For weeks, AFSCME members have been encouraging their members of Congress to support President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. This ambitious plan will make significant investments in America’s physical and human infrastructure — everything from roads and bridges to child care and home care to lowering prescription drug costs and improving Medicare — all by asking the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share.
Now, it’s crunch time. This week, as Congress prepares to vote, we need a big push. We have a once-in-a-generation chance to transform our communities and empower working people.
The Build Back Better agenda will bolster public services, create good union jobs, cut middle-class taxes, expand health care coverage and so much more.
We can pay for this plan by asking the ultra-wealthy and corporations to contribute more in taxes. They can afford it — they’ve become $1 trillion richer during the pandemic, even as working people have struggled and sacrificed.
Public service workers have been the everyday heroes of this crisis. Fighting the pandemic on the front lines and mobilizing to ensure passage of the American Rescue Plan in March, we have saved our communities from collapse. Now, Congress has to step up and build the sturdy economic foundation all working families need.
It is not enough to go back to pre-pandemic levels of investment in public services. Not when years of budget cuts left us short-staffed and underfunded, while billionaires and corporations made out like bandits. It’s time to build back better.
