BBB Bill Would've Allowed Millions Of Women To Work

While 6.4 million jobs were filled by workers in the last year, millions of other jobs remain unfilled. One reason is that millions of women remain out of the workforce because of issues like the lack of affordable child care. The Build Back Better Bill would have solved this problem, but too many senators refused to vote for it. They would rather complain that vote for solutions that would let women return to work.

Here is how the situation is described by Heather Long in The Washington Post:

If two years of pandemic life has taught us anything, it is that the United States urgently needs its own version of Japan’s “womenomics,” an effortto boost women in the workforce.

Omicron January has offered yet another reminder that parents, especially moms, are at a breaking point — over inadequate child care, intermittent schooling and the challenges of work, whether remote or in-person. It’s also been a warning about what happens when the U.S. economy doesn’t have enough workers: Growth slows as businesses are forced to cut hours or shut entirely. The 24-hour diner becomes the 16-hour place.

The irony of the moment is that at precisely the time when U.S. policymakers should think bigger about remaking the workplace to meet the needs of women, we are going in the wrong direction. The impending demise of Build Back Better threatens initiatives such as paid parental leave, more subsidies for child care and universal prekindergarten.

Addressing these long-standing problems is not just a matter of doing something nice for women, children and families — it’s good for the overall economy. There’s an immediate need to keep more women from quitting (or forgoing promotions) because they are burned out, but there’s also a longer-term imperative to make it easier for more women to be part of the paid workforce in the years to come.

With baby boomers retiring, the United States is likely to be short on workers for years. Immigration would help, but so would policies that specifically target enabling more women to work.

The United States used to be a global leader in advancing women in the workforce, but that’s not true anymore. In 1985, the United States was behind only Sweden in the share of women working. By 2019, the nation had fallen to 23rd, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Other nations have eclipsed the United States by following a formula: Offer flexibility, child care and paid parental leave.

In the short-term, parents need flexible scheduling from their employer to get through these covid-19 crunch periods. But to really change the game for women will require nationwide policies.

Japan launched womenomics in 2013 to try to increase the number of Japanese women in the formal workforce. It was far from perfect, but Japan’s female labor force participation rate soared above the United States and many European countries.

The core of womenomics was 14 weeks paid maternity leave, more government-subsidized child care, tax reforms to incentivize work and goals to prod employers to promote women to management ranks and to encourage men to take paternity leave.

For years there have been calls to do something similar in the United States, not to mention outrage that the United States is one of only seven countries in the world without any mandated paid maternity leave. McKinsey and S&P Global — hardly left-leaning institutions — have produced reports arguing that the key to boosting U.S. economic growth is to get more women into the paid workforce.

That urgency has only grown after the pandemic’s toll on the nation. Overall, the share of Americans working or looking for work is near the lowest levels since the 1970s. Put another way, there are 2.3 million fewer people working now than pre-pandemic, and more than half are women.

It’s a major red flag that day cares are at only 90 percent of normal staffing levels and schools are in dire need of bus drivers and substitute teachers, among other positions.

The Build Back Better package was supposed to go a long way toward addressing these problems.

“Probably the single biggest thing Build Back Better could do for the economy is boost women’s labor force participation,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former adviser to the Japanese government.

But now it’s become “Build Back Smaller.” The measure has to be pared down significantly, if anything passes at all. There still seems to be momentum for universal pre-K, but other child-care efforts are in limbo and paid family leave looks likely to be cut.

“The reason this is not a top priority is this is invisible work that gets done by generation after generation of American women,” said Alicia Sasser Modestino, associate professor at Northeastern University who has done extensive research on the impact of the pandemic on women.

There are trade-offs to any policy decisions, but let’s be blunt: America is once again on the verge of leaving women behind. That’s going to hurt families and the entire economy for years to come.

Manchin Shows His Misogyny By Killing The BBB Bill

 

Much has been made of Manchin's uncaring attitude toward child poverty by killing the Build Back Better Bill, since it will end the child tax credit (which pulled millions of children out of poverty). But it's not just children that Manchin is hurting. His action also hurts millions of women in the United States, and shows that he cares as little about women as children. He is a misogynist!

