Invest in the rest of us! It’s time to pass our budget reconciliation priorities!

The House has until Sept. 27 to get the budget reconciliation package passed, the legislative vehicle for passing an inclusive recovery package. This means we’re in a key moment for advocacy as we fight to win the most progressive reconciliation bill possible. The House is moving on the bill first – that means you need to call your Representative and make sure they’re supporting these essential policies.

Some “moderate” Democrats are pulling back on the optics of the $3.5 trillion cost of the Biden’s Build Back Better plan. We know that corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors are whispering in their ears. But this is 2021, and we’re keeping tabs on where our money has gone…

Action #1 – Call/email your legislators now! Pick your script length here!

Option #1 – Mini-script for calling: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Rep. [___] to support, along with the reconcilation package, Biden’s Build Back Better plan – a $3.5 trillion MINIMUM investment in our healthcare, eldercare, childcare, education, housing, child tax credits, clean energy and more. I want it funded by making big corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. It’s time for our tax code to reward work, not wealth.

Option #2 – Longer script for calling/emailing: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Rep. [___] to support both the reconciliation package and Biden’s Build Back Better plan – $3.5 trillion MINIMUM in investments in what regular Americans need. I want it funded by making big corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. It’s time for our tax code to reward work, not wealth.

(Use the “red” statements and what you want of the sub-points)

President Biden’s Build Back Better plan will create millions of good-paying jobs and help ease the burden of high costs facing working families.
- The plan will make sure the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share of taxes. It will not raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year.
- Last year, 55 of America’s biggest corporations paid no federal income taxes.
- During the pandemic while tens of millions suffered, the wealth of America’s 700 billionaires rose by $1.8 trillion, or 62%. That’s enough to pay for more than half of the president’s ten-year Build Back Better plan.
Instead of continuing tax breaks for huge corporations and tax loopholes for the rich, let’s grow our economy and create jobs by investing in roads and bridges, the environment, clean energy, and education, and by making healthcare, prescriptions, childcare, eldercare and housing affordable.
- This $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan will do this by creating an economy that works for all of us. And it will create a tax system that rewards work, not wealth.
The House Ways and Means tax plan raises just $2.1 trillion of the $3.5 trillion President Biden proposed. More needs to be done:
- It must guarantee that billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk pay more in taxes than they do now. The House tax plan doesn’t do that because it doesn’t close the Billionaires Loophole, known as stepped-up basis.
- The House tax plan doesn’t fully close the loopholes that allow multinational corporations to dodge tens of billions of dollars a year in U.S. taxes by shifting profits to offshore tax havens.
- The House tax plan doesn’t do enough to make sure that rich tax cheats and corporations can no longer get off scot-free as they illegally evade hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes every year. The way to stop that is to approve the financial reporting requirements that President Biden wants banks to adopt so the IRS can track the money that’s flowing in and out of the bank accounts of the rich but is not being reported on their taxes.

Option #3 – Maxi-script for email: [I’m calling from [zip code] and] I want Rep. [___] to use the budget reconciliation bill to invest in Biden’s Build Back Better plan for the rest of us, the 99% of Americans who’ve helped create the exponential wealth of our top 1%. Our tax dollars funded trillions on tax cuts and profits for billionaires and corporations and supported endless wars, with little for regular Americans to show for it but injured soldiers, ruined small businesses and financial instability. Now we demand you act to create legislation that centers us – the 99% – that’s taking our health, our education, our communities, along with our responsibilities to our children, our elders and our future generations seriously. A $3.5 million investment is a deal, not a burden, and we know that closing loopholes like the step-up tax will NOT harm small farms and family businesses. We’re watching carefully to see if [he/she] understands how important this is to us.

[You can add this on if you want to…it all fits in Brownley’s email box]

Here are the priorities that are important to me:

Invest in a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants;
- Citizenship for DACA recipients, TPS holders, and essential workers.
- Inclusion of all immigrants in the recovery package.
Give us a pathway to accessible, dignified health care:
- Use medicare to negotiate drug prices, limit launch prices and tie prices to equivalents in peer countries. Ensure low-cost or free life-saving prescriptions available to all. No more insulin deaths!
- Expanding Medicare to cover vision, dental, and hearing.
- Lowering the eligibility age to 60 years old;
Invest in our Climate, including a Clean Energy Standard (with NO FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES!) and a Civilian Climate Corps;
Invest in our Care Economy, including universal child care, child tax credits for millions of families,federally guaranteed paid leave for all, and creating good jobs in the home and community based-care sector;
Invest in our housing, especially deeply affordable housing and housing for unhoused populations; and
Invest in our good will. Pay for this package and address extreme wealth inequality at the same time – a two-fer! Taxing the ultra rich and big corporations so they finally pay their fair share.
- Fund the IRS so they can both effectively deliver emergency payments and take on wealthy tax cheats.
- Restore the inheritance tax basis used prior to the 2017 Tax Scam.
- Make millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate as everyone else into the Social Security trust fund and increase the income tax exemption on low-income recipients. Set the minimum level 25% above poverty level and tie it to a wage index so seniors don’t fall behind.
- Close the stepped-up basis loophole. Don’t let the GOP use family farm horror stories from the last century as an excuse. Not only has that not been true for decades, families who continue farming and small businesses are exempt from Biden’s plan.

