Such a tremendous response to my message yesterday about Public Citizen’s Campaign for a Progressive Presidency.

I’ve copied it below in case you missed it. I know it’s not exactly brief — the challenges before us demand something bold and comprehensive — but please at least skim through it so you’re up to date on our plans for the coming year.

And, if you can, please make a year-end donation today. Anything you can chip in will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

Even better, if you join our popular Sustainers program as a monthly donor, your contribution will be matched dollar-for-dollar each and every month for one full year.

Thank you!

- Robert

******

There is relief, to be sure, in knowing that Donald Trump will soon be out of the White House.

But the disposal of the most corrupt, callous, and incompetent administration in generations — and arguably in all of American history — will not by itself repair the damage of the past four years.

And Trump’s exit alone will not launch this country forward with plans to address our most urgent needs.

To do that, we need to maintain a high level of public mobilization and increase our engagement with the machinery of government now that it will again be possible to influence policy with persuasion, evidence, and pressure.

Will Joe Biden be the transformative president we need? Will he govern, as he says he aims to do, in the vein of FDR?

The answer is: Joe Biden will be exactly as progressive, bold, and effective as we make him be. He will not be our savior — we will be our own saviors.

In short, this is not the time to catch our collective breath.

This is the time to intensify our no-holds-barred advocacy.

And Public Citizen is ready to do just that.

Whether we can carry out and deliver on our plan to win far-reaching change under the Biden administration — to make our country more just and democratic, to rein in corporate power and crack down on corporate abuse, to recover from the coronavirus catastrophe and avert climate disaster — depends, in large part, on us.

It’s going to take all of us — the team here at Public Citizen along with you and hundreds of thousands of Public Citizen members and supporters all across America — pulling together to make this work.

What follows is a detailed plan for how we are going to make great things happen together.

This is almost certainly the longest email I’ve ever sent you. The challenges we as a nation find ourselves in demand nothing less. Even so, I’m only beginning to scratch the surface here. Please take a few minutes to give this a look.

THE PLAN

The Biden presidency presents us with the opportunity not just to reverse the damage and cruelty inflicted on the country by Trump, but to slingshot forward with transformative, structural change that speaks to the great needs of the country.
To achieve these objectives, we have to be incredibly strategic and we have to mobilize the public like never before.

We’re ready.

Here’s the theory that informs our plan:

1. We have to focus on key priorities during the transition, which will set the arc of the administration.

2. The pandemic is defining society and will do so for as long as it lasts. We must win pandemic relief commensurate with the scale of the crisis.

3. We must win transformative democracy reform, which will knock down the barriers to advancing the policies America wants and needs.

4. We have to operate strategically and at scale to drive forward a wide range of bold legislative proposals that will make our country more just and fair, limit corporate power, and avert catastrophic climate change.

5. We must leverage the power of the executive branch so that the Biden administration can make real change even if Mitch McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader.

Read on for the full plan.

I. WINNING THE TRANSITION

With good reason, “personnel is policy” has become almost a mantra in Washington, D.C. Public Citizen will make recommendations for who occupies top positions in a Biden administration, but our signature contribution will be on personnel policy.

During the transition, nothing will be more important than pushing the incoming administration to adopt a tough revolving door policy, so that corporate lobbyists, corporate lawyers, and corporate executives do not control the administration.

We helped write the Obama revolving door executive order (and now have improvements we would like to see), which prohibited lobbyists from holding top positions in government.

The policy was imperfect, but it worked. A direct result was the absence of scandal in the Obama administration.

We have been advocating aggressively with the Biden transition and building strong coalition support for a strengthened revolving door policy.

We live in the real world. Any revolving door policy will have exceptions. It’s clear that a Biden administration will make significant exceptions to bring in a number of people personally close to Biden. But if we can limit the ease of corporate entrance into the administration, it will make a big difference.

It matters, for example, if health insurance lobbyists are designing health care policy, or if corporate defense attorneys are running the Department of Justice divisions.

Along with our inside game, we will be organizing loudly and publicly to keep corporate representatives out of the administration.