The following is part of a post by Jessica Levinson at MSNBC.com:

Failure to pass President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan will be a failure for women, particularly those who are poor or working class. The plan, which is at the top of Biden’s legislative wish list, is a $1.8 trillion initiative to strengthen this country’s safety net and address our climate crisis. The plan would, among other things, provide free preschool for 3- and 4-years-olds, fund child care, paid family leave, a child tax credit, care for elderly and disabled people, rebates and tax credits to promote clean energy, and an expanded Medicare program.

We know that women bear the lion’s share of the responsibility of taking care of children and elderly relatives. We know that these inequalities were exacerbated during the pandemic, as women took on three times as many unpaid child care hours as men did. Almost 2 million women were also forced out of the workforce, and out of their incomes.

A failure to pass Build Back Better would quickly follow Biden signing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. The majority of the jobs created by those government programs will be performed by men. This is no surprise, men currently hold 90 percent of infrastructure jobs. That’s not to say the infrastructure package is bad law; it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t spend government money on jobs that will be held predominantly by men. It means that the passage of the infrastructure bill would make the impact of not passing Build Back Better more glaring. The people who will feel the failure of the Build Back Better plan the most deeply are women. . . .

How can one Senate Democrat thwart the will of almost every other Democratic lawmaker? Because the Senate is, and was designed to be, a deeply anti-democratic institution. The Senate is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, except that Democrats now represent more than 43 million more people than Republicans. The 1.8 million West Virginians represent approximately 0.5 percent of the American population of 333 million people.

All of this — the partisan divisions and the anti-democratic institutions — is maddening and points to deep structural problems in our society. But it shouldn’t cause us to ignore another structural problem in our country: gender inequality.

It’s worth asking why the man who pulled the plug on the Build Back Better plan did so. Manchin reportedly told his colleagues that he thought poor parents would use their child tax credit payments for drugs, not for their children. The child tax credit, which will lapse if it is not continued, has cut childhood poverty by 30 percent. Research indicates that 90 percent of low-income families use money from the child tax credit for necessities and education. Manchin also apparently thought people would commit fraud and lie about being sick if a proposed sick leave policy were passed.

It is at best paternalistic, and at worst misogynistic that Manchin thinks so little of his constituents that he is willing to torpedo expanding portions of the safety net that will disproportionately assist women in being full members of our society.

We live in a society rife with inequalities. Our government had the opportunity to try to remedy some of them. This is not about giving women extra benefits, it is about remedying detriments. Many women, particularly poor women, start most races miles behind the starting line. The Build Back Better plan would have been part of an effort to help them begin the race at the same time and place as everyone else.

Why Did Manchin Kill The Build Back Better Bill?

This cartoon is by Joe Thibodeau.

On Sunday, Joe Manchin bragged on Fox News that he would vote against the Build Back Better bill. That effectively kills the bill, because it needed the votes of all 50 Democrats and Independents to pass. Why did he do that? Is it because he's rich -- he has his and doesn't care about anyone else -- especially the poor, workers, and middle class who are struggling to keep their heads above water in this inflationary recession? That's my opinion.

Here's what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich thinks at robertreich.sunstack.com:

I can’t resist opining on West Virginia senator Joe Manchin’s motive for announcing yesterday he won’t support the “Build Back Better” social and environmental package. He delivered the deathblow on Fox News Sunday (after refusing to take Joe Biden’s phone call presumably asking him not to make the announcement).

The reasons Manchin gave are absurd on their face. He must know that.

He said he’s worried about inflation and the national debt. But Build Back Better would be paid for with tax increases on big corporations and the wealthy — so it won’t have any bearing on inflation or the debt. More to the point, its sticker price of $1.75 trillion covers 10 years, during which the Congressional Budget Office projects $288 trillion worth of economic output. So a Build Back Better plan of $1.75 trillion or would amount to roughly 0.6% of gross domestic product — or slightly more than the 0.5% of GDP Americans spent last year on tobacco. And that doesn’t cover all the benefits to the economy of investing in K-12 education, childcare, and so on. 

Manchin also claimed he’s worried about the impact of the latest COVID surge on the economy. But if COVID slows the economy, that’s even more justification for federal spending that strengthens social safety nets. And even more reason to support a program that could possibly stimulate the economy in the short run. 

