Friend,

With urgent legislation stalled in the Senate, it’s time for President Biden to take matters into his own hands.

He personally can help the growing numbers of people in the U.S. who are struggling to pay for urgent needs, like prescriptions and utility bills. He personally can declare emergencies for the climate and the pandemic, which would open up more federal resources to tackle these crises. He personally can cancel federal student debt, which disproportionately impacts Black people.

As we’ve seen, President Biden does take action when pushed by the people. After public pressure, he extended moratoriums on evictions and student loan debt. After public pressure, his administration is finally beginning to send out free COVID tests and masks.

And it’s clear that we can’t keep betting on the Senate to act.

I was one of the few Congresspeople who held strong last year to ensure our transformative Build Back Better Act had a chance of passing in the Senate. Unfortunately, just as progressives predicted, as soon as the House of Representatives separately passed the fossil fuel industry’s infrastructure bill, we lost our leverage over corporate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin who turned his back on the people, blocking all the necessary reforms we’d worked so hard on from passing in the Senate.

So in order to support the people who call this country home, we need President Biden to use his powers to issue executive actions ASAP. If the Senate won’t act, he must.

Please sign if you agree: President Biden, it’s time to make your second year in office a year of bold executive actions. People are in desperate need, and we’re calling on you to do as much as you can to help.

Here are a few things President Biden could do with the stroke of a pen:

• Fix the student debt crisis so that receiving an education doesn’t equal a lifetime of student loan payments—by canceling federal student debt, as he promised to during the campaign. Canceling up to $50,000 in federal student loan debts would immediately narrow the racial wealth gap and increase the wealth of Black Americans by 40 percent. (Black borrowers have a harder time paying off student debt due to systemic racism in housing, employment, and more.)

• Enact a nationwide moratorium—or even better, a ban—on evictions, water shutoffs, electricity and heat shutoffs, and Internet shutoffs during the pandemic and for a year afterward. These shutoffs disproportionately hurt our neighbors of color, and it’s no coincidence these disparately impacted groups are also facing the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve fought alongside grassroots groups, including the national No Shutoffs Coalition, which has already presented President Biden with a draft executive order on this issue.

• Lower prescription drug prices that are bankrupting U.S. families by benchmarking U.S. drug prices against prices in other countries, allowing the federal government to purchase medications in bulk and at lower prices for critical populations that lack access, and permitting U.S. pharmacies and patients to import drugs from other nations.

• Declare a climate emergency, stop fossil fuel projects, and end federal fossil fuel leasing and drilling on public lands and waters. President Biden has the authority to mobilize a whole-of-government effort to rebuild the economy with green jobs and address the climate crisis. It’s past time for him to act with the urgency required.  

President Biden has the authority to help millions of people and our planet without waiting for the Senate to act. Now he’s got to use his executive powers. Please sign if you agree.

Thank you,

Rashida