While a revolving door policy is our top concern during the transition, it is only a piece of the broad advocacy we are conducting.

On our own or in coalitions we spearhead, we have prepared detailed memos for the Biden transition team with recommendations for Day 1, for the first 100 days, and for longer-term priorities.

The memos address topics ranging from rolling back harmful Trump deregulatory schemes to holding Wall Street accountable for financing projects that worsen climate change, from using existing legal authority to cut medicine prices to passing measures that make voting easier, and much, much more.

We are framing the arguments to build on Biden’s campaign promises and to make specific recommendations, not just offering hortatory language about “being bold.”

The transition teams don’t enact policy, but they do help set early priorities, tee things up for immediate action, and influence who will be appointed to key positions.

Public Citizen advocates are participating in dozens of meetings and conversations with transition team members, pushing for our priorities.

II. CONFRONTING COVID

The pandemic is the dominant social, health, economic, educational, and political issue of the day.

The first order of business for a Biden administration and the new Congress will be a COVID relief bill. How big and what’s in it, however, remain up for grabs.

The scale of the pandemic demands aggressive responses — both to address immediate needs and to address issues implicated by the pandemic — and we will push to ensure any relief measures meet the moment.

The good news is, we’ll have an administration that supports science-based policy.

Public Citizen is playing a leading advocacy role on at least two dozen discrete COVID-related issues.

These include:
And that’s only a partial list!

We will also be advocating for funding levels in a COVID relief bill at the scale needed — trillions — and for a long list of specific needs, including unemployment compensation, support for state and local governments, funding for schools, money for nutrition support, funding to aid particularly hard-hit constituencies such as Native American communities and people with disabilities, and much more.

We will run a full-throated advocacy campaign to ensure the COVID relief package is as bold as it needs to be, and to ensure our priorities will be included.

This effort will include:
Our efforts will not be only legislatively focused. Executive agencies, from the Food and Drug Administration to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, have authority over many of these matters. We have extensive experience working with and influencing these agencies, leveraging our technical insights with our advocacy acumen.

There is no doubt that if we can devote sufficient attention and resources, we will win a number of quick and crucial victories from these agencies.

III. PREVENTING VACCINE APARTHEID

The world is on track for a global vaccine apartheid, where access to a vaccine is rationed based on where you live and how much money you have.

In this scenario, hundreds of thousands of people in poorer countries will die needlessly, and the economies of lower-income countries will be shackled while rich countries return to operating without quarantines and coronavirus restrictions. Already more than 170 million people in poor countries have been thrown into severe poverty.

This is utterly unacceptable.

And it is completely avoidable.

With the United States in the lead, the world can solve the global supply problem with a two-pronged approach:
The U.S. government has authority under existing law to pursue both prongs of this agenda, although new legislation would make it easier and could provide a forceful mandate for U.S. governmental action.

Much more important than the details, however, is building political support. We have led the way since the first days of the pandemic in highlighting the imperatives around treatment and vaccine pricing, access, and supply — as well as the central role of public investment in coronavirus-related technologies.

Now we are adding staff and hoping to scale up further to win the global fight for access.

From the onset of the pandemic, Public Citizen has led and helped shape policy understanding around vaccine development, including by showing over and over that public investment underlies all coronavirus R&D and every one of the leading vaccine candidates. This work builds on our decades-long work for access to essential medicines in the United States and around the world.

Our goal is for President Biden to announce that the United States is committed to sharing coronavirus vaccine technology and know-how with the world, to enable qualified manufacturers around the world to begin production once approval has been granted to a vaccine, and to help manufacture the vaccine to meet global demand.

If the president were to announce a commitment to this approach, it very likely could be negotiated with vaccine intellectual property holders and manufacturers, without resort to compulsory tools, though those exist. In this scenario, the vaccine companies would be well and fairly compensated.

With this single grand gesture, President Biden would re-establish the U.S. global leadership and moral authority that is now in tatters. The United States would demonstrate its re-engagement with the world, commitment to global solidarity and well-being, and readiness to share our scientific and technological prowess in the face of global threats.

IV. SAFEGUARDING DEMOCRACY

If our government is going to address the enormous challenges we face, we must have a working democracy.