(NOTE: if your legislator is hiding behind the GOP fiction that closing the step-up basis will hurt small farmers and family-owned owned business, make sure they know that IT WILL NOT! AAUGH! BROWNLEY AND CARBAJAL were among those who signed this letter.)

Contact:

Rep. Julia Brownley (CA-26): email, DC (202) 225-5811, Oxnard (805) 379-1779, T.O. (805) 379-1779
or Rep. Salud Carbajal (CA-24): email. DC (202) 225-3601, SB (805) 730-1710 SLO (805) 546-8348
Who is my representative/senator?: https://whoismyrepresentative.com

Action #2 – Spread the word on social media!

It is possible that the House of Representatives may vote on President Biden’s historic $3.5 trillion Build Back Better (BBB) plan this Friday, Sep. 24, if the majority of votes can be secured. That’s a tall order as there is not yet majority support for the $3.5 trillion level of spending, the taxes that will be raised to pay for it, and whether to give Medicare authority to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. To secure the votes to WIN we need to mobilize this week like never before.

A massive lobbying effort is underway by thousands of corporate lobbyists — from Big Pharma, to Big Tech, to Big Oil, to the Chamber of Commerce. They oppose many elements of the $3.5 trillion package, AND they oppose how President Biden proposes to pay for it — by making the rich and corporations pay their fair share, and giving Medicare the ability to negotiate for lower Rx prices to save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

Contact your friends and family who live in the following “swing” states to lobby their U.S. Representative with phone calls and emails as well. (AZ, CA, GA, HI, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NY, OR, TX, VA, and WA).
Call your U.S. Representative this week — more than once if you have the time. The more calls the better. We are doing a national Call Congress all day Weds., Sep. 22.

ATF’s toll-free number is 1-888-516-5820. Provide your zip code and you will be connected to your member of Congress.

Or go to this click to call link and provide your phone number and zip code and you will get a call back that patches you through to the office. The system does not keep your phone number.

Script for calling: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Rep. [___] to support $3.5 trillion MINIMUM in investments in healthcare, eldercare, childcare, education, housing, child tax credits, clean energy and more and I want it funded by making big corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. It’s time for our tax code to reward work, not wealth.

More actions to take?

Lots of resources and talking points here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fvCzT93UdCGb1wYgHFfLMZdk30fJ5CNG_HU_2w88PnQ/edit

Unfortunately, some conservative Democrats already showed they are willing to threaten the reconciliation package. This is unacceptable. Here is the list of Democrats who need to hear that you expect them to stop obstructing Biden’s recovery agenda:

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05)
Rep. Vincente Gonzalez (TX-15)
Rep. Filemon Vela (TX-34)
Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Rep. Jared Golden (ME-02)
Rep. Ed Case (HI-01)
Rep. Kurt Schrader (OR-05)
Rep. Jim Costa (CA-16)
Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (GA-07)
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (FL-07)

Seriously, do they think we didn’t notice…

Did they think we didn’t notice the GOP’s 2017 Tax Scam, which mostly benefited the wealthy and corporations, will cost us nearly $1.9 trillion over 10 years? (possibly up to $3 trillion through 2029)That it didn’t solve any of the problems regular American families face, such unaffordable child care and hospital bills, the high cost of education, decades-long wage stagnation and growing inequality?
- Did they think we didn’t notice that the GOP intends to cut our social safety net – Medicare and Social Security – to pay for their 2017 scam if and when they return to power?

Do they think we don’t remember how the wealthy and corporations profited from the $4 trillion COVID bailout? (Seriously, we’re still pissed about this.)
- How the GOP snuck a $170 billion tax benefit into the 2020 CARES Act in which 82% of the benefits will go to just about 43,000 taxpayers, mostly hedge fund investors, or like our ex-president, a real estate business owners.
- How the wealthy and large corporation got first shot at the SBA loans. How more than half ($2.3 trillion) went to many businesses that weren’t required to show that they were impacted or keeping workers employed.
- How $651 billion in tax breaks didn’t stop companies from laying off workers – the Cheesecake Factory, for example, got a $50 million tax break and laid of 41,000 people.
- How $454 billion went to the Federal Reserve to stabilize markets, allowing companies like Wells Fargo, At&T and others to borrow at a lower lower rate, while still laying off workers.
- How corporations used their $670 billion Paycheck Protection Program for CEO packages, for stock buybacks, and for dividends and acquisitions, instead of protecting employees’ paychecks.

Do you think we didn’t read that over 50 large corporation paid zero in taxes last year? That the nation’s 25 richest people paid only $13.6 billion in federal income taxes between 2014 and 2018, or about 16 percent of their reported income over that period — and a very, very small sliver of their wealth. A 16% tax rate is lower than the rate a single worker making $45,000 a year would pay, including Medicare and Social Security taxes.