He said he can’t face his constituents in West Virginia without renouncing “Build Back Better.”But on a per-person basis, West Virginians would be among the biggest beneficiaries of the legislation in all America. One out of four West Virginians over 65 have no natural teeth, for example — the highest rate in the nation. Biden’s original bill provided dental benefits under Medicare.

So what’s really motivating Manchin? Four possibilities:

West Virginia is a coal state, and Manchin doesn’t want to do anything that might dampen coal production (the bill has a number of environmental measures). Possibly, but Manchin must know there’s no long-term future in mining coal regardless of what happens to this legislation. There are far fewer coal jobs left in West Virginia than there are jobs in health care. The legislation would, however, help West Virginians transition from coal to new and better jobs. And help them survive in the meantime.

He’s self-dealing. He owns stock valued at between $1 million and $5 million in Enersystems, a coal brokerage firm he founded in 1988? Last year he made half a million dollars in Enersystems dividends (roughly three times the $174,000 salary he made last year as a senator).

He’s takes bribes. He collects more campaign money from coal, oil, and gas companies than any other senator. (In June, Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy told the Greenpeace investigative unit that Manchin participated in weekly meetings with company operatives.)

He loves the power and attention. Who ever heard of Joe Manchin before the Biden administration? A minor-league Democratic senator from a small, poor state suddenly has the national spotlight and has become the biggest spoiler in the Democratic Party.

Manchin Says He Will Kill The Build Back Better Bill

Joe Manchin went on Fox News on Sunday and said he will not vote for President Biden's Build Back Better Bill. Since the bill needed all 50 Democratic votes in the Senate to pass, Manchin's announcement effectively kills the bill.

Manchin has always opposed the bill. Initially, he said he opposed it because it cost too much. He said he would not support it unless it was reduced to no more than $1.5 trillion (over ten years). Democrats believed him, and reduced the bill to less than $2 trillion (actually about $1.7 trillion).

But that didn't placate Manchin, because he was lying about the cost being the reason. Manchin owns several million in coal stocks. He opposed the bill because it included significant money to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels to attack global warming. He doesn't want that because, not only him but also his family, are too invested in coal.

He also opposes paid family leave (even though we are the only developed nation that does not have family leave guaranteed). He claims it would be socialism. But what it really is, is help for working families across the nation. Manchin has cast his lot against ordinary Americans.

In killing the bill, he is also killing more financial help for college students. He is killing the child tax credit, which has lifted many families out of poverty. He is killing help for working families to get decent child care. He is killing everything in the bill that would help ordinary Americans. But he rich, so he doesn't care.

If you are surprised by Manchin's announcement, then you have not been paying attention. Manchin has always been opposed to the bill. He should be ashamed of himself!

And don't expect him to help pass the voting rights bill either.  

GOP Is Lying - The BBB Bill Would NOT Raise Debt/Inflation

The Build Back Better Bill is currently stuck in the Senate. Not a single Republican is willing to support the bill -- because it helps ordinary Americans instead of corporations and the rich. And sadly, the media is treating the GOP lies about the Build Back Better Bill as though they had some substance. They don't!

Here is part of what economist Paul Krugman has to say about the BBB bashing: 

I guess reporting conventions require that journalists pretend to believe that Republicans have good-faith objections to the Biden plan — that they’re worried about deficits, or the effect on incentives, or something. But we all know that their main objection is simply the fact that it’s a Democratic initiative, which means that it must fail.

Also, it would tax the rich and help the poor.

Actually, can anyone even remember the last time leading figures in the G.O.P. seriously engaged with real policy concerns? The most recent important example I can think of is the enactment of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997. It has been bad faith ever since.

While the most important source of opposition to Build Back Better is simply the desire to see Biden fail while keeping the rich as rich as possible, there may be some sincere concern that the bill would increase budget deficits. Actually, it wouldn’t have a significant deficit impact — the Congressional Budget Office says that the spending is almost completely paid for, and attempts to claim otherwise aren’t credible. But even if the deficit did rise, why would that be such a bad thing?. . .

Again, most of the proposed spending would consist of highly productive investments.

Finally, there’s a lot of talk about how Build Back Better might worsen inflation — talk that mainly seems to involve failure to do the math, for example, by confusing decades with single years and failing to divide by gross domestic product.