It’s as simple as that.

In 2018, amid the horror of the Trump administration, we convened a three-day meeting among core allies to build a long-term strategy for democracy reform.

We all recognized the severe crisis of democracy that Trump represented and the imperative of undoing that damage.

But we also knew that there are deeper problems, problems we and others had long been working on.

What we resolved together was to build a stronger, bigger, and broader coalition for democracy than had ever been brought together.

We agreed that “a moment” would present in response to Trump and that we had to be ready — with a response that was not just about addressing problems like the president maintaining ownership of a global business empire while in office but also dealt with core issues of Big Money dominance of elections, voting rights, and improper corporate influence.

That meeting led to the creation of the Declaration for American Democracy, the biggest pro-democracy organizational coalition in memory. Its roster of more than 100 groups includes labor, environmental, racial justice, faith, community, consumer, women’s rights, and many other organizations.

Public Citizen and the Declaration for American Democracy worked with Rep. John Sarbanes and the House of Representatives to craft legislation that reflected our original vision.

The result was the For the People Act, introduced in 2019 as H.R.1 — the first major piece of legislation of the last Congress. The For the People Act:
The For the People Act passed the House in March 2019. Mitch McConnell refused to give it consideration in the Senate.

Now, the moment we anticipated in 2018 is upon us. The For the People Act will again be a top priority in the House of Representatives. And, with the support of President Biden, we aim to drive it through the Senate, Mitch McConnell or not.

Winning will require a massive, scaled up campaign, with our broad coalition activating their grassroots members across the country; hiring organizers and mobilizing in key states; carrying out a hard-hitting public education campaign; unleashing a fierce online campaign using paid and earned media; enlisting high-level validators, including Republicans; and leaving no stone unturned in a sustained lobby campaign.

Beating Mitch McConnell is not easy, but nor is it impossible. Just this last Congress, we forced him to appropriate $400 million in election security funding that he ardently opposed. The trick was, simply, applying enough pressure.

When we win passage of the For the People Act (along with companion legislation to restore and advance the Voting Rights Act), it will remake the terrain of American politics. It won’t eliminate corporate influence, but it will meaningfully diminish it — opening the door to winning victories on policies that Americans overwhelmingly favor but which are blocked, time and again, by the corporate lobby and its politician proxies.

V. DRIVING A BOLD, PROGRESSIVE AGENDA IN CONGRESS

As desperate as Americans are to escape from Trump, we can’t allow our agenda to be limited to undoing Trump’s damage. (Though we definitely need to do that!) The country’s needs — even before the pandemic — are far too serious and urgent.

The first six months of a Biden administration will be crucial. That is when Biden will have the political capital to get the most done and to advance the boldest initiatives.

Our belief is that if Biden is able to enact bold reform that people understand and that delivers real benefits — starting with getting the pandemic under control and bringing economic relief commensurate with the scale of the crisis, which is likely to worsen in coming months — it will renew his political capital and enable him to win still more.

(Does Mitch McConnell change the equation? Not really. If McConnell controls the Senate, then we still want to push through the boldest possible agenda — and, with the aid of a President Biden, focus on McConnell and his cronies for blocking it. Should we think about compromise? Absolutely. But the best, strongest, and most-likely-to-be-achieved compromises will come after we build public support and push bold proposals through the House — increasing our leverage against McConnell.)

Our first two priorities — and the first priorities of the new administration and Congress — will be COVID relief and democracy.

But we have a robust agenda that goes far beyond that:

Slashing Drug Prices

Allying with the House Progressive Caucus, we pushed hard to make legislation on drug pricing, passed by the House in 2020, far stronger than its earlier versions. In the new Congress, we will leverage our deep expertise on drug pricing and patent monopolies to push for the strongest legislation possible to crack down on Big Pharma price gouging and ensure affordable medicines.

Our campaigning will involve grassroots organizing (highlighting case studies of people denied access to medicines they desperately need), a focus on the outrageous profits and CEO pay in the industry, traditional and social media strategies, engagement with the new administration, and much more. Aggressive measures to address Pharma profiteering score 90% or more public support. Our challenge is overcoming Big Pharma’s political power.

