It has been 3 months since Congress passed the bill that gave many of $1200, while leaving others out. There has been nothing to help with rents and mortgages or to help landlords, which means a HUGE housing crash when the economy opens up and 25% of us get eviction notices.
The people who have lost their jobs need Medicare For All and a $2000 UBI for all the months of the lockdown. But instead of sending a bill with those things to the Senate for a vote, Speaker Pelosi wrote a bill with Cobra instead of Medicare For All and removed UBI from the bill, but including a bailout for lobbyists. McConnell clearly doesn’t like this bill, but Pelosi really wants people who lost their jobs to get shafted with Cobra, so she’s not sending another bill.
Meanwhile, millions of people never received the FIRST $1200 check and it’s been three months! Was Congress worried about the homeless? No. Was Congress worried about families with an undocumented immigrant that didn’t get the check? No. What about starving students, most of which, it seems, did not get a check? Is Congress worried about them? No.
Well, what IS Congress worried about? There are millions of people who never got help. There are millions and millions without health insurance. They’re worried about renaming military bases named after Confederates, they’re worried about some story about Russian bounties, which even if it’s true, wouldn’t be anything new between the two countries. We’ve been fighting proxy wars, trying to use others to kill each other, for decades. And they’re worried about November. That’s right, elections. Rep. Anna Eshoo even has a bill that addresses microtargeting of political ads.
But if Members of Congress were REALLY worried about November (hint: it’s more profitable being the opposition party) they would want you, the voters, to see that they truly cared about you and your ability to survive this crisis. They would be fighting for Medicare For All and would be saying, over and over if they had to, that “we have to get the people some help”. If YOUR Representative and Senators aren’t doing THAT, I guess you know where they stand.
What can you do? Well, you can start by contacting your elected representatives and telling them what you want them to support. Demand they fight for you. And you can share this information and advise others to do the same. Will it make any difference? It depends on how many people contact them.
Jason Kishineff
American Canyon