It’s true that the bill’s $1.75 trillion price tag is, on the surface, a lot of money. But that’s spending over 10 years, which means that annual outlays would be far smaller than the $1.9 trillion rescue plan passed this year or, for that matter, the $768 billion annual defense bill the House passed last week.

Also, much of the spending would be paid for with new taxes. Furthermore, you should never cite a big-sounding budget number without putting it in context. Remember, the U.S. economy is enormous. The budget office estimates that in its first year Build Back Better would expand the deficit by 0.6 percent of gross domestic product, a number that would shrink over time.

I’m not aware of any economic model suggesting that spending on that scale would make much of a difference to inflation. And because much of the spending would expand the economy’s productive capacity, it would probably reduce inflation over time.

Is Build Back Better perfect? Of course not. But it’s the best legislation we’re likely to get for years to come. And claims that we should let this opportunity pass out of concern over fiscal responsibility or inflation are uninformed at best, dishonest at worst.

Public Supports the Build Back Better Bill By 49% to 38%

The chart above is from the Politico / Morning Consult Poll -- done on November 20th and 21st of a national sample of 1,999 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

Build Back Better Act Passes In House Of Representatives

On Friday Morning, the Build Back Better Act was passed in the House of Representatives on a 220 to 213 vote. All Republicans voted against the bill. Rep. Golden (Maine) was the only Democrat voting against the bill -- saying he opposed the provision that raised the provision raising the deduction for local and state taxes.

The bill now moves to the Senate, and Majority Leader Schumer has said he hopes to pass it before Christmas. It he's able to do that, it will give President Biden a hugely successful first year in office.

The fly in the ointment is two Democratic senators -- Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Krysten Sinema (Arizona). Neither has promised to vote for the bill. Will they gut it with amendments or try to kill it altogether? 

The BBB Bill's Cost Is Far Less Than Not Passing It!

 

The cartoon above and the post below are from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

I’ve been implementing or teaching public policy for five decades (OMG has it really been that long?), and I never cease to be amazed at what occurs when the bean counters and columnists have at it.

You’re going to hear a lot in the next day or two about the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of the cost of Biden’s Build Back Better plan, along with how much of it will be covered by proposed taxes. Beware. Putting aside the accuracy of these estimates, the exercise omits the cost of doing nothing.

Tackling climate change will be expensive, but doing nothing about climate change will cost far more. If we don’t adopt ambitious measures, untold numbers of lives will be lost and trillions will be spent coping with the consequences of our failure.

Expanding Medicare would be costly, but the price of not doing so will be in the stratosphere.  The nation already pays more for health care per person and has worse health outcomes than any other advanced country. (It’s estimated that Medicare for All would save $450 billion and prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths every year.)

Investing in universal childcare, universal pre-K, and public higher education will be expensive, too, but the cost of not making these investments will be astronomical. American productivity is already suffering, and millions of families can’t afford decent childcare or college.

It’s not just official bean counters who are failing to assess the cost of doing nothing. The media also focuses on the costs of tackling big problems without mentioning the costs of doing nothing about them. Journalists wanting to appear serious about public policy routinely rip into progressives for the costs of their proposals but never criticize so-called “moderates” for the costs of doing nothing or too little about the same problems.  

The frequently-asked question “how are we going to pay for it?” is similarly nonsensical without an assessment of the costs of doing nothing. Even if taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations were to cover only a fraction of the costs of tackling a large worsening problem, so what? As long as the costs of tackling it are less than the future costs of not doing so, it makes logical sense to tackle it.

Republican administrations have repeatedly doled out gigantic tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthy without first announcing specific cuts in public spending or other tax increases to pay for them because -- despite decades of evidence to the contrary -- they claim that the cuts will generate economic growth that will more than make up for any lost revenue. Yet when progressives propose ambitious plans for reducing verifiable costs of large and growing public problems, they’re skewered for not having ways to pay for them.   

Finally and relatedly, I’m often barraged by conservatives claiming that progressive proposals are just too big. This argument might be convincing if the problems were growing slowly. But experts on climate change, the state of the nation’s health, and childcare and education are nearly unanimous in their view that all these are worsening exponentially. 

