Contact: Johanna Kichton, [email protected], 202.660.0605
WASHINGTON, D.C.—People’s Action Campaigns Director Sondra Youdelman today released the following statement in response to President Biden’s American Families Plan:
“We are heartened to see President Biden’s commitment to working class families. There is enormous potential to jumpstart our economy by redistributing the wealth in our country to make sure everyone has what they need.
“Several parts of this package do that. Rewarding care work and ensuring families can pay for child care and get paid leave will lessen the load on hardworking and overwhelmed families. Providing free pre-k will make sure all our children start off strong. Unemployment insurance dependent on economic conditions will help protect workers when the economy is suffering. Free tuition for the first two years of community college is a start towards free college. And increasing taxes for those who can afford it, and ensuring they pay, will make sure everyone is doing their part and gets taken care of.
“But President Biden still missed the mark in big ways that could have helped struggling families. We’re disappointed that healthcare provisions in the American Families Plan were not as robust as we need, especially amidst a pandemic that pushed our public healthcare system to the brink. We need to force pharmaceutical companies to the negotiating table by having Medicare negotiate drug prices, and then reinvest those savings into the Medicare system. We must lower the age for Medicare to cover more people. This is a rare and missed opportunity to save money in the federal budget, take corporations head-on, and put people over profit. We also need to make the child tax credit permanent and include a pathway to citizenship, so that all families are supported. And we wish the tax hikes on the rich included an estate tax so that people with generations of wealth pay their fair share.
“People’s Action and our member groups are committed to winning big for families. We’re ready to build on the good in this package and help President Biden and Congress make it great.”
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People’s Action is a national network of 40 state and local grassroots, power-building organizations in 30 states, united in fighting for justice. We operate the largest progressive rural organizing project in the country. People’s Action and its member organizations coordinated one of the biggest distributed organizing programs in rural areas this election season.