Averting Catastrophic Climate Change

Over the past several years, we led an intensive process through the U.S. Climate Action Network to develop a policy platform to combat the climate crisis effectively while advancing justice for workers and frontline communities. The platform includes transitioning the electric grid to 100% renewable energy, replacing internal combustion engines with zero-emission vehicles, implementing sustainable agricultural practices, retrofitting existing buildings, and more — on a timetable fast enough to avert climate catastrophe. 175 diverse organizations endorsed the platform.

Now, that platform will be transformed into desperately needed legislation. Without compromising with ourselves, we will also support measures that are compatible with the approach but are less comprehensive. Specifically, the best immediate hope for far-reaching legislation may be focused largely or entirely on new investments: in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and support for sustainable farming. In other words, support for the good, without mandating an end to the bad.

With a framework that addresses ecological imperatives and advances racial and economic justice and equity, we believe we can help pull together a coalition broad and strong enough to win meaningful action.

Investing in Infrastructure

Infrastructure investments are perhaps the most likely subject of bipartisan agreement in the coming Congress and they were a central component of Biden’s campaign. Major public investments in infrastructure will gain an additional boost as a means to kickstart the economy as it comes out of the pandemic.

We foresee an infrastructure bill as serving crucial unmet needs to repair and construct new pipes, bridges, schools, libraries, rail systems, and more.

It will also be a way to advance complementary objectives: addressing the climate crisis; rebuilding American industry; supporting unions and paying workers a fair wage; providing access to health care and Internet services to underserved communities; and much more.

Along with supporting a large-scale bill, we will focus on advancing these complementary goals. We will draft legislative language to facilitate these purposes and lobby for their inclusion in an overarching bill; pull together cross-cutting coalitions to rally for our specific, strategic inputs; educate the public on the major opportunities to promote equity, justice, health, and a clean environment through public infrastructure investments; and mobilize grassroots support both for an overarching bill and our specific priorities.

Expanding Health Coverage, Advancing Medicare

Whatever the short-term prospects for Medicare for All, depending on the ultimate composition of the Senate, we have a very good chance of winning meaningful expansion of health coverage. Our top priority is to lower the Medicare eligibility age, which would sweep millions of Americans into automatic insurance coverage, covering the most vulnerable and enabling earlier retirements for those who so desire. We will throw our fast-growing grassroots Medicare for All campaign behind this effort.

Taking on Monopolies

Earlier this year, the House subcommittee on antitrust released a watershed report on the impact of monopoly on America and the failure of antitrust agencies and law. We are now primed for a major rewrite of antitrust law that recognizes the manifold ways in which monopolistic companies leverage their economic power to injure consumers and competitors, and that recognizes bigness and monopoly as a per se threat to democracy and society, conferring too much political and social power on giant corporations.

Corporate Crime

Corporate wrongdoing costs more in lives, injuries, and dollars than street crime. yet it is rarely treated as crime. This despite the fact that corporations and executives are the ultimate “rational actors” — if the risk and cost of punishment is too great, they will follow the law. We have drafted legislation, previously introduced, that will establish this simple principle:

It is a crime for a corporation or executive to conceal information about business practices or products that pose an imminent risk of death.

In other words, recklessly endangering workers and consumers will be a crime. (If you’re wondering — yes, it is the case that no such crime is presently defined in the criminal code, though such actions may be considered homicide in some instances.)

Overturning Citizens United

The evidence continues to amass in favor overturning Citizens United — the Supreme Court ruling that unleashed Dark Money and unlimited political spending by corporations and the super-rich. While there is every reason to believe that a Supreme Court with a Justice Merrick Garland would have overturned the heinous decision, there’s no prospect of the current court doing so, making it all the more important that we win a constitutional amendment.

Until the pandemic hit, we were on course to secure a House vote on the amendment in 2020. We will continue our amazingly successful grassroots campaigning going forward, seeking a vote on the amendment in both the House and the Senate.