Cautious incrementalism is wise under most circumstances. But where headwinds are turning into gales, incrementalism drives us backwards. Calling progressives “extremists” or “radicals” is absurd when they’re seeking to remedy problems that are themselves extreme and will radically harm Americans if left unattended. The status quo is not sustainable. (In my experience, young people understand all this, perhaps because they’ll live longer than the rest of us and bear the brunt of the cost of inaction.)

We can no longer pretend that climate change, a wildly-dysfunctional health care system, lack of childcare, deteriorating schools, and unaffordable higher education pose small or insignificant challenges. Doing nothing or too little about these problems has made all of them worse — and will make them far worse if we continue to do nothing or too little.

Obsessing about the costs of addressing them without acknowledging the costs of failing to address them is dangerously irresponsible.

Significant Public Support For The Build Back Better Bill

The chart above reflects the results of the new ABC News / Washington Post Poll -- done between November 7th and 10th of a national sample of 1,005 adults, with a 3.5 point margin of error.

It shows that the public supports President Biden's Build Back Better Bill.

Biden Reveals Framework For His Build Back Better Bill

It looks like Democrats have finally agreed on a framework for President Biden's Build Back Better Bill that could finally pass both houses of Congress. On Thursday, the President met with Democrats to reveal what is in the bill.

The bill is not everything that progressives wanted. It doesn't contain the free community college provision, the expanded Medicare provisions for vision and dental, Medicaid coverage for the poor in states that have not expanded it, family paid leave, and significantly cut the climate change provisions. 

But it is still a good bill. It will help working and middle class Americans, and it will provide a boost to the economy.

But it is just a framework. We'll have to see what the bill looks like after it is written. Hopefully, it will still look good, and have both Manchin and Sinema on board.

Republicans will claim it costs too much, but that will be a lie. The bill is paid for with some new taxes on the rich and corporations, and an enhanced IRS.

Below is what is still included in the bill, and how it is going to be paid for (from The NY Times):

The Ways Biden's BBB Plan Could Be Paid For

It now looks like President Biden's Build Back Better plan will cost about $1.9 to $2.0 trillion dollars. But the president doesn't want to do what the Republicans did with their tax cuts for corporations and the rich -- add trillions to the national debt. He want the program to be paid for. It hasn't been decided how that will happen. That is still being negotiated. But Hayes Brown at MSNBC.com tells us the ways that are being discussed:

Tax rate changes for the wealthy and corporations

The House Ways and Means Committee in September passed its budget reconciliation recommendations, which featured a series of tax increases to help pay the package. That included increasing the top marginal tax rate for earners over $400,000 to 39.6 percent; raising the corporate tax rate from 21 to 26.5 percent; and boosting taxes on capital gains from 20 percent to 25 percent. The corporate tax hike alone would bring in $540 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. The income and capital gains tax changes would add another $300 billion or so.

Minimum corporate tax

Because of some last-minute opposition (which I’ll get into later), the tax hikes that passed Ways and Means might not be available in the final bill. An alternative option under consideration sets a 15 percent minimum tax that corporations have to pay. “Because this minimum tax would be tied to the amount of revenue reported, corporations could not use tax deductions to zero out their obligations to the IRS,” the Washington Post reported.

Global Minimum Tax

Relatedly, multinational corporations can currently dodge many U.S. taxes through holding onto its profits in countries with lower taxes. But more than 130 nations recently agreed to set a minimum tax rate of 15 percent on all corporations’ profits. That includes the United States, which has already included the provision in the Build Back Better Act. The new minimum will both stop the “race to the bottom” between countries slashing corporate rates and disincentivize American corporations from seeking out tax havens.

Increase IRS enforcement

Wealthy Americans tend to have more complicated taxes — which makes it easier for them to avoid paying them. In the Ways and Means Committee’s legislation, the IRS would get $78.9 billion over the next 10 years for “strengthening tax enforcement activities and increasing voluntary compliance, expanding audits and other enforcement activities.” The bill’s language makes clear who’s being targeted here: “no use of these funds is intended to increase taxes on any taxpayer with taxable income below $400,000.”

