On November 10, People’s Action joins allies across the country to demand Congress pass a strong Build Back Better Act. We are standing up to corporations who want to buy off lawmakers to derail these popular proposals, which can deliver direct assistance to millions of people in need.
People’s Action and a coalition of grassroots and immigrant justice organizations, including We Are Home, Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), Corazón, The People’s Lobby, POWER-LA, Bay Area Rising and San Francisco Rising, VOCAL-NY and MIchigan United are leading actions at the offices of Goldman Sachs and other corporations to draw attention to their efforts to buy off lawmakers to block passage of key elements of the Build Back Better agenda, including reforms of taxes, financial services, paid family leave and pharmaceutical drug pricing.
“I’m enrolled in Medicare and I have to pay out of pocket for my dental care. Dental comes second when you have to pay for food and nutrition. #BigPharma rigs the game so they always win. That ain’t right!” —Carmen Betances, @SeniorCaucus
The Facts
Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema won her seat by promising to make the rich pay their fair share and to lower drug prices. Instead, she’s taking huge amounts of money from Big Pharma and Wall Street, protecting Trump’s tax cuts, and blocking the very pieces of the Build Back Better initiative that would fulfill her campaign promises.
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By the end of September, Sinema had taken roughly $1 million from the industry groups fighting to gut Biden’s Build Back Better initiative. Those groups include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the RATE Coalition, the National Association of Manufacturers, and PhRMA.
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In the third quarter of 2021, Sinema reported receiving more than $27,000 from the PACs of pharmaceutical companies. She also took thousands of personal donations from the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists.
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Sinema has taken $85,850 in donations from Goldman Sachs so far this cycle.
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In the last three months, Goldman Sachs president John Waldron made a maxed-out donation to Sinema of $5,800, and PACs for the financial services industry gave more than $50,000.
The Facts
While West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin lives on a yacht, drives a Maserati, and blocks crucial poverty- and inequality-reduction pieces of the Build Back Better initiative, almost a third of the children in his state live in families that are either “not getting enough to eat or behind on housing payments.”
- No state in the lower 48 states is more vulnerable to worsening flooding from climate change than West Virginia, but Manchin is siding with fossil fuel companies and blocking BBB’s central climate provisions.
- Manchin took hundreds of thousands of dollars from fossil fuel donors in his most recent fundraising quarter, including contributors who “normally back Republicans.”
- Manchin took $74,600 in the third quarter of 2021 from employees and the PAC of Energy Transfer Partners (Dakota Access Pipeline), whose CEO was a fundraiser for Trump.
- Manchin took thousands of dollars from Harold Hamm, a fracking magnate who gave half a million dollars to Trump’s superPAC.
- Trump donor and billionaire Nelson Peltz says he calls Manchin every week.
- This cycle, Manchin has taken $76,000 from Goldman Sachs.
Both Manchin and Sinema took money from Big Tobacco in the most recent fundraising quarter.