VI. EMPOWERING EXECUTIVE ACTION

Whether or not Mitch McConnell has the power to obstruct a progressive agenda in Congress, we will also be advocating and campaigning for a broad agenda of executive action to undo the harms of the Trump era and to advance key priorities for consumer protection, worker rights, health and safety, democracy, ecological sustainability, and justice.

The executive branch has a lot of power to make change on its own — by issuing executive orders, changing the way it implements programs, making law enforcement decisions, and promulgating new, binding rules and standards.

Creative use of executive power can be hugely impactful. We saw that power used for evil with the Trump administration, most notably in immigration policy but also in many other areas. Now, drawing on both our campaigning skills and our unparalleled legal and technical expertise, we are going to help make sure that executive power is used for good.

A priority across government will be to undo the damage wrought by Trump — to reverse the executive orders, rules, guidance, interpretations, and policies his administration adopted, often in blatant violation of the law.

But our ambitions go far beyond that.

Here are a dozen key examples (this is a very partial list) of what we aim to get accomplished through executive action. For each of these items, we have a discrete campaign plan ready to activate and a network of allies we will bring together to support the plan.

Drug Pricing
The Secretary of Health and Human Services has the power to authorize generic competition for drugs that remain on patent under two separate statutory authorities (for drugs developed with public financial support and for government programs). Using this power just once — or even threatening seriously to use it — would stop price spikes and bring down prices across the board. Public Citizen is the leading expert on using these authorities and we will work with the Biden administration to make sure they are deployed.

Stopping Systemic Ripoffs
The then-Republican-controlled Congress repealed a rule in 2017 that would prohibit “forced arbitration” provisions in consumer financial contracts that prevent ripped off consumers from suing in court or banding together in class action lawsuits. These ripoff provisions essentially give banks and others a license to steal in small sums, adding up to billions. We will win a stronger version of the rule, as well as bans on provisions that prevent victims from going to court in other areas of the economy, from nursing homes to student loans. Billions of dollars are at stake.

Protecting Farm Workers
Rising temperatures are making exposure to excessive heat a life-and-death issue for millions of workers, especially farm workers, who are overwhelmingly immigrants. Having petitioned previously, we are now poised to win a heat protection standard (requiring water, time in the shade, and breaks) that will meaningfully improve the lives of millions toiling in the fields and other hot places.

Dangerously Excessive CEO Pay
The Dodd-Frank financial reform law passed a decade ago required regulators to issue a rule to prevent executive compensation plans that put banks and financial institutions at risk (e.g., pay packages that reward sudden share price spikes). We will win this binding rule in the Biden administration.

Making Big Business Follow the Law
We led the way in documenting the failure of regulatory enforcement under Trump, showing that fines fell by 90% in the first year of his administration. We will push not just for a renewed commitment to enforce the law, but for a meaningful expansion of law enforcement efforts against corporate criminals and law-breakers. This makes a huge difference. For example, the Trump administration’s policy of not enforcing quality standards for nursing homes led directly to the horrific and needlessly high COVID death rates in those facilities.

Corporate Political Spending Disclosure
There’s nothing in Citizens United that requires Dark Money. An executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their political spending and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule requiring disclosure by publicly traded companies would go a long way to ending corporate Dark Money expenditures. We’ve led the charge for both — with more than 1 million public comments to the SEC favoring such a rule — and will push forward during the Biden presidency.

Combating Voter Suppression
We will advocate for federal agencies like the Social Security Administration and the Indian Health Service to provide voter registration service to their clients. And, with allies, we will push the Department of Justice to do everything in its power to crack down on state efforts aimed at keeping voters of color from the polls.

Fair Trade
The president has vast power to shape the direction of U.S. trade policy — with extensive implications for both the U.S. and global economy. We will build on our longtime, cutting-edge advocacy so that the U.S. advocates for trade policy that benefits workers and consumers, not multinational corporations. As one example, we aim to lock in place — and expand — our recent victory by which the U.S. government has ended support in trade deals for special rights for corporations to sue governments.