The Billionaires’ Income Tax

The newest option in play in the Senate is a less intense version of the wealth tax that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has long championed:

Under the “Billionaire Income Tax” proposal, a summary of which was obtained by The Washington Post, the federal government would require billionaires to pay taxes on the increased value of their assets such as stocks on an annual basis, regardless of whether they sell those assets. Billionaires would also be able to take deductions for the annual loss in value of those assets.

It would also set up a system for taxing assets that are not easily tradable, like real estate. The tax would apply to billionaires and people earning over $100 million in income three years in a row.

Sanders Makes The Case For The Build Back Better Bill

The following is an op-ed from Senator Bernie Sanders in the Charleston Gazette-Mail:

In America today, the very rich are becoming richer while millions of working families are struggling to put food on the table or pay their bills. We now have the absurd situation in which two multi-billionaires own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans; the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 92%; and the gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time in the last 100 years.

The $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill, supported by President Biden and almost all Democrats in Congress, is an unprecedented effort to finally address the long-neglected crises facing working families and demand that the wealthiest people and largest corporations in the country start paying their fair share of taxes. In fact, this legislation would be paid for by ending loopholes and raising taxes on the 1% and large profitable corporations.

This bill would take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and lower the cost of prescription drugs in America by having Medicare negotiate prices with drug companies, something the VA already does. It is unacceptable that we continue to pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs — sometimes 10 times more than the people in other countries.

Last year alone, while nearly one out of four Americans could not afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors wrote, six of the largest pharmaceutical companies made nearly $50 billion in profits and the 10 highest-paid executives in the industry made over $500 million in compensation. In order to preserve this corrupt and greedy pricing system, the drug companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fight our legislation and have hired nearly 1,500 lobbyists, including former leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, to represent their interests. Enough is enough. We must lower prescription drug prices.

This bill would expand Medicare to cover dental care, hearing aids and eye glasses. Today, in the wealthiest nation on earth, many millions of seniors are unable to afford to go to a dentist, or buy the hearing aids and eye glasses they need. In the richest country on earth older Americans should not have teeth rotting in their mouths. That is unacceptable.

The United States, and states like West Virginia and Vermont in particular, are seeing their populations age. The result: more and more older Americans and people with disabilities need home health care. They would much prefer to be around their loved ones at home rather than be forced into expensive nursing homes. This bill greatly expands home health care and makes sure that these jobs are adequately paid.

The Build Back Better plan is not only vitally important for seniors, but it is enormously important for working families and their children. As a result of the $300 direct payments to working class parents which began in the American Rescue Plan, we have cut childhood poverty in our country by half. It would be unconscionable to see those payments end, which is exactly what will happen if we do not pass this bill.

This legislation also ends the dysfunction of our childcare system which forces millions of working families to spend 20% to 30% of their limited incomes on childcare and keeps over a million women out of the workforce. Under Build Back Better no family would pay more than 7% of their income for child care, and pre-K education for 3- and 4-year-olds would be universal and free. This is a huge step forward for working parents and their kids.

This legislation would make community college tuition free and enable our young people to acquire the skills they need to get good paying jobs and meaningful careers.

This legislation will end the embarrassment of the United States being the only major country on earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave.

This legislation will make a massive investment in low-income and affordable housing so that we no longer have 600,000 homeless Americans and millions more who spend half their incomes or more on housing.

And then there is the existential threat of climate change. With the planet becoming warmer and warmer, with unprecedented forest fires, drought, floods and extreme weather disturbances, and when scientists tell us that we only have a few years to avoid irreparable damage to our country and planet, this legislation begins the process of cutting carbon emissions and transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

And when we do all of these things, and more, we create millions of good paying jobs and offer a brighter future for our young people.

This reconciliation bill is being opposed by every Republican in Congress as well as the drug companies, the insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry and the billionaire class. They want to maintain the status quo in which the very rich get richer while ordinary Americans continue to struggle to make ends meet.

I believe that now is the time, finally, for Congress to stand up for working families and have the courage to take on the big money interests and wealthy campaign contributors who have so much power over the economic and political life of our country.

Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation. Yet, the political problem we face is that in a 50-50 Senate we need every Democratic senator to vote “yes.” We now have only 48. Two Democratic senators remain in opposition, including Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

This is a pivotal moment in modern American history. We now have a historic opportunity to support the working families of West Virginia, Vermont and the entire country and create policy which works for all, not just the few.