There is a huge problem with Biden’s Build Back Better plan: only 10% of Americans have a good idea of what all is in the proposal. We Dems are doing a lousy job of communicating an enormously popular set of policies.
There is also a huge advantage with Biden’s BBB plan: its components are hugely popular with voters. We have to connect the policy specifics to the BBB plan and make it real and specific for voters.
Here’s some bottom line taking points:
- BBB will boost our economy and make Americans more financially secure from the middle out.
- BBB protects our climate future with history-making investments in green energy, green jobs, and training workers for the industries of our post-carbon future.
- BBB helps Americans get back to work with twelve weeks of paid family medical leave and an average child care subsidy of $15,000 per family.
- BBB reduces Americans’ medical costs by reducing prescription drug costs, lowering our premiums, and expanding Medicare to more people and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage.
- BBB pays for Americans to take care of their elderly and disabled family members at home.
- BBB reduces poverty with $3000 of child tax credits and by tripling the Earned Income Tax credit.
- BBB improves primary education by investing in universal free pre-school and boosting teacher recruitment.
- BBB makes two years of community college free to all Americans and reduces the cost of all colleges with bigger grants for tuition.
- BBB doesn’t raise the national debt. It’s paid for by making the wealthiest Americans and corporations pay their fair share.
The strength of the BBB, making landmark changes in taxes, healthcare, education, climate protection, and the caring economy is also a weakness: it’s hard and detailed to explain. We Democrats love good policy ideas that help people. But we aren’t great at communicating those ideas.
We need to be more granular in pitching the BBB to Americans by emphasizing those policies that will most help the voter we are speaking with. That requires individual messaging which understands what that voter’s challenges are.
Seek to understand the circumstances of the voter: do they have young kids or school-age kids; are they taking care of elderly parents or disabled family members; are they working without paid sick time or family leave; are they looking to go to college, or send their kids; are they covered by Medicare or Medicaid; are they concerned about the future of the climate? Those facts will improve targeting your message to that voter’s circumstances and help them understand how BBB will specifically help them.
Every Democrat holding and seeking every office, at every level, and every activist contacting voters need to be conversant with Biden’s BBB proposal and be doing everything they can to get that message out above all else. Our party will rise or fall upon the success or failure of BBB in ’22 and beyond.
And above all, we here in Arizona have to convince Senator Sinema to get on board with literally everyone else in her party and support the BBB plan without reservation or reduction to its’ benefits. Call her and write her and lobby her and shame her at every turn, and get everyone you touch to do the same. This is literally the most important task of every Democratic Arizonan at this juncture.
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The government is in no way ‘printing money’ to pay for this bill. What the government DID ‘print money’ for was Trump’s tax cuts, which exploded the deficit and the debt to hand out money to the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
The entire bill is paid for with increased taxes on those making more than 400k per year and corporations. It adds zero to the national debt, and will probably end up reducing the debt by decreasing other government expenditures by its provisions, such as negotiation of Medicare/Medicaid drug prices with pharma suppliers.
But it appears that Senator Cruella Sinema isn’t going to allow tax increases or negotiating drug prices.
What then?
I’m just wondering where all this money is going to come from with no one willing to go back to work. I see signs up all over the place for help wanted. Some small businesses have had to reduce hours of operation to try to stay open and profitable. Every time I go to the store or the gas station prices are up another 5 to 10 cents. The government can’t just keep handing out money and printing more. This is what causes inflation. I lived through the Jimmy Carter fiasco where mortgage rates were 19%.
Prescott, the inflation you’re seeing is being caused by the pandemic, and the way companies manage inventory (just in time scheduling).
This began over a year ago when the other guy was president.
Assembly lines and shipping shut down, now we have a bottleneck of products coming in and a shortage of ports and truck drivers.
Biden is working to open the ports up 24/7 to address the problem, but it’s going to take time to correct, and we should probably rethink the way private business manages the supply chain.
America is vulnerable, we learned that at the start of the pandemic in 2020.
If the government was printing money and giving it to you and I and some poor folks, the economy would boom, because you and I and especially poor folks would spend it, and spending, for better or worse, is what drives our economy.
But they’re not doing that, they’ve been printing money for years to give to banks to loan out at little or no interest to them, and things like that are why the stock market is at record highs.
For the last 40 years we been realigning the country for the benefit of the very wealthy instead of the middle class.
Small businesses, and big ones, are having trouble hiring because people don’t want to go back to low paying jobs, especially in the hospitality business, where they are abused for minimum wage or worse, less, because of gig jobs and jobs where you live on tips.
What’s happening now is nothing like what we went through with Carter.
If business wants people to come back to work, they’re going to need to show they value the work they do and respect them as people and not just a profit centers.
Gas prices go up and down because oil producers and oil companies play games with us. You can go back and find 4 dollar a gallon gas just a few years ago.
Oil prices are just a long running scam we all got used to.