Protecting Privacy
The United States has virtually no national privacy policy, outside of protection for medical records and modest safeguards for young children. Even in the absence of new legislation, the executive branch could insist that government contractors — inclusive of most major companies — adopt robust protections for users’ privacy and limit surveillance and tracking of their users.

Stopping Mega-Mergers
The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission maintain guidelines that establish when mergers are presumptively OK and when they are not. Those guidelines have evolved in a bad direction for decades and were materially worsened under Trump. We expect them to be revised under Biden’s leadership. Our role will be to toughen them considerably, in order to slow the rapid consolidation of economic and political power.

Disciplining Corporate Scofflaws
The federal government routinely does business with large corporations that repeatedly break the law. Why? Doesn’t that encourage bad behavior? Doesn’t it put the government itself at risk of being defrauded or having contractors engage in new misconduct? We aim to win an executive order prohibiting the government from contracting with repeat lawbreakers, or at least making it more difficult. Winning such a policy would have a far-reaching impact on corporate compliance with employment, consumer protection, environmental, and other rules.

Ending the Bankrolling of Climate Catastrophe
Fossil fuel projects depend on financing from banks and other lenders. If those lenders are better required to take into account the risk of those projects failing (because climate changes, such as rising sea levels, actually imperil their operational feasibility, or because the world will shift away from fossil fuel reliance) as well as the risk of those projects to the stability of the global financial system, then they will be much less likely to provide finance. Cutting funding for new fossil fuel development is crucial to speed the transition to a fossil fuel-free future. We’re leading the way with innovative proposals to financial regulators to adopt new rules that take into account the reality of the worsening climate crisis.

VII. COMING TO TERMS WITH TRUMP’S POPULARITY

While we celebrate the defeat of Donald Trump, we have to take seriously that more than 70 million Americans voted for him.

Why?

There is no single or simple answer. But we have to grapple with the question.
What to make of all this?

Well, the first imperative is to confront, directly, racism and sexism. To call it what it is, and to work for policies that dismantle institutions and practices that express and perpetuate these systems of oppression.

We should also question why people are drawn to hateful ideology, divisiveness, and bigotry. Many Americans feel alienated. They see a system rigged against them and favoring the rich and connected. They feel victimized by corporations and economic forces that have preyed upon and devastated their communities.

They are searching for answers and authenticity. Perversely, many believe they found those qualities in the fraud that is Donald Trump. His contempt for “norms” counted as a badge of authenticity. His scapegoating offered an explanation for their legitimate grievance.

The best way to break through this is to show people genuine solutions to their genuine concerns, to show them what it looks like when government actually works for them instead of for the corporate class.

It won’t be easy to break through the information bubble (including, but extending way beyond, Fox News). But if we push clear policies that will help people and then deliver victories that make a difference in their lives, we’ll reach more and more people. (If you doubt this, remember that Americans, regardless of party affiliation, overwhelmingly favor progressive policies — from raising the minimum wage to cutting drug prices, from reducing corporate influence over politics to cracking down on polluters, and on and on.)

That’s our plan to respond to Trump’s disturbingly high level of support.

And that’s this plan overall: a strategy to win bold, progressive policies that deliver concrete wins that make a difference in people’s lives.

VIII. CONCLUSION

“Sí, se puede” goes the slogan innovated by the great leaders of the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta and César Chávez.

Yes, we can. Yes, it is possible.

Is our plan ambitious?

You bet it is.

Nothing less will do.

There will be different ways all of us can pitch in along the way.

Right now, we need an influx of real-world financial resources.

And since this is the time of year when many people donate to organizations that inspire a sense of working collectively to take on the most critical challenges, I’m asking you to make a contribution to this shared project called Public Citizen today.

Please donate now.

To “sweeten the deal,” anything you contribute today will be matched dollar-for-dollar by a group of longtime benefactors.

Even better, if you join our popular Sustainers program as a monthly donor, your contribution will be matched dollar-for-dollar each and every month for one full year!

If donating today is not right for you, that’s okay. I hope you’ll understand that I have to ask from time to time — especially at this time of year — so that we have the resources to carry out all the essential work we have to do together.

Thank you so much for supporting Public Citizen.

For peace and progress,

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
 
 
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