: Fight Inflation by Curbing Corporate 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.
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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.
For President Biden:
Ukraine: I strongly support your firm, thoughtful, and effective efforts to support the Ukrainian people’s resistance to Putin's war of aggression. Like you, I oppose the cynical efforts of Republican war hawks to score political points by recklessly demanding actions that would inevitably escalate into a potentially catastrophic direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia.
For your Members of Congress:
Ukraine: I strongly support President Biden’s firm, thoughtful, and effective efforts to support the Ukrainian people’s resistance to Putin's war of aggression. Like you, I oppose the cynical efforts of Republican war hawks to score political points by recklessly demanding actions that would inevitably escalate into a potentially catastrophic direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia.
For President Biden and your Members of Congress
Inflation: Like most Americans, I am concerned about inflation. I urge you to adopt three inflation-control measures that reflect the people-oriented values and priorities of the Democratic Party.
Green Energy: I oppose the Republican demand for "energy independence" by ramping up oil production, increasing subsidies and tax breaks for Big Oil, and eliminating health, safety, and environmental oversight and regulation. Instead I support using the Defense Production Act (DPA) [and your other executive powers] to increase production and use of green technologies that reduce fossil fuel demand and fuel costs as called for in the March 23, 2022, letter from Senators Markey, Warren, and others.
Price Controls: Contrary to Republican lies about government spending, the root of inflation lies in corporate greed and price-gouging, not federal social spending or workers being paid too much. The best way to fight inflation in energy costs during this national crisis is to use the DPA to impose price controls on gasoline, natural gas, and heating oil, similar to what Trump did in 2020 to reduce price-gouging by medical equipment companies in the first months of the pandemic.
COVID-19 Funding: As you know, the COVID-19 funding that Americans relied on for the past year to cover the costs of testing, vaccinations, and treatment has run out. Republicans blocked renewing it in the Omnibus appropriations bill. For the families that will now have to pay these bills, it's a new and punishing form of inflation. I call on you to quickly propose and pass an emergency supplemental funding bill that combines additional humanitarian and military aid for Ukraine with restoration of the COVID-19 relief funding that Republicans blocked. Let Republicans, Manchin, and Sinema vote against such a popular measure at their political peril.
Background
Inflation is now at a 40-year high:
The chart above is from last December—before the Ukrainian crisis—when President Biden noted: "Gas supply companies are paying less and making a lot more, and they do not seem to be passing that on to the consumers at the pump. Instead, companies are pocketing the difference as profit. That's unacceptable." We in ISF agree.
The Department of Commerce reported at the end of December 2021 that corporate profit margins had hit the highest level in 70 years. Many of those corporations are paying little if anything in federal income taxes on the extraordinary profits they are earning by raising prices on the American people.
(Image from Nonfinancial Corporate Business: Profits After Tax)
Corporate CEOs and highly paid talking-head pundits all agree that rising oil prices are a major cause of inflation. Which is true. But the price of petroleum was going up long before the threat of war between Russia and Ukraine, because last December oil-producing nations (including Russia) and the energy cartels deliberately set out to restrict production in order to raise prices. When they started their current round of price increases, oil was under $70 a barrel. Last week crude oil closed at $113.90 a barrel. That's a 65 percent increase in just four months. Some of that increase is due to the war, which started one month ago, but most of it is greed for higher profits, pure and simple.
Oil price increases reverberate through the entire economy because everything that is manufactured and distributed for sale uses fossil-fuel energy, on which we are still too dependent. That means that the greed of Big Oil and the oil-exporting nations is going to increase costs for everything that we buy going forward. We have seen Big Oil do this time and time again. We now face a double pandemic and war emergency and it is time to impose controls on the price of oil and other energy costs.
Furthermore, by fall, the Ukraine war is going to cause a global food shortage, because both Russia and Ukraine were major exporters of food and fertilizer. But the war is taking those exports off the market, which will cause hunger in Africa and the Middle East and higher prices for everyone in the world, including us. If Big Oil is allowed to continue its price gouging without constraint, we know that Big Ag will follow suit, jacking up our food costs for excess profits.
But the bankers of the Federal Reserve have decided to "tame" inflation by raising interest rates. What they don't say in their press releases is that the way interest-rate increases fight inflation is by reducing funds available for investing in new businesses and new jobs—and for building and buying new homes. That results in fewer jobs and higher unemployment, which in turn reduces demand for goods and services, because more people are unemployed and broke, and that (eventually) results in "taming" inflation. Oh, goodie.
This is not the first time in our history that wars and natural disasters like the pandemic have destabilized the economy. In World War II, Roosevelt imposed wartime price controls that effectively constrained inflation. Those price controls ensured that high inflation never undermined public support for the war. The Defense Production Act (DPA) was enacted during the Korean War to do the same thing. Even Trump (grudgingly) used the DPA at the beginning of the pandemic. With inflation and corporate profits at insane (and unsustainable) levels, it's time once again for carefully planned strategic price controls.
References
CORPORATE PRICE GOUGING & TAX DODGING, Americans for Tax Fairness
Nonfinancial Corporate Business: Profits After Tax, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
AN ENERGY MARSHALL PLAN: Markey-Warren letter to Biden re using the DPA and military sales to boost manufacturing of electric heat pumps, efficient electric appliances, and renewable energy technology
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DRAFTING ORDER TO INVOKE DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT FOR GREEN ENERGY STORAGE TECHNOLOGY, The Intercept
Pricing Controls under the Defense Production Act, National Law Review
Could price controls be the answer to inflation that Biden is seeking? The Hill, 3/17/22
The Dirty Secret of Inflation: Corporations Are Jacking Up Prices and Profits, The Nation
Could strategic price controls help fight inflation? Isabella Weber, The Guardian 12/29/21
Approve emergency supplemental funding now to continue the fight against COVID, Action Network
Explainer: US gasoline prices could fall below $3 if oil market sustains losses | Reuters, Reuters, 11